The four men resumed their seats.

"Well?" Lydia asked. "What was all the shouting about?"

Eventually, Abiola spoke. "It's Odenigbo." At this, Odenigbo exploded into heated Yoruba, then so did everyone else.

Lydia picked up the occasional English word-lemon meringue, rainstorm-and she held up a hand, silencing the men. Irritably, she said, "Little trees? Again? I'm sick of this conversation."

Unlike Lydia, who owned her own car, the Nigerians shared three taxis between seven drivers. One man's choice of little tree air freshener had consequences for everyone.

"I like Strawberry Delight," Odenigbo said, with a defiance that suggested he was alone.

A splutter of disagreement greeted his words. "Strawberry Delight is detestable," Gilbert said.

"Worse than the smell of smelliness," Modupe said.

"Worse than the smell of the passengers!"

"We've been through this a million times!" Lydia said. "Forest Floor is fine, so is Spice Market, the rest are gank! End of. Now, who wants to buy me a drink?"

It quickly became clear that Gilbert treated Lydia like a queen. After he'd bought her two drinks in the bar, he ferried her off to his home, a big, old, ramshackle house that he shared with six others. In a kitchen that pulsed with music, he cooked dinner for her-a humble pizza. Not due to his limitations as a cook but out of respect for her cautious Irish palate. Wafting in the air were the hangovers of previous experiments in which he had served up Nigerian delights for her delectation: spicy oysters, goat soup, jollof rice. They had not been a success. The words rank and gank still lingered. It seemed that Lydia's taste for the exotic was only in men.

She ate her pizza with silent concentration. Gilbert tried to engage her in conversation but she cut him off with a curt, "Shush." She brooked no distractions while she was eating. When she'd consumed all six triangles and licked pizza grease off her fingers, she shoved her empty plate across the table at Gilbert and he then clattered it into the sink.

"Thanks," she remembered to say.

In accordance with house rules, Gilbert made a desultory effort to clean up, using a sopping cloth to wipe the table surface in sweeping, lackluster arches, leaving visible semicircles of droplets behind, then he dashed the plates under a lukewarm running tap.

Lydia sat and watched him. She didn't lift a finger. Whoever it was that she-oh so resentfully-housekept for, it was obviously not Gilbert.

"Right," she said, getting to her feet as soon as the plates had been deposited on the draining board. "Let's go."

They went to a party in a cavernous club, with very loud music and very little light. The other revelers were almost all Nigerians, many of whom interrupted Gilbert's and Lydia's kissing in order to respectfully fist-bump Gilbert. When Lydia tired of the incessant shoulder-tapping and of shouting above the music, "What am I? Invisible?" she insisted that they leave and they made their way back home to his bed.

There was a strong connection between them and they were well-attuned physically but-mark me here-their hearts did NOT beat as one. However, that didn't mean that they wouldn't at some stage. There were no obvious impediments . . . except for the large sums Gilbert shelled out on his fancy duds.

Not that Lydia seemed concerned. She lay on his bed, watching as he lovingly secreted his corset-like jacket inside a dust-cover. "You're a dandy," she said.

He liked this. "Say it again."

"Gilbert Okuma, you're a dandy."

"Dandy." He laughed, his teeth very white in his dark face. "Do you know any other words?"

She loved his accent, the deliberate drawl and the tiny little pause between each word.

"A peacock," she suggested. "A fashion victim? A fop? A banty-cock? A gadfly?" Indeed, the local youths, Dublin natives, were happy to supply another description. Spanner. As in, "Look at that spanner! Look at the shoes on him! And the coat!"

But Gilbert was unconcerned. Those boys were uneducated peasants, hobbledehoys who knew no better.

Gilbert, an interesting man, lived for the moment.

For the moment . . .

But all that might be about to change.

Day 59 . . .

Matt and Maeve enjoyed a leisurely evening during which they ate a large, meat-based dinner followed by a variety of confectionery, all the while entwined tightly on the couch, watching home makeover shows. It was an uplifting demonstration of two people very much in love-and yet now and again there was that faint whiff of a third party, the presence of some man curling his way, like cigarette smoke, through the flat.

At 11 p.m., Matt and Maeve retired to their bedroom and I was keen to see what would happen this time. Just like the first night, they got undressed and then got dressed again, as if they were about to go jogging. But instead they got into bed. They read for a while then Maeve opened a bedside drawer and I braced myself for furry handcuffs, blindfolds and other sexy folderols. But instead of sex toys, Maeve produced two notebooks, one with a glossy photograph of a red Lamborghini on the cover, the other bearing a reproduction of a Chagall painting, a man holding hands with a woman who was flying over his head like a balloon.

With a certain amount of gloom, Matt accepted the Lamborghini notebook and a pen. At the top of a blank page, he wrote TODAY'S TRIO OF BLESSINGS. Then he seemed to run out of inspiration. He gazed at the empty page and sucked the top of his pen like he was sitting an exam and knew none of the answers.

He needed to locate three good things that had happened today. But nothing was coming. God, he hated this, so he did.

With a gold-colored pen, Maeve wrote, "I saw a green balloon by a green traffic light."

On the next line she put, "A little girl smiled at me for no reason."

And her third blessing? "Matt," she wrote, and shut the notebook, feeling peaceful and satisfied.

Matt was still sucking his pen; he hadn't produced a single word. Then! Struck by sudden inspiration, he scribbled: A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my car.

A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my flat.

A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my

... on my . . .

Stumped, he looked around the room. What else was he glad that a mysterious lump of ice hadn't fallen on? What did he value? Well, Maeve, obviously. He picked up his pen again.

A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my car.

A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my flat.

A mysterious lump of ice didn't fall on my wife.

There! He scored a thick happy line across the page and, very pleased with himself, tossed the notebook back to Maeve. That was a good list. Sometimes Maeve inspected his list of blessings just to make sure he was doing it right, but he was entirely confident with what he'd written today.

Day 58.

Fionn didn't like Dublin. Even though he'd lived there until the age of twelve and it could be called home, there were too many unhappy memories. He waited until everyone else had climbed off the bus-the Monaghan Meteorite-before he stood up and descended into the chaos of the bus station.

He needed to find a taxi. Excellent Little Productions was expecting him for a meeting and he hadn't a clue how to get there. Searching for signs for the taxi stand, he jostled through clusters of people and for a shockingly vulnerable moment he thought he'd have to fight his way back on to the Meteorite and insist on being taken home to Pokey.

Only the thought of how disappointed Jemima would be kept him moving forward.

He straightened his back, squared his already square jaw, threw his bag over his shoulder and sauntered toward the taxi rank. He was twenty minutes late and counting.

Three miles away, in a converted mews house, Grainne Butcher paced in the double-height, light-flooded greeting area, watching for the taxi. Mobile in hand, she hit redial for the seventh time and once again got Fionn's voicemail.

"Who turns off their mobile?" she asked, incredulous. She turned to stare at Alina, who was cowering behind the curved blond-wood reception desk.

"Don't know," Alina mumbled. As the lowest of the low, she ultimately got all the flak. There were several chronically angry people in the company, from Mervyn Fossil, the owner and producer of the company, and Grainne, the director (who also happened to be Mervyn's wife), to the stylist, and a neat chain of blame operated in which Mervyn dumped on Grainne, who dumped on the editor, who dumped on the senior researcher, who dumped on the junior researcher, who dumped on the runner, who dumped on Alina. The only person who wasn't part of the chain of rage was the stylist and that was because she was freelance.

"And he hasn't rung?" Grainne Butcher asked again.

"I would have told you if he had."

"Don't be glib! Just yes or no answers."

"No," Alina whispered. "No, he hasn't rung."

Mervyn Fossil hurtled into the hallway. "Where? The hell? Is he? "

"Coming," Grainne muttered. "Go on, go away, keep making calls, I'll tell you when he's here."

Mervyn, a short fake-tanned tyrant, stared at Grainne, his mouth curled into a sneer.

"Go on," she said.

With a silent but deadly glare, he returned to his office. As soon as his door shut, Grainne started pacing again.

"Here he is! Thanks be to Christ!" A taxi had drawn up outside. Grainne strode out, thrust a tenner at the driver-"Keep the change!"-then hoicked Fionn from the car. She clicked open the boot and stared at the emptiness. "Where's your stuff?"

Fionn indicated the one medium-sized bag on his shoulder.

"That's all you have? For a whole month?"

"What do I need?"

Then Grainne remembered why she'd fallen under his spell in the first place.

Who would have thought that in the miserable shit-hole that was Pokey she'd have stumbled across the likes of Fionn? She didn't even know why she'd decided to go for Carmine junior's christening: she hated her brother, she hated his wife, she hated the very air of Pokey.

She'd been sitting at her sister-in-law's kitchen table, fighting for breath and counting down the minutes to her departure, when Fionn had shown up to do Loretta's garden. Grainne took one look at the hair, the jaw, the big spade-like hands, and got that tingly feeling-so rare and so cherished.

"What planet has he come from?" she asked Loretta.

"He's local."

"Since when?"

"Years and years."

"I don't remember meeting him when I lived here." If she had perhaps she wouldn't have been so quick to leave.

"You might have. Moved here with his mother when he was about twelve. She couldn't cope, poor woman. He ran a bit wild, teenage tear-away and all that, till he was taken in by the Churchills. Adopted. No, fostered."

"Who? Oh, the posh old pair in the big glass house in the valley."

"Yes, Giles passed on a few years back and the wife, Jemima, moved to Dublin."

Out of nowhere, Grainne was flooded with a memory of a beautiful, confused woman being unable to pay for her basket of food in the supermarket. Angeline, Fionn's mother. "God, yes, I remember the mother!" Then she remembered Fionn. His time in Pokey had overlapped with Grainne's for perhaps only a year before Grainne, aged seventeen, skipped for Dublin. Even then, at whatever age Fionn was-twelve or thirteen, probably-he'd been possessed of beauty but he'd been far too young and too wild for Grainne.

Who could have guessed he'd turn out like this?

Watched by Loretta, who was aghast at her brazenness, Grainne marched right into the garden shed and said to Fionn, "Any chance of a quick gardening lesson?"

He paused in the act of hoisting up a bag of soil. "And you are?" "Grainne, Carmine's sister."

"And you want a gardening lesson?"

"That's right."

He didn't seem terribly surprised-probably used to women throwing themselves at him, she decided.

"I haven't time for lessons but you can come round with me," he said. "You can watch what I'm doing."

Easy-going, she thought. Good. She followed him out into the garden where a row of potted plants waited beside a patch of raw earth.