'Tess tells me you're at JQA?' said Rosie as she poured a pint of gravy all over her meatloaf, sweet potatoes, collard greens, turning the whole plateful into a disgusting, dark brown mess. The gravy had been made with something Tess gets in the mail, apparently, along with other weird British groceries like Marmite and Maltesers and some stuff called PG Tips, whatever they might be.

'Yes, I'm a professor of IT.'

'My goodness, that's impressive. What exactly do you do?'

'I teach, I lecture, I write scientific papers, I do some outreach work in the community and help develop various kinds of software.'

'You must be very busy.' Rosie started on her meatloaf. 'I do hope you'll tell me more some time?'

Yeah, I thought, why don't we make a date?

'What do you do, Rosie?'

'I work in promotions and PR.' It sounded kind of strange the way she said it promotions and pay ah but kind of cute as well.

'So are you with a global corporation, smaller outfit, working for yourself?'

'I worked for other people until recently. But when I get home again, I'm going to be setting up in business on my own.'

'f.a.n.n.y won't like that,' said Tess.

'f.a.n.n.y's going to have to lump it, then. She won't mind, actually. She knows there's heaps of work for both of us.'

Rosie took more greens and sweet potatoes then drowned them in more gravy. It looked gross. Yeah, I know British people love their gravy. I saw a movie one time about a British family on Christmas. It seemed they couldn't get enough of it.

I'd have used the stuff to varnish doors ...

She won't mind, actually.

I always think of sounds in terms of images and tastes and scents and touch, as well as mere vibrations either pleasing or unpleasing in the air. Rosie's voice was warm as soft black velvet and made me think of jasmine-scented nights. When she spoke it sounded like somebody was pouring very slowly and seductively from a gallon jug of fresh, sweet cream. I could almost taste the cream, could almost see the matt-but-also-somehow-glossy liquid coiling in a bowl, where it left a momentary trail before becoming part of a smooth pool ...

'Tess and Rosie, do you think you could include us in this conversation?' Ben demanded as Rosie talked some more about her PR and promotion plans. Meaning, obviously, talk to him. Or, better yet, listen to him, and speak only when he speaks to you. 'Pat, your gla.s.s is empty. What will you have to drink? What about this Napa Valley Merlot? Or will you stick with beer?' He snuck a glance at me. 'I'm sorry, but we're out of gasoline.'

'I'll stick with beer,' I told him. Did he have to mention gasoline, drag all that childhood business up again? Yeah, I guess he did.

He was clearly mad at Rosie. But, since she was company, he took it out on me. Well, screw you all the way to New York City, you self-important b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I didn't need to say because he would have read it in my eyes.

'Sorry, Ben,' said Rosie insincerely attagirl as she ate more meatloaf. 'So anyway, I thought I'd start off small. I'll rent an office somewhere cheap like Camden.'

'Camden isn't cheap,' said Tess.

'It is compared to the West End and all those little streets round Marble Arch.' Rosie speared a cube of sweet potato and then she went on talking with her mouth full, something I would never do because my mother raised me to have manners.

Rosie's mother evidently did not.

'I'm not going after f.a.n.n.y's high-end clients, Tess,' she added, as she waved her silverware around. 'I'll be starting with the smaller fry, all the little people and sole traders who need my help to sell their stuff and services in these straitened economic times. I'm going to show them how to make a living. The company's called Rosie Sorts Your Life. I chose the name because that's what I'll do sort people's lives.'

'Maybe you should be a little more specific, Rosie, and say you'll sort their working lives? It's not as if you're offering counselling on personal issues,' said Ben sarcastically. 'Or am I making false a.s.sumptions here, and will ma.s.sage and nail art be included?'

'I'll encourage all my clients to achieve a proper work-life balance,' Rosie told him, looking straight at Tess.

'Balance, moderation yeah, that's what it's all about,' said Tess. 'It's definitely what you need in life, in work, in shopping, everything. I read about it in a magazine.'

'Shopping, yes you balance what you need with what you absolutely have to have or go into a terminal decline,' continued Rosie calmly. 'Or you drink a million full fat lattes and turn into a whale, because that frock called out to you and you ignored its cries.'

Then she turned to smile at Ben just like she was the hostess of this party. 'But I think that's enough of me,' she said. 'What are you writing at the moment? A sequel to Missouri Crossing, yes? Or something less sensational? Less what do they call that section in a UK bookshop Painful Lives?'

This girl, was she for real?

Ben opened his mouth but didn't get a chance to speak. 'Darling, I think everybody's finished. So could you be a love and fetch the cheesecake while I collect the dinner plates?' asked Tess, and he was so surprised he did just that, muttering something to himself as he walked out the door.

ROSIE.

When I'd opened the front door to Pat, he hadn't seemed to find the sight of me at all appealing. Why do I say that? He hadn't smiled, he hadn't introduced himself and he hadn't offered me his hand. He'd merely looked at me and then, a couple of seconds later, he'd managed to say hi, you must be Rosie?

I didn't say hi, you must be the geek?

Yes, he was good-looking, albeit in a serious sort of way. But looks aren't everything and I had bet myself a penny to a pound this wasn't going to be a fun-packed evening.

It's always most annoying, isn't it, when you're in a social situation and you can't work out what's going on? Ben and Pat were friends. They'd grown up together in Recovery, Missouri, Tess had told me, hadn't she in some sagebrush swamp or other geographical impossibility?

They'd been to the same school. They'd both done well. They must have done extremely well. They must have been a pair of very clever and determined children to have found their way out of that labyrinth of expectation, hadn't lived the lives mapped out for them, did not exist on welfare, beat or shoot their wives or drink themselves to death on bourbon, moonshine or whatever.

Ben had got a scholarship to Yale, which must have been almost unprecedented for a boy who'd grown up in a trailer park. I'd seen those places when I'd been a student backpacker, travelling half asleep on Greyhound buses, driving past depressing, endless trailer cities full of sad, defeated-looking people and dumpster-diving children, townships which had looked like h.e.l.l on earth.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

As for Pat, he must have gone to MIT or Harvard, mustn't he, to be a professor at what was he thirty, thirty-five? What was all that stuff about the gasoline? It must have been some sort of private joke? But it wasn't funny not to Pat, at any rate. When Ben had mentioned gasoline, Pat's brown eyes had narrowed and for just one second I'd thought he might get up and walk straight out.

But instead he'd pulled the tab and poured himself a beer, drinking it reflectively and once in a while glancing at me. As if I was something in a zoo. As if he wondered if I could be real and did I bite?

'Patrick, would you like home-made dessert?' asked Ben. As he put Tess's cheesecake on the table, he was almost spitting out the words.

'Thank you,' Pat replied politely. But there was a sharpness in his voice which had not been there before Ben mentioned gasoline.

'The girls made this vanilla cheesecake specially for us,' Ben added. 'Or they went to Target and bought the packet mix just add b.u.t.ter and two cups of milk in any case. Ladies, you forgot to put the carton in the trash.'

'You styled the finished product with these carefully-positioned lemon slices?' Patrick Riley looked at Tess, then me. 'You individualised the basic concept, right?'

'Yes, of course,' said Tess.

'We might have used a packet mix,' I added. 'But the positioning of the lemon slices always makes or breaks a cheesecake, wouldn't you agree, Professor Riley?'

'Yes, I would.' Pat turned to Ben and shrugged expressively. 'So I guess to call this cheesecake home-made is no lie?'

PATRICK.

I hadn't wanted to come by here for dinner. But, as time went on, I found that I was kind of having fun. It was a big novelty, watching such a young and pretty woman not making eyes at Ben, not listening to every word he said, being in his company yet daring to talk about herself.

But you don't keep Ben Fairfax down for long.

After sulking while we ate dessert, he started up again. It was all about himself, of course. But while he talked she didn't gaze at him in adoration like most women do. She looked at him like I'd look at a wasp, like she wished he'd go away and bother someone else. Or shut up bragging, anyhow.

When he said his agent was negotiating movie options for Missouri Crossing, and that Fox was head to head with Miramax, Rosie didn't gasp and say how wonderful! When would it be at the multiplex? She couldn't wait! She asked if Ben was going to write the screenplay. Or did he think it might be better left to a professional?

'I could write the screenplay, Rosie,' he said acidly. 'After all, it is my story. I know all my characters through and through and character is story, as I'm sure you would agree?'

'All the same, I've heard it's difficult to write a screenplay. You would probably need to take some lessons in technique.'

She just told Ben he'd need some lessons in technique? She lived? It seemed she did. As we ate second helpings of dessert the cheesecake made with packet mix, my mother used the same variety, I knew the taste from childhood when a slice of ersatz cheesecake was a treat I happened to look up and catch her eye.

She smiled at me. I saw her teeth were very white. They were also very even, save for those two at the front. One was slightly crooked and leaned against its neighbour. This was appealing, somehow. s.e.xy, even it kind of promised something. I should not be thinking girls looked s.e.xy. It was the sort of thing Ben Fairfax did. He never lost an opportunity to a.s.sess a woman's s.e.xiness or otherwise, to mark her out of ten.

Rosie scored a perfect ten, so- Why was I bothering to think this kind of thing? My personal life was s.h.i.t. I was about to lose my children. My wife was fooling round and cheating on me like she had the right, like it was all my fault. Getting a divorce was going to be so d.a.m.ned expensive, not to mention break my mother's heart.

But sitting at the table across from Rosie, I felt kind of happy. More than happy, I felt joyful, light of heart. Rosie made me glad.

ROSIE.

This isn't really happening, I thought, as we said our goodbyes.

As Patrick thanked us for a pleasant evening, sounding like he meant it, as he shook my hand and said he hoped we'd meet again, I swear he held my gaze for several seconds longer than he needed, and I know I blushed.

What did he mean, he hoped we'd meet again was he merely being polite to me? Or was he going to try to make it happen?

I shouldn't even think about it happening.

Yes, of course I longed to fall in love. It was on my list of things to do when I got back to the UK. Get my hair cut, get my eyebrows threaded, see my dentist for a six month check-up, renew my car insurance, fall in love. But there's a time and place for everything, and at this particular point in time I didn't need any further complications in my life. I was on sabbatical from love, from life, from fun from everything.

'I'll see you off the premises,' said Ben, practically pushing Patrick out of the front door. 'But, before you go, come down to the garage and check out my new baby?'

'Yes, okay,' said Pat.

Tess and I cleared up the mess. We loaded up the dishwasher with the first of half a million pots and pans and dishes and started on the silverware and other stuff we had to wash by hand.

Ben wasn't helping. When he came back from showing Pat his baby, he stomped off to his den and slammed the door.

Tess said just to leave him. He was sulking like a moose with antler-ache because we hadn't paid enough attention to his rambling on. This was something authors often did sulked if no one listened while they talked about their writing. It was down to the artistic temperament. She'd read about it in a magazine. When we went to the mall tomorrow, she was going see she burned his plastic good and proper.

'That'll teach him to be foul,' she said.

I asked why Patrick had seemed a little grumpy when we'd first started dinner.

'He's having problems with his wife,' said Tess.

'Oh he's married, is he? Tess, you might have warned me.' I dumped a pile of dishes some silver-banded stuff I thought we ought to wash by hand because the dishwasher would ruin it in the enormous sink. 'I could have put my foot right in it.'

'I don't think so, Rosie. Your middle name is tact.'

'What's been happening, then?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I'm only making conversation. We'll talk about the weather if you like.'

'Mrs Riley told him she wants to take their children and go travelling round the world with some British man she met at work. She's a PA, secretary, clerk or something in a multinational that has its US offices downtown.'

'What's she like, this wife?'

'I've only seen her once. We met one afternoon in Barnes and n.o.ble in Minneapolis. Ben was checking out his books and chatting up the shop a.s.sistants, asking if they had enough signed copies authors do that sort of stuff and so he introduced us.'

'Well?'

'Do you think we should save this bit of meatloaf? Or chuck it in the bin?'

'I'd chuck it in the bin. Tess, you were telling me about Professor Riley's wife?'

'Why are you so bothered about Pat Riley's wife?'

'I'm not bothered, Tess. But you have this irritating habit of starting on a subject then gra.s.shoppering away again.'

'She's just a woman shortish, cuteish, with natural blondish hair. No prettier than you or me and she'll be dumpy when she's middle-aged. She's got that sort of figure. So she'll always need to diet, exercise, or she'll run to fat. She smiled. She said it was good to meet me and how was I doing? She didn't look like a cow.'

Ben reckoned Pat was broken-hearted, added Tess.

But when he'd looked at me while we were eating cheesecake, I could have sworn I saw amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes.

'What's your verdict, then?' asked Tess, as she put the knives and forks and spoons into their purple velvet nests in the big mahogany canteen a wedding present to Mrs Fairfax Two, apparently. But she hadn't taken it when she and Ben split up. So now it was the property of Mrs Fairfax Three for the duration. 'Professor Riley, Rosie nice a.r.s.e, nice face, nice eyes, nice hair, nice everything, in fact?'

'I didn't really notice.'

'Ooh you did, you liar. I watched you noticing!'

'Tess, he's just a man.'

'You smiled at him as well.'

'I was being polite and British, wasn't I? I always smile at people I meet socially, ask them what they do and all that stuff. It's the way my mother brought me up.'

'Yeah, you do tend to act like Lady Muck from Downtown Minster or whatever it's called. You're well embarra.s.sing. But you thought he was attractive, didn't you? You thought he was hot?'

Tess turned from her forks and grinned at me. 'Okay, he doesn't have a lot to say. But we must make allowances. He's been best mates with Mr Gobby Fairfax all his life and Ben can talk enough for both of them.'

As she rattled on, I thought yes, Pat Riley's a.r.s.e was very nice. I'd noticed as he left. He had nice eyes as well. Dark and heavy-lashed, they looked like they could smoulder and anyone who crossed him should watch out. As for his hair jet-black and plumb line straight, he could have had a better cut and style. But it was not receding and it wasn't greying yet.

'He's married,' I reminded Tess.

'His wife's playing away.' She giggled. 'You could get in there while Mrs Riley's being bad and have yourself a little bit of fun.'