Goodbye To All That, And The Usefulness Of Lists.

Okay, that's it with the weight gain plan. I am sick of Complan already.

It tastes like liquidised wallpaper paste, so I'm going to have to come to terms with being a headless child. And Max will just have to accept me as I am - unless he's already decided he prefers blonde James Blunts, in which case gaining a couple of stone won't help.

Anyway, I am not going to think about that today. Marriage is off the agenda, despite William and Kate's attempt to distract us all from the spending cuts. I shall bury myself in my work instead.

It's got to be preferable to sitting around stewing about my home life, even though the dreaded Vicky's back. She isn't wearing a neck collar, so I can only assume that I misdiagnosed her condition. I do have another go at finding out what's she up to, though. I haven't entirely given up on my powers of detection.

"What exactly is it that you're working on now, Vicky?" I say. Subtle is my middle name.

"Something special for Andy," she says. "Confidential."

Huh. Andy. And what a hypocrite! Vicky hasn't even been made to sign a bloody confidentiality agreement, since she complained to The Boss that my suggestion was offensive.

"Everything that goes on here is confidential," I say. "You can tell us."

She won't divulge anything else, though - so Greg's going to have to stalk her, if we're to have any chance of discovering what's going on.

I'm thinking of stalking Max, too. Maybe I'll follow him the next time he "pops to Sainsburys" and check that he isn't stopping off at Ellen's for a quickie instead. In the meantime, I could always start keeping a list of the evidence that suggests that he's having an affair.

I like lists. They're deeply reassuring. In fact, I'm sure I used to make them when I was trying to decide if a boy liked me or not. I shall get my old diaries out again tonight, and check what method I used.

When I mention this to Johnny in an email, he seems pretty pleased about it.

"Then you'll see that I was your first love," he says. "And probably The One."

"I don't believe in The One," I say. "It's only my single friends who do. And, last time I looked at my diaries, you got a mention as my first exhibitionist, but I'm sure I didn't say anything about love."

"You said you'd written Molly Loves Johnny For Ever."

"That was Luvs," I say. "Totally different thing. Fuelled by teenage hormones, too many Babychams, and The Real Thing."

Johnny spends the next few emails trying to persuade me that we all need some romance in our lives, and pointing out that my life with Max is hardly the stuff of Mills and Boon. It seems that even he is not immune to the bloody Royal Wedding.

I study Max's expression for signs of a romantic disposition while he watches TV tonight. It's hard to tell much from the side of someone's head, so I eventually give up trying to read his mind, and start flicking through the diaries instead.

I soon come across some old lists, though they're not exactly illuminating. For a start, I have no idea who half of them refer to, this one being a good example:

Kev Likes Me/ Likes Me Not. 

Pros
He looked at me when I trod on his foot while getting on the school bus.
He answered me when I asked if he was playing footie after school: "No."
He gave me his chewing gum wrapper to put into the bin.
He called me Short-arse twice.

Cons
He didn't ask me out.
He looked at Julie Firman's tits all the way home.
He called me Short-arse twice.

Who the hell was Kev? I have no idea, but he sounds a bit of an idiot.

The lists are interspersed with pages and pages of differing versions of my signature - my first name, combined with the surname of whichever boy was in favour at the time, including David Cassidy and Marc Bolan. (Neither of these two went well with Molly.)

Molly Hunter doesn't make an appearance - although it doesn't sound too bad, now I come to think of it. If I was called that, I'd probably make a brilliant stalker. And it's a definite improvement on Kate Wales.