I was avoiding going to bed with my thoughts last night and, for some reason, I decided to check my credit card bill online.
This is something I never do. Once a purchase is made, I rarely revisit the scene of the crime, and do my best to forget everything about the new item and pretend I’ve either had it forever or that it was sorely needed, whichever stands the greater chance of being convincing. Sometimes neither really comes off, but hey, I’m a novelist, I need to exercise my imagination. This time, though, for some strange reason, I did check.
Thank goodness I did. For, at the end of the tally, and standing out like a neon pink, sprinkle-encrusted jelly doughnut amid a plate of humble wholemeal scones, was a purchase of £367.99 made at an online store called Anna’s Sexy Clubwear.
Quite a lot of me wishes I was the type to shop at Anna’s Sexy Clubwear. I am not sure what sexy clubwear entails, but I would imagine it features higher heels than I have ever known – probably high enough to bring on a nosebleed – and more than the odd smattering of leather. It is a very sad fact indeed that the last time I bought leather, it was a pair of elbow patches for Child One’s school jumper, which she had worn to shreds. Needless to say, she took one look at my painstaking mending, screamed that I was on a one woman mission to destroy her life, and refused even to touch the jumper ever again. I thought they were actually quite natty. Tragic, but true.
Whoever is running around the internet with my card details is having the time of their life. By the time I’d got on the phone with First Direct, with my voice up there in bat-squeak register due to the dread thought that I was going to be lumbered with paying for someone else’s purchases at Sluts R Us, the thief had sprinted to several more sites and bought a load more stratospheric heels, some clothing featuring many straps which is going to be very draughty indeed during this chill November weather we’re having, and some other stuff that I really don’t even want to discuss on a family blog.
The lady from First Direct’s fraud squad listened as I shrieked: “Look, you can see it’s not me, I’d never wear that sort of gear in a million, trillion years!” After I had ranted on for a good while longer, she eventually got a word in.
“Look, madam, do calm down. We know it’s not you. You really don’t need to worry,” she said, in those special tones we reserve for talking to the deranged.
“Are you sure? I won’t be charged?” I shrilled.
“Absolutely not. After all, madam, you only ever shop at Primark or Tesco!”
Grrrr. Now where’s the link for Anna’s Sexy Clubwear?