A superb, recent, fully furnished three-bedroom penthouse apartment with a delightful roof garden. South-facing balconies, accessed off the main bedroom and the living-room, affording fine views over the adjacent park. Finished to a very high standard internally, the decor is fresh and bright, and features warm Scandinavian oak flooring throughout. Electric storage heating, cable television, 1200 square feet approx., accessed via security gates, containing good car-parking facilities. Excellent local shopping centres; churches, schools and transport systems easily accessible...

The estate agent whom I seduced into subservience showed me through a small square hallway with three doors leading to three separate areas: one to the fitted kitchen on the left, one to the bedrooms and bathroom straight ahead (this is where the spiral staircase to the roof is located) and one to the lounge to the right, a long rectangular room with the all-important french windows plus shutters, French-style. He took me out to the balcony.

The park is a hidden oasis of tranquillity, centred by a lake frequented by swans and surrounded by a band of assorted rare trees: Spanish chestnuts, African cypresses, giant redwoods, Douglas firs, Scots pines, Ilchester oaks...and a swathe of illustrious rhododendrons... The park is a hidden oasis of tranquillity, centred by a lake frequented by swans and surrounded by a band of assorted rare trees: Spanish chestnuts, African cypresses, giant redwoods, Douglas firs, Scots pines, Ilchester oaks...and a swathe of illustrious rhododendrons...

Narcotic, isn't that what Nicole said about rhododendrons?

It's like this.

I was annoyed.

Here's what happened.

As soon as I discovered that Ronan was heading for Paris last night, I dashed to Sylvana's, screeched and stamped about the place for five minutes, then phoned Nicole's B&B. The lady of the house told me she would be gone for two nights, but didn't say where she was going. After screeching and stamping about a little more, Sylvana gave me a cup of hot milk with honey and put me into her spare, queen-size bed. I am certain she laced it with sedatives.

This morning I called Nicole again from Sylvana's.

She was thrilled to hear from me. Her voice was full of it. "Guess where I am!"

"I haven't a bloody clue."

Pause.

"Julianne, we're in Paris!" she squeaked, all excited.

"God love you."

"Ronan's in the en suite just a few feet away. Would you like a phone intro?"

"I don't think so."

I was pacing up and down Sylvana's sitting-room, manic and directionless as a crab, goofed on Jakartan espresso.

"Ronan came over to the B&B late last night and told me to pack a bag, and while I was in the middle of doing that we sort of made love, then he went downstairs and paid the landlady and..."

"Does she charge much for the service?"

Pause.

"Only about twenty pounds. It's expensive, but it is a lovely B&B and anyway Ronan can afford it. Oh, Julianne, I adore Paris. There's a view outside our window of the Tuileries gardens just across Rue de Rivoli, beside the Louvre..."

"Rue de Rivoli."

"Yes, that's where he bought me those earrings, do you remember? And then the River Seineyou can just about make out the stone walls of the river bank. You can even see Pont Alexandre III from here. The light is amazingit's incredibly bright, it's so bright it's almost whitecan you imagine that? As I'm speaking I'm looking at the Eiffel Tower over to the right, going all the way up like a huge tree trunk. I wish I could paint this view, Julianne, but I didn't bring my canvas or materials. Ronan's not in a great mood after last night. I think he's furious with his wife."

"Did you tell him about Chi? Chi? " "

"No, but they had an argument. He actually called her a bitch. To my face! I couldn't believe it. He really doesn't love her; it's clear to me now, Julianne. I told him I wanted to move to Paris. I'm really excited. It's as if..."

I pressed off and tried to call Ronan then. But as usual he was suffering from cellphone erectile dysfunction.

I went home.

Mother was still in bed. When I went to the kitchen for a Danish and coffee I bumped the door into something semi-soft. It was Max beside a bowl of cat food. This time he was not ignoring me. Purring dangerously at the far kitchen door, the sniggering feline viper looked in the mood to scrape my eyes out and use them to play marbles with.

I made a dive for him.

He did a U-turn underneath the kitchen table and escaped between my feet, out through the kitchen door in a flash. I mounted a search. He was hiding beneath the banana couch in the hall. I flushed him out with a cushion. He sprang into the living-room. He took a running dive and slithered up the side of the fish tank, snarling like a starved rat, clinging to the glass edge with two sharp-clawed paws. One was now inside, digging fruitlessly away at water. The fish were going berserk.

I ran at him, thinking how dare you harm those poor fish.

I flokked him with one of the white leather cushions, sending the water in the tank up in thuds against the glass. Max scattered. After I finished counting the fish and establishing that they were all present and correct, I again searched for Max. Everywhere. Under the couch, armchairs, in the fireplace. He had to be in here because the door to the kitchen was closed, as were the french windows.

But where?

At last I spotted him seated with royal indifference on top of the grand piano. Or should I say, Max was seated inside the piano, making these scraping noises against the strings as he licked tropical marine water off his wet paws. He was positioned just beneath the huge pear-shaped piano lid, looming above him like a guillotine.

A guillotine suspended, as it were, by a matchstick.

One push of the finger, I was thinking, and the lid would crash down on the little squid as he smiled, slicing him through the tight mesh of music wire. There would be a resounding crash, some deft scattering of silent dust, perhaps a slight strangulating squeak from our furry friend, and finally an aural-friendly reverberative chasm of minor fifths and demented sevenths.

I moved in for the kill.

I laid my index finger against the lever when suddenly Mother walked in, wearing my tartan pyjamas.

She asked me what I was doing.

"Mother, could you please tell me what you are doing in my pyjamas?"

"Don't pretend you like them."

"I wear them."

"What's the matter, Julie? You're rather pale-looking."

"I was just...admiring the internal workings of this baby grand."

"Babies again." She smiled.

She approached the piano. She didn't notice Max because of the angle. She sat herself down on the piano stool and started laying into poor old Schubert, quite unaware of the fact that she'd just sent Max into spasm to avoid getting his paws belted by the hammers.

He hopped on to the floor, twirled round a few times, then settled down on his bum and started to re-lick himself, happy to be on terra firma once more, sporting this familiar look of cat contentment, which I find so easy to despise.

When Mother was not looking I closed in on Max, grabbed him like a rug by the back of the neck, hauled him from the floor, carried him out to the veranda, shut him in the cat box in case he fell off the veranda, and closed the french windows again. And clapped the dust off my hands, satisfied.

I dashed into the bedroom, packed a large suitcase in five minutes flat, stole a Valium from Mother's private collection in our bathroom, popped it into my mouth and felt calmer at once, slid out of the apartment, dived down to the car park and commandeered Ronan's Porsche, and it was with a sense of driving purpose that I screeched through suburbia in a yellow blaze track of smoke to my estate agent, a roaring spitfire across the city.

Six hours later I handed my estate agent one month's deposit and two months' rentthree grand in total. I got the cash from the sale of the Porsche to a service-station crook I knew well from a recent Circuit Court prosecution. The rest I blew on a fantastic day out at the shops.

"What you need is an image change," Sylvana advised as we waited in the seating area of Toni&Guy. "I haven't got an image to change," I replied. "So what am I doing sitting here?' 'Rubbish," she countered. "You're a stunning sex bomb, Julie."

"I know: I explode whenever a man goes near me." She advised me to have my hair cut short. That men these days loved women with short hair. I protested that at this low ebb in my life I'd rather not make my hair the pretext for male fantasies. "And keep it black. Black is seductive and mysterious and...dangerous."

"Of course, I'll be like a sex bomb, then."

"Primed to go off at the rate of ten creeps a minute." So I just sat there with my eyes closed and let the guy cut my hair short and darken it by a few degrees (like you can darken black). When I opened my eyes again I discovered with horror that I was shorn like a sheep. I ran out of there crying.

Sylvana found the whole thing most amusing. She led me into one of her own Whole-Self outlets and re-emerged with a bag full of soaps and shampoos and conditioners and aromatherapy oils. All for me.

While I was at it, the fancy grabbed me to purchase eight thick candlesrecommended by the Feng-Shui Feng-Shui booklet I'd swiped from Nicole's place. Sylvana asked me if I was planning for a blackout in my new place so I just told her yes. To shut her up. booklet I'd swiped from Nicole's place. Sylvana asked me if I was planning for a blackout in my new place so I just told her yes. To shut her up.

Finally, we took a standard deviation to purchase lipstick, mascara and foundation. To her credit, Sylvana succeeded in drumming up some enthusiasm in me.

I was equipped, at last, with my new identity.

On the way back to my new place, we hopped out at a local supermarket and bought provisions, most crucially milk, coffee, bread, butter, jam, bottled water and enough bananas to turn us into overnight baboons. In the drinks section we got a bottle of brandy, naturally, and Sylvana insisted on buying champagne. The most expensive in stock.

We were back just in time for the potted-plants delivery man: Sylvana's idea for my new roof garden. The bloke managed to put a dent in the landing wall with a rectangular earthenware pot. Not a squeak of apology out of him. It's hard to credit itthe man just shuffled in and out of my new apartment, leaving his personality on the wall. Every time I look at that dent, there'll be a blundering male in the flat with me.

One good thing, though: the same blunderbus banged his head as he was ducking through the low roof exitpresumably because his vision was impaired by the begonia he was carrying. He gruntedand then, believe it or not, he apologized. Either to himself or the begonia, I can't be sure, but at least he apologized.

After he left, with his foul breath and his BO issues and his baggage-smashing installation techniques, we both unloaded the car and filled up the kitchen presses and made up my new bed with fresh-scented sheets that Sylvana had thoughtfully purchased for me, along with duvet, pillows and pillowcases.

I was set up in my new 'home'.

We stripped, togged out, grabbed our Ambre Solaire and our champagne, our magazines, our shades, our radio and our new chaises, and a fruit bowl sprayed with cherries and Belgian chocolates. And we headed up here to bake.

It's half-seven, now, and there's no sign of us moving yet. The heat is still raw, blistering down on our skin like acid. I'm baking away like a scone in the oven. My head is leant back against oblivion, my eyes closed beneath my Calvin Kleins and that hazy, lazy, dazy sensation is just about holding back the teetering frontiers of forlornness.

I look over at Sylvana.

That icon of humorous disdain and playful contempt, the woman without whom I might now be dead, is enclosed behind a pair of shades the size of conjoined badminton rackets, letting it all hang out like a bulging basket of autumn fruits barely covered by a skimpy napkin.

I needed Sylvana to tell me I was young and pretty. I needed her to tell me I was intelligent and smart. I needed her to tell me I was sexy, and warm and generous. I needed her to tell me I was strong and independent and self-reliant and self-confident. I needed her to tell me I was talented, lovable, good to be with. I needed her to tell me I had a great, happy future ahead of me. I even needed her to tell me that my dream of having a daughter will one day come true.

And you know what?

She told me all those things today.

She even told me I was beautiful.

"Sylvana?"

"Yes."

"Never mind."

Pause.

"Sylvana?"

"What?"

"What am I going to say to my mother?"

Shading her eyes with the side of her hand, she concentrates on me for a few moments: "Say nothing for the moment, Julie," she says kindly. "Just tell her you're staying with me because you and Ronan are sorting out a few problems. You need your own sanctuary for now. And when the time is rightwhen you're happier in your own mind about thingsyou can break it gently to her."

What the hell am I doing here?

I tell Sylvana that I'm scared. She says she knows, and she assures me that no matter what happens she'll be there for me if and when I need her. She's so earnest and sincere and free of any trace of sarcasm or irony when she says this that for the first time I really think I might make it through this nightmare.

39 39.

It's strange, the quiet.

It's after ten a.m. I am exhausted. Apart from the gentle breathing of wind from the park, the world seems as still and silent as death.

Sylvana has left. I didn't really want her to go, but I refuse to be a burden on anyone so I insisted. I'm standing on the roof garden, surrounded by my potted plants, clutching the white railing and peering out at the trees round the lake. They seem to be whispering restlessly to one another while the diminishing light of day strains the colour from things and reduces them to a dusty greyish-green.

Alone.

It's cool now. I shiver.

I tread down the dark spiral staircase to the living quarters below. Without turning on the light, I enter my bedroom, my movements scratching against the bare walls. I sit on the bed, staring through the window into the dusk above the trees in the park.

I like the dusk. I like it when the receding daylight fills a room with itself, spreading its pervasive natural rhythms into the space. That's why I have the electric light off. A room is more lonesome under a solitary lit bulb.

I can still hear the sounds of birds through a slit in the window, chirping themselves to sleep, unaware that I too seek a piece of the stuff of life they seek, that every living thing must seek.

I lie against the pillow. Its clean edges wrap around my hair. Crisp, clean duvet, pillowcases, sheets never before used. The flat newness of linen that has not yet seen washing detergent.

The only sound I can hear is of me breathing.

What now?

They're in Paris now.

Dining in a restaurant, probably. I can see them together under a low-hung, dim-lit light. Nicole with cleavage and an armful of clinking bangles, dangly earrings dancing from her ears, her beautiful hair combed down to the table, fluttering and giggling and laughing with Ronan.

And he, well-dressed, talking easily about aesthetics from Kant to Heidegger, unthreatened by the quality of Nicole's intellect, able to do or say anything because he knows Nicole will not judge him, oppose him, cease to make herself available to him.

In about an hour from nowbecause Ronan does not favour late nightsthey will taxi back to their hotel. No. Two hours: Paris is an hour ahead. And there they will share a guilt-free bed in the anonymity of a foreign city. Make love and then fall asleep, Nicole on Ronan's chest.

Then I'll be free to fall asleep.

I let my shoes fall off my feet on to the floor and I push my legs under the duvet. I am colder than I realized. I pull the duvet over me and lie on my back, frost fingers biting against warmed palms. Then I twist off my wedding ring and put it on my bedside table. I consider whether or not to get up and flush it down the toilet, but I'm too exhausted.

Love!