Changes in Perspective, or The Morning After The Night Before.

I wake to mad beeping from my mobile. A barrage of texts, all of them from Johnny.

"Good morning."

"I'm so sorry about last night."

"I can't stop thinking about you."

"When can we meet again?"

"I'm on the train. And wishing I wasn't."

Max looks a bit curious, so I tell him the texts are all from Orange.

"Bastards," he says. He's very familiar with Orange's relentless marketing, which seems to fill up his in-box as soon as he's managed to empty it.  Or that's what he claims, anyway - whenever he tries to explain why he never receives my texts. Josh says it's worth all the hassle for the Orange Wednesday codes, but then he would, seeing as he's always the one who gets to use the damned things.

I can barely look at Max as I get ready and rush off to work. There's no time to give last night's debacle more than a cursory thought, which is probably a good thing. God knows why Johnny wants to repeat the experience. I'm not at all sure that I do.

"What the hell happened to you?" Greg says, as I walk into the office, five minutes late.

"Oh shit," I say. "I forgot to text you." Then I realise the significance of what Greg has said. "Oh my God, did you report me missing to the Police?"

"Um, no," says Greg. He fidgets a bit, and says, "Coffee?"

He's obviously forgotten that I am on coffee-making duty for the next two months in lieu of his having acted as my taxi service to Johnny's hotel last night. Then I realise why.

"Why didn't you? Weren't you worried about me?"

"Well, I would have been," says Greg. "But, after I went for a run, I fell asleep in front of the TV and didn't wake up until 8:00am. Few too many gins."

"Oh, for God's sake," I say. "I could have been dead."

"Don't be daft, Mol. If you can handle the nutters we get here, you can handle a bloody oil baron. Anyway, how was he?"

"How was who?" says The Boss. He has a snakelike ability to creep up on you. It's quite repulsive.

"Boris," says Greg. "We're guessing at what his next occupation will be."

Greg makes me do today's surgery by claiming to have an urgent doctor's appointment. Something to do with a suspected stress fracture, due to his "jogging injury." He only started jogging yesterday, so this seems a bit unlikely, especially as he says he only got to the end of his road before he had to give up and walk back home again. A severe stitch, apparently.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that now I have to do the surgery letters as well as finishing up my other casework - and all before I leave work today. I can't leave anything unfinished, not when I shall be on leave next week. Or nothing that it wouldn't be safe for Greg to handle alone, anyway - which represents most things. God knows what time I'll get home tonight - though this may be a good thing, as I still have no idea how I'm going to face Max.

When I finally lock up at 9:00pm, and start walking home, last night's events come flooding back. In their full ghastliness. I can't imagine why Johnny still sounds so keen to continue our affair. If you could even call it an affair, when all it has involved is two chaotic and ultimately very hazardous kisses, and some virtual sex.

Mind you, it has changed my perspective on hard man Vladimir Putin, though. If he's even half as short-sighted as Johnny, he'd be a piece of piss to deal with, if he started throwing his weight about. All you'd have to do would be to steal his glasses. Johnny doesn't seem at all powerful without his.

And Johnny isn't the only one who's acting out of character. Max is being very assertive when I get home. He's done almost all the packing, and informs me that we are not taking the laptop with us, as we are going to "spend quality time together" without distractions. He even wants me to leave my mobile behind, but I refuse to comply with this - not when I am leaving an incompetent ninja at home, with a sex-pest for a neighbour.

I write Josh a very long list enumerating the dire consequences that will arise should he be unwise enough to consider anything as stupid as a house party in our absence, and ask Mum to drop in daily to check that the house is still standing. And that Josh is still in one piece. Accidents will happen, as I know only too well after last night's shenanigans.

So now it's bedtime, and tomorrow I am off on "holiday." At least this might give me a bit of headspace to decide what on earth I am doing with my life. Though if the answer is turning into a bearded lady and growing back my hymen, I have no idea what the solution to that will be.