T: 4th and final date

"The bells, the bells!" my subconscious cries.

So, he fucks up, and he sends flowers.

I love getting flowers. It's sweet he bothered. It's great he realised an apology was required.

BUT as a male friend pointed out - send flowers to show someone you care, not as a buy off when you've done something wrong.

On balance it seemed another chance would only be polite. However, warning bells (and friends) clanged "Don't trust him."

Nonetheless, I met him at a London museum Late (not the ice-cream parlour that he'd have preferred), and we spent an awkward hour examining exhibits that he feigned no interest in, thus inhibiting mine (except for the string quartet playing pop hits in 1800s style and costume - nothing could have dulled my pleasure in that!).

Was this the offending article?

We didn't discuss the problem - it seemed too early to be having that kind of intense conversation, but I no longer felt free to be myself as I didn't trust him. He then revealed another present. This made me extremely uncomfortable.  Not least because I sensed it might be something that would exacerbate rather than rectify the problem. He admitted that he had initially purchased an instructive 1900s manual on etiquette for women. Does this guy never learn? Would he have liked me to gift him a book on subordinating the natives in colonial India? It was at this point I gave up.

The present in fact was extremely cool, but this man just seemed to be too much hard work. He wanted to go for dinner. I wasn't hungry, and there seemed little left to say. I declined. His face fell. He asked if he could give me a hug goodbye, and left me at the tube.

And he strode off to get his long awaited ice-cream.