"And I really need it for tomorrow."

"Yes, well I'm sure it's still there."

"Perhaps you could drop me round later to pick it up?"

"If you like," he says, shrugging. "Or you can go yourself. You have your own key. Whichever."

True. I can go later myself. And report back to him anything unusual I might happen to have seen.

"Can I ask what the recipe is, Gertrude?" he inquires.

"When are you going to Paris, Ronan?" I interrupt, pouring into his glass from a bottle of Chateauneuf.

There's this slight jolt in the kitchen.

"Tomorrow afternoon," he replies, composed.

"Well, I hope it goes well."

While Sylvana's expression is mutating, Ronan is sitting there downing his wine, in excellent form, content in the assumption that I'm not going to plague him over Paris.

Sylvana: "Some tooth conference you're attending, is it?"

"That would be one way to describe it."

"The spaghetti is ready, children," Mother announces.

"I could eat a horse." He brightens.

"You'll wish you had," I mutter.

Now she turns the spaghetti pot upside down and drains the water into the sink. She forks three heaps of steaming spaghetti into three bowls and I offer Ronan some more baguette, and suddenly Mother shrieks and my heart jolts and we all look up.

Standing on top of the kitchen surface, poking its claws into the fish bowl is a large black cat. Mother yells at the poor crud, who is intent on getting an honest bite of fish. Max darts his head back like a snake, motionless and startledbut his paw is still in the fish bowl. She shakes her apron at him and he scarpers.

Mother: "Where did that come from?"

"It's Sylvana's," I reply.

My friend observes me coldly.

Ronan is concentrated on Max, who is now licking his paw on the floor by the cooker. If he's seen this cat before, it's clearly not registering. But then, he was never a great animal-watcher.

"Does it have a name?" Mother wonders.

"Well, Sylvana?" I grin.

"Prudence," she replies, kicking me under the table.

"What a wonderful name," says Mother.

Ronan: "I assume Prudence will be accompanying Sylvana home tonight?"

"No, Ronan." I hope Prudence drives him batty. I hope the quadruped moults on to his trousers. I hope it licks his scented, shower-gelled toes as he sleeps. I hope it salivates over his cornflakes as he's reading his paper. I could train it to poo on his postmodern art books. That would be good. That would be symbolic. Such excellent taste, for a cat.

"Sorry about the cat, Gertrude," says Sylvana. "I'm completely unable to control her."

"It's a he," corrects Mother.

"These days sex doesn't matter," says Ronan drily.

Sylvana: "Unless you're married."

Mother: "Isn't he beautiful? His fur is black like a piano."

We watch the spectacle of Mother lovingly caressing the creature on the ground, with Max putting his whole neck and upper torso into the plying movement of her hand. "Lucky Sylvana," she says.

"There's some cat food under the sink, Mother."

Mother fills a bowl with cat munchies. The split second the bowl hits the ground, Max homes in.

"You've brought him up very well, Sylvana," says I evilly.

Ronan: "Never trust a cat."

Sylvana: "Or a man."

"Is our dinner ready yet, Mother?"

Mother carries over three bowls of spaghetti, one for each of us. She herself is abstaining. Then she fetches the fish sauce. "The puree is in another dish, for you girls."

She appears to be steering us away from the fishpaste.

"Yes," I say. "I'm in the mood for tomato puree tonight."

Sylvana: "Me too."

If only she knew.

I get up and fetch the heated dish of puree and the canister of Parmesan. Mother now pours several ladlefuls of the grey gunge on to Ronan's bowl of spaghetti, Sylvana watching with distaste.

Mother returns to the sink with the half-empty bowl of mousseline. She advises us all to eat up otherwise it'll go cold. I blot out my spaghetti with puree.

Ronan stares at his dinner, scratching his head. "This looks...interesting."

"He means that as a compliment, Mother."

"I know."

"Is this the Delia Smith recipe you were talking about, Julie?"

"Yes," I reply, nervous. "It's an old Mediterranean thing."

"It's salmon mousseline," says Mother, scrubbing some pans. "Try some Parmesan; that should take the bite out of it."

Salmon mousseline? Where did she get that idea?

He lowers his head to sniff. He raises it again and asks me to pass him the Parmesan.

I pass it to him and he sprinkles it over his dish.

I watch him, fascinated.

Sylvana senses something is going on, but doesn't know quite what. She's frowning at me like a crumpled sheet, searching helplessly for clues that might explain the strange, secretive vibe she's getting from me.

And so, to help her out, while Ronan's head is tilted down in his fish dish and Mother's back is turned, I start performing this swimming, breaststroke motion over the table for her benefit and then I point at his dish.

She frowns at me doubly deeply. I need to find a more effective way of helping Sylvana to mentally associate tropical marine fish with the marine slurry Ronan is on the point of shovelling into his gob.

So now I pretend to be a proper fish. While doing the breaststroke, I loll my head from side to side, ogle my eyes and open and close my gob in that cute brain-free way that fish have when they're just being themselves. And I point at his dish.

She is as lost as ever.

I draw a fish in the air with my fingers. She's nodding: she's with me so far. Now I pluck the imaginary fish clean out of the air and place it in my mouth, and I close my mouth and pretend to chew, shutting my eyes as if I'm in seventh heaven; then I open my eyes again and point like daggers at Ronan's dinner.

But she still doesn't get it.

She's shrugging, nodding, having figured out the part about Ronan eating fish. But their precise origin still eludes her. This is incredibly frustrating for me: I want her to share in the sheer pleasure, which has now begun in earnest to spread like creamy Mitchelstown butter all over my being, as I observe Ronan placing the first squiggly mouthful of spaghetti and fish mousse-line in his mouth.

The kitchen is in perfect silence. So silent that you can hear the sound of Ronan's horse-like chomping as he eats. Sylvana's eyes are flickering like an iguana from Ronan to me and back to him. Mother is bemusedly observing the proceedings from the sink, drying plates with a dish towel.

Ronan looks up suddenly. "Is something the matter?" he wonders.

Sylvana and I simultaneously avert our eyes.

Mother turns back round and starts making a real racket cleaning pots and pans in the sink. "How is your dinner, Ronan?" she asks.

"It's..."

"No complaints, Ronan. Mother made it specially."

He screws up his mouth, looks over at me as if I've just committed an act of sabotage against him, then he lowers his head again to study the contents of his plate. After a while he decides to twirl another load of gooey spaghetti around his fork.

I can't bear Sylvana not to know what's happening. I pick up the nearby TV Times TV Times and open it at the crossword page. and open it at the crossword page.

"Right, Sylvana. Test out your brainpower. Two across: 'Walks softly'. Five letters."

"Treads," says Sylvana.

"Creeps," offers Ronan.

"Crawls," suggests Mother, still crashing away at the sink.

"It depends on two down: 'Receptacle for fish'. Eight letters."

"Fish tank," says Mother.

"Aquarium," offers Ronan.

"That's it!" I shout.

"Although," he volunteers, "it could be both."

"Try three down then: 'Moulinex'. Five letters."

"Moulinex?" says Ronan, entwining a further load of spaghetti on to his fork. "That's a brand name, isn't it?"

"Hm..."

He chews away at this mouthful too, with a slight grimace. Mother is still making a lot of noise with the pots and pans.

"Don't they do mixers?" suggests Sylvana, slightly frustrated by my abstruse references.

"Mixer. Yes. That's five letters."

I pretend to write in 'mixer'.

When Ronan descends for his fourth mouthful I make all manner of faces at Sylvana while repeating the word 'mixer' out loud several times, as if absent-mindedly, and all the while I am pointing at Ronan's dish. She clearly thinks I'm crazy. She looks again at me. I am gleaming meaningfully back at her. Then she studies Ronan's dish and looks back at me again, and I do a quick breaststroke motion, and now there seems to be a slight alteration in her countenance and she suddenly gets up and leaves the room through the door to the hall behind Ronan.

With her hand over her mouth.

"What's wrong with her?" says Ronan, attempting his fifth mouthful.

"She's not feeling great today," I explain, quickly breaking some baguette and clumsily applying butter. "You shouldn't be so harsh on her."

"Oh, Sylvana and Iwe understand each other."

I've got bat ears, but I swear to God I honestly cannot tell whether that heightened acoustic noise in the bathroom is Sylvana laughing her heart out or puking her guts up.

Mother, returning to the table with a cup of tea and some cream crackers on a plate: "Well, guess what I did today?"

"What?" asks Ronan.

"I went to see my friend. She lives just down the road."

She smiles brightly, as if she's just announced she's won a trip for two to Lanzarote.

"Really?" Ronan is doing his best to be polite and discover an interesting angle on old ladies who meet their friends in the afternoon. I mean, what do old ladies do when they're together? Plan tax dodges? Plot bank robberies? Hardly likely. "Did you go for a walk?" he wonders, trying to chew his sixth mouthful.