Rich saw his hope that Jase and Jayne were having a laugh at his expense vanish in an instant. Sadly, his first theory, that she was a raving nutter, was more likely to be true. Rich couldn't move. He wanted to push her away, but didn't know how to. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. What had she just said, she wanted him? Rich's mind searched frantically for another way of not facing up to the situation.

That was it, she wanted him. Her pride had been dented. He had been a little unceremonious in his exit, he supposed. Clearly, she wanted to get him to the point where he admitted he still fancied her and then she'd back off. She'd have clawed back a little self-respect. She didn't really want him. She just wanted him to want her. It wasn't exactly mature, but that was women for you, all mind games, never played anything straight. She'd never wanted him in all those years when they were... well, not together. Because they weren't ever together. But, in all those years when they... had s.e.x. She'd never once hinted that she'd like to take the s.e.x further than that. He'd just say some nice things to her and then she'd back off.

'Look, Jayne, you are a very attractive girl.'

Jayne broke away from the embrace, and laughed, 'I know that.'

She tossed her hair and sort of stuck out her t.i.ts, in one practised move. Clearly she thought she was being irresistible. She put Rich in mind of a very expensive hooker he'd once hired for Jason's thirtieth birthday present. Rich shook his head and grinned. She was an odd one. Lacking in confidence one minute, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with it the next.

'You are a stunner, and a very clever lady, too.'

Rich wanted to sound sincere, or at least smooth. He was aware, however, that he sounded like his father or even his grandfather patronizing and dated. His throat was squeezed with stress. He didn't know how to adjust the tone of his voice and couldn't think of anything convincing, let alone truthful, to say.

'You could do loads better than me,' he said, although he was aware that in reality no one ever minded shooting out of their league. 'Why are you wasting your time with me? What you should be doing is concentrating your energies on working things out with that boyfriend of yours.'

'What boyfriend?' asked Jayne, her dreamy look momentarily interrupted by a bemused one.

'The boy ' Rich corrected himself, 'the man that you split up with just before you came here. The one that upset you so much that Kate and Ted were worried about you.'

Jayne started to laugh, 'Babe, I thought I'd explained when we were on the slopes yesterday. That is you. I was talking about you.'

She was staring at Rich as though she were his mother and he was four years old. His crime? Something small and boyish, like eating a snail or refusing to say thank you for the gift of a sweetie. Her expression was supposed to look stern, but the effect was blurred by the wide, indulgent smile.

'I know we've broken up before, but we'd always made up pretty quickly. This time you hurt me, babe.'

'Is that how you see it, breaking up and making up?'

'Yes, of course.'

'But we were never a couple. And will you stop calling me "babe".' Tash called Rich 'babe'. Jayne called everyone 'darling'. What was she playing at?

Jayne exaggerated her indulgent-mother-of-four-year-old-tearaway look, and Rich thought he might laugh. This was comical, or it would be if it were happening to anyone else.

'Don't say such silly things. Not to me. Admittedly we weren't conventional, but we were a couple. You even met my mum and dad,' said Jayne.

'You didn't introduce me. It wasn't as though you took me home for tea. I met your mum and dad at Kate and Ted's wedding. Ted is your brother and that means you happen to have parents in common,' insisted Rich. Jayne tutted as though he were splitting hairs over an insignificant detail. 'You are scaring me, Jayne. Look, don't take this the wrong way, but I think you need help.'

'I love you.'

Rich started to laugh. 'Yeah, right.'

He looked at Jayne again, and she hadn't moved a muscle. She was still staring at him with those dopy, droopy eyes and that lost-puppy look. He couldn't remember her eyes during s.e.x, but he was pretty sure she'd never worn that expression. She'd been feisty. She'd been fun.

That was all she'd been.

But now. G.o.d.

'You can't love me.'

But even as he said it Rich was already terrified that Jayne did think she was in love with him, which was much, much worse than her teasing him or playing with him. Women in love did peculiar things. Tash, for example, had agreed to marry him after knowing him for only a couple of months. Although he was delighted that she had, he did think it was a bit extreme. Scorned women in love were even worse; they were scarily extreme. They scratched cars with keys, cut holes in suits, sowed cress into your carpet. Women were bitter, vengeful and excessive. You read about it all the time in GQ and Loaded.

Rich was standing with his back to the cinema auditorium so he didn't see the door swing open and Mia emerging from the darkness, looking for the loo. Jayne did. It was fate. This was her moment. She lurched upwards and pa.s.sionately kissed Rich. Although she was much smaller than he was, she stole the advantage by taking him by surprise. She pushed him until he was backed against the wall and had nowhere to go. Jayne ran her hands up and down his shoulders, arms and hips. She grabbed at his b.u.t.tocks. She'd closed her eyes, but opened them again, just long enough to ensure that Mia had clocked them. Mia had. She was far too cool to stand open-mouthed and gape instead she walked pa.s.sed them, coughing loudly, then slipped into the loos.

The whole episode took a moment in real time. It played out as a year of agony in Rich's head and unlimited ecstasy in Jayne's.

Her lips were familiar, in so much as they were no different from hundreds of others he had kissed. He had opened his mouth, just a fraction, as an automatic response and not because he was attracted to her. He wasn't even thinking about the kiss in terms of it being a kiss. He couldn't have been because, in the same second that he noticed she was kissing him, he'd noticed that the wallpaper was frayed at the edges of the skirting board and you wouldn't notice that if you were really kissing, would you? Jayne's neat, little tongue had found the gap between his teeth and darted forwards to ma.s.sage the inside of his mouth. It wasn't awful, Rich thought. The tongue wasn't, the wallpaper was. Of course it wasn't awful. Kissing her had always been s.e.xy. But it wasn't right. No, this wasn't right.

And then he saw Mia where the wallpaper had been, out of the corner of his eye. What would she think? Well, it was f.u.c.king obvious what she would think.

Oh, no. No. No. s.h.i.t.

Rich pushed Jayne off him. She gave up her grasp at the exact same moment, so his shove sent her lurching against the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. 'I like it when you play rough,' she grinned.

'You are f.u.c.king insane. Now get in there and explain to Mia what's going on,' he yelled, pointing towards the girls' loos.

'What should I say, exactly? Would you like me to tell her that we've been lovers for years?'

'No!' Rich stared at Jayne in disbelief until she turned fuzzy at the edges.

'Babe, don't cry. We've got each other, whatever happens,' she cooed.

She leant forwards and started to caress his head. Her long, cool fingers traced out the lines on his forehead. She kissed his jaw, tiny, little nibbling kisses. Rich was crying. f.u.c.k, he couldn't remember when he'd last cried. But she made him so angry. Why did she insist on distorting things? Twisting things? Making more of it than there ever was? Why would she want to ruin his marriage? Surely she didn't really believe that, if she ruined his relationship with Tash, he'd turn to her and say, 'Oh, well, never mind. You're free, aren't you? Would you like to marry me instead?' How f.u.c.king mad was this girl? She was a s.h.a.g-buddy. Someone he had recreational s.e.x with. That was all. And yet looking at her now as she caressed him, rested her head on his chest and hugged him, looked back up into his eyes and smiled at him you would be forgiven for believing that they were pa.s.sionate lovers in the midst of a soul-searching argument.

Which is exactly what Mia did think.

'Excuse me,' she said pointedly, as she re-emerged from the loo.

Rich tried to break from Jayne's grasp. Jayne clung more tightly. 'This isn't what it looks like,' said Rich quickly. 'Honestly, Mi, you have to believe me.'

'None of my business, Action Man,' she said. She threw out an efficient smile, one which wasn't meant to warm anyone.

'Tell her, Jayne. Tell her,' insisted Rich. Jayne refused to say anything. Instead she looked at the floor, knowing Mia wouldn't be able to bring herself to think anything but the worst. Mia cheerfully raised her eyebrows as she grinned at Rich and said, 'Leopards can't change their spots.' She shook her head from side to side in mock despair, and returned to the film.

Rich watched Mia walk away and wondered if he could persuade her to keep quiet. He doubted it. On recent evidence it appeared that he wasn't very good at persuading women to do the things he wanted them to do. He used to have a knack for it, but looking at Jayne now, smiling at him like a mad Cheshire Cat, he realized he'd lost that power somewhere along the way.

He was done for. Where had he gone wrong? He turned back to Jayne.

'I didn't take anything you weren't keen to give away. I never encouraged you to think we were anything other than...' Rich searched around for the correct word. '... anything at all,' he finished.

'We were lovers.'

'We s.h.a.gged.' Rich didn't even want to say they'd f.u.c.ked. Saying they'd f.u.c.ked sounded more involved than he wanted to admit to.

'It was more than that. We were more than that.'

'No, we weren't.'

'We were and by denying me you are admitting as much.'

'What?' Rich was completely bemused. He leant against the wall, took a deep breath, dropped his head into his hands, then thought it looked defeatist and so altered the gesture mid-manoeuvre to look as though he were simply running his fingers through his hair.

'You didn't tell Natasha about me. That proves I was significant.'

'No, the opposite.'

'This wedding isn't going to happen.'

'You're crazy.'

'Who is the crazy one, Rich? You or me? I fell in love with a man I had s.e.x with for a decade. You denied I ever existed. Who is the most insane?'

40. Lost the Plot.

Despite Mia's love of French art-house movies, she found it absolutely impossible to concentrate on the rest of the film. She would never know what became of any of the beautiful, nervy, floppy-haired characters. Not that it mattered, as she was jubilant. This result was better than she could have imagined. It took every ounce of restraint that she had not to lean over and whisper to Scaley Jase that he was wasting his time flirting with Jayne and he might as well father her child immediately. She knew she had to exercise some self-control.

Who would have thought it? Rich and Jayne? Mia was surprised. She didn't much rate Tash, but she'd thought Rich had. They'd appeared to be madly in love and they were days away from their wedding, for G.o.d's sake. What was Rich doing with his tongue down Jayne's throat? It didn't look like a first kiss. They definitely had history. Otherwise they'd both have laughed the incident off, dismissed it as a silly, drunken mistake. Still, whatever this meant for Tash and Rich, Mia hardly cared. The important thing was that, by default, Scaley Jase was once again available.

Neither Jayne nor Rich came back into the theatre; Mia a.s.sumed they'd gone to find somewhere quiet to finish the business they'd started. Jason repeatedly looked back towards the door leading to the foyer, until Mia whispered to him that Jayne had grown bored with the film and gone on to a bar. They were to meet her there. This lie at least ensured Jason wouldn't call it a night straight after the film finished.

'Where are Rich and Jayne?' asked Kate as soon as the credits began to roll. She wanted to start up a conversation immediately because she didn't want to be drawn into a critical appraisal of the film. She had nothing to say about it because she never used expletives.

'Jayne's waiting for us at Bar de la Galerie, and I think Rich has decided to have an early night,' Mia knew half of this was likely to be true.

'Very sensible,' said Kate, yawning. 'I'm going to hit the hay, too. I wonder if Ted will still be awake.' Kate kissed the other two and said her goodnights, congratulating herself that for two out of three nights she had avoided the bar. Jason and Mia zipped up their jackets and headed for Bar de la Galerie.

Jason pulled open the huge bar door and a cloud of noise, smoke and good-time vibe almost knocked them over. He grinned at Mia, and stepped forward confidently. Jason liked to be inside noisy, funky bars where conversation was often replaced by meaningful, loaded looks, slow drags on cigarettes and long slurps of cold beer. He considered himself a simple man.

Mia followed Scaley. She felt the beat of the current track bounce through her boots and rebound up her body. She swore her lungs, kidneys and heart were all internally dancing; only her ribcage stopped them escaping altogether. She was almost surprised to recognize the feelings of excitement and antic.i.p.ation that came with having a good time. She'd forgotten how much fun could be had at a noisy, funky bar. It wasn't her recent scene. You were much more likely to find Mia enjoying a private supper or visiting an art gallery with a girlfriend. Kate said it was defeatist and repeatedly argued that Mia would never meet anyone like that.

Which was a b.l.o.o.d.y cheek.

Mia did not need to take romantic advice from Ms Monopoly, thank you very much. Just because Ms Monopoly was happily ensconced in yaya lala land, with the lovely, cuddly (and wealthy) Big Ted and their three perfect children. Just because Ms Monopoly had everything Mia wanted, and more, was no reason for Mia suddenly to take advice from her on her love life. Everyone knew Ms Monopoly was naive beyond belief. She'd just got lucky with Big Ted. They'd both moved quickly before they, or anyone else, knew any better, and happily it had turned out OK. It was a bit of luck it did not make Kate the grand master of all matters amorous.

Besides, in the not so distant past, Mia had visited more bars than Kate could begin to conceive. The bars she used to frequent in London were smarter than this one, the music was more obscure, the c.o.c.ktail lists were longer, yet she never seemed to have much of a giggle no matter how many squashy leather chairs there were to lose yourself in, and no matter how many enormous vases of lilies were placed on the shiny, mahogany coffee tables. Although, she did find those rainforest-sized flower displays useful to hide behind if she didn't like the look of her date. Because, yes, she'd had blind dates.

After she'd dated every single male of her acquaintance and of her friends' acquaintance, after she'd followed up on every chance encounter and said yes to those guys that were nice enough but in fact not enough, after all of that when she still hadn't found anyone who made her sides split with laughter, her knickers leap with expectancy and her heart pound with the unknown (or, indeed, even one of the three) she'd tried Internet dating, blind dates and, as Tash had accurately pointed out, even an ad in Time Out.

It wasn't that she couldn't find dates without resorting to these means, more that she couldn't meet anyone who 'got' her, and she reasoned that she was looking in the wrong places. At least with an Internet profile she had the chance of meeting someone who knew their Claude Monet from their edouard Manet. But they all looked like her uncles. Or someone else's uncle. Or maybe they looked OK and they knew their wines, but they didn't laugh much. Or they laughed too much, too loudly, too desperately. Or... well, whatever. There was always a reason that they weren't right, whether she met them in bars, at clubs or on line.

So what did Ms Monopoly know?

No matter now.

She had her plan.

It was a shame she couldn't have met someone like Scaley. In her extensive search she had never found that type of a man who knew when to say 'sorry', 'excuse me' and 'pardon'. They always got that wrong. She had never met a man who was so entirely Colin Firth in front of the parents and Colin Farrell in bed. Scaley was. She liked the fact that even in bars without floral arrangements, but with damp walls instead, she still felt excited, alive, if she was with him. He was a man who took her seriously, but not too much so. Not as seriously as she took herself. He was a man who knew more than she did about Impressionist painters. He was the man who had made her feel genuinely relaxed this holiday, more so than yoga cla.s.ses, aromatherapy ma.s.sages or even a stiff gin and tonic.

A man that was currently craning his neck to look for another woman.

Mia pulled herself up short. She wasn't even drinking, why on earth was she indulging in this line of thought? Why was she viewing Scaley through rose-tinted gla.s.ses? It had to be her hormones. Definitely something to do with the time of the month. She remembered that time she flirted outrageously with the butcher on the deli counter in Harvey Nicks because he had strong hands. She temporarily forgot that, while in possession of ten big, manly digits, that was probably the amount of brain cells he had, too. He was totally unsuitable. And yet she had fancied him madly for five days and fantasized about the way he confidently picked up raw cuts of pork. She was mesmerized as he slapped the pieces on the scales and cheekily informed her that it was 'A little bit over, but every girl likes a bit extra'. She'd never eaten so much meat in her life as she did that week. She had been quite ill with indigestion. But then her obsession abruptly stopped as suddenly as it had started, coinciding exactly with her cycle. It was Mother Nature's way of trying to chivvy her along, telling her to get out there and reproduce.

Scaley was just as unsuitable as the fat-fingered butcher, or the toyboy banker-w.a.n.kers, or the countless other five-day infatuations Mia had enjoyed. He was deeply unsuitable. He was a desperate, womanizing commitment phobe. He was old ground. She never travelled backwards. They had nothing in common. He was exactly like the butcher.

Only brighter.

Stop it! Mia yelled at herself, almost frightening herself, she was formidable. OK, so she was on a high the plan was back on track. But that was no excuse to get confused. Scaley Jase was exactly like the butcher only brighter, which made him the ideal sperm bank and nothing more.

'I wonder where Jayne's got to?'

Jase didn't want to appear keen in front of Mia, but on the other hand all he could think about was whether Jayne would show up and he'd get to see her tiny, lithe body writhing on the dance floor. Better yet that he might get to writhe with her both on the floor and in bed.

Mia sighed, and pulled her face into an expression that was supposed to convey sympathy. It was tricky when she wanted to give the air a euphoric punch of victory.

'You quite fancy Jayne, don't you?' she asked Jason. She had to yell very loudly to be heard above the music.

'No more than any other man,' he lied. Not wanting to confess to fancying a woman who was possibly a no-show, despite the fact he'd been all but undressing her in public for the past forty-eight hours.

'Jayne, she's a regular package holiday, isn't she?' grinned Mia.

'What do you mean?' Until Mia had made that comment, she had managed to secure only about 10 per cent of Jason's attention. She was sharing it with his attempt to catch the bartender's eye (and it did annoy her that even though he had a beer in his hand he was already trying to order his next one), his particular search for Jayne and a more general exploration of the dance floor as he eyed up any remotely attractive girl. It was habit. Mia's intriguing opener had guaranteed 100 per cent of his interest, as she had known it would. She'd thrown him the line; he'd bitten. Now all she had to do was reel him in very, very carefully.

'Well, you get all the thrills and fun of a cheap, convenient deal. The only problem is you are off enjoying the holiday and the baggage arrives late. Late enough to ruin the whole shebang.' Mia used the loud music as an excuse to lean in very close to Scaley Jase. Her breath was warm on his neck and her breast nudged his elbow.

'What are you talking about? Stop talking in clever metaphors. Just say what you want to say.' Sometimes Mia's contrived cleverness really got on Jase's nerves, usually when he didn't know what she was being contriving and clever about.

'I don't know if I should say anything,' said Mia cautiously. She knew that she had to appear reluctant. Elation was not a suitable response to uncovering a friend's infidelity.

'What baggage?'

'Look, I wouldn't have said anything if I'd thought you were interested in Jayne for yourself, but as you're not...' Mia paused for effect. She deserved an Oscar or at least a Grammy. 'Well, I do need a bit of advice, and I have to tell someone.' More warm breath, more breast brushing up against elbow.

'Tell someone what?'

'You probably know anyway, being so close to Rich and everything. I'm sure he's already confided in you, so I'm not gossiping.' Mia's whisper was deep and husky, she sounded as though she smoked twenty a day which indeed she had until she'd decided she wanted to conceive.

'What?' Jase almost shouted with barely contained excitement.

'About Rich and Jayne.'

'Sorry?' Jason, usually the epitome of cool, spluttered into his beer and pulled away from Mia.

'I'd thought something was going on. They seemed to know each other beyond casual acquaintances, and they are always touching each other.'

The penny dropped, nearly knocking Jason out cold. 'They're having an affair, right?' He wanted to be wrong.