Pat x.x.x FROM: Patrick M Riley SUBJECT: Talk to me?

TO: Rosie Denham SENT: July 31 14.59 Rosie, you're not picking up my calls on your new cell. Did I get the number wrong? Do you have a problem with your laptop, too? On the blink again?

Pat X A casual email asking if I was okay. The mention of my laptop, was it on the blink again? So he must have realised he'd blown it, had decided he might like to see me if he came to London, if he wanted casual s.e.x. We will be forever in your debt. You need me, I'll be there. Did I dream it, or was that what Patrick Riley said?

He clearly hadn't meant a word of it.

PATRICK.

It looked like I messed up. Rosie didn't reply to emails. When I rang her cell phone she refused to take my calls. Or I was calling the wrong number. She ignored my texts.

I guess if I was calling the wrong number, the person who was getting all my stuff would be deleting it? The chances were they wouldn't call me back.

I was worried now, so worried that I called her parents on their landline. When her mother finally picked up, she sounded very cross. But she didn't sound distressed. So that was a relief.

'No, Professor Riley, Rosie isn't here,' she snapped, like she was talking to a disobedient dog.

'I'm sorry to disturb you, Mrs Denham, but she isn't taking calls from me. Please could you a.s.sure me she's okay?'

'She was very well four hours ago. Mr Riley, if my daughter wished to speak to you, I'm sure she'd get in touch. This is a very antisocial time to ring, you know. It's the middle of the night.'

'I'm sorry if I woke you.'

'You did, and now I'll find it very difficult to sleep without some form of medication.'

'As I said already, I'm sorry to disturb you, Mrs Denham.'

'Goodnight, Mr Riley.'

August.

ROSIE.

'Just go on ignoring him,' said Tess. 'The man's a total jerk.' She glugged down more red wine and poured a second gla.s.s for me. 'Laptop on the blink again my a.r.s.e.' She glanced towards my laptop, which was fine. 'Look, there's another text.'

Darling, won't you write me?

'Delete?' I asked.

'Of course delete, you m.u.f.fin-head.'

So I clicked delete obediently then took another gulp of my Shiraz. I'd bought four bottles from the Waitrose in the Edgware Road on my way home and meant to drink them all. 'Tess, do you ever hear from Ben?'

'Yeah, this week he's been emailing and texting fit to bust a gut.'

'What does he say?'

'Let's have a look.' Tess found her phone and started scrolling. 'Oh, the usual rubbish you get from stupid t.o.s.s.e.rs who realise they've messed up. When will you be coming back to Minnesota, darling? Miss you, babe! Honey, won't you call me up some time?'

'My goodness, you can tell the man's a novelist. I hope he's copied all that stuff to whatsername, the woman who'll be writing his authorised biography.'

'So do I. After all, his fans deserve no less. But before this latest lot, I hadn't heard a d.i.c.kybird for months. He didn't answer any of my texts. He didn't seem to care when I took off. But now it seems he's changed his mind. I thought that was a woman's privilege?'

'I never thought I would be dumped by email. I thought at least he'd ring me. Men are all such cowards.'

'But we need them, don't we, for when our girly bits need servicing? Men have the perfect tools to do the job.' Tess sighed. 'I know Ben Fairfax is a git. But for a couple of lovely months, I thought he was the one. I thought meeting him in Vegas had to be my lifetime highlight, that he was Prince Charming, my happy-ever-after.'

'You didn't think that at all.'

'I sort of did, when I was drunk.'

'The trouble is you can't always be drunk. Well, you can, but it's not good for you. It's difficult to put on your mascara while you're drunk.'

'What are we going to do?' asked Tess. 'I'm getting old. I have all these fine lines around my eyes. Or when I smile, I do. I've got others coming round my nose.'

'You haven't any on your actual nose.'

'Of course I haven't any on my actual nose. You'd have to do some serious skin-neglecting to get lines on your nose. I've never seen a wrinkled nose, have you? Well, not on anybody under eighty, anyway.'

'Let's start another bottle,' I suggested.

'Yeah, why don't we?'

'd.a.m.n those Yankees, eh?'

'I'll get the alimony first then I'll d.a.m.n ruddy Ben. Maybe we should find ourselves some British guys? I know this cool club in Dagenham-'

'No, Tess no guys. British, Yankee, aliens from outer s.p.a.ce, none of them are any use to us. Okay, there might be good ones out there somewhere, special pebbles on life's great big beach. But you'd need to shift a million tons of worthless shingle before you found a gem.'

'Oh, come on, it's not as bad as that. You're being very gla.s.s-half-empty now.'

'Yes, that's right, I am but at least I haven't dropped the gla.s.s and broken it. I haven't cut my fingers on the shards.' I shook my head and sighed. 'That Y chromosome, it fouls up almost everything. Tess, I promise you, I'm done with men.'

'What are you going to do then, work and work and work like f.a.n.n.y, end up rich and powerful and alone?'

'It might be a plan. But f.a.n.n.y's not alone in any case. She's got her gorgeous Caspar and probably half a dozen lovers, too. The last time I saw f.a.n.n.y, she had a great big knuckle-duster of a brand new ring on her right hand and great big smile on her face. Tess, forget the alimony. You don't need Ben's money.'

'Yes I do.'

'You don't. You're not a parasite, a feeble-minded gold-digger who preys on ghastly men. Listen, sell your diamonds. Get a flat and come and work for me.'

'You mean in your PR business?'

'What else would I mean, you m.u.f.fin-head yourself?'

'You're serious, are you?'

'Yes, of course I'm serious. Tess, you're smart. You're sharp. I think you could be brilliant at promotions and PR.'

'Why would you think that?'

'You come from a family of market traders, right?'

'Yeah, people who sell cauliflowers and spuds.'

'Then you worked for a salvage merchant, didn't you?'

'Yes, but I-'

'So you could sell stuff for my clients, couldn't you? Cauliflowers or antique bathroom fittings, selling's in your blood. You're used to doing deals?'

'I suppose. Okay, I'll come and work for you. Tess and Rosie sort your life, eh? Yeah, let's drink to that. When shall I start?'

'What about immediately?'

PATRICK.

I still can't believe I was so dumb.

After all I tell my students, after I tore Rosie up about her carelessness, I messed up spectacularly. I'm a full professor of IT, and what did I do? When I went to get Lex her espresso, I forgot to log out of my email application.

So any burglar could walk in and s.h.i.t over my stuff.

So any burglar did.

While I was at the counter, Lex wrote Rosie. She sent the message through my email application and then she deleted it from my Sent folder and from my Deleted one as well.

So I wouldn't see it on the app because it wasn't there.

So I would not suspect a thing.

How did I work out what must have happened? A week after I met with Lex, my email application failed. It was usually reliable. But once in a while it got the screaming heebie-jeebies and packed up.

So I had to go into my Gmail. My app sent and received all of my messages through Gmail and Gmail doesn't delete anything.

So as I was looking for something else, I found it. There it was as large as life and twice as toxic in my Sent Mail folder.

FROM: Patrick M Riley SUBJECT: Cool it!

TO: Rosie Denham SENT: July 26 15.27 Rosie, I've been thinking about us.

It was so great to be with you. But now I'm home again, I realise my life is here in Minnesota with my wife and kids.

Lex and I are going to try again.

It's time for you and me to draw a line.

You take care now.

Pat ROSIE.

I was surprised to find how much it kept on hurting.

But I knew I had to work on that, get over it. So I did cool and capable, at least during the day. While I was with Tess, we even had a laugh, a girly giggle. I pretended I was fine.

I also knew Tess would be good. But she was more than good. She was persistent and determined and she also worked extremely hard. She chose not to understand when anyone said no. She just kept on at them until they gave in and said yes. She didn't waste her time on niceties or idle chatting. She put her offer on the table and demanded an immediate response. She got more done in twenty minutes than I did in an average working day.

Whenever Tess picked up the phone, she sold catering to private functions, interviews to local radio stations, a range of articles to magazines. I reckoned she could sell a brand new range of vegan wholefoods to a pride of lions in the Serengeti National Park. So I was not especially surprised when she had no trouble selling cupcakes made in a client's kitchen up in Leicestershire to Harrods.

'We're winning, aren't we, mate?' she asked me, beaming as she disconnected after she had closed a deal on a range of cushion covers I'd been trying to sell to national chains for weeks and weeks.

'Yes, we are, all thanks to you,' I said. 'Tess, could you go to Manchester tomorrow?'

'Who or what's in Manchester?'

'A woman who makes special jams and marmalades and stuff her lemon curd's sublime. She wants to sell stuff locally.'

'Why would she sell it locally when she could probably sell it nationwide, if it's that brilliant?'

'Well, precisely, Tess and that's why I'm sending you to see this lady. You could get some sales locally and encourage her to be a little more ambitious, couldn't you? She's got all the necessary certificates, so she-'

'Yeah, I know so she can sell to shops, at markets, to the general public. I'm a market trader's daughter, right?'

'Of course, I was forgetting. Okay, I've tasted all the stuff she makes. Mum has tasted it as well and if my mother pa.s.ses anything it must be close to perfect.'

'I'll have her jams in Fortnum's by tomorrow afternoon. Or I'll have some orders, anyway.' Then Tess looked at me with narrowed eyes. 'As for the other rubbish in your life you're dealing with it, are you?'

'I suppose.'

'You mind you do. You tell yourself a hundred times a day that man is worthless, that man is a waste of oxygen, that man is bad.'

'All right, all right.'

I did get through the days okay. Tess helped enormously. She was both inspired and inspiring. She was full of energy and she was determined to make Tess and Rosie Sort Your Life a big success. She decided she would be a self-made millionaire. After all, if somebody like Ben could do it, she announced, she was going to do it, too.

So on the whole the days were fine.

But at night I cried into my pillow. I sobbed my heart out for a faithless, fickle, cruel man. I acted like the sort of idiot woman I despised.

PATRICK.

'I'm sorry, Pat,' said Lexie, when I called her in a white-hot rage which frightened even me and told her to get round to the apartment now, this very minute.