In which I accept him just as he is
I was speechless. There was the Dirty Baker, on one knee, waving aloft his hideous cheap ring in a public place. And not just ANY public place, but Kong, the place where Carrie Bradshaw had lunch with Aleksandr's ex-wife in season six of Sex and the City. The couple whose water he'd spilled all over them by rocking in his rickety fashion backwards against their chair looked angrily at us.
"Stop embarrassing me!" I said. "You are making a public spectacle of us! And ruining my Carrie Bradshaw fantasy while you are at it!"
The Baker's rheumy eyes widened. "I thought you wanted me to propose," he said. He sounded hurt. But in a snippish pedantic way.
"Not like this, with that ghastly cheap piece of tat!" I hissed. It was true that I had wanted him to propose, but why like this? Why in Paris, where I had admittedly hoped he would propose until I realised he had bought that cheap Ebay ring, and then he ruined our dinner by calling my listed Georgian home with pristine sweeping lawns the "arse end of nowhere". . The Baker ruins everything. He is incapable of true feeling.
"It's not that I don't want a proposal,. I just want you to think about doing it properly and nicely," I said. "Get up off that floor. You are exacerbating your rheumatism."
"It is you I love only you I do not deserve you it is right that I should have thought more carefully I only want to make you happy my darling," he said somewhat mechanically, as he rose wonkily. He looked about himself vaguely.
"Oh GO and have your cigarette! I know that's what you want," I told him. He has no sense of occasion. I have told him time and time again that smoking is unhealthy and that I cannot bear it. Still he does not listen.
He placed the hideous bauble carefully on my plate. I noticed it had a piece of pocket lint stuck to it from where he'd stored it, not even in a velvet-lined box or pouch.
"It is a vegan ring," he said with dignity. "I did not want to insult our love nor the thousands upon thousands of people killed in the quest for blood diamonds by giving you a real stone. Nor did I wish to think of the planet being raped for gold while tiny bunnies, birds and foxes are rendered homeless by man's thoughtless cruelty and avarice. Anyway I think I will have a cigarette while you consider your answer."
He left, his greying hair looking dusty and unpleasant against his collar.
I considered my answer. It is true that no man has ever proposed to me before. I had to ask my husband to marry me and buy my own ring AND his, and he gave me fake diamonds that were so small as to become permanently stuck in my earholes pierced by an Essex gun in a chemist's when I was a teenager because my family was too proletarian for me to know about the superiority of needle piercing. But I did not feel as happy as I had anticipated. The Dirty Baker should have wanted to marry me 40 years ago when I was still worthy of love. Now all I have is money and some assets, despite being so poor that I cannot afford to eat or have a kitchen. I don't even have boobs as they were cut off due to my body dysmorphia in my 20s.
I do not really need a husband or a boyfriend, and it upsets me that the Baker is angling to live off my coin in my pristine Georgian house. He will want to eat off my silverware and not only the cat fork. He claims that he will be lonely when I go away for work. The Rock Star used my London flat and pillow spray for an assignation with someone else - what is to stop David from doing the same? He claims there are no people in Yorkshire but I am certain that would not stop people, like Garnier Fructis. from visiting him in my absence. I suppose he could make himself useful in the kitchen,. If only he would not spend so much money on ingredients.
He is certainly not worth showing off at Fashion Week. But he does love me and after all nobody has ever loved me, except for Lizzie. If only David were a horse I think I would be completely happy.
I enumerated his faults and good points once more. He loves me but he smokes in bed. He sends romantic texts but does not get a light in his bathroom. He is frequently mean to me and wears hideous clothing. He is no longer the 30 year old I fruitlessly bought Siouxsie tickets for.
He returned, a hopeful gleam in his eye. I looked with revulsion at the ring. When Carrie's e Aidan proposed with a ring she hated she immediately vomited. I had not done that yet. I only felt a little dyspeptic. Perhaps that was a good sign.
I opened my mouth to give my answer. Just then, my phone rang. A text. It was from Nic. "Shelter horse in desperate need of care," she texted. "Only has one leg. A beautiful gelding called Jim, former racehorse under name New Gold Dream, horribly abused. Will go to knackers if we don't act! Pretty please??"
That's a lot of food for one person, although those special vegan eggs can't be cheap. 
Does he have some kind of persecution complex? Is he into being domineered? (I can just picture Liz being one helluva dominatrix! 
