Expectant ex (Diary of a Prince series)

No she’s not pregnant. But she does expect a lot.... Still.

Her name is Bunny. Miss Boiler to you. She's an ex. Thing is, it seems my years in the wilderness of south east London have done nothing to dampen her ardour.

She knows I’m with Indigo. She knows we have Rosie. I broke up with Bunny years ago but she became easy prey for lonely nights thereafter. She always opened her door at 4am when I was high and I abused that. And still she came back for more.

We met at boarding school aged 17 and she thought we were meant for each other. She told me I looked like George Clooney and I puffed out my chest. But years down the line she became a bore. Always grumpy. Always moaning. A bit like how Indigo is now. Surely that can’t be linked to MOI?

I strung her along for rainy days. Said “I love you” at the end of emails, things like that. I don’t do that anymore but she continues to hover.

It was about two years ago when she popped back onto the scene. She sent me a text.

“Hey stranger, how are you? I am filming in London next week and wondered if you’d like to meet?”

Of course I was curious but ran the thing straight by Indigo. She too was nosy and told me to meet her for lunch to find out what she’s doing. So I did. Before I left Indigo said “by the way, if she asks my age, don’t tell her I’m 37”. We met at Belgo’s in Covent Garden and after five minutes she said, "how old is Indigo again?”

“33,” I said, not realising women remember these details.

"She was that age when you met her," Bunny said. "She's older than that - how old is she really and why are you lying about it?"

I blustered and blundered and brought the conversation to an awkward end. Later, when I told Indigo she said Bunny was manipulative. “Why couldn’t you have said 35 or 36. Now it looks like you're embarrassed about our age gap.”

She didn’t like it when I told her Bunny was now a hotshot TV producer. I think she’s a bit insecure since becoming a mum. And she disliked it further when Bunny sent a text the following day saying, “Thank you for my lovely dairy free lunch. We must do it again soon.”

“Why did you buy her lunch – you could have made her go halves like we do,” Indigo said querulously.

When I told her Bunny wanted to meet Rosie she became unhinged.

“Tell her she is not welcome anywhere near my daughter and if she persists in contacting you, I will take my dusty flirt bag out of the attic and look up some old numbers. We can both play that game Mr Prince.”

Anyway, since the lunch when Bunny caught me out she has thought there’s something wrong in my relationship with Indigo (quite apart from the baby issue which is relatively recent). So every couple of months reminds me of her existence in a text or email.

She usually begins, “hi you... being useless as usual.” or “Hi stranger... so rude not replying” Indigo says she’s a bitch, honing in on another woman’s man with no sense of decency and that I should tell her to leave me/us alone.

But if I sneak a thought about it, I realise it’s a security blanket I've had since entering the cut throat world of adult relationships and I actually kinda like it hanging at the window of my past.