She nods. "Ronan says it's got great possibilities, he says it's my real selling point."

Can that cad ever keep his mouth shut?

"Anyway, as I was saying, each trigram stands for a thing. Zhen Zhen, for instance, stands for thunder, Li Li means fire and..." means fire and..."

I just switch off and let her drone on. We're approaching Temple Bar Square anyway, so my mind is on other things. The pub is located on the corner beside the barber's and the secondhand music store, near the narrow arched passageway that leads down to the quays. We've only about fifty metres to go.

"Also, he's taking me to Paris next week," she says gaily.

I stop suddenly, alongside a bronze petalled lotus seat, presently being subjected to rigorous and loud intellectual scrutiny by a group of US tourists. "What did you just say, Nicole?"

She's beginning to look apprehensive. "Nothing."

"Did you just say he's taking you to Paris?"

"It's for my art."

I am completely flattened. "When?"

"Next Tuesday. There's a late-afternoon flight. Look, I know you don't approve of the situation I'm in with Ronan..."

"Holy Christ."

"Are you sure you don't want to meet him some other time?"

"I don't believe this."

"But it's a fantastic opportunity, Julianne. I have to go."

This is serious. This is critical. They are closer than I thought. She could become a famous artist. And where will that leave me? A mere barrister? She could be rich. And me? On impoverishment rations of fifty grand a year.

This is catastrophic.

I know that Ronan is at worst just a transient prick pedlar who leeches on to female soft tissue until spray time. But with art and glamour and wealth thrown in? Why, I haven't a stinking hope in hell.

If I go in there now I could force him to a spontaneous decision. I could risk everything.

I grab her by the arm and pull her to the right into the arched passageway leading to the river. We stop and I lay into her, my voice reverberating against the enclosing walls. I'm spewing out a torrent of exhortation, pleading with her generally to see sense and to devote her life to independence and autonomy, and responsible adulthood.

And what does she do?

She turns all soft and sympathetic on me. "Julianne, you've been wonderful, you really have. It was wrong of me to burden you with Ronan. I wasn't considering your feelings, especially since this isn't an easy time for you, with your own husband."

She touches the back of my hand affectionately and smiles at me sincerely, and says she's really glad we met just now and that we must get together again soon.

I want to cudgel her.

"But I'd really better go or else I'll be late for Ronan."

"Go," says I bitterly, turning away.

She smiles like I'm suffering from some hormone-related deficiency syndrome but since she's a woman herself she can fully relate to that. She apologizes and thanks me for some reason, and gives a small wave and whispers goodbye in a caring, sing-song way as if nothing has happened.

She retreats back up the alleyway towards Temple Bar Square, leaving me alone in this hellish windswept void.

I drive home by the sea. There's a thick band of sombre cloud hovering over the now dark bay. Thin speckles of drizzle flock against the windscreen. I let them fall without switching on the wipers. I prefer to view the world right now as a distorted chaos.

So.

My marriage is dead.

And he's taking her to Paris.

Well, at least I know where I stand.

I am weary. Too weary for anger.

Now thick raindrops are splashing against the glass. I leave off the wipers. The cars that pass me are just vague, ghostly shapes and I know I am putting my life and other people's lives in danger by the fact that my visibility is no better than a snowed-up television, but bothering takes far too much effort.

So I keep driving on and on in the direction of home, although that's the last place where I want to go right now, and it's only after my wing mirror snaps against an oncoming car that I get the fright of my life and flick on the windscreen wipers again. They cut through the opaque windscreen water wall and there opens out a shining wet road in front of me, bleary, miserable and grey.

Still, at least I kept my trap shut.

I have kept the advantage. If you can call it that.

She was right about one thing though: Chi Chi does have great possibilities. does have great possibilities. Chi Chi is history. is history.

28 28.

Opening the front door, I've got the strange sensation that I've just walked into someone else's apartment.

Apart from the vague odour of dead fish, there's this old, chunky, tinkly, gargley, bolloxed-music-saloon sound coming from our lounge.

It's the sound of a piano.

Bizet, I think.

A few feet further on, guess who I spy through the lounge door?

Mother is sitting behind this shining black monstrosityway too big for the room and for her, and as jarringly incongruous as a giant slag heap stuck in the middle of a desert of snow.

She's perched on a familiar, worn piano stool, her reading glasses crooked on her nose, her head bobbing up and down like a buoy as she reads from the score.

"I don't believe this."

The music crashes to a halt. She looks up, surprised. "Oh, it's you, dear."

I am speechless. "You didn't... didn't... " "

"I had to pay the delivery men one hundred and fifty pounds. It's extortion."

"I don't believe it."

"Yes, I should have got another quote."

"Mother, I didn't think you were serious."

"I'm not, dear; I am known for my terrifying sense of humour."

"I can't believe you actually had this piano delivered."

"Well, then have a look at the dents by the front door."

"Ronan will have a fit."

"And we must give him all the support he needs."

"Oh, God!"

I'm circling the baby grand like Ronan recently circled his Porschebut with a great deal more difficulty, considering the thing has taken up nearly half the lounge and has sucked away any available walk space like a giant vacuum cleaner.

The dining-table and chairs have gone. Mother informs me that the table is being temporarily stored in our bedroom in a folded-up state, and the Victorian dining-chairs are stacked up in her new bedroom, but it's no problem: they're ideal as an elongated shoe rack.

"I've sold my house," she explains. "The purchaser didn't just want the house. He wanted everything. Carpets, curtains, furniture, even the antiquated lawnmower which I'm in two minds about. Everything except the piano. He said his favourite daughter died last year and apparently she used to play piano. He couldn't bear the sight of this thing in my drawing-room. I had to give him a handkerchief. It's awfully sad, isn't it?"

"You're changing the subject."

"Also, it's very valuable."

"What am I going to tell...?"

"A piano brings a lot of possibilities to a household."

"None of them good."

She laughs the way she used to laugh when I was young and sulkful.

But maybe she's right? Maybe there is a bright side? After all, this will drive Ronan stark, stripping, internally haemorrhaging crazy, will it not? Surely that's a point to be borne in mind?

I mean, why should I consider Ronan's feelings here? Has he considered mine? He's forking a woman behind my back. And me? What great injustice have I committed? Hijacked his precious living-room space via an old grand piano?

Not very grim in the total scale of things.

Besides, look at her.

She's the picture of total bliss.

I shouldn't be so harsh.

Five minutes laterat seven on the dotthe front door opens. Mother scurries daintily into the kitchen out of harm's way, mischievous grin on her face. Ronan is about to discover something significant and she does not want to be around for the celebrations. The front door bangs shut. Shoe steps in the hall. The rustle of plastic. He deposits something large on top of the banana couch. He sees me.

"Did you have an exciting afternoon?" I wonder.

There's this rumple of coats being hung up.

"What's that fishy smell?" he says.

"Well, did you get any?"

Pause.

"Any what?"

"Shoes."

"Yes, I'm wearing them," he replies. "Were you cooking fish?"

"What's in the package, Ronan?"

"A fish tank, what else."

Mother is peering through a crack in the kitchen door. Grinning at me. She's in an excellent mood. Clearly delighted she's got her grand piano. But also excited at the prospects offered up by the next few minutes of life on earth.

The cloakroom door closes again and Ronan sits down on the banana couch and removes two shiny new brown shoes. Then he gets up and picks his package off the couch and approaches the lounge. I lower my eyes to my magazine. His footsteps cease. I assume he's reached the doorway.

Perhaps his eyes are delaying on the short black dress and black shoes I purchased this morning? Or on my nicely arranged hair? Or on my stunningly landscaped face?

Or perhaps he's noticed something else.

"Julie. What is that?"

First I look up, then following his gaze I very very slowly glance over my shoulder towards the baby grand. "Oh, that? that? Well...it's got five letters." Well...it's got five letters."

There's this barely audible click. We both glance towards the kitchen door. Mother dear has just closed it. She's very discreet that way. Very unobtrusive.

Ronan speaks again from his stationary doorway position, inhaling deeply under the weight of the fish tank. "What's it doing here, Julie?"

"I won it in a raffle."

Bad news has to be broken gradually.

He rushes in now with his heavy glass load, places it clumsily on the pedestal and flips off the packing. There's silence behind me. I wonder if he'll recognize the piano?

"It's nice, isn't it?"

Now there's this squeaking sound: it creaks like lightning through the night sky of my memories. It's the sound of the piano lid being raised. Mother is privileged to possess a piano which, when you raise the lid, sounds like a coffin-opening party in The Evil Dead The Evil Dead. I remember it so well.

"You won it in a raffle?"