"JULIAN, YOU ARSEWHORE!"

I strode up the stairs two at a time, clutching the unfamiliar boxers in a tight fist. I stopped on the landing to kick Julian's pot plant, Gerald, before continuing on my way. "Julian!" I bellowed.

"Yes, pookums?" Julian was in our bedroom, trying on clothes and dancing to XFM. His shiny brown hair was bouncing in its usual ringlets as he moved. I hated his hair. I hated that he got out of our bed an hour earlier than he had to, just to spend extra time blow-drying and straightening. I thumped the radio hard and it spluttered into silence. "You're a cunt," I told him.

He turned around and blinked at me with large, almond-shaped eyes. "What?" He was wearing at least ten garments at once, all faded vintage greens and rich burgundies. Stupid tosser.

I couldn't speak for a moment. I was so angry I could feel the air around me zinging. "Boxers!" I screamed at last, waving them above my head. "Not mine! And not yours either! I wonder, Julian, where exactly did they come from?"

Julian's big brown eyes welled with tears; I almost softened like I had done a million times before, like I had done the very first time we met. He'd needed a ride home from a club, because he was Julian and he never thought about things like how he was getting home. I wish I'd never let him in my car. Should have left the bugger right there in the rain where he belonged, staring at the Aldwych Theatre across the road. Stranded on the Strand. But no. Had to fall for those big damn eyes.

Not this time. I appeared to have forgotten, in my brief trip down memory lane, that he had fucked yet another boy who wasn't me and put the stupid whore's boxers in the laundry.

I did the most hurtful thing I could think of. I lashed out about his clothing choices. "You think you're so outrageous, with your stupid velvet blazer and skirt over your jeans!" He whimpered some more. "You're so bloody passive aggressive! Why are you like this? Why- Just… fuck off. Fuck off! Go away!" I was crying now, going an attractive, blotchy red. I could see it in the mirror. "Go and… get another fucking piercing then, you tart, and when you come back I want you to GET YOUR STUFF OUT OF MY HOUSE."

Julian and I were both sobbing by now. In fact, I was verging on hysterical as I watched him go. I waited until I heard the front door shut downstairs and then screamed wordlessly for as long as I could.

When I'd stopped screaming, I flung myself to the window and looked at the bus stop across the road. He was sitting there fiddling with his buttons – one was coming loose; I'd promised to get Lucy to sew it for him weeks ago – and not crying any more. Well. Fuck him them. I flung myself on the floor.

It took a while for me to start breathing normally again. Eventually, feeling more than a little ashamed of my hysterics, I got gingerly to my feet. I had a raw imprint on my arm where I'd leant too hard on the carpet. It stung.

Deciding what to do next was the hardest part, but I settled on making a Julian Bonfire. I think I was only half intent on setting a fire on my own property, but nonetheless the pile of Julian Things mounted in the living room: books, CDs, clothes, his hair products, the six toothbrushes he cluttered up my bathroom with.

At least that would make his departure that evening easier to deal with. I think I never intended for him to live here long. I think I knew what would happen – that's why he still had an apartment of his own.

Funnily enough, Julian didn't show up to get his things. I spent the afternoon alternating between crying, watching Hollyoaks and checking to see if he was on Myspace. By ten o'clock I was on my sixth banana sandwich and it was pretty clear that Julian was not going to show up.

I called my hairdresser.

"Lucy Reid's phone," said a nasal voice.

"Is she there?" I asked, caught off guard. I picked at my sandwich until the phone was handed over.

"Hello?"

I couldn't help it; I started crying. "Lucy," I whimpered in between sobs. "I- J-" It was no use. Breath control had never been my strong suit, and the words just wouldn't come out.

Lucy ventured a guess. "Julian trouble?" She'd always been very good at interpreting my meaningless sobbing. The last time Julian and I broke up, I'd had six haircuts in five weeks just so I could cry to Lucy about it.

I explained my entire day to her, from the laundry to the boxers to Julian not coming to get his things. "What do the boxers look like?" She wanted to know.

"Does it matter?" I snapped.

"Well. You know he's done it before, so why choose this time to break up with him? I've been telling you to for months."

Scowling, I looked down at the offending boxers, which I hadn't let go of all day. They were really small; blue, with green palm trees and surf boards on them. I told Lucy. "Sounds like the kind of boxer ownership expected of a Julian-whore," she remarked drily.

"I don't have boxers like that," I pointed out. It was true that, judging by the precious few of Julian's other lovers I'd seen, he liked the boys he meaninglessly fucked to be skinny and frivolously stupid. But as far as I knew I was his only ever boyfriend, the only person to properly love him, and I was three stone shy of skinny with a useless degree in industrial chemistry.

I was about the point this out to Lucy when there was a noise from the front of the house. I knew better than to think it was Mrs Lewisham's cat again, because cats do not sing It's Raining Men at the top of their lungs, nor do they have a door key. I told Lucy I had to go and went out to the hall to ask Julian if he knew what time it was.

He was drunk. He smelled of clubs. He had a boy with him, a tiny, skinny boy whose purple-and-pink boxers peeked out above the waistline of his jeans. I kicked Julian in the shin.

"Whassamatter?" He asked. Drunk. Definitely drunk.

"You're a slag, Julian."

"I love you, Colin," he slurred. I coughed bitterly and looked at the boy. Julian, oddly astute when drunk, followed my gaze and continued. "I know I sleep with other boys, but I do love you, because you gave me a kettle when I went to university-"

"You-" I stopped short and I looked at the boy, who seemed marginally soberer (not to mention only just legal) but most definitely a silent victim of Julian's brash charm. "Go home, ducky, this is going to get nasty," I told the boy, and he worriedly let himself out again. Good for him.

I turned my attention to Julian. I couldn't believe his nerve, but I also couldn't be fucked to do anything about it. In the end, I dumped two spoonfuls of glowing-green Night Nurse down his throat and dragged him into the living room. His mouth reached for mine a thousand times between the hall and the sofa. It was horribly, painfully familiar, this routine, and my chest ached something awful as I covered him in a tartan blanket and went upstairs to bed.

Knowing what he was like, I locked my bedroom door.

This time, I really was done with Julian.