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leant
against a car, still doubled over in pain. Sophie was now back on
her feet and had retrieved the bat. She swung it above her head
like a cavewoman swinging her hunting club, and moved quickly
towards me. I ducked at the last spilt second, and heard the glass
from the passenger seat window shatter, setting off the car
alarm.
    “ You crazy
bitch!” I screamed, still trying to catch my breath, but had to
quickly roll to safety as she attempted another bat attack which
crashed into the tarmac.
    This time I took off as fast as
I could. Sophie made chase for about 50 yards before giving up and
standing in the middle of the road; the bat raised above her head.
“If you ever come near her again I’ll kill you!”
    I didn’t look back. I kept
running until I was certain I was clear and free. And that pretty
much brought the curtain crashing down on the most meaningful
relationship I’d had in my life up until that point.
    It would also
prove to be the last day I would have sex for a very long time.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 4:
Back to Work
     
    Monday, January 5, 2009 -
9.17am
    Drought Clock: 3 days, 21
hours, 55 minutes
     
    Monday morning. Back to work
and in the office. The festive holiday was well and truly over, in
more ways than one.
    It had been four days since I’d
broken up with Stacey and stared death in the face. I had dared not
tell the boys what really happened. They would crucify me with
their taunts if they knew how the baseball bat-wielding Sophie had
nearly decapitated me. I wasn’t quite ready for their onslaught of
ribbing and banter just yet.
    But I had been desperate to
talk to someone, and I knew I could trust Kelly to be the voice of
reason and offer some words of consolation.
    “ That is the
funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” Kelly somehow managed to get the
words out through fits of hysterical laughing, holding her stomach.
So much for being the voice of reason.
    “ It’s not
funny,” I smiled. “I could have been seriously injured. Or worse.
Dead!”
    Kelly held one hand over her
mouth to try and stem the flow of laughter while she waved the
other hand at me apologetically. Her long brown curly hair bounced
up and down as she tried to control her giggling. “I’m so sorry,
babe,” she managed to finally calm herself down.
    I had worked
with Kelly Campbell for a little over four months now after she
came on board as a sales executive at Maxwell Media through a
graduate scheme. We sold online advertising to a range of different
industries across the three business-to-business websites. I had
been with the company a little shy of a year, but I’d been bored
shitless before Kelly arrived. She was bright, bubbly, and had this
infectious laugh. She was an easy person to get along with. Before
meeting Kelly I had never bought into the theory that a man and a
woman could really just be friends. I’d had female friends before, but
inevitably one person would always fancy the other person. Normally
I was the one who did the fancying.
    But with Kelly it was
different. Don’t get me wrong, she was attractive, but I think the
fact we were both in relationships meant that neither one of us
felt the need to try and impress the other person. There was no
pretence. No bravado. Kelly had been with her boyfriend Paul for
nearly a year now, and I had met him a few times when he had come
to meet her after work. He was a good guy and they seemed really
happy together.
    “ So, how have
you been doing?” she asked genuinely.
    “ I don’t know
really, it all feels a bit empty,” I said. “I still think it was
the right thing to do, but it still feels a bit
strange.”
    “ That’s
normal,” Kelly reassured me. “You were with each other for a long
time. You get into a routine. It takes time to adjust to the
change, especially when things happen so quickly.”
    Kelly was right. For the last
three years my daily routine had always revolved around Stacey in
one way or another. I was now in an unfamiliar