He was famed throughout his industry for his slick, surgical work. When he chopped up a company, then put it together again, the scars disappeared fast, and very quickly the taut new version began to seem like the only possible one. No one would have believed that the old, saggy, bloated configuration had ever existed, never mind functioned.

But this time was different. What kept rising to the surface of his mind was that this scaled-down company would never entirely convince. He felt like a plastic surgeon who'd done a breast reduction and forgotten to sew the nipples back on.

He'd let the personal get in the way of the practical. He hadn't wanted those Cambodian directors to get thrown in chokey, and that reservation had hobbled the fluid, blue-sky thinking that was his talent. He'd eventually come up with a solution but, now that the job was done and dusted and he was almost home, he was hit with a bout of painful perspective.

He'd . . . he tried out the word; it was a new one for him . . . well, he'd failed.

Failed. No one else had guessed, his paymasters in Milan seemed happy enough, but Conall himself knew. And word would get out eventually. Conall Hathaway's lost it. Too old. Burned out. No longer reliable.

His innards clenched. Failing felt as bad as he'd always feared it might, but he had lived his life with the knowledge that, sooner or later, his judgment would let him down. It was something he'd spent his career on the run from. He'd taken on job after job, needing to stack up triumphs so that when his luck finally ran out, his average success rate would still be stratospheric. Now that failure had happened once, he knew it would happen again. Like when a plane commences a descent, you know the pressure has changed even before the pilot tells you. His unbroken chain of successes had been interfered with, and he had an irrational, superstitious conviction that the direction of his life had been altered and that he had to go where the new path took him.

Adapt! Adapt, adapt! That's what he needed to do: adapt to survive. And another chunk of awareness floated to the surface. He needed-wanted-someone to help him at work. Only now that this job was over and he was almost home, was it was safe to admit just how hard he'd found it. All those flights, those time-zone changes, the lack of sleep, the information overload . . . Too many times in the last three weeks he'd been seized with the ice-cold conviction that he simply wasn't able for it. Admittedly, he found every takeover frightening, it's what had made him so good-that level of fear had produced lots of adrenaline-but this had been different. It was madness to have attempted it on his own. An operation as big as that needed several Conalls.

A deputy. There, he'd said the unsayable: he needed a deputy. Someone to share the workload, to bounce ideas off, to assume some of the responsibility. He realized he even had a few candidates in mind, people younger than him, possibly even more cutthroat than he'd been at his prime, and already he was wondering which one he'd choose. But who said he had to have just one deputy? He could have two, even a team, a whole group of outside-the-box thinkers. Together they'd be terrifying.

But the more effective they were, the more it meant that Conall Hathaway, lone troubleshooter, was no more. That person was gone. Whatever the future brought, and it could be all good, it still meant that he was a failure.

What was it going to be like, he wondered idly. Being a failure? To get his adrenaline fix, was he going to have to start mountain-climbing or doing extreme sports, like a Southern Hemisphere person? God, no. He had a vision of himself and Jesse having underwater breath-holding competitions in Float-then he remembered Lydia. Thank Christ. She was extreme enough for anyone.

Finally, the plane was on the ground. Conall unfastened his seat belt and switched on his phone before he was told he could-he might have forgotten to sew the nipples back on but he would never obey their petty rules.

He stood up and stretched elaborately, almost hoping that the steward would berate him, then hit Lydia's number.

"Hathaway?"

"I'm home. My bed, forty-five minutes."

"If you want me, come and get me. I've been driving all day."

Entre nous, I'm delighted he's back in the country especially if, as seems to be the case, Andrei is off. I have plans for Hathaway. Oh yes, big plans.

Day 2 . . .

She could actually run in them. Four and a half inches-although she would admit they had a half-inch platform, which made the descent less steep, but four inches was still very high-and she wasn't just walking fast, she was actually running. Not every woman could do that, especially not every woman over forty, and it was a handy skill to have because right now she was very late. She'd managed to talk Fionn out of his gloom so she was on her way home to get changed into a cocktail dress, then she had to race across town to meet him for a knees-up at the U.S. embassy. They were still going to every party they were invited to because she was defiantly refusing to think about the future and was determined to keep enjoying herself, right up until the last minute, whenever that would be. But all this socializing was time-consuming, and she was already late when she left work, then she'd stopped off to buy milk and other basics and she'd got lured into a drugstore. She'd actually needed iron supplements (she couldn't sustain this pace for much longer without something), but she'd got sidetracked in the nail-care aisle and went into a trance. God, they had good stuff there, excellent stuff: a new brand of topcoat and emery boards patterned with Marimekko designs . . . She'd lost a lot of time but at least she was finally home and- "Conall!" Oh my God. It was Conall. Hathaway. Standing outside the front door of 66 Star Street, looking huge. She hadn't seen him in ages.

He seemed just as shocked to see her. "Katie?"

"Conall."

"You look fantastic."

"You look . . . wrecked." His suit was rumpled and his hair was all over the place.

"Just off a plane from the Philippines."

"Nothing changes." She pointed her key at the lock. "Can I . . . Do you want me to let you in?"

"I'm waiting for . . . Ah-"

"Lydia?"

"Yeah, she's on her way down."

She's your-" Katie proceeded with caution, like she was crossing a broken old bridge with rotten slats that could snap beneath her without warning. "She's your girlfriend?"

"Um, yeah."

There, Katie thought. The words were said and she was fine. She hadn't plunged into a terrible abyss; in fact, she'd felt nothing. Fionn, what a fabulous painkiller he was. Better than anything on the market. He should license himself; he'd make a fortune.

"And," Conall said, "I hear you and-Fionn, is it?-are an item?"

"We are. Anyway, gotta go. I'm late."

"And it's going well with him?"

God, Conall-so competitive, always. What did he expect her to say? No one could ever be as good as you, Conall? Because they could. Fionn was. She contented herself with an enigmatic shrug and went on her way.

Day 2 . . .

Slippers, shower caps, soaps, night-time chocolates, pens-a cornucopia of beautiful things all lifted from Conall's hotel rooms.

"Hathaway, this is good gear."

"Any time." Deftly, he unclipped Lydia's bra. He'd done a fine job of almost entirely undressing her while her attention was focused on her goody box.

"Oh!" She gasped with delight: Molton Brown shower gels. Far better than the own-brand shite he'd included.

Conall laughed and gently bit first her right nipple, then her left. "You love it, don't you? The pleasuring?"

"Mmmm." He'd thought her gasp was sexual, she realized. She'd better focus. She had a naked Conall Hathaway before her, with a frisky-looking erection keen for action. The free shower gels could wait.

"That's what Katie used to call it," he said, lowering her to the bed.

Lydia froze. "Katie called what what?"

"Pleasuring. It was her word."

Lydia rolled away and sat up. "Don't ever mention Katie again. You mope."

"... Oh ..."

"I don't care. But when I kick you into touch, you'll never keep another girl. Mind you, the saps you've had in the past, maybe they put up with it because you've a house in Wellington Road. But if you want me to stick around-"

"Right . . . sorry."

"Have you forgotten that I told you Katie and Goldilocks are an item?"

"No."

"They're mad about each other. At it nonstop. Having baths in the middle of the night and chasing each other round the house and screeching and keeping hardworking people like me from their night's sleep."

Day 1 "What time will you be home?" Maeve asked.

"Could be quite late," Matt said.

"Oh Matt."

"You know what it's like." He smiled apologetically. "Potential clients, private room, tasting menu, expensive wine. These things drag on."

"Friday night's a funny one for that sort of do."

"Only night we could all manage. But you'll be grand. You've got Shrigley, right?"

"Mmm. And there's a leaving do at work." She didn't know why she'd said that. It wasn't as if she'd go.

"You could go to it after Shrigley. Then you wouldn't be on your own here for so long."

Maeve paused, a spoonful of porridge halfway to her mouth. Matt didn't usually try to persuade her to go out with her work colleagues.

"Why not? Try it for an hour," Matt said. "Might be good for you. If it gets too much, you can always leave."

Maeve looked at him doubtfully.

"Half an hour, maybe," he said. "You never know, you might find you're enjoying yourself."

"But Matt . . . even normal people don't enjoy leaving parties."

"Maeve, look." She saw desperation in his expression. "We've got to keep trying."

She dropped her eyes. No, no more trying. He was on his own with that particular mission.

"Maeve?"

She had to say something. "What restaurant are you going to?"

". . . Ah . . . Magnolia."

"I thought that had closed down."

". . . Ah . . . no, it hasn't."

Matt snapped two antidepressants out of their foil package and rolled one across the table to Maeve. "Like I say, I'll be late, so take your time."

Maeve threw the pill into her mouth and chased it with a gulp of water. She passed the glass to Matt. "I'll just brush my teeth and we'll get going."

She left the room. Matt tensed and listened hard to the sound of a tap running in the bathroom. When the buzzing sound of an electric toothbrush reached him, he threw himself on her satchel, rummaged urgently through it, produced a bunch of keys, clattered them into the cupboard under the sink, dumped the satchel down on to the floor and shoved himself back in front of the breakfast counter.

I've just noticed that something's wrong, something's terribly wrong. Matt and Maeve, well, their shared heartbeat . . . I can't feel it any more. It's gone and I realize it's actually been dead for a while, for a long while. What I was feeling wasn't the real thing, but something like a recorded message, an echo from the past. Like the light that reaches us from a long-dead star.

Day 1 . . .

Lydia threw herself onto the floor, flat on to her stomach, to check there was nothing left under either of the beds. She wanted every last microfiber of the lads out of here. A couple of dust balls were rolling around, but other than that, nothing. The packing had been thorough; the last few days had been a frenzy of activity.

"Jan, don't forget your poster of the pope." She hopped up to unpeel it from the wall.

"You can have," Jan said. "It might help you."

"Me?" She couldn't stop grinning. "I'm beyond redemption."

"That looks like it." Andrei did a last sweep of their bedroom.

"If you've forgotten anything, you can pick it up when you come back."

She hadn't cared even when she'd discovered that Andrei's new billet was just one floor away. He was an engaged man now and that operated like a repellent force field for her. That messy business was all in the past, a baffling little dabble, over for good.

She was so cheerful about getting rid of them that she'd helped carry the last of their boxes down to the van.

"Goodbye. Goodbye." Now that they were leaving, she felt almost sentimental. "Safe journey, all that."

As she watched the van disappear up the street, her phone rang. "Hathaway?"

"Tonight?"

"Cleaning. I'm moving into my lovely new big room. Sissy's calling over when she's finished work to help me kick over the traces. You can come too, seeing as you were such a dab hand at the cleaning down in Mum's. Not."

"I'll come. I can help." He sounded a little huffy. "Then do you want to come to my brother Joe's? To give Bronagh her birthday present?"

"Who's Bronagh?"

"My niece. I told you about her."

"Oh yeah." No, no memory. "The answer would be no."

"No?"

"I hate kids and kids hate me."

"But she's a laugh!"

"Believe me, Hathaway, not to me she won't be."

"Ah . . . all right. I'll go there on my own and then come over to you."

Day 1 . . .

". . . so then I flew back to Manila again and-"

"Yeah?" Joe said, drinking his tea and staring sightlessly around his kitchen.