After Isobel had been carted away for tests, it was time for a less mentally unstable girlfriend (if such a thing exists). Hayley and I would go out 3 times on and off over the following year, but I can't remember how we got together in the first place. She was small and dark with a cute dimple in her chin, but with weirdly over-developed calf muscles. I had never experienced a love-hate relationship before, but we got under each others skin to the point where we fought constantly, but couldn't stop getting back together. Once she implicated me in the creation of a rather mean caricature, particularly focussed on her love of roller-skating, for which I was only partly responsible for, which led to me being summoned before the head of year. Apart from the intricacies of not being able to be with someone or without them, the one thing she taught me was that women are deceptively hard to understand. We were once kissing in her room, when she informed me that I could put my hand up her shirt, if I so desired. Upon doing so, I received the second slap across the face of my romancing career, for she had meant the back of her shirt not the front. Quite why she thought a twelve year boy would be interested in backs, when he thought breasts were on the table is anyone's guess, but I knew from that day forward that women were many things, but logical and understandable were not two of them.