Patience woke up with a hangover on the morning after the works’ Christmas party. She was alone, as usual, disappointed and, as she had overslept by half an hour, she was going to be late for work for the first time in her five-year-long working life at XYZ Bank.

She felt disappointed and miserable this morning, noticing her bad bed hair in the steamed up mirror that she wiped with one hand as she brushed her teeth with the electric brush she’d treated herself to in last year’s January sales.

When she was promoted to team leader last January she had begun the year with boundless energy and enthusiasm and had looked forward to a great future. Still alone and unloved, of course, but she had thrown all her eggs into the one basket and felt after four years of concentrated study, that she had the unpredictable bond market pegged and the Boss had not only recognised that and even pointed out in his pre-office-party speech that she was now running a successful team of twelve traders that were really hauling in the results.

But that warm glow of recognised success was early that previous evening, now at dawn on this dark winter morning she felt she had definitely let herself down.

She dressed listlessly noting the time on the bedside clock. She was planning on starting work at 9 this morning, two hours later than normal, as most of the staff were instructed to post-party. The markets would be quiet everywhere today. It was a concession Kevin the Boss had made and announced when he decided that they would have the office party on the Thursday before Christmas, that they should start the Friday late and have a hair of the dog and some nibbles at noon for an hour at most and then clear the office until the Wednesday after Christmas.

It was a plan and Patience decided she had about half an hour to spare and she would use that time to sit down and write her New Year Resolutions now.

She had been doing them every year since she was about six years old, usually five in number and she would tick them off as she broke them one by one. One year she lasted on her ‘no chocolate shall pass these lips’ resolution until Easter; only last year she didn’t last much past 4pm on New Year’s Day, while staying at her parents and the mint-choc Matchmakers did the rounds, and Patience’s patience gave in on the third round.

She sat at her tiny one-bed flat’s galley kitchen with a pad and pencil and a tea cup with a tea bag brewing in it.

‘Number 1 no fucking chocolate’, she wrote and underlined it twice and, as an afterthought, crossed out the ‘fucking’.

‘I’ll write this out in big letters and stick it on my new kitchen noticeboard, when I get one in the January sales,” she thought positively, ‘so no words like ‘fucking’. Write down sensible resolutions, Patience, ones that you know you can keep.’

She wrote on her pad, ‘No. 2. No Sex’ then crossed the ‘No Sex’ words out and wrote, ‘No BAD Sex’, and underlined the ‘BAD’ three times.

“Oh god,” she said out loud to echo in her empty flat, “I did have bad sex last night, so bad that it was sooo damn good, the best sex ever. And then that bastard Jeremy wakes up before me and sees me lying there with my streaky make-up and bed hair and sneaks off out without a fucking word! The. Total. Fucking. Bastard!”

‘No. 3. No Swearing’, she wrote on her pad and chewed the end of her pencil, remembering bits and pieces of vague mixed up memories of last night.

“And it was all my own fault,” she sighed, “After all that booze from a free bar all evening and followed by being bedded by a complete a-hole who I would never normally touch with a barge pole. He’s younger than me and I’m his boss, it’s like cradle snatching by a ridiculous old maid, I’ll never live it down in the office. Never. Ever!”

‘No. 4. No Alcohol’, she wrote. “Damn, I’ve got half a bottle of wine in the fridge, but then I’ve got a week until the New Year. I might need that as therapy tonight after the day I guess I’m going to have. Oh, going into work ... I know I was hammered, Jeremy the Bastard was definitely hammered, beer goggles on his part, pure lust on mine. Oh God, what have I done? I was relying on being discrete but was it as obvious as it now seems in the cold light of day? So embarrassing, sleeping with ... him, him of all people. The office Casanova. I’ll never live it down.”

‘It’s so unfair, the blokes get hero-worshipped and hi-fived for being total sluts and given a name that even sounds romantic, like Casanova, while I’ve probably become the Office Slut and will forever be labelled an Old Tart and a Cradle Snatcher. Shit!’

Patience stirred her tea bag, lifted it, squeezed it out and plonked the spent bag onto the saucer. She stirred in a splash of milk and sipped the hot refreshing liquid from the lip of the cup.

Closing her eyes, she thought about the pain, no, the pains, plural. The hangover pain, the pain from way behind her tired eyes, the pain of rejection by the man who had got his jollies off and the pain of embarrassment that she knows will come and keep coming back until Jeremy leaves the company or she does. “Damn, and I worked so bloody hard for this life, damned hard!”

‘No. 5. No Fraternisation, Ever!!!’ she wrote on her pad, underlining ‘Fraternisation’ with a wavy line for emphasis.

‘That’s not just a New Year Resolution, that’s a Golden Rule for Life,’ she said to herself, then out loud, “A golden rule for a quite bossy chick with attitude, a little on the chubby side maybe, but one who has a solid foundation for a career to concentrate on. I am going to win respect and be a role model for my staff, with no distractions, not a single one. I can do this and these five resolutions will get me back on track. Ms Patience Long, future CEO of XYZ Bank. I can see the gleaming brass plate on my suite of offices now.”

Her phone chirped on the charger next to the bread bin.

“Must be 7 o’clock,” she said to herself, “I must get going.”

But the chirp extended to a full ring.

“Who’s ringing me at this unearthly hour?” she wondered.

She got up and turned, the phone only two steps away in her tiny kitchen. She didn’t recognise the number, ‘Mmmm,’ she thought.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Hi de hi, Sweetheart,” the bright and cheerful voice came over the loudspeaker of the phone, “you up yet, showered, dusted in pure babe powder, dressed and decent, or are you ... otherwise?” The last word deep and full, Patience thought, of sexual innuendo.

“Er, yes, I’m up” she answered hesitatingly, “er, who’s this?”

“Oh, I’m soooo mortally wounded, I’m clutching my broken heart to hold it together,” the voice replied with an upbeat chuckle at the end, “so cruel you are to a mere mortal and yet you seemed such a sleeping beauty, a goddess in repose, when I had to tear myself away at some ungodly hour to serve my slave driver overseer, you know, tote that bale, pluck that cotton, service the plantation owners’ insatiable daughter.”

“Jeremy?” Patience asked, “is that you?”

“Yes, my dear, and who else would be calling you this early, worshipping you with ‘sweetheart’ and other endearments?” Jeremy said brightly, surprisingly brightly he seemed to Patience.

“Well, no-one I guess,” Patience replied, “except my Dad, sometimes, but not often recently.”

“Well, get used to it, terms of endearment are customary between couples, feel free to chip in manly compliments whenever they take your fancy. If you feel ‘sweetheart’ is a little jaded then I’m sure I can come up with something, but definitely not ‘sugarplum’ you do have to draw the line somewhere, ga-ga-ga,” Jeremy said, with a little vocal gagging impressions at the end. “Anyway, copy this phone number into your contacts and put me under ‘Stud’, if you have to, but I’d prefer ‘Jezza’ or ‘Jez’ but never ‘Jezzie’, sounds too much like ‘Lezzie’ OK? Then, you can get your cute butt into work, Kevin’s PA is already unloading the booze ready for the Noon do.”

“What?” Patience felt disorientated, her mind running through selected words, like ‘sweetheart’, ‘sugarplum’, and ‘cute butt’ and ‘noon do’ and trying to make sense of it all. ‘I mean,’ she thought, ‘the sex last night was indeed out of this world. But I’m just a notch on the Jeremy bedpost, aren’t I?’

“Hey, ‘So-called-Stud’, how did you get my number, did I give it to you last night?” she demanded.

“No, you were totally incapable of coherence after, well before too but definitely and especially after,” Jeremy laughed, “we both were after all. I got your number off the office contact list and you are now in my phone as ‘Pash’, that is ‘Paaysh’ with a long ‘a’ sound so it is recognisably short for Patience, not ‘pash’ as meaning ‘passion-full’. They are spelled the same and in your case they mean the same but are pronounced quite differently.”

“Office contact list? Where the hell are you?” Patience asked.

“In the office, of courses,” Jeremy replied, “you asked for at least two volunteers to man the office and I volunteered along with Lick-arse Lenny and Dreamy Di, but neither of them have showed up. Di said she was the sensible married one, remember and her hubby fireman-lifted her out of the pub at about 9.30. As for Lenny, well we all know he’s all talk and no trousers. He’s only still employed as he’s Kevin’s god-son.”

“So how?”

“Ah, I woke up, I have an excellent sense of time and place, and I left you at 6 and made it here quarter of an hour early. Really quiet on the Tube, I think a lot of offices have started Christmas early,” Jeremy laughed. “As for the office, I’m the only one in from our team. Kevin’s PA Karen came in on her starting time at 7.30, she wasn’t at the party, and has brought the booze in and has scooted off to get the grub from M&S when they open at 8. So, I thought as I was the only one here all on my lonesome with no-one to boss me about for a change, I would call my loved one for a private conversation and thank her most sincerely for blowing my socks off, which I hope we can repeat fairly constantly now that the barriers are down.”

“Loved one?”

“You are there on your own this bright cold winter morning, yes?”

“Yes, but.”

“And, you are trying to recover from a night of passion with ‘your secret admirer’ who sent his second very private secret ‘secret Santa’ prezzie to you, remember? Ooh I think you were checking it twice and I delivered it thrice, if my memory of Christmas Party Past serves me right? Blame the alcohol for that, Hon, if you wish but we both had more than a hand in what happened after that. And, on the receiving side, you appeared to have acknowledged that secret prezzie on, well, for want of another expression, multiple times, am I not exaggerating?”

“Er, yes, I do remember the second present quite fondly and the first, the Hairy Beaver, rather less fondly,” Patience laughed for the first time this morning, noticing the unwrapped Hairy Beaver with the pot and packet of grass seed on one side of the kitchen worktop, “you cheeky sod. I was so embarrassed when I opened that in front of everyone.”

“Not as embarrassed as you seemed opening your optional additional present somewhat later, you did grow a delightful flush to your cheeks. But yes you laughed at the public gift,” Jeremy returned her laugh, “we were limited to less than £10 which cut down on options, but it did make you laugh and I even got a penny in my pocket for change. Actually, it was Christine who organised the Secret Santa draw and fiddled it in my favour. Now, that we’ve broken the ice I’m hoping we can watch your hairy beaver grow together and, if you like, I’ll take over the watering and trimming duties, I’ve got the scissors for the job and a grooming kit to boot if you have the necessary beaver.”

“As if I’d let you anywhere near my precious beaver with a sharp implement,” Patience said, realising too late what she said.

“No, Pash, tempting, but not going there,” Jeremy laughed.

Patience giggled and shook her head in surprise at their saucy conversation. She was sure she hadn’t giggled like that since she was a girl; she’d been so focused on school, college and career that she only smiled briefly in welcome or thanks and never walked around like Jeremy who always seemed to have a permanent smile affixed to his face. It’s one of the things that had always attracted her to him from afar.

“Look, it’s almost ten past. I better get a move on, get my coat on and I’ll see you soon.”

“OK,” Jeremy said, “I might speak to you on the Tube, if the office is still empty of big ears.”

“Oh, O ... K,” Patience replied a little doubtfully.

“Come on, Sweetheart,” Jeremy insisted, “don’t go all ‘stranger-danger’ on me. We. Have. Been. Intimate. Between us the barriers are not what they were before. At work we can be as frost as usual, and be as standoffish as you were until you attacked me in the cab.”