Snow on Valentine’s Day: A Love…Maybe Valentine eShort. Ella Harper

you off to?’ she asks bleakly. Her eyes are almost as red as the straps on Tara’s silky teddy. ‘Somewhere nice?’

      ‘Not really,’ I say in a brisk tone. I probably could be truthful. I wasn’t off to somewhere ‘nice’, as such. I was off to somewhere I couldn’t stay away from, not on this day, at any rate. But I think Sarah has enough to deal with without me dumping my emotional woes on her.

      ‘He’s a heartless tool,’ I remind Sarah gently as I leave the office.

      ‘I know he is,’ she says, bursting into tears. ‘I just wanted a bloody teddy bear.’

      I nod sympathetically. Those bloody teddy bears. They have a hell of a lot to answer for.

      I make my way from my office to Piccadilly Circus. It’s not far; I work ten minutes or so from Leicester Square, which means it’s hard for me to avoid it the rest of the time. There have been days where I have literally walked around it causing me to be most inefficient with my time, just to make sure I don’t accidentally happen upon it. I am aware that this is a ridiculous state of affairs. It is the very reason I tend to keep it to myself. Who would understand a deliberate avoidance of a London monument just around the corner from my work for three hundred and sixty four days of the year?