"Julianne, what are you doing?"

The cheerful voice makes my heart somersault.

It's Nicole.

She's in her red dress, out of breath, all smiles. Hurriedly I drop the Feng Shui Feng Shui booklet between my legs, close it and slide it surreptitiously into my bag beneath the table. booklet between my legs, close it and slide it surreptitiously into my bag beneath the table.

"I was just reading the Bible," I reply, pushing the coffee eclair towards her. "What on earth are you you doing here, Nicole?" doing here, Nicole?"

"I'm meeting Ronan at four in Temple Bar. Isn't this an amazing coincidence? Julianne, I love the leather jacket."

"I've just charged it to my husband's credit card, along with all these shoes and suits and things, and I also bought a lemon-yellow Wonderbra with matching knickers, just for the hell of it."

Not a flicker from her. "I've just bought a dress myself. Will I show it to you?"

"It's okay."

"It's peach," she insists hopefully.

"Charming. Enjoy your coffee eclair, Nicole."

She sits down opposite me and starts picking at the eclair (Mother will be furious). After ordering a coffee from one of the waiters she turns to me all earnest, grave.

She says she realizes I just put myself on the line for her back there in front of Harry. She says she is extremely grateful to me for saving her life, and that owing to me, she no longer lives in danger of being thumped. Thank you so much, Julianne.

"You're welcome, by the way, Nicole..." I'm playing with my lower lip. "I'd love to meet Ronan."

"You would?"

"Yes. I was thinking: what about an introduction?"

"You mean, this afternoon?"

"It can't hurt."

"I'd like that." She smiles.

"I'm just curious to see what a jerk he is. Only joking."

She tells me, in effect, that, at four o'clock she'll introduce me to my husband of two years' standing.

"Hands off, though." She laughs. "He's mine mine, okay?"

This is her concept of a joke, like.

"You have no idea, do you?"

"How do you mean?"

"Forget it."

She flicks her hair back and takes another forkful of cake. She's beginning to look tired. She's lost the happy glow she had when I called up to her place earlier. That thing with Harry must have traumatized her, poor thing.

I take a bite from my own cream-orientated gunge, take several sips of my coffee and turn to her. "Nicole, can I say something?"

She nods earnestly at me.

"You probably won't like this, but do you have any idea what you constitute in Ronan's eyes?"

"How do you mean?"

"To him you are just a sexual plaything."

"I don't..."

"To Ronan you are merely an inflatable doll with a smile. A vibrator with a human face. He is just using you as his virility barometer."

"Why are you saying all that, Jul"

"You're just a conquest conquest, Nicole."

She quietly nibbles some titbits from her fork. I'm actually beginning to enjoy this.

"This isn't about sexual conquest." She sulks.

"Face it, Nicole, you're no more than a mini-Everest."

She flushes, sipping her just arrived coffee.

And most infuriatingly I add: "Sad but true."

"Ronan is not like other men," she tries to explain.

"They never are."

Again, I have to listen to a load of hogwash about how my wonderful husband is so different. She tells me that he's kind and gentle, and appreciative of her work as an artist, which of course makes me want to vomit recipe books wholesale.

"You'll see what I mean when you meet him at four."

She goes quiet now.

"Look, Nicole, I don't see how you can continue to ignore certain blatant facts: once upon a time he and his present wife actually went to the trouble of getting married in a church. In front of a priest and a congregation. In front of God God, for chrissake! Think of this: he put a wedding ring on her finger and walked back down the aisle with her and took her on a honeymooon to...wherever, and he lived with her for a few years and is still living with her, no thanks to you, Nicole."

"Have you any idea how all this is making me feel?"

"In the end he's only going to let you down. Like he did his own wife. Wait and see."

She slams down her fork, leaving one small piece of eclair on the plate, and takes a sip of coffee. She waits a beat, then proceeds, as nicely as she can: "Look, I know you're going through your own problems."

"Stop right there, Nicole."

"You were really kind," she insists, "taking me to hospital yesterday..."

"I didn't plan it like that."

And I didn't. In actual fact I had planned to beat the crap clean out of her, but fate in its characteristically arrogant and unpredictable manner decided to jerk people around yet again and give the job to Harry instead.

"...and protecting me from Harry just now. You didn't have to do all that. You've been fantastic."

"Dump him, Nicole."

"But I'm in love love with him, don't you see?" with him, don't you see?"

"He's using using you. For a bit of sex." you. For a bit of sex."

"Is that what you think this is?" she pleads. "A bit of sex?"

"Exactly."

"If it's just a bit of sex, then why did he tell me this morning that his marriage was dead?"

Pause.

"He said that?"

"He phoned me after breakfast. His silly wife had been tormenting him again."

"His marriage is dead."

I mean, it seemed relatively alive to me this morning.

"That's what he said."

"How dead is dead? dead? " "

She stands up, excusing herself and saying that it's nearly four o'clock, and she'd better 'pop' into the ladies with her plastic Brown Thomas bag to change into her new peach dress.

Oh, the joys!

Nicole is leading me up Dame Street to the Temple Bar area of town, a revamped cobblestone development housing the worst and the best excesses of humanity, from sculpture exhibition halls to institutions for getting pissed.

She's walking tall beside me in her vile new peach dress. She says Ronan has never kept her waiting. That he's a fantastic timekeeper.

"Has he considered working in aviation control?"

"He's great that way."

I can't wait to see his face when we both walk in.

She tells me a little about him. Most of it a whole load of codswallop, like the bit about Ronan being a 'creative genius with words and images'. What can you say?

As we branch through a narrow side street to Temple Bar, she starts telling me that Ronan has offered to rent some studio space for her in the vicinity, which is full of artists' studios. She tells me that Ronan is loaded and he can well afford it, but that she hopes to be able to pay him back some time in the future if she makes a success of her painting.

"If," says I, all sarky.

"There's something I haven't told you," she replies.

"Go on."

"I've had some good luck."

"Pray tell."

"Ronan received fantastic news about my main painting from Lucien Morelhe's an artists' agent Ronan knows from his time in Paris. They're going to exhibit it in the first week of September!"

"September?"

"Yes! And they want to see some more of my paintings. And apparently the art critic of Le Monde Le Monde wants to meet me. Isn't that wants to meet me. Isn't that incredible! incredible!"

"What's the painting about?"

"It's called Chi Chi."

"Of course it is."

I'm humming away to myself, wondering how Ronan will cope with his cardiac arrest when he sees me walking into the pub beside his nubile jerk-off.

"It's my best work," she says. "Ronan agreed to mind it for me in his surgery, in case Harry decided to fly into a rage and tear it up or something."

I stop dead on the pavement and glare at her. "Describe it to me."

Surprised, she explains that it's a work in oils and features eight goldfish in different colours in a big bowl.

"I see."

It's the picture hanging up in the surgery.

"The number eight symbolizes the Bagua Bagua. I painted each fish in different colours, to show that each is a source of chi chi but at the same time stands for something unique. The idea was based on the trigrams found on the but at the same time stands for something unique. The idea was based on the trigrams found on the Bagua Bagua. Trigrams are a kind of script using parallel lines. Each trigram stands for..."

"So this Chi Chi, as you call it, is some sort of masterpiece?"

"I wouldn't call it that." She laughs.

"So it's the best of a bad lot?"

She doesn't want to agree with this formulation either. "I suppose it's my one really good painting."

"The one on which your reputation depends."