I raise my eyes to heaven.

It takes quite some time for me to cool down. It's not easy, because the truth of this whole goddamn thing is gradually dawning on me, the painful inexorable truth.

When I feel ready to converse civilly I turn to her: "So. Who is this 'friend' that you keep on automatic redial?"

"His name is Ronan."

"I see."

"Unfortunately he can't make it to the hospital before five."

"Other commitments? Just when you need them, they go crap on you."

"He's very good to me in other ways."

"Oh Jesus, get me out of here," I moan, pulling into the entrance of the hospital. "Is this Ronan guy the one who gave you the earrings?"

"How did you guess?"

"It's written all over your face," I reply, suddenly desolate.

"He got them in Paris," she whispers, fingering her newly hung earring. "In the Rue de Rivoli."

I knew it. I knew I recognized them. I was with him in that jeweller's when he bought those earrings: it must have been when my back was turned. He'd offered me a first option on them and I told him they were beautiful but slightly too dangly for my liking. That was the last I saw of those earrings. Now I find they end up on Nicole's ears.

It's almost poetic.

There's no doubt, now.

Nicole is not a three-night stand.

I don't like to go on about it, but it feels as though my heart is about to break.

19 19.

Why do I do things like this?

I've just parked the car in the hospital car park and, with my arm round her back, I have walked the shivering wreck into Casualty. A nurse takes one look at her and tells me she's not bad enough for in here. I reply that I think Nicole's wrist may be broken. Even if it is, she coldly informs us, it's not bad enough for in here.

I want to tell the cow I think she has a damaged liver and a ruptured spleen, and has swallowed a gobful of weedkiller out of a milkshake carton but I know what she'd say. Not bad enough for in here.

So I coax my new friend down a series of corridors to the outpatient department, reassuring her we're not good enough for Casualty, which brings the hint of a smile to her bruised lips.

Luckily the secretary can fit her in, although she might be in for a long wait. We take a seat on a plastic chair row in a waiting room with other casualties who look to me as if they've had a lot worse happen to them than a damaged liver and a ruptured spleen, and poisoned insides from a gobful of weedkiller.

There's broken ankles, legs, collarbones and wrists, burns, bruising, bandages and moanings, and an air of utter defeat about the place. And a wailing wall of children from one family who look as though they've been collectively food-poisoned.

Misery is hard to stare in the face, so after two minutes, I'm giddy already. I stand up and tell Nicole that I'm going in search of a coffee machine. I locate one at the end of a maze of corridors. I press the number four programmewhite with double sugarand a straight line of dark-grey liquid spurts down into the cup. At a guess, this is going to taste like something in the liquid-detergent line.

Still, it could hardly make me feel worse.

Carrying two cupfuls, I manage to get slightly lost on the return. But since I have left a continuous trail of coffee blobs on the floorlike Gretel without Hansel or breadI don't have too much difficulty retracing my steps to the coffee machine, from where I take an alternative route.

I rejoin her a minute later. "This is all I could get."

"It's okay," she replies. "I like coffee."

"I meant, I lost most of it on the way."

But she is a profusing mess of gratitude.

We sit here in silent communion, sipping microchip Nescafe from our white plastic cups. I wonder if she's thinking what I'm thinking? Like, what the hell I am doing here?

The whole thing is so droll it's not funny. She and my husband are in love. It's almost hilarious. I should be finishing the job Harry began. I should be battering her to death with my fists.

Maybe then they'd admit her to Casualty.

She opens her swollen gob: "It's really good of you to be staying here with me like this."

"Not at all. I enjoy seeing people suffer."

She laughs at this, a sudden spontaneous yelp, which makes her groan and crouch forward, and grab her midriff. I have discovered a weapon of pain infliction: humour.

"I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world," I add.

While my buddy is groaning and chortling with the agony of laughter and generally getting a whole lot of shit off her chest plus a few fierce looks from some of the injured people in this band-aid purgatory, I raise my eyes to the tubular lighting. Wait till I tell Sylvana.

"Why did this have to happen?" she moans.

She starts rocking gently to and fro, head inclined downwards.

"Why did did it happen?" I inquire suddenly. it happen?" I inquire suddenly.

She can't look at me. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do. Is it to do with the guy who gave you the earrings?"

Pause.

"Maybe..."

I can understand her point: who wants to admit their adultery to a person like me who gives the impression of being a decent and responsible member of civilized society? Answer: no one with any self-respect. That's principle for you: only ever admit your mortal failings to the equivalent of a scruffy hooligan.

"It's okay, Nicole, I won't judge you." (From me, a simply amazing piece of reassurance.) "Harry found out," she mumbles, lowering her head. "That's the man I've been living with."

"Found out what?"

"You're going to think I'm awful..." She lowers her eyes.

"Try me."

"I've been seeing a married man."

"Heyl We have a marriage wrecker. Congratulations!" We have a marriage wrecker. Congratulations!"

"I feel awful about it."

"Quite."

"Are you married, Julianne?"

"NoI mean, yes."

Hell, Julie, get a grip. Your wedding ring.

"I love my husband," says I. "He's irresistible. Do you find him irresistible?"

"Who?"

"The husband."

"Yes, I do." She nods helplessly.

"How long have you known him?"

"Since January. He came into the travel agency where I work, to book a holiday in Amsterdam for himself and his..."

"His wife?"

She nods. "His wifetechnically."

"Oh, I see: technically."

"He returned the following day to see me. He didn't even mention Amsterdam."

I remember that weekend in Amsterdam. I remember that peculiar dreamy mood that fell over Ronan that weekend. Was I born naive and trusting? I really believed it was because we were having a lovely romantic weekend togetherwalking the canal cobblestones, boating and dining on the Grachten Grachten, strolling the Rijksmuseum, venerating the memorial of Anne Frank's house, nauseating at the thumb crushers and person sawers in the Torture Museum, sipping Tia Maria in Maxim's late-night piano bar and smoking dope in the tearooms.

I really believed that these things made him happy not just because he found them enjoyable in themselves, but because the two of us were enjoying them together. Now I understand his dreaminess: in fact, he spent the whole weekend fantasizing about this woman presently slurping acid coffee beside me.

"Then he rang me up and he just asked me out. I probably shouldn't have accepted."

"Then why did you?"

She exhales deeply. "I don't know. Harry was good to me, but I was going through a bad time when I met him. I don't love him any more. It was a mistake moving in with him. Ronan is different."

The way she says 'Ronan', it's like she's imbuing him with this mystical hue.

"How is he so different?"

"He just is," she says simply.

Romance: that's what it does to the brain. A couple of weeks in Ronan's company, believe me, and he turns into a fantasy-free zone.

"Explain."

"He's a great communicator," she says, almost nostalgically.

"You're joking!"

She eyes me, baffled.

"What man can communicate?" I say airily.

"He loves me," she replies, turning away. "That's all that matters."

I'm sitting here, nodding away to myself. He loves himself. The poor woman. If she only knew.

"He loves your body, Nicole. Don't look at me like that. You do have a gorgeous body, you know."

She shakes her head.

"With us it's not just sex sex."

The way she pronounces the word, it's like sex is something subterranean and dirty. It's as if what goes on between her and Ronan transcends the commonality of carnal greed. It's as if stripping naked in my kitchen and sleeping with my husband in my bed has something indefinably noble about it.

"So what is itif it's not just sex? Spiritual communion?"

"I just know he loves me."

"How do you know?"

"He told me."

This makes me immediately suspicious. "Did you ask him?"

"I didn't have to."

"What if he thought you were asking him and he said it to avoid complications?"

"Look, you've been really kind bringing me here like this."

"Where were you when he told you?" I press.

"Why all the questions?" she moans.

"I'm just trying to find out if he's deceiving you too...I mean, as well as his wife."

Sighs. "He told me again yesterday."