'Better than Bicycle Billy, "one of Ireland's top comedians"?'

'You know you are.'

'If I knew it I wouldn't have to ask.'

'Better than Billy, better than Ted, better than Mark, better than Jimmy, better than everyone.' Ashling wanted to go back to sleep.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Jimmy's gag about the football supporters was great, though.'

'It was OK,' Ashling said cautiously.

'How OK?' Marcus pounced. 'On a scale of one to ten?'

'One,' Ashling yawned. 'It was crap. Let's go back to sleep now.'

43.

Oliver's visit had shattered Lisa's fragile equilibrium. At work her eye was off the ball and her bitchy-remark quota was way down. What made things worse was that he didn't ring her. She'd hoped that he would, if only just to leave a jokey 'Thanks for the shag' message. Especially now that he had her number. But the days passed and hope faded.

On day five the yearning got too bad and she rang him, but it went straight to message service. He was out, she deduced, having a good time, living the life she used to live. Full of irritating desolation, she hung up, too raw to leave a message.

She should have known he wouldn't get in touch. It was over, they both knew it, and once his mind was made up, it stayed that way. Subdued and distracted, she couldn't stop dwelling on questions that she should have considered six months, nine months, a year previously. What had happened to her marriage? What went wrong? Like so many relationships, theirs had foundered on the issue of children. But this time there was a twist. He wanted them, she didn't.

She'd thought thought she wanted them. There was a spate when absolutely anyone who was anyone was up the duff: various Spice Girls; a plethora of models; several actresses. A bump was as much of a style statement as a pashmina or a Gucci handbag, and pregnancy was she wanted them. There was a spate when absolutely anyone who was anyone was up the duff: various Spice Girls; a plethora of models; several actresses. A bump was as much of a style statement as a pashmina or a Gucci handbag, and pregnancy was hot hot. She'd even included it in a list Pregnancy was 'Hot' and Precious Stones were 'Not'.

Shortly after that, the in-thing was to be seen wheeling a tiny little baba in a black jogging buggy don't leave home without it. Lisa, her gimlet eye registering the infinitesimal rise and fall of all things trendy, took in these developments.

'I want a baby,' she told Oliver.

Oliver wasn't so keen. He liked their stylish, sociable life, and knew that a baby would put the brakes on it. No more partying until dawn, no more white sofas, no more spontaneous, last-minute trips to Milan. Or Vegas. Or even Brighton. Sleepless nights would no longer be courtesy of high-grade cocaine, but of a screaming child instead. All disposable income would be diverted away from Dolce & Gabbana jeans and reapplied to mountains of disposable nappies.

But Lisa got to work, and slowly she convinced him. Appealing to his macho pride, 'Don't you want your genes to be carried on?'

'No.'

And then one day, lying in bed he said, 'OK.'

'OK, what?'

'OK, we'll have a baby.' Before Lisa could exclaim with pleasure he had plucked her foil card of pills from the bedside shelf and ceremoniously flushed them down the loo.

'No safety net, babes.'

In her fantasies, Lisa was already sporting a delicious coffee-coloured baby on her slender hip. 'It's not a doll,' Fifi pointed out to her. 'It's a human being and they're a lot of hard work.'

'I know that,' Lisa had snapped. But she didn't really.

Then someone at work got pregnant. Arabella, a sharp, slightly dangerous woman, who was as smart as a whip and always immaculately turned out. Overnight she became as sick as a dog. One day she even puked into the wastepaper bin. When she wasn't in the ladies' either weeing or throwing up, she was slumped at her desk, queasily nibbling ginger, too exhausted to work. And the food! Despite her ever-present nausea, she ate mountains. 'The only thing that settles my stomach is food,' she mumbled, shoving another Cornish pasty down the hatch. In no time she looked as if she'd been buried up to her neck in a sandpit. It got worse. Her once-glistening hair became unaccountably frizzy and suddenly she was very prone to cold sores. Her skin yielded flaky patches of psoriasis and her nails split and broke. To Lisa's supercritical eye she looked more like a plague victim than a pregnant woman.

Most disturbing of all, Arabella's concentration disappeared. Mid-interview she forgot Nicole Kidman's name, and could only come up with the office nickname for her: Nicole Skidmark. She couldn't remember if her wraparound John Rocha velcro skirt was last season's or the one before. And these things were elementary elementary, Lisa noted in mounting alarm. The day came when Arabella's ability to make a decision between a White Magnum and a Classic Magnum just went west on her. 'Whi- No, Classi- No, no, wait. White. Definitely White. No, Classic...' She could have dithered for England. 'I've become lime-jelly-brain girl,' she moaned.

Thoroughly spooked, Lisa went to see another woman who'd had a baby. Eloise, features editor at Chic Girly Chic Girly.

'How are you?' Lisa asked.

'Psychotic from sleep deprivation,' Eloise answered.

It got worse. Though it was six months since Eloise had had her baby, she still still looked as though she'd been buried up to her neck in a sandpit. looked as though she'd been buried up to her neck in a sandpit.

And something else. She no longer cared, she'd lost her hardness. This was the editor formerly known as Attila. She sacked without fear or at least she used to. But now she was afflicted with a faint but unmissable air of goo.

Lisa began back-pedalling like there was no tomorrow. She didn't want a baby, they destroyed your life. It was easy for models and Spice Girls. They had teams of nannies to ensure you got your sleep, personal trainers to insist you regained your figure, private hairdressers to comb your hair when you hadn't the energy to.

But by then Oliver was well into the idea. And the thing about Oliver was that once he'd decided on something, it was very hard to make him change his mind.

Secretly she began taking the Pill again. No way was she destroying her precious career.

Ah yes, Lisa's career. Oliver had objected to that too, hadn't he?

'You're a workaholic,' he accused, over and over, with mounting frustration and anger.

'Men always say that about successful women.'

'No, I don't just mean that you work too hard, although you do. Babes, you're obsessed obsessed. All you talk about is office politics or circulation figures, or how the competition is doing. "At least we get more in advertising... We did that article six months ago... Ally Benn is out to get me." '

'Well, she is.'

'No, she isn't.'

Mad with the irritation of being misunderstood, Lisa glared at him. 'You've no idea what it's like, they all all want to be me, all those twenty-year-olds. They'd stitch me up and stab me in the back, given half a chance.' want to be me, all those twenty-year-olds. They'd stitch me up and stab me in the back, given half a chance.'

'Just because you think that way doesn't mean everyone else does. You're paranoid.'

'I'm not, I'm telling it like it is. Their only loyalty is to themselves.'

'Just like you, babes. You've got so hard, you've sacked too many people. You shouldn't have sacked Kelly, she was sweet, and on your side.'

Shame flickered for the tiniest moment. 'She couldn't hack it, she wasn't tough enough. I need a features writer who isn't afraid of doing hatchet jobs. Nice people like Kelly hold the magazine back.' She rounded on Oliver. 'I didn't enjoy sacking her, if that's what you're thinking. I thought she was all right, but I'd no choice.'

'Lisa, I think you're the business. I always did. I...' he paused as he searched for the right word. 'I admire you, I respect you...'

'But?' Lisa questioned sharply.

'But there's more to life than being the best.'

A scornful laugh. 'No there isn't.'

'But you are are the best. You're so young and successful, why isn't it enough?' the best. You're so young and successful, why isn't it enough?'

'That's the trouble with success,' Lisa muttered. 'You've got to keep doing better.'

How could she explain that the more she got, the more she wanted? Every coup left her empty, chasing the next one in the hope that perhaps then she'd feel like she'd arrived. Satisfaction was fleeting and elusive and success simply whetted her appetite for more and more and more.

'Why does it matter so much?' Oliver had asked in despair. 'It's only a job.'

Lisa flinched at that. Oh, he was so wrong. 'It's not. It's... everything.'

'You'll change your mind when you get pregnant.'

Instantly, terror bathed her in sweat. She wouldn't be getting pregnant. She had to tell him. But she'd tried and he'd totally stonewalled her.

'Let's go away this weekend, babes,' Oliver suggested with a brightness that he didn't feel. 'Just you and me, hanging out, the way it used to be.'

'I've got to pop into the office on Saturday for a couple of hours. Got to check the layout before it goes to the printers...'

'Ally could do that.'

'No way! She'd screw it up on purpose just to show me up.'

'See what I mean?' he said bitterly. 'You're obsessed and I never get to see you, except at work bashes... And you're no fun any more.'

There continued a steady, bitter accretion of let-downs and disappointments, a mounting litany of resentments and blame, of withdrawal and isolation from each other. Two people who had blurred into one gradually became two again, sharply defined and separate.

Something had to give and eventually it did.

On New Year's Day Oliver found a packet of the Pill in Lisa's handbag. After a savage and lengthy exchange of words, they lapsed into silence. Oliver packed his bags (and one of Lisa's) and left.

44.

'who's doing the lunch run today?' Lisa asked.

'Me,' Trix replied quickly. Too quickly.

Trix loved doing the lunch run, not because she wished to be of service to her colleagues, but because it ensured she got two lunch-hours. It took four minutes to walk to the sandwich shop, another six to order, pay for and collect the sandwiches. Which left forty-five minutes to wander around the shops of Temple Bar before returning to the office and shriekingly condemning the indecisive crowds ahead of her in the sandwich queue, the gobshites who worked there who couldn't tell the difference between chicken and avocado, the man who'd had a heart attack so that she had to loosen his clothing and wait with him until the ambulance came...

Even though everyone was snowed under by work, with just over a month to go before the launch of Colleen Colleen, nevertheless they found themselves looking forward to her progressively more outrageous excuses.

Then she would sit and spend fifteen minutes eating her sandwich, before looking at the clock and announcing, 'One fifty-seven, I'm going on lunch, see you all at two fifty-seven.'

'I'd like something a little bit different for my lunch today,' Lisa told Trix.

'Ah, Burger King.' Trix understood.

'No.'

'No?'

'There's more to lunch than sandwiches and burgers.'

Trix's look was baffled.

'Is it fruit you want?' Her over-made-up forehead puckered in confusion. She knew that Lisa sometimes ate apples and grapes and that kind of gear. Trix never ate fruit. Absolutely never. She prided herself on it.

'I'd like sushi.'

The suggestion was such a revolting one that Trix briefly lost the power of speech. 'Sushi?' she eventually spat in horror. 'Do you mean raw fish?' she eventually spat in horror. 'Do you mean raw fish?'

Over the weekend Lisa had read that a sushi emporium had come to Dublin and she hoped that sampling their merchandise might lift her out of her Oliver-triggered depression. But she'd hoped the comedy gig on Saturday night would do the trick too, and it hadn't: although Jack had had showed up and had talked to her for a lot of the night when he hadn't been talking to that pain-in-the-arse Clodagh, that is. showed up and had talked to her for a lot of the night when he hadn't been talking to that pain-in-the-arse Clodagh, that is.

'Some of your best friends are fish,' Lisa said wearily.

'How many times do I have to tell you that there are never any fish in the van when I'm in it!'

'Here, I've drawn you a little map,' Lisa said. 'Just ask for a bento box.'

'A bento box? Are you making that up?' Trix snarled, terrified of being made a fool of.

'No, that's how takeaway sushi is packaged. They'll know in the shop what you're talking about.'

'A bento box,' Trix repeated suspiciously.

'Who's getting a bento box?' Jack had appeared in the office.

'She is,' Trix whined, at the same time as Lisa said, 'I am.'

Trix launched into a noisy condemnation of Lisa, how she was forcing her to buy and transport disgusting raw fish across the city, how the very thought made her feel like vomiting...

'Someone else can do the lunch run if you'd prefer,' Jack suggested mildly.

'No, it's OK,' Trix said sulkily but speedily.

Then, to everyone's surprise, Jack said, 'Here, get me one too.'