he high as a kite feeling lasts precisely two days. Two days of floating around beaming with love. Sorry, lust. Two days of getting very little done other than daydreaming about the events of my night with Nick. Two days of leaping every time the phone rings.

And then, when he hasn't called, I start to feel sick. Now I know I'm being ridiculous because yes, yes, I know he's not The bloody One, but that doesn't mean I don't want him to want me. I mean, Jesus, he's supposed to be madly in love with me by now, and he's definitely supposed to be phoning me.

I call Jules.

'Jules,' I moan, 'he hasn't called.'

'So?' she says pragmatically. 'He will.'

'But why hasn't he called? He said he'd call.'

'Libby, for God's sake. You sound like you're madly in love, but you keep saying this is just a fling. Flings don't call every day.'

'But just because I don't want him in that way doesn't mean I don't want him to want me.'

'Now, that,' says Jules, 'is ridiculous. Stop being so childish. Anyway, you know you're seeing him, so of course he'll call, but it will probably be on Saturday, just to confirm the time, as he said he would.'

'Okay,' I grumble.

'And,' she continues, 'you don't want him to fall in love with you because that will only make the whole thing far more complicated.'

'Okay,' I grumble again.

'So just relax,' she finishes.

'You're right, you're right. I know you're right.'

'Naturally,' she laughs. 'I always am.'

It's a bastard isn't it, how everything changes once you've slept with someone. How, even though you know you're not going to fall for them, you still have expectations, and you'll still be disappointed in the end.

Except no, not this time. I won't be disappointed. There's no commitment, just enjoyment, and I will enjoy Nick. Really, I will.

The phone rings at one o'clock on Saturday.

'Hello?' I'm already breathless.

'Hi, babe.' It's Jules.

'Oh,' I say, the disappointment more than clear in my voice. 'Hi.'

'What are you doing now?' she asks, and I decide not to tell her that I'm sitting next to the phone willing it to ring.

'Nothing much. You?'

'Nothing. Jamie's working and I'm bored. Do you want to go shopping?'

Now that sounds more like it. A bit of retail therapy never did anyone any harm, and besides, having looked through my huge wardrobe of super-trendy clothes, I see I haven't got anything to wear for tonight. Well, it's not exactly that I haven't got anything to wear, just nothing suitable, and Nick isn't the type to appreciate my John Rocha dresses or Dolce & Gabbana trousers.

'Do you want to come and pick me up?' I say.

'No,' she says. 'You come over here and we'll hit Hampstead. How does that sound?'

'Perfect,' I say. 'See you in an hour.'

I check my bag as I leave the house. Yup. Got money, credit cards, cheque book, make-up. Shit! Nearly forgot my mobile phone, so I grab it and head down to my gorgeous car, Guzzle the Beetle, aptly named as he (and yes, I know that most cars are female but mine, with his gorgeous metallic blue coating, is most definitely male) guzzles petrol like there's no tomorrow.

And off we trundle to Jules's flat, and once again I sigh with envy as I walk in, because, thanks to being part of a couple, both with nice fat incomes — Jules is an interior designer and Jamie is a barrister — Jules lives in the flat I wish I had. A maisonette in a side road off Haverstock Hill. You walk into a huge, bright, airy living room with maple floors and floaty muslin curtains drifting on either side of french windows that lead to a large balcony. All the furniture is camel and cream, modern classics mixed with beautiful old antiques, and the canvases on the wall are huge, colourful, abstract and beautiful.

The kitchen's in the basement, and Jules spends most of her time down there. As large as the living room, the kitchen is dominated by a massive scrubbed old french pine table, with enough room left for checked yellow comfy sofas at one end. More french windows lead straight on to the garden, and the units are the ones I dream about — slightly Shaker-ish but with a modern twist. It's my favourite room in the house, and the one we always end up in, drinking huge mugs of tea at the kitchen table, or curled up on the sofa with the sun streaming in.

It does look interior-designed, but it also looks like a home, like a place where you immediately feel comfortable. I adore it, and when I arrive I do what I always do and put the kettle on, and Jules doesn't mind, I know she loves the fact that I feel almost as at home there as she does, possibly more so.

'Hi, Libby,' Jamie calls out from his study next to the kitchen.

'Hi, workie,' I call back, the shortened version of workaholic, which is what I've been calling him for years. He appears in the doorway and comes over to kiss me hello, and, even though I know I couldn't stand to be with someone who works all the time, it has to be said that I can see exactly what Jules sees in him because he is, truly, gorgeous. The only man I know who looks handsome in a wig. No, not that sort of wig, the legal barrister sort of wig.

And before I met Jamie I always thought that all barristers were pompous assholes. They were all, from my limited experience, into ballet, opera and theatre. They all spoke like they had a bagful of plums in their mouth and were as patronizing as hell.

But Jamie isn't like that. Jamie, when he isn't working, is actually a laugh. And Jamie doesn't wear pompous classically English clothes. Jamie wears faded jeans and caterpillar boots. Jamie wears midnight-blue velvet trousers and Patrick Cox loafers. Jamie smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. Jamie, in fact, is cool, and one night, when we were all very drunk, he confessed that if he hadn't been a barrister he would have been a pop star, which made us all choke with laughter at the time, but actually I could see that. I could see Jamie being the lead singer in a seriously hip band and giving interviews with an insouciant toss of his head.

Jamie and I have an odd relationship, in the way that you always have slightly odd relationships with the men your girlfriends subsequently marry. Jules was my friend for years, and then Jamie came along, and yes, we hit it off immediately, but there's always that tiny bit of resentment because they took your best friend away.

But I forgave him. How could I not? And now, even though I don't see him that often, we have this lovely, teasing, almost brother-sister relationship, where he sits me down and asks about my love life and then tries to give me advice, which I almost always ignore because at the end of the day he's a bloke.

And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that men are far better equipped to give advice when you're having man problems because they know how men think, but Jamie is a bit crap at all of that, because despite being gorgeously gorgeous, he wasn't exactly Mr Experience before Jules came along and swept him off his feet. He was far too busy building up his career, and yes, he had hundreds of admirers, but never the time to notice them.

Jules was different to all the women setting themselves up to be the perfect barrister's wife. Jules didn't wear designer clothes. Jules didn't go to the hairdresser's or have a manicure once a week. Jules didn't care about going to the best restaurants or the ballet. And, more to the point, Jules never tried to pretend she was anyone different to try to trap her man.

No, Jules has always been one of those women that men go crazy about because she has enough self-confidence to say this is me, take it or leave it. And, invariably, they take it. Or at least try to. They love the fact that she doesn't wear make-up. That her clothes, on her tiny, petite frame, are a mishmash of whatever she happens to pull out of the wardrobe that morning. That her laugh is huge and infectious, and, most of all, that she listens. She loves life, and people, and makes time for them, and even before Jamie came along men were forever falling in love with her.

I've tried to be more like Jules, but, even though there are rare occasions when I feel I'm getting close, at the end of the day I just haven't got enough self-confidence to pull it off, and they bloody know it. So they start by falling madly in love with me — with the exception, it would seem, of Nick — and they end, about three weeks later, by disappearing when they realize that I'm actually a bundle of insecurities and not the woman they thought I was at all.

But anyway, enough about me, back to Jules and Jamie. Despite Jamie spending all his time tucked away in his study, their relationship does seem to work, and what I love about going out with the two of them is that we have fun. They have fun, and it's catching.

So Jamie comes out of his study and gives me a huge kiss as I stand by the kettle and then says, 'Tea? Excellent. I need a break. So,' he says, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table, 'how's the love life?'

He always asks me this because he knows I'll have a story to tell, and, if I do say so myself, I tell my stories brilliantly. I tell them so they're sparkling, witty, amusing. I tell them so they capture people's attention and make them clutch their sides with laughter, shaking their heads and saying, 'God, Libby, you are extraordinary.' I tell them so people think I lead the most glamorous, exciting life in the world. Except, when I'm telling them one-on-one to Jules, I can be honest. I can tell her how lonely I am. How I spend my life wondering why I never seem to have healthy, happy relationships. How I probably wouldn't know a healthy, happy relationship if it jumped on my head and knocked me sideways.

And she listens to me quietly, and then thinks about it, and finally tells me why these men aren't right for me, and that one day someone will come along who will fall in love with me, and that the trick is to stop looking and that it will happen when I least expect it.

Which is all very well for her to say, and it's probably true, but how am I supposed to stop looking when it's the one thing I want more than anything else in the world? Well, other than winning the lottery, I suppose, but only because it would increase my pulling power a thousandfold. But seriously, I've never understood all that rubbish that married women tell you about not looking, because how can you not look when you're looking, and how can you really be happy on your own when you're not?

Sitting here in the kitchen with Jules and Jamie, I tell them my funny story about Nick, and about him performing a striptease in the living room, and about him sitting in my bath with a shower cap on, and they laugh, and I laugh with them, and Jamie shakes his head and says, 'God, Libby, what would we do without you?' and I don't take offence, I just shrug my shoulders.

'So where are you two off to today?' he ventures, standing behind Jules and rubbing her shoulders in a gesture that's so affectionate I practically sigh with craving.

'Just up the high street,' she says breezily, as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

'Oh, God. I know what that means. I'd better warn the bank manager.'

'No, darling,' she says, 'we're not going for me, we're going for Libby. Except I might see something I like, in which case—'

'I know, I know,' he laughs. 'So, d'you want a lift up there or are you walking?'

Jules looks at me, the disgust already written on her face because she knows exactly how I feel about walking — if God had meant us to walk he wouldn't have invented cars — and I don't have to say anything, I just give her a pleading look and she sighs an exasperated sigh and says, 'You're giving us a lift.'

We jump into Jamie's BMW, and I do what I always do and insist on sitting in the front seat so I can pretend to be married to Jamie, and Jules does what she always does and prises off her engagement ring for me to wear, and we drive up the road with my arm hanging out the window in case anyone I know should be passing, which naturally never seems to happen, and he drops us off by the station.

'Jules,' he calls out the window, just before driving off, 'can you get me some socks?'

She nods and turns to me with a sigh. 'And who said it was glamorous being married to a barrister?'

We go to Whistles, Kookai and agnès b. We mooch round Waterstone's, Our Price and David Wainwright. We ooh and aah for hours in Nicole Farhi, and finally, in a tiny little sports shop tucked away at the top of the high street, I find exactly what I'm looking for.

'You're not seriously buying those,' says Jules in horror, as I stand in the mirror with super-trendy Adidas trainers on my feet.

'Why not?' I look innocent as hell, even though I know exactly what she's going to say.

'But they're not you!' she manages in dismay. 'You're Miss aspiring Prada, Miss Gucci. You're not Miss Adidas.'

'Look,' I say to her slowly and seriously, trying to make her understand, 'let me put it this way. I'm getting tired of being Patsy, so now I want to see what it's like to be Liam for a change.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Patsy's always in Prada and Gucci, and Liam's in Adidas, so now I fancy a more casual look and these are exactly what I've been looking for.'

'But what are you going to wear them with?'

'T-shirts and jeans.'

'T-shirts and jeans!'

'Yes. T-shirts and jeans.'

'But you haven't got any T-shirts and jeans.'

'Yes I do, Jules. Don't be ridiculous. Thank you,' I say, turning to the shop assistant with my most professional tone. 'I'll take them.'

Actually that whole Patsy, Liam stuff is a load of shit, and, although Jules probably would understand, probably in fact does understand, I can't be bothered to explain it to her right now. You see, it's not that I'm trying to change myself for Nick, God no. I mean, I hardly know the guy, it's just that these somehow seem more his style, and I can hardly go to his local Highgate pub in my designer togs, can I? These are much more appropriate, and anyway I've wanted a pair for ages. Honest.

So, armed with my wonderful new trainers (and what a bargain, £54.99!), we go for a cappuccino, and as we sit down I pull my mobile phone out of my bag and ring the answering service just in case it rang and I didn't hear it, but no, the recorded voice on the end says, 'You have (pause) no (pause) new messages,' and now I'm starting to get seriously pissed off, but Jules sees what I'm feeling before I've even started really feeling it and she says, 'No. Stop it. He's going to phone,' so I relax a bit, and it's fine.

Over coffee, Jules says, 'Are you sure you're not going to get too involved?'

And I sweep her comment aside with a toss of my hair and laugh in a very grown-up, in-control sort of way and tell her she's being ridiculous, but meanwhile why the bloody hell hasn't he called? My mobile number's on my answering machine at home, and I could ring in to pick up my messages, except that if I do that I won't be able to press 1471 to find out who last called me, which is what I do automatically every time I walk in my flat, and he might be the sort of person who hates mobiles and hates leaving messages, so he might have phoned but not left a message, but Jesus Christ, Libby, SHUT UP. I'm doing my own head in.

'What makes you think I can't have a fling?' I say eventually. 'You know, sex with no strings attached?'

'Because you can't,' she says firmly.

'Now that's where you're wrong,' I say. 'I haven't done it for a while, but I've had loads of flings with men when I haven't been emotionally involved. It's just been sex. I've fancied them but I haven't liked them, or I've realized they're not for me.'

Jules sits and thinks for a minute. 'And when was the last time you did that?'

'About five years ago, but I could have done it loads of times since then.'

'So why haven't you?'

'I just haven't.'

'You don't think that perhaps we change between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight or nine and that what was so easy for us when we're in our early twenties becomes almost impossible when we're nearing thirty, which is why we don't do it any more?'

'What do you mean?'

'The reason women generally stop having flings, or sleeping around, or whatever you want to call it, is because they realize they can't do it, because the older they get the more they see you can't sleep with someone on a regular basis and not want more, not when you've reached an age where society, unfortunately, still tells you that you should be married and having babies.'

'No.' I shake my head. 'I think you're either the sort of person who can or the sort of person who can't, and I'm the sort of person who can.'

Jules doesn't say anything. She just looks at me.

'I am, you know,' I insist.

And she keeps looking at me. And eventually I say, 'For Christ's sake, stop looking at me,' and she shrugs and changes the subject.

And eventually at five o'clock we wander back down the high street, which I don't mind in the slightest because it's downhill and even my disgustingly unfit body can cope with practically falling down a hill, and I jump in the car and drive home, and when I walk in there have been three messages, and, as I press 'play', I'm praying, I'm seriously praying that Nick has phoned.

The first is from my mother. 'Hello, Libby, it's me. Mum.' As if I didn't bloody know.

'C'mon, c'mon,' I urge her.

'Just calling up for a chat,' she says, 'and wondering whether you're coming for tea tomorrow. Call me later if you can, or otherwise in the morning, and if you're going out tonight have a nice time. If not, there's a really interesting documentary about magazines at nine o'clock tonight which I'll be watching with your father and—'

'Oh, shut up,' I shout at the answering machine as she finishes. Anyway, what kind of sad git does she think I am, staying in on a Saturday night? Even if there's absolutely nothing to do I'll try to go out just so that I can tell people I went out. And yes, drinking coffee at Jules's kitchen table and watching Blind Date and Stars in Their Eyes does count as going out because I've left my house, and all I need to tell people is I went to some friends for dinner.

Message number two is from Joe Cooper, which always sends me into panic mode. Not that I don't like him, I adore Joe as much as, if not more, than when we first met, but every time I get a work-related phone call on the weekend I start having anxiety attacks, convinced that something has gone terribly and irrevocably wrong, but luckily this is just Joe asking for a phone number, and he ends the message by saying he'll try to get it from someone else.

Message number three is a silence. Then the phone's put down. Shit. I pick up and dial 1471.

'Telephone number 0.1.8.1.3.4.0.2.3…' Yes! I don't bother listening to the end of the number because it's a Highgate number, and I don't know anyone else who lives in Highgate! Yes! He rang! And it gives me the burst of energy I need to run the bath so that I'll be ready whenever he calls again. Yes, I know I could call him, and I'm not playing hard to get, it's just that, having spent so many years chasing men, I now realize it's better not to call them. Ever. If you can possibly help it. And that includes calling them back. Except I'm not so good at that one.

And to make completely sure I don't give in to the urge to call him back I jump in the bath, and then, just as I've submerged my head under water, the phone rings and I jump up as if I've had an electric shock and go running into the living room, leaving a trail of sopping wet footprints. I pick it up and, trying to sound calm and collected and sexy as anything, say huskily, 'Hello?'

'Libby?'

'Yes?'

'It's Nick.'