You may be wondering…

I haven’t given up – on Nick or on you. But events, dear boy, have moved on. I’m trying to decide what to do and how to do it. The thing is, I’ve got offers, from tabloids and from the Telegraph. But I’m not going to accept any of them unless the outcome will benefit Nick and me. That’s tricky, because the offers aren’t just based on me spilling the beans on our affair. A month ago, the press would have killed for my story. Now, unless I can implicate Nick in misuse of public funds, they don’t really care. (Amazing: I have photos of him naked and asleep and they’re not that bothered.)

I won’t sell Nick down the river. He’s a great public servant who entered politics to make a difference. He isn’t vain and he isn’t venal. But he is incautious. I have any number of proofs of his love for me, and have watched him charge all sorts of expenses to cover our activities. But I truly believe this country is better off because of Nick, and he would be a great Prime Minister. It hurts me, it’s a knife in the ribs, this separation, and he hasn’t treated me as honestly as I would have wished. But we will be together, he and I, and he has a great shot at the top now. James Purnell? Don’t make me laugh. Miliband – either Miliband – ineffectual. Labour will choose someone with depth and authority,

I don’t mean it

Nick. I love you.

He claimed expenses for time spent with me

Unbelievable. They’re falling like ninepins: Shahid Malik and Elliot Morley and Andrew Mackay and more heads to roll tomorrow, and still Nick is unscathed. And he’s been so blatant in his misuse of office, finding the feeblest of excuses to take me on trips and out for lunches and dinners that will doubtless have been charged as ministerial business. He should be quaking in his boots, but instead he’s fizzing with the excitement of watching his rivals self destruct. He doesn’t know what I know and cannot imagine how close I came to biting his hand when he brushed my cheek and said “I miss you, Little Cabbage.” My knees gave way, but my heart stayed hard. He’s forfeited my love and earned this deep anger. I am going to make him pay. I don’t yet know how.

Steaming

If revenge is best tasted cold, then we could be tapping our fingers for quite awhile. Ian has provided precisely the evidence I never wanted to see. It would be enough to save me from a murder charge in a French court but The Telegraph may yet assassinate Nick first, by publishing evidence of his creative accounting. We’ll see. It seems entirely possible that Nick could meet a sticky end before angry dupes like me eviscerate him. And I can’t quite decide how to handle any of this. Should I ambush him? Am I strong enough? Bad enough to confront him with his duplicity, but how much worse if I cried or whined or showed any weakness.

You know what makes me incandescent with rage? If I were to the catch him in his office now, to lay out the photos that so clearly betray his betrayal, with not just one but two other women, he’d almost certainly brush my accusations aside. After all, he’s the victim at the moment, the leader Britain hasn’t yet had, his final moves towards his vocation interrupted by a silly Westerminster kerfuffle over expenses. The last thing he needs is me.

Which is ironic, because I need him. Still.

Rage

I broke a glass this evening. It wasn’t any old glass – it was one of a set of matching Champagne flutes, etched crystal. There’s little of beauty in this flat (not me, for sure), almost nothing of value. These glasses were just about all I cared for or about, glasses that conferred a sense of occasion even in their everyday use. If I’d lived a different kind of life, I’d presumably have sideboards stacked with such items, Waterford beakers and matching dinner services and canteens of silver. But I didn’t and I don’t and I’m mourning the glass. The stem snapped in my hands as I thought of her. Of Nick and her. I can’t help feeling she’s won.

I know why he’s letting her do this. There have been so many false alarms about Gordon but this time it’s for real. No way will Labour MPs will allow this broken, gurning man to lead them into the next election. There’s nothing some of his would-be successors would like better, of course, than for Brown to hang on in there and take the blame for the inevitable rout. James Purnell doesn’t want the poisoned chalice yet. David Miliband says he’d have to drink from it, for the good of the party, but he’s in no hurry to take the helm. But Nick – he’s gagging for it, and as for his protestations of innocence… well, they’re about as convincing as Harriet Harman declaring her lack of ambition.

If Nick gets the gig, will he take me back? Sarkozy divorced in office. Berlusconi’s marriage has hit the rocks. Surely British voters are at least as forgiving as their continental counterparts?

Forgiveness. Not sure I can forgive. I’m pulsating with anger and I don’t even know why.

Why more people don’t kill themselves

It’s not about fear, or religion. It’s just too much effort to figure out how to die. Last week I was thrumming with strange energy, unable to sleep. But someone has tripped over the cord and yanked out the plug.

Truth or kiss

I’d love to believe in him. I’d love to believe in us. I love him. But I can’t shake the feeling that Nick is being dishonest. He dismissed our future with studied gravity yet I caught a whiff of something else – relief? So I paid a visit today, to Ian the detective. My pasty sleuth seemed unsurprised by the request that he turn his dubious skills to investigating his erstwhile paymaster. He is going to stake out Nick. A phrase kept running through my mind: the truth will set you free. Please no. I don’t want freedom. I want Nick.

Help me

There’s no point in pretending to normalcy, in eating or drinking or having conversations. This morning I went to work and sat at my desk and focused on the matter in hand: how to change his mind, rewind, reset. I remembered what a friend told me about his long-suffering mum, who effectively put her philandering husband under house arrest by informing the health authorities that he may have contracted a notifiable disease. I wondered if I could use the same trick on Nick by claiming exposure to swine flu, and checked on the internet to see if my holiday resort had been afflicted. No such luck. Then I considered staging an accident at work. It would have to hospitalise me, be pretty scary. He’s made the decision about terminating the relationship, it’s in his gift, so he hasn’t in any way confronted the reality of losing me. I need him to understand, viscerally, what life without me would be like. 

For the moment it’s so easy for Nick. Every government department is in chaos, ministers are openly plotting. After Smeargate and a budget that even Gordon’s cheerleaders find hard to spin, Gordon is toast. So open is the disrespect that one of his own cadre sent Nick a musical mashup of the PM’s YouTube video on MPs’ expenses. Rats deserting a sinking ship, and their instinct is to head for the apparently unsinkable Nick.

With all this going on, politics, Nick’s great passion apart from passion, is keeping him fully occupied. He’s even been doing the media rounds, smooth as ever. I have to jolt him out of this. I have to find a way to make him stop, take stock, feel. 

For the moment I’m doing all the feeling for both of us, and it’s literally killing me. Even so, I have given up drink. I will not text Nick or importune or do anything that gives him reassurance that he can come back to me at any time. This is a time for superhuman strength. I am tough enough for both of us. I will rescue our love, by whatever means necessary. Nick, I am doing this for you.

He has dumped me

He says he doesn’t want to. He says the government is in trouble and he can’t risk adding to Labour’s woes. He says he would rather be with me but he has to put principles first. He says a lot and I don’t believe any of it. 

If he loved me as much as I love him, he’d put us first. If he asked me to wait for him, and if waiting involved not contacting him until after the storms have passed, when Gordon is gone and Labour is out of office and Nick has stepped up to the plate, I would do that for him. Instead he pretends to think of me. I’m young, I should find someone else, forget about him. 

As if. As if. As if.

Cheers

I’ve lost the ability to get drunk. This is the second bottle of red and follows a brace of vodka miniatures nicked from the plane. I can still speak and write and think, and those are things I don’t want to do. Any phone or text messages sent now would deepen the agony, not alleviate it, assuming – and I do – that they’d go unanswered. Nick is blanking me, blocking me. Why can’t I just pass out? These minutes, the coming hours, the rest of the evening and into tomorrow – it’s all dead time. Until I can talk to Nick – until he talks to me – there’s nothing but waiting and enduring and trying not to jump to conclusions. Because there will be a reason, and it will be benign. Natrasleep, more wine, Solpadeine. I’ve just got to get through this night.