But even as she was saying it, she was asking herself if she was wrong.

"When did this accidental event take place?" Gilbert asked.

Lydia looked at her watch. "An hour and . . . thirty-seven minutes ago."

"You have come straight from his bed?"

"I had to tell you." She'd felt that every second that had passed without Gilbert knowing was a further insult to him . . .

"How thoughtful you are."

... although Gilbert was so angry that now she wasn't sure. But she couldn't have lived with a cover-up. What would have been best was if she hadn't had sex with Andrei, but unfortunately that wasn't an option.

"You think you have been my only woman?" Gilbert asked softly, sudden spite in his eyes.

She swallowed away a lump in her throat. "Yes," she said. "Actually, I did."

"But you were not."

She swallowed again. "Grand. I see. Right."

"There have been others."

"Okay." She heaved a huge breath from deep in her gut. "Just as well we're having this little chat, then, no?"

"But these other women-" with a triumphant glint, he sarcastically mimicked her earlier words-"it meant nothing."

"It meant nothing? Just like mine meant nothing? But funnily enough," she said, as she got up to leave, "the last thing you sound like is a man."

Day 43 The years have been good to you.

It's the weekends that have done the damage.

Katie was so surprised and entertained that a little noise escaped from her throat. Could she be said to have laughed out loud, she wondered. Did that make the quote count as "laugh-out-loud" funny? Automatically she went for her phone: Conall would love this one.

Then she remembered that she couldn't ring him. Not now, not ever. Another little noise escaped from her throat and this one definitely wasn't a laugh.

The days when she could casually pick up the phone and read out that day's bitter little bon mot from her diary were gone forever.

Oh. Now that didn't feel at all nice. She wasn't feeling too good this morning. Monday night, the night she'd broken it off with him, had gone okay. Tuesday night had gone okay. Wednesday night had gone okay. Last night had not gone okay.

Because she'd made the terrible, terrible mistake of reading an Anita Brookner-she didn't know the name, they were all the same-and it had put the fear of God in her. She was convinced that for the rest of her life she'd have to spend her holidays with some woman she barely knew from work, someone with repressed lesbian tendencies, and together they'd visit cathedrals. They'd wear stout shoes and carry guide books and spend entire days admiring fifteenth-century naves. In the evenings they'd go for a prix fixe and have one glass of house red each and the repressed lesbian would say, "Men, nasty brutish creatures. We women can provide comfort for each other."

That's what happened when you were forty and alone.

In fact, she would probably die alone. She'd be dead for eight days before she was found, and only the mewing of her twenty-seven hungry cats would alert her cold-hearted, uninterested neighbors.

But she didn't care too much about that; after all, she'd be dead. It was just the holidays she was worried about: the stout shoes, the cathedrals, the cheapo stuff on the prix fixe (soup of the day, melon) and all the lovely things on the a la carte-the prawns, the sea bass-forbidden to her. And what if she wanted a second glass of wine, would her lezzery companion permit such debauched bacchanalia?

She rubbed her hand over her eyes. What a bleak picture of a life . . . And-she just thought of something else-they'd have a box of chocolates, some dreary brand like Milk Tray, and every night before they climbed into their narrow single beds to read four pages of their improving books, her companion would invite her to select a sweet. To show her appreciation, Katie would be obliged to spend hours reading the guide, and even longer savoring the one piece, the only piece, of pleasure in her life, then the box would be replaced in her companion's suitcase-and locked!-until the following night.

Oh God! God, God, God!

The problem was that she hadn't been realistic enough in the beginning. Conall was a special man, with a big presence; he'd taken up a lot of space. You didn't cut someone like him out of your life without undergoing some adjustment. She'd been mildly delusional thinking that it would be easy. Coupled with the fact that this was her first break-up in her forties, was it any wonder she was struggling?

But, on the positive side, other than this newfound fear of holidays with a repressed lesbian, she was coping. Drinking a bottle of wine a night, admittedly, sleeping very badly, admittedly, picking up the phone to ring him twelve times a day, admittedly, but coping.

Day 41 (early hours of) "Three double espressos," Lydia said.

"There's only one of you," Eugene said. She could hardly see him through the steam of the cappuccino machine.

"I'm knackered," she said. "I've got to last through till nine."

Eugene looked at the big greasy clock on the wall. It was 4:20 a.m. "You've a while to go yet. Anything to eat?"

"Something loaded with sugar."

"Grand, I'll bring it all over."

She turned, looking for a free seat. The place was crowded with taxi drivers tucking into middle-of-the-night breakfasts and-Gdansk!-she saw a familiar friendly face. "Hey, Odenigbo!"

Odenigbo jerked his head up, looked alarmed, then smoothed all expression from his features and gave her a short, cool nod before, very deliberately, twisting away.

Irkutsk! Not Gdansk at all. "It's full in here," she muttered to Eugene. "I'll be outside."

Closing the door on the noise and the steam, the night air cool against her hot face, Lydia swallowed hard. Odenigbo blanking her, now that was harsh. But only an eejit would expect that Gilbert's mates would stay friends with her. Loyalty and all that. She understood it. She'd done the dirty on Gilbert; of course his compadres would close ranks. But she minded. She missed the other Nigerians, they were fun. And what about Gilbert having done the dirty on her! The unfairness of it!

She needed to talk to someone. It was twenty-five past four in the morning-what were the chances that Poppy was awake? Quite high, actually. She was getting married in five weeks; she hadn't had a full night's sleep in months.

R U awake?

Ten seconds later Poppy rang. "You got me at a good time. I've just had a nightmare about the flowers and I'm lying here shaking. What if they're mortifying?"

"But they're flowers. How can they be mortifying?"

"Mum was at a wedding last week and she said the flowers were hideous."

Yes, but Mrs. Batch was a sour old boot who found fault with everything. If she was admitted into heaven, she'd kick up a stink at reception and demand to speak to the manager and complain at the top of her voice that everything was too radiant and blissful.

"Your flowers will be cool, cop on, Poppy! I'm never getting married if this is what it does to you. I just got blanked by Odenigbo."

"Oh! That's harsh. But you wouldn't expect me or Sissy or Shoane to play nice if we bumped into Gilbert."

A little silence followed. They both had their doubts about Shoane.

"You're right, yeah, I'd go mad. I just got a . . . you know, it was a reminder, I suppose. Do your test on me, Poppy!"

"Just yes or no answers, right? Question one: Your life is over?"

"No."

"You'll never meet another man again for as long as you live?"

"No, no, I will, I'd say."

"When-and I say when and not if-you think of Gilbert being with the other girls, you want to tear your skin off?"

"Yeah."

"You're sorry for all those times you told your good friend Poppy to shut up when she said he had a family and six children back in Lagos?"

"No."

"Oh. Sure?"

"Would you stop!"

"Moving on. You keep fantasizing about him arriving at your door and offering to do anything-"

"-to burn his Alexander McQueen jacket, the one that cost over a thousand euro, to show how sorry he is."

"I'll take that as a yes. You told him you loved him?"

"You know I didn't."

"He told you he loved you?"

"No, I'd have told you."

"Did you love him?"

"I don't know. I was hoping the Poppy Test would tell me."

"Did he love you?"

"Well, obviously not if he was riding other girls."

"Had you made plans to go on holiday together? Maybe a mini-break in Barcelona?"

"No, but not because he wouldn't. Because I can't-"

"The Poppy Test deals only with yes or no answers. So that's a no. Let me add up your scores. Okay. There was very little to this rel-Well, I'd hardly even call it a relationship. It'll hurt for a short while, quite badly, but there's no depth to the wound. Like a paper cut."

"A paper cut!" Lydia was liking the sound of this. "I know what you mean. Really, really sore, surprising like, especially because it was only a bit of fecking paper. Not like a huge big sword that they execute people with in the Al-Qaeda videos."

"For a few days every single thing you do will hurt."

"Then it'll stop?"

"And you won't even notice it going. You're not thinking you might get back with him?" Poppy asked delicately.

Lydia snorted. "No way. I wouldn't take him." Anyway, it was complicated. It wasn't like other breakups where only one person was in the wrong and the other could wait like a smug martyr for pleas for forgiveness. They were both wronged and in the wrong and it meant they were stuck.

"Good. You'll be grand and there's plenty more where he came from. Lagos," Poppy added.

Poppy was right about one thing: there were always more men coming on-stream. Even if Lydia was still waiting to meet one who didn't eventually disillusion her with his sappiness or his faithlessness or his outrageous stupidity. "You know what, Poppy? With men? It's not the despair that kills me-"

Together, they chanted, "-it's the hope."

"When will I be over Gilbert?" Lydia asked.

"It's been three days? Give it a week. Can I go back to my nightmares now?"

Lydia wanted to keep talking. She wanted to blurt out how she hated herself for thinking Gilbert was worthy of her. But if she said that, Poppy would bollock her for having abnormally high self-esteem and that other girls wouldn't like her if she went around saying that sort of thing.

And there was something else.

"What about . . . him, the other . . ." Lydia choked on the word, ". . . man."

"Andrei, the flatmate you accidentally slept with? This is not an area the Poppy Test covers."

"But what do you think?"

"I think that every time you look at him you'll feel guilt, confusion-"

"Revulsion."

"Revulsion? That bad?"

"I haven't been able to be in the flat with him since . . ."

Since that moment-well, moments-of nutjobbery. As soon as it had ended, she'd legged it out of the flat and hotfooted it over to Gilbert, trying to convince herself that if she fessed up, it might make it not have happened. Christ, how wrong could you get? She discovered that yes, it had happened and, worse again, that she and Gilbert were no longer a going concern. The very thought of Andrei had been so repulsive that she literally hadn't felt able to breathe the same air as him. But there had been nowhere she could go-Gilbert's house no longer being an option-so she'd cruised around all night, picking up a fare here and there. When she eventually came home, at around 8:30 in the morning, Andrei had left for work. And in the few days since then she'd slipped into a different work schedule, driving through the night and coming home to sleep only when she was sure Andrei had left for the day. In a few weeks' time, he was going to Poland for his summer holiday; maybe she could avoid seeing him until then.

"Personally," Poppy said, "I think Andrei's quite ridey. I can see why you-"

"Please! No! Stop!" Her skin crawled at the thought that they'd-arrgh!-had sex. Sex! Arrgh, arrgh, arrgh!

"Okay, revulsion. You'll blame him for the breakup with Gilbert. But you'll have to suppress it until one of you moves out. Learn to live with it."

"Maybe I shouldn't have told Gilbert."