I am in love with a girl that doesn't exist.

Her name is Anna. She's 26, a couple of years younger than me. She drinks her coffee black and has her steak rare. I know this because I have taken her out for both. We split the bill. We've also been to the cinema to watch films with subtitles and bizarre lighting effects, to small, dingy clubs to drink overpriced gin and tonics and listen to modern, out dated music. In the months we've known each other, we've been anywhere and done anything.

I love her laid back attitude and her ability to do things spur of the moment. She's called me up and an hour later I have found myself giggling around an art exhibition containing nothing but photographs of dead animals and white boxes. I love that she gets on with my friends and laughs at all Tom's jokes. They all tell me I'm lucky to have her. I'd be luckier still to have someone real. I love that she's happy to try any new food and will eat absolutely everything and anything. She likes beer and Star Wars and riding bikes. She's beautiful. Skin smooth as silk and big, beautiful, brown eyes.

We have been living together now for three weeks in a flat we both compromised on. It doesn't have the gas hob that she wanted nor is it near a tube station that I wanted. It has a bath that she wanted and gas heating that I wanted. It came with a washing machine but we had to buy a fridge. It is not perfect but it is ours.

We have a big double bed with a memory foam mattress topper on. We were cuddling one night and I feel something scratch my leg. She felt me flinch and laughed. I haven't shaved, she says, I couldn't be bothered. I reached down and stroked that skin smooth as silk. It was rough, bristley, short hairs stabbed my fingers. I tried to laugh it off too, hide my flinch, but I'm not sure I quite pulled it off. We stopped cuddling after that.

Her name is Anna. She's 26, a couple of years younger than me. She drinks her coffee black and leaves half drunk mugs all around the bedroom. I know this because we are living together. There are drawers in our room devoted entirely to tampons and sometimes there is blood in her underwear. She gets spots when she's stressed and her eyes get bloodshot when she's tired. She doesn't shave much when it's winter and her legs get furry.

She gets mad if I forget to replace toilet roll. She won't let me put my Stormtrooper poster up anywhere and says it doesn't go with the decor that she's chosen. Our fridge, the one we could barely afford, is full of salad, peppers and cucumbers. We only have meat three times a week as she's watching her figure. She yelled at Tom once when he and I came back drunk after a night out together and he slammed the door and told me that my friends need to grow up and Tom has the sense of humour of a perverted 12 year old boy. She doesn't have time to go anywhere and do anything anymore. Weekends have to be planned weeks in advance.

I am in love with a girl that doesn't exist.