Real life | 6 December 2012

The renovations were too much for me. I had to get the builder boyfriend back. But before you call me weak, manipulating, cheap, pathetic, or (if you’re into American self-help books) co-dependent, just hear me out. I defy anyone to go through what I went through with a consignment of ill-fitting MDF and not make a panic-stricken phone call to an ex-boyfriend who happens to be a building contractor.

And it’s not as if I rekindled the relationship entirely in order to get my house halfway back to habitable. I missed him. I missed his funny south London builder ways. I missed his deafeningly loud laugh, his tousled, blond,  dust-filled hair, his weather-beaten face and soulful blue eyes. I missed the way he wears T-shirts when it’s minus four.

I even missed his argumentative black cab driver-style rants over dinner about how the country is going to the dogs: ‘Here’s me working like a mug on a freezing roof all day when you can sign on the dole and get everything for free and a car thrown in.