Volume I - Episode 78 Where: Melbourne, Australia When: 1 year, 1 month and 7 days before E-Day, 10:15 pm Tuesdays quickly became my favourite day of the week. No matter what I was going through - crap at work, illness, boredom, loneliness, depression - all I needed to feel better was to think about the next Tuesday night visit from Jessica. It makes a huge difference to your life, always having something to look forward to. She was all that I could have asked for in a companion and more. She was caring, sweet, attentive and intelligent. She always had interesting things to tell me and talk about. She always seemed genuinely interested in my thoughts and feelings. She always went out of her way to make me feel happy. And she was by far the funniest girl I'd ever met in my life. She had an imagination like no other girl I'd ever known. She'd come up with ideas, jokes and funny little scenarios that I never would have come up with in a million years. Barely a night went by in Jessica's company that I didn't double-over in pain, unable to breathe from laughing so hard. I liked her right from the start. But as each week went by, I grew to enjoy her company more and more. There were times when I felt like she was too good to be true. Could this amazing, beautiful, funny, intelligent girl really be in my life? Most nights I went to bed literally shaking my head in amazement. She was by far the best thing that had ever happened to me. By the third or fourth week, the only thing I didn't enjoy about life was saying goodbye to her. She'd give me a hug and maybe a kiss on the cheek, and then I'd stand at the front door and watch as she walked out into the cold night air, happy for the night we'd had together, but always knowing it would be another seven days before I could see her again. One night, while enjoying her goodbye hug, I accidentally let slip that I didn't want to say goodbye. I quickly snapped my mouth shut after blurting that out, afraid that she would be offended or scared off. But instead, she gave me a long, lingering hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then she pulled her keys out of her handbag and took a small, colourful rubber toy from her keyring. "This is Daff," she said. "I want you to have her. She'll keep you company when I'm not here. She's like a part of me, so no matter where I am, it's like I'm always here with you." I looked at Daff, with her funny rubber hair and her googly rubber eyes, and my eyes welled with tears. It was just a toy, such a simple, silly thing, but it meant so much. Every week after that, she always brought a new little toy or stuffed animal to keep me company after she left. We worked our way slowly through my DVD collection. The original plan had been to go out every now and then, but that never happened. It was always too cold, and we were perfectly happy sitting on the couch, enjoying each other's company. With any other woman, I might have thought she was ashamed of me, too embarrassed to be seen in public with an old nerd like me. But she never made me feel that way. She always made me feel cool and interesting, like I was the centre of her world. And the more I got to know her, the more fascinated about her life I became. She was in her 2nd year of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne. She worked Friday and Saturday nights on the door of Zinger Nightclub. She had some kind of bad history with her dad's side of the family. She lived with her mum. She grew up in the country, but now she was a party girl through and through. She loved to go out and dance all night. She spent every Sunday night at Shotgun nightclub (which, until then, I had never even heard of), and spent all day Monday, every Monday, recovering. She had a boyfriend, Shane, who had been with her since high school. [CONTINUED IN FIRST COMMENT BELOW]