Date 28

"Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me."

My first date of 2009 and things couldn't have got off to a better start.

She made contact with me first and before we actually met we'd had a huge amount of communication between each other by e-mail and text. As it turned out I asked her out for a drink on Christmas Eve and she was overjoyed, and so was I. Because of the Christmas/New Year interruption we eventually met up on the 2nd of January and it turned out to be the most perfect first date I'd ever had.

I knew as soon as I saw her that I fancied her and to say that there was a spark between us was an understatement. It was a purely magical evening and to cap things off she asked me back to hers, which in terms of first dates has never happened to me before or since. We also drank a huge amount and by my reckoning we started at 6pm and finished at 4am (without any food), which is no mean feat. The next morning we had to get up reasonably early as she was visiting her parents in Kent and we both had horrendous hangovers, which was to be expected. So, we both went our separate ways.

She texted me on the way home and sent me a beautiful message about how wonderful the previous evening had been and how we had to see each other again as soon as possible. I then got another text from her later on in the day asking if I wanted to go back to hers that night. I was actually in bed nursing THE hangover from Hell, and I was also coming down with a cold, so I was feeling doubly awful. Thus, I had to decline, but if I'd had any energy left then I would have been over like a shot.

We then met up again a couple of days later as she'd invited me round for dinner and she made me the most amazing meal I've ever tasted. She was an astonishingly talented cook and I also bought her flowers too, which she was overjoyed with and I have to add that I've never felt compelled to do this for anyone else. We had another sublime evening which ended with us dancing (a rarity for me as I never, ever dance) around her lounge with her flatmate until 4am, absolutely hammered on red wine on a school night.

I then saw her a day later and she cooked for me again and we drank and drank and things were going much better than I ever could have believed they would. This went on for just over a month where we'd see each other every other day and I was happier than I'd ever been in my life, which really is no understatement.

One evening we were due to go and see Slumdog Millionaire but when we got to the cinema there was such a big queue that we decided to just go back to hers and indulge in her favourite pursuit of drinking lots of red wine late into the night. I was still at the stage where I would get butterflies in my stomach when I saw her and we, again, had another lovely night where she made it clear that we were now in a proper relationship and bizarrely spoke about our future a lot and even mentioned babies (weird, I know) and then the next day we kissed good-bye at the station and went our separate ways as had become the norm. This, dear reader, was the last time that I ever saw or spoke to her.

This was a Thursday morning and everything had seemed normal. She was going away on the Friday morning to Vienna for a weekend away with her flatmate but she'd be back on the Sunday so I told her to give me a ring when she got back, which she said she would. She then texted me during the day and told me to organise something for us for when she got back that didn't involve alcohol as she quipped that she wanted me to see her sober for once! I duly went away and pulled in a big favour from one of my best friends and acquired two tickets to see her beloved Arsenal play.

Sunday came and this had been the most time we'd not had any contact between each other. I didn't hear anything from her but wasn't too concerned as I thought maybe she'd got back late or something. The next day I hadn't heard anything from her but just assumed she was busy at work. Then I checked my Facebook in the afternoon and she'd managed to put a mountain of photos up from her weekend away. I still hadn't heard anything by the evening so sent her a text. She took an age to reply and sent back a bizarre response saying she was feeling a bit weird but she was out in Wimbledon (more than likely on a date) and would contact me the next day. The next day I didn't hear anything either and so I rang her that night. It went straight to voicemail so I left a message just asking her how she was and how her trip had been etc.

The next day came and still nothing. It got to the afternoon and I thought things were getting ridiculous so I mailed her telling her that I'd got us tickets to see Arsenal and was she free on that date. Then a couple of hours later she sent back a reply telling me it was over.

She sent me the most patronising and insensitive e-mail I've ever received. The gist of it was that she didn't think it was going to work between us but she said she didn't know why. It was all over the place and she even admitted that it was very cowardly of her to jettison me by e-mail, but it still didn't stop her! She also told me how sweet it was of me to get her Arsenal tickets and that I should go anyway to see a team that I didn't support. She signed off by saying 'take care and I really do mean that as I think that you're lovely. P.S. I'll send you back your Twin Peaks DVD' (I've never been able to watch it since). So, in other words 'run along now, silly boy.'

I was completely devastated as I just hadn't seen it coming. I replied that night to her with tears streaming down my face. I kept the response very structured and wrote it in what I'd term as 'controlled emotion,' as I needed answers. She never replied to it.

I sent her a very brief message a few days later after hearing nothing, telling her that we needed to talk about things. I received a very terse and short reply saying that she'd ring me at the weekend. She never did.

I was by this time in complete shock and I'd stopped eating completely and I couldn't stop crying. My whole world had come crashing down but I didn't contact her. Other aspects of my life hadn't been going great and this tiny glimpse of happiness I'd experienced probably magnified the hurt I was feeling as the rug had well and truly been pulled from beneath me in the most abrupt manner possible. A month had passed of tears, little food and no contact so I e-mailed her a very casual request asking her for my DVD back. She replied the next day, apologising, and that she'd send it back. True to her word I received it from her the next day and she enclosed a bizarre typed letter just saying thanks for lending me the DVD (I hadn't lent it to her as we'd been watching it together when I was over at hers) and a few other banal things. It was very impersonal as if she was writing to a stranger, and she never once asked how I was. I replied to it that evening by e-mail and kept things very light as I didn't want to let on how much she had affected me and asked her a few things such as how her job was going etc. Suffice to say; I never got a response.

The next few months were much the same in that I was eating very little and losing weight fast. I was still inconsolable and my nadir came when I broke down in Waitrose of all places; I just couldn't come to terms with it all and I never got any answers as to what had happened (and I never will). In the end and a good 5 months later I snapped out of it and began to live my life again. I think some people reading this will think this was an overreaction on my part but I'd never felt this low after a relationship break-up and probably never will. I didn't foresee it at all and my body just shut down. There were no signs that anything was wrong and everything had always been on her terms and she was the one who'd always text and e-mail me a million times a day and not the other way around and she was very intense. I adored her and she knew it, plus this was a 34 year old woman not a teenage girl. I really beat myself up about it as I thought I'd done something wrong, but, as one person said to me it said a lot more about her than it did about me.

In hindsight I should have known better than to have started anything with a red wine swilling Tallulah Bankhead (the original femme fatale and her ultimate obsession and heroine) wannabe, but you live and learn. It's now been a long time since it happened and although I'm to all intents and purposes over her; I still feel very hurt and think of her longingly in my weaker moments. It's also changed me as a person as where previously I used to be an open book, I'm now the absolute antithesis in that I've become very guarded.

"Girlfriend in a coma."

Bizarrely in the May of 2009, completely out of the blue, my beloved Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier League (not a great year for me). The first text I received offering condolences was from her. I'd long deleted her number from my phone but I recognised it and all it said was 'sorry.' She was of course referring to my team's demise and not the pain she'd put me through. I was a bit tipsy and so shocked to hear from her that on the way home on the train I replied and we got into a bit of banter about the football. I then texted her again a week or so later and asked her if she fancied coffee. She replied instantly within a few seconds and said 'yes' although not for a couple of weeks as she was busy. I ,therefore, waited patiently and contacted her again to arrange things. She never did get back to me...