'Like?'

'A present or... something. For being in the photo and making it so good.'

Under normal circumstances Lisa would just have told Ashling to fuck off and get a grip, but she was too distracted.

'Ask Jack,' she snapped. 'I'm busy.'

Clutching the photograph, Ashling nervously knocked on Jack Devine's door. When he bellowed, 'Come in,' she reluctantly entered and cringingly explained her mission. 'They did it without a word of complaint and they didn't ask for anything and I just thought we should show some sort of appreciation...'

'Fine,' Jack interrupted.

'Really?' she asked cautiously. She'd been expecting him to mock her request.

'Absolutely. They make the picture. What d'you think they'd like?'

'Somewhere to live,' she semi-joked.

'I haven't got the budget,' Jack replied. He sounded quite regretful. 'Any other ideas?'

She thought about it. 'Money, probably.'

'Thirty quid each? It's all I can stretch to, I'm afraid.'

'Er, fantastic' It wasn't much, but it was more than she'd hoped for. At least Boo and Dave would get a couple of hot meals out of it.

'Here,' Jack signed a petty cash slip. 'Give that to Bernard.'

'Thank you.'

He let his dark eyes rest on her face for two or three long seconds. 'You're welcome.'

At seven o'clock, as arranged, Lisa went to the bar at the Clarence. Oliver rose when he saw her.

'What d'you want to drink? White wine?'

White wine was her drink, at least it had been when they'd been together. He'd remembered.

'No,' she said, hoping to wound. 'A cosmopolitan.'

'I might have known.'

She watched him, big and bulky, loud and forthright, cheerfully joking with the bar staff. How come he always occupied more space than he actually filled? Her head tightened and lifted he was so familiar she almost didn't know him.

Returning with her drink, he got straight to the point. 'Have you got a solicitor, babes?'

'Weeell...'

'We both need a solicitor,' he explained patiently.

'For the divorce?' She tried to sound blase but it was the first time the word had ever been actually uttered as a real likelihood.

''s right.' He was brisk, businesslike. 'Now, you know the deal '

She didn't, actually.

'Our marriage has irretrievably broken down, but that's not enough to get divorced. We need to give a reason. If we were already separated for two years we could just do it. But until then, one of us has to sue the other. For desertion, unreasonable behaviour or adultery.'

'Adultery!' Lisa bristled. She'd been totally faithful while they'd been together. 'I never...'

'And neither did I.' Oliver was equally emphatic. 'As for desertion '

'Yeah, you you left left me me.' She was keen to blame.

'You gave me no choice, babes. But you could sue me for that. Only thing is we have to be separated for two years before you can use desertion as grounds, and we want to get this sorted soon?' He threw her a questioning look and waited for her to concur.

'Yeah,' she said snippily. 'Sooner the better.'

'So that leaves us unreasonable behaviour. We need five examples.'

'Unreasonable behaviour? What's that?' She was almost laughing, forgetting briefly that this had anything to do with her. 'Like doing the hoovering at three in the morning.'

'Or working every weekend and bank holiday.' His tone was bitter. 'Or pretending you want to get pregnant and continuing to take the Pill.'

'Whatever.' Her expression was hostile.

'We have a choice. I can sue you or you can sue me.'

'So you admit you were unreasonable too?'

He sighed heavily. 'It's only a formality, Lees, it's not about allocating blame. The person who gets sued doesn't get punished in any way. So which is it to be? You sue me?'

'You decide, seeing as you know so much about it all,' Lisa said unpleasantly.

He gave her a long look, as if trying to make sense of her, then he shifted. 'If that's what you want. Now, costs. We each pay our own solicitor but we split the court costs between us, yes?'

'Why do we need solicitors? If we flew to Vegas for a quickie wedding, can't we fly to Reno for a quickie divorce?'

'Not that simple, babes. Think about it, we own a property together.'

'Yeah, but we each know how much we contributed to... OK, I'll get a solicitor.' She couldn't take another second of this, so she rearranged herself in her chair and asked with brittle gaiety, 'How's work been?'

'Loco. Just got back from France and before that I was in Bali.'

Lucky bastard.

'After here, I've got a quietish time until the shows.' He nodded at Lisa's tailored two-piece. 'I haven't seen that suit before.'

She inspected herself. 'Nicole Farhi.' Lifted from a shoot the previous January, she'd attempted to hang the blame on Kate Moss.

'I don't like it.' Oliver said.

'What's wrong with it?' She'd always valued his opinion on her clothes and hair.

'Nothing. I mean I don't like that I've not seen it before.'

She knew what he meant. She felt an aching affront that his hair was longer, that his watch was new, that since she'd last seen him he'd travelled halfway around the world and she'd known absolutely nothing about it.

'You look different,' he said.

'Do I?'

'No.' He shook his head and laughed with an odd breath-lessness. 'I don't fucking know.'

She knew exactly what he meant. Extreme familiarity and empty distance hung together in strange coexistence. Both were present equally, so it felt that two different realities had been sliced and put back together incorrectly.

'Excuse me me!' He interrupted himself to pick up her wrist and, with his other hand, turn her fingers to him. There was something he wanted to see. He was rough and the angle was painful. 'You don't wear your wedding ring any more?' he accused, his brown eyes contemptuous.

She tugged her hand away and glared. Rubbing her sore wrist she accused, 'You hurt me!'

'You hurt hurt me me'

'What's the big deal with the ring?' Her face was flushed and angry. 'You're the one talking divorce.'

'You were the one who brought it up in the first place!'

'Only because you were leaving me.'

'Only because you gave me no choice.'

They glared at each other, breathing hard as emotion over-spilled.

'Do you want,' he demanded, his expression like thunder, his eyes never leaving her face, 'to come up to my room?'

'Come on.' Already she was on her feet.

The first kiss was a frantic, teeth-clashing grind. Trying to do too much at once he pulled at her hair, tugged at her jacket, kissed her too hard, then tore off his shirt.

'Wait, wait, wait.' Looking exhausted, he laid his naked back against the door.

'What?' she mumbled, numbed by the sight of his hard polished chest.

'Let's start this again.' He reached and pulled her to him with delicate tenderness. She buried her face in his chest. The special Oliver smell. Forgotten, but remembered with such stupefying, sense-filling impact. Peppery, sweet-spicy, and something unique and indescribable that didn't come from soap or a bottle or from his clothes. A smell that was just him him.

His familiarity brought tears to her eyes.

With unbearable fragility he placed a fluttery kiss on the corner of her mouth. As if it was the first time. Then another butterfly kiss. And another. Moving inwards slowly, creating pleasure that was almost indistinguishable from pain.

Not moving, barely breathing, she let him administer kisses.

Sex with Oliver was the one time in her life when Lisa played passive. When she wasn't controlling or rapacious or proactive or voracious. She always let him be in charge and he loved it.

'I look into your eyes and you're not even there,' he often used to remark. 'You're just this whimpery, helpless little girl.'

She knew he was turned on by the contrast between her usual bolshiness and such bedroom passivity, but that wasn't why she did it. With Oliver there was no need to be in charge. He knew exactly what to do. Nobody did it better.

The kisses moved from her mouth to her neck, her hairline. Her eyes closed, she groaned with pleasure. She could die now, she really could. She heard him whisper, his breath hot on her ear, 'You're gone, babes.'

Like a sleepwalker, she was led to the bed. Obediently she stretched out her arms for her jacket to be removed, lifted her hips for her skirt to come off. The smooth, cool sheets poured across the bare skin of her back. Her whole body was quivering, but she lay without moving. When he grazed her nipple with his mouth, she jerked as if she'd had an electric shock. How could she have forgotten how sensational this was?

The kisses moved downwards, ever downwards. He placed a tiny kiss on her stomach, so gentle it barely lifted the downy little hairs, but it flooded her with swollen sensation.

'Oliver, I think I'm going to...'

'Wait!'

The condom was the bum note, the one thing that reminded her that things weren't the way they used to be. But she refused to let herself think about it. So he was probably having sex with others? Well, so was she.

When he entered her, a great peace settled. She exhaled long and clean, all tension fleeing. For a second she savoured her absence of agitation until he began to drive himself into her with long, slow thrusts. She intended to enjoy this. She knew she would.

Afterwards she wept.

'Why are you crying, baby?' He cradled her to him.

'It's just a physical thing,' she said, already regaining control of who she really was. Enough of that passive stuff. 'People often cry when they've come.'

Their earlier anger and discomfort had been burnt off by passion. Instead they lay in bed, talking idly, wrapped around each other in affection that was bizarrely comfortable. It was as if they'd never been apart, never fought acrimoniously, never thought with bitterness of each other. Not that either of them was naive enough to think that the sex indicated that a reunion was on the cards. Even when their fighting had been at its ugliest, they'd had sex. Amazing sex. It had seemed to provide an outlet for all that excess of emotion.

Absently she swept her hands along the undulation of his biceps. 'Still working out, I see. What can you bench-press now?'

'One hundred and thirty.'

'I'm impressed!'

After midnight, conversation wound down further and further until eventually he yawned. 'Let's go to sleep, babes.'

''K,' she said drowsily. There was no question that she leave, they both knew that. 'I'll just go to the bathroom.'

After she'd washed her face, she used his toothbrush. She did it without thinking and it was only after she'd finished that she noticed.

When she returned from the bathroom she put her chilly feet between his thighs to warm them, the way she'd always done. Then they slept, as they had slept almost every night for four years, spooned together. She curled into a 'C', with him curled into a bigger 'C' around her, hugging her length, his palm warm on her stomach.

'Night night.'

'Night.'

Silence.

Into the darkness, Oliver remarked, 'This is really weird.' She could hear his pain and confusion. 'I'm having an affair with my wife.'