'Impress me,' Lisa glinted, in a parody of Calvin Carter. Which might have amused Mercedes had she known what Lisa was doing. But she didn't, so her only option was to flash Lisa a nasty glare.

Jack turned his attention to Gerry. 'How are we getting on with the cover?'

Lisa watched anxiously. Gerry was so quiet that she paid him no attention and consequently she hadn't a clue if he was any good at his job. But Gerry whipped out several cover prototypes three different girls overlaid with a selection of typefaces and text. The mood he'd created was remarkably sexy and fun.

'Excellent,' Jack enthused.

Then he turned to Lisa. 'And how are we getting on with the celebrity column?'

'Working on it,' Lisa smiled smoothly. Bono and the Corrs were refusing to return her calls. 'But more interestingly, even though we're a women's magazine and our audience will be ninety-five per cent women, I think there's a real case for having a column by a man in Colleen Colleen.'

Just a minute, Ashling thought, her brain bruising with shock, that was my idea that was my idea...

Her mouth worked, making silent 'Oh's and 'Ah's, as Lisa continued blithely, 'There's a stand-up comedian and my sources tell me he's about to go stellar. Thing is he won't do anything for a women's magazine, but I'm going to convince him otherwise.'

You bitch, Ashling thought. You fucking, fucking bitch You fucking, fucking bitch. And didn't anyone else remember? Hadn't anyone else noticed... ?

'I...' Ashling managed.

'What?' Lisa shot, her golden face terrifying, her grey eyes as hard and cold as marbles.

Ashling, never the best at standing up for herself, mumbled, 'Nothing.'

'It'll be a great coup,' Lisa smiled at Jack.

'Who is he?'

'Marcus Valentine.'

'Are you serious!' Jack was genuinely animated.

'Wh who?' Ashling asked, shock heaped upon shock.

'Marcus Valentine,' Lisa said impatiently. 'Have you heard of him?'

Ashling nodded mutely. That freckly bloke hadn't looked like a man 'about to go stellar'. Lisa must be must be mistaken. But she seemed so sure of her facts... mistaken. But she seemed so sure of her facts...

'He's on on Saturday night in a place called the River Club,' Lisa said. 'You and I will go, Ashling.'

'The River Club?' Ashling had gone nearly as hoarse as Trix. 'Saturday night?'

'Yesss.' Lisa writhed in impatience.

'My friend Ted is on too,' Ashling heard herself say.

Lisa narrowed her eyes appraisingly. 'Oh yeah? Great. We can get a backstage introduction.'

'Good job I haven't any plans for Saturday night,' Ashling heard spilling from her normally meek mouth.

'That's right,' Lisa agreed, coolly. 'Good job.'

As everyone filed out of the boardroom, Lisa turned to Jack. 'Happy?' she challenged.

'You're amazing,' he said, with simple sincerity. 'Quite amazing. Thank you. I'll talk to them in London.'

'How soon will we know?'

'Probably not until next week. Don't worry, you've come up with some great ideas, I suspect it'll be fine. Six o'clock OK with you to go and see the house?'

Raw and raging with injustice, Ashling returned to her desk. She was never going to be nice to that bitch again. To think she'd felt sorry for her, friendless in an unfamiliar country. She'd tried to forgive Lisa her constant bitchy put-downs on the basis that she must be unhappy and frightened. Sometimes to Ashling's shame she'd even half-laughed when Lisa had implied that Dervla was fat, Mercedes hairy, Shauna Griffin in-bred, herself pathetically clingy. But now, Lisa Edwards could die of loneliness for all she, Ashling Kennedy, cared.

Slapped on her George Clooney screen-saver was a yellow Post-it, saying that 'Dillon' had rung. She peeled it off, the screen crackling with static. Surely it wasn't October already? Dylan rang Ashling twice a year. In October and December. To ask what he should get Clodagh for her birthday and for Christmas.

She rang him back.

'Hi Ashling. Time for a quick drink tomorrow after work?'

'Can't. I've got a horrible article to write maybe later in the week, OK? Why, what's up?'

'Nothing. Maybe. I'll be away at a conference. I'll give you a shout when I get back.'

15.

'Ready, Lisa?' Jack asked, appearing at her desk at ten past six.

Watched silently by their gossip-hungry colleagues, they left the office and got the lift down to the car-park.

The second they were in the car, Jack ripped his tie from his neck and flung it into the back seat, then tore open the first two buttons on his shirt.

'That's better,' he sighed. 'And go for it yourself,' he invited. 'Take off whatever you want ' He broke off the end of the sentence abruptly and a mortified hiatus followed. The heat of his discomfort reached Lisa. 'Sorry,' he muttered grimly. 'That came out wrong.'

Agitatedly he ran his hand through his messy hair, so that the front stood up in silky peaks before flopping back down on to his forehead.

'No problem.' Lisa smiled politely, but the tiny downy hairs on the nape on her neck rose sharply. Shocked and excited at the image of undressing for Jack in his car, feeling those dark eyes on her naked body, the cool of the leather seats against the heat of her skin. Nipping her lip in determination, she vowed to make it happen.

After a suitable recovery period Jack spoke again. 'Let me tell you about the house.' He steered into the Dublin evening traffic. 'The deal is, Brendan is going to work in the States. He's got an eighteen-month contract, which might be extended, but it would mean that you'd have the place for a year and a half, anyway. After that we'd have to see.'

Lisa shifted noncommitally. It didn't matter because she didn't intend to be here in a year and a half's time.

'It's off the South Circular Road, which is very central,' Jack promised. 'It's an area of Dublin that still has a lot of character. It hasn't been yuppified to fuck.'

Lisa's spirits started a slow slither. She was desperate desperate to live in a place that had been yuppified to fuck. to live in a place that had been yuppified to fuck.

'There's a strong sense of community. Lots of families live here.'

Lisa wanted nothing to do with families. She wanted to be surrounded by other singles and to bump into attractive men at her local Tesco Metro buying Kettle Chips and Chardonnay. Dully, she watched Jack's hands on the steering wheel, her churning misery calmed by the confidence with which they glanced off and guided the leather.

He swung the car off the main road on to a smaller road, then on to an even smaller one. 'There it is.' He pointed through the windscreen.

Crouching on the pavement was a little red-brick artisan's cottage. Lisa took one look at it and hated it. She liked modern and fresh, airy and spacious. This house promised cramped, dark rooms, ancient plumbing and an unhygienic free-standing kitchen with a horrid Belfast sink.

Reluctantly she got out of the car.

Jack approached the house, put the key in the lock, pushed the door and stood back to let Lisa pass. He had to duck his head to fit through the doorway.

'Wooden floors,' she remarked, looking around.

'Brendan had them done a couple of months ago,' Jack said proudly.

She forbore from enlightening him that those in the know were completely over wooden floors and that carpets were very much in the driving seat.

'Sitting-room.' Jack led her into a small, ash-floored room containing a red couch, a telly and a cast-iron fireplace. 'That's an original,' Jack nodded at it.

'Mmmmm.' Lisa loathed cast-iron fireplaces they were so busy busy.

'Kitchen.' Jack trailed her through to the next room. 'Fridge, microwave, washing machine.'

Lisa looked around. At least the cupboards were fitted and the sink was an ordinary aluminium one she'd rather run the risk of Alzheimer's than live with a Belfast sink. But her satisfaction ebbed when she noticed a scrubbed-pine kitchen table, with four sturdy, rustic chairs! Heartsore, she thought of the wheely turquoise Formica table and four woven-wire chairs in her kitchen in Ladbroke Grove.

'He said something about the boiler playing up. I'll just take a quick look.' Half-disappearing into a cupboard, Jack rolled up his sleeves, displaying brown forearms, with planes of muscles which shifted with the movements of his hands.

'Pass me the spanner from that drawer there, will you?' Jack indicated with his head. Lisa wondered if he was putting on a special macho display in her honour, then she remembered Trix saying he was handy with machinery, and felt her sap rising. She'd always had a weakness for men who were good with their hands, who got smeared in oil and came home at the end of a hard day's fixing things, slowly unzipped their overalls and said meaningfully, 'I bin thinkin' 'bout ya all day, baby.' She also had a weakness for men with six-figure salaries and the power to promote her when she didn't really deserve it. How nice would it be to combine the two?

Jack banged and twiddled with things for a short time longer before saying, 'It looks like the timer is gone. You can get hot water, but you can't pre-set it. I'll sort it out for you. Let's see the bathroom.'

To her surprise the bathroom passed the test. Washing herself needn't necessarily be a lightning raid, with a loofah in one hand and a stopwatch in the other.

'Nice bath,' she admitted.

'Handy little shelf there beside it,' Jack agreed.

'Just big enough for two glasses of wine and a scented candle.' Lisa's swift glance was meaningful. And wasted. To her frustration Jack had marched onwards to the next room.

'Bedroom,' he announced.

It was bigger and brighter than the other rooms, though it was still afflicted with a country-cottage feel. Sprigging on the white curtains, echoed by sprigging on the duvet cover and way way too much pine. Pine headboard, big pine wardrobe, pine chest of drawers. too much pine. Pine headboard, big pine wardrobe, pine chest of drawers.

Even the mattress is probably made of pine, Lisa thought scornfully.

'It overlooks the garden.' Jack pointed out the window at a smallish square of grass, bordered by shrubs and blooms. Lisa's heart sank. She'd never had a garden before and she didn't want one. She liked flowers as much as the next woman, but only when they came in a big, cellophane bouquet, with an enormous satin ribbon and a card of congratulation. She'd rather die than take up gardening, the accessories were gruesome elastic-waisted trousers, ridiculous floppy hats, silly baskets and mad Michael Jackson gloves. It was Not A Good Look.

And though she'd told Femme Femme readers last July that gardening was the new sex, she hadn't meant a word of it. Sex was sex. Perennially. She missed it. readers last July that gardening was the new sex, she hadn't meant a word of it. Sex was sex. Perennially. She missed it.

'He said something about having a herb garden,' Jack said. 'Will we check it out?'

He shot the bolt on the back door, and again had to duck his head on the way out. She followed his straight-backed progress across the little lawn, wryly amused by her own admiration. The birds chattered in the benign evening light, the air was pungent with grass and earth and for a second she didn't hate everything.

'Over here.' He waved her towards a bed and folded his long legs into a crouch. To show willing, Lisa half-heartedly hunkered beside him.

'Mind your suit.' He extended his arm protectively. 'Don't get muck on it.'

'What about yours?'

'I couldn't give a feck about mine.' He turned and gave her an unexpectedly mischievous smile.

Up close she saw he had a tiny chip from one of his front teeth. It added to his maverick air. 'If I get enough grass-stains on it, it'll have to go to the cleaner's and I won't be able to wear it tomorrow... And wouldn't that be terrible?' he asked drily.

Lisa laughed and, just for the hell of it, moved her head closer to his. She watched his pupils narrow and dilate through several expressions confusion to interest to extreme extreme interest back to confusion and then blankness. It took far less than a second. Then he turned away and asked, 'Is that coriander or parsley?' interest back to confusion and then blankness. It took far less than a second. Then he turned away and asked, 'Is that coriander or parsley?'

One of his locks of hair was winding around itself into a curl. Lisa wanted to put her finger in and spring it.

'What do you think?' he asked her again.

Feeling as if they were speaking in code, she looked at the leaf in his hand. 'I don't know.'

Between his thumb and forefinger, he crumbled the leaf, then held it to her face. Intimately close. 'Smell,' he instructed.

Her eyes closed, she inhaled, trying to breathe in his skin.

'Coriander,' she said in triumph. She was rewarded with another smile from him. His mouth went kind of curly at the corners...

'And there's basil, chives and thyme,' he indicated. 'You can use them for cooking.'

'Yeah,' she smiled. 'I can sprinkle them on my takeaways.'

There was no point pretending to him. The days of being bonkers-besotted and wanting to cook for her beloved were long gone.

'You don't cook?'

She shook her head. 'I don't have time.'

'That's what I keep hearing,' he said.

'Does, er, Mai cook?'

Big mistake. Jack's face went back to being closed and broody. 'No,' he said shortly. ' At least not for me,' he added. 'Come on, let's go.

'So what do you think of the house?' he asked, once they were back inside.

'I like it,' Lisa lied. It was the best place she'd seen but that wasn't saying much.

'It's got a lot of things going for it,' Jack agreed. 'The rent is decent, the area is nice and you can walk to work.'