Shock. Twice in five minutes. This time his dental eyes gleam with fury.

He storms out. I slam the door after him shouting 'good riddance'. I start pacing the kitchen like a starved jaguar, trying to resist grabbing a bowl or a pot and hurling it against something stainless.

The doorbell goes.

That's the taximan. I go out to the hall, pass the bathroom where Mother is and storm into the bedroom. Ronan is bending over a huge suitcase opened out on the bed, flinging clothes in.

"You can send the taxi back. Mother is not going anywhere."

"You're right, she's not."

"What do you mean?"

"I am."

He zips up his suitcase and hauls it off the bed.

"Where are you going?" says I more faintly.

"It doesn't matter. Goodbye, Julie."

He walks straight into the hall, opens the front door and slams it behind him.

Crying, I shout after him and follow him out, down eight flights of steps in pursuit. But by the time I reach the sunlit car park his taxi has disappeared.

That's the last straw.

I can't stand it any longer.

I am going to get them both together.

I dive on to the balcony, grab the box containing Max's decomposing body and shove it into a black bin bag. I tear out of the apartment and down into my car, where I hurl it in the boot. Then I get in and start the car, skid out and head in the direction of Nicole's B&B.

I call her on the way. When she answers she's all happiness and jollity. Really chuffed to hear from me.

"Has Ronan called you yet?" I pant.

"No, he hasn't..." she says. "Why?"

"I have to see you Nicole. Now! You're not to make any appointments. You're seeing me me, is that clear? Where are you now?"

"I'm just leaving the B&B. I'd love to, Julianne, but..."

"Stay where you are. I'll be there in ten minutes."

47 47.

She's waiting for me at five minutes to midday, standing at the gate in front of her B&B, holding a black artist's canvas case under her arm. She's wearing a pair of light-brown knee-high leather boots (the ones I saw her buy in town), a colour-coordinating tan miniskirt, a light-lemon-yellow sweater. Around her neck is a gold chain. She seems to have added orange highlights to her golden hair, which drapes in long curls round her shoulders and back.

When I see her with those long, tanned, sexy legs of hersbeaming heartfully at meit gets so underneath my skin that I want to bite my tongue off.

Instead, I buzz down the window and smile nicely.

"It's lovely to see you, Julianne."

She strokes the side of my car with her right hand like it's some kind of cat substitute. It's sort of ironic to think that Max lies just a few feet behind me, in another world. "It's an amazing car."

"Yes. And it's green. One of your favourite colours."

"Is it yours?"

"It's my granny's. Nicolesomething's come up. I need you to come over to my place."

She pulls this pained face. "I'd love to. But the thing is, I'm being photographed this afternoon for my new career and I have to get my hair done..."

"It's urgent."

"It's just that Ronan arranged the photo session himself and I can't let him down."

I gape at her. "What does he he know about photography?" know about photography?"

"He's actually very professional. He took some photos of us in Paris on Tuesday and I've just had them developed. They're in my bag...do you want to see them?"

"At my place."

"Oh, Julianne! I wish I could, but I have to meet him at the zoo at three."

"You're joking."

But she's not. "There's a lovely aquarium there. He said it would be a nice publicity gimmick to shoot me standing next to the tropical fish. What do you think?"

I stare straight ahead. "He's right. You'd look hilarious."

"And that's why I have to get my hair done first."

She's feeling it now like it's some sort of live animal.

"Nicole, come out to my place. Invite Ronan. Seriously! I'd love to meet him. Invite him for lunch. We can do a nice French salad with avocado and mango. I'm sure he'd like that."

"He loves avocado and mango, but I don't know..."

"And then you can go to the zoo where you both belong."

She laughs a lot at this.

When she recovers she asks me why I want her to come out to my place precisely now and not some other time.

"It's Max," I reply, looking away.

"Max? Is he okay?"

"He's not in great form, Nicole. I think he's been sick. I can't guarantee his health any more. You need to come over and check him out."

This gets her concerned. She wants to know more. She starts firing these questions at me about what he's been eating, whether he's been allowed to roam, whether there were any chemicals etc. he might have had access to.

I make up this whole pile of bull about me having spotted Max chewing vegetation in my neighbours' roof garden just feet away from an open-top cannister of weedkiller.

Now Nicole looks dangerously worried.

"And when you're there you could always give me one of those Feng Shui Feng Shui consultations. We need one badly." consultations. We need one badly."

She is torn. Ripped apart, in an anguished dilemma of indecision. On the one side you've got Max plus Feng Shui Feng Shui consultation. On the other you've got hair. How on earth is one supposed to choose? consultation. On the other you've got hair. How on earth is one supposed to choose?

In a sudden flash she agrees to a brief visit.

Brief is all I need. It's all I need to lock her out on the balcony, get Ronan over and sort out the issue once and for all. With Sylvana, perhaps, hidden in the background.

"Should we go in your MG?" she says, excited now.

Thinking about it, I realize this is not such a good idea. I'm worried about this stink in the boot, percolating through the crevices in the back seat. I'm not saying Nicole would recognize the scent: after all, Max alive is a totally different smell from Max dead. But I'm just a bit afraid she'll start interrogating me about whether I left the boot open and, say, a hedgehog accidentally hopped in and set up camp for the night. It would be just like her to think up an angle like that on hedgehogs.

"Look, I've a better idea: you take your car and I'll take mine."

"All right."

"Just follow me."

On the way to my new penthouse apartment, I pull up behind a yellow skip on the side of the road. Nicole stops just behind me. I get out and open the boot. Thankfully, Nicole does not get out. I lift out the bin-bag-enclosed cat box, carry it over and dump it into the skip.

I get back in and drive off.

Nicole resumes following me.

When she sees my new apartment she throws a wobbly. "It's lovely here, Julianne. Your hallway is a real confluence of energies."

"Thank you."

"Max is so lucky."

"Yes."

"I wonder where he is?"

"That's a nice gold necklace you're wearing, Nicole."

"Ronan gave it to me."

She starts giving me a potted history of the chain Ronan bought her, where he got it, where they were when he gave it to her, but I just walk into the lounge, leaving her in the hall talking about Ronan and when she's finished that, prattling on about what a nice harmonious atmosphere there is in my new apartment and how the glass doors into the kitchen and lounge make the place lovely and bright.

I begin uncorking a bottle of brandy from the drinks cabinet.

Still in the hall, she points out that the spiral staircase leading upwards from the bedroom passageway is a lovely design, but in Feng Shui Feng Shui terms it is 'counterindicated because of the way it chokes and represses the energies of a house'. terms it is 'counterindicated because of the way it chokes and represses the energies of a house'.

It's not that I particularly disagree with this fascinating piece of information, it's just that I'm really not in the mood. I pour a triple brandy to calm myself down.

"There's very little clutter," she continues from the hall. "That's good. Clutter makes you feel all blocked; it stops the flow."

"Aha."

"Some chrysanthemums would be lovely," she says, walking in. "They bring laughter and peace to a house."

I start sipping. Why did I have to mention that thing about a Feng Shui Feng Shui consultation? I should have just told her Max was making these odd choking noises and left it at that. Let's hope she doesn't accidentally wander into my bedroom. If she catches sight of that magnolia plant I'll never shut her up. consultation? I should have just told her Max was making these odd choking noises and left it at that. Let's hope she doesn't accidentally wander into my bedroom. If she catches sight of that magnolia plant I'll never shut her up.

"Do you intend to keep the walls white, Julianne?"

I don't bother answering. I can't get it out of my mind that Ronan has, for the last several months, been laying Nicole like a dual carriageway.

She explains that colour is an important cure: different colour combinations can affect your health as well as your moodas we all know from the colour of the clothes we wear.

"White is the colour of innocence and openness," she infinitely ad-nauseates. "It can make it hard for you to have definite opinions because it opens up too many possibilities."

"I have no problem having opinions, Nicole. The only problem is when other people disagree with them. What can I get you? Cointreau? I got in a new bottle; some person drained the last one on me."

She wonders if I have any fruit juice, saying that she's into the 'healthy option'.

"I'm afraid we don't carry healthy options here." I stick my hand inside the cabinet and grab the Cointreau. "We only stock stuff that seriously damages your health."

I know I shouldn't be drinking brandy. But I'm wary of resolutions to give up alcohol, or anything else (sex, drugs, glue, et cetera) that has the obvious capacity to keep you alive.

I pour her the drink and hand it to her. She accepts it without a word.

"Could I ask you a favour, Nicole?"

Nicole raises her eyebrows and sits forward in her seat, fixing on me a serious gaze.

"I want you to keep my address to yourself. There are certain people I don't want knowing about this place. Relations. Friends. The parish priest, even. I'm keeping my husband in hiding, you see."

At once she appears to see my dilemma.

"Can you promise me you won't tell a soul?"

"I promise," she says with an almost ridiculous sincerity that reads I would never dream of betraying a secret uttered to me in confidence I would never dream of betraying a secret uttered to me in confidence.

Still, I don't trust her. So I go on to clarify what I mean. I do this because I am seriously worried about what 'I promise I won't tell a soul' is generally taken to mean: "I promise I won't tell a soul, except my partner, Orla, Hugh, Mixer, Freddie, Sandra, Bernice, Donal, my sisters, my mother, my grand-aunt, my colleagues, the women at the gym, John the gardener who is very discreet, let's see...Mabel who works as secretary at the chiropractors, not forgetting the librarian at Deansgrange who reads literature and therefore is hostile to idle gossip, and finally the new curate from Nigeria who wouldn't have anyone to gossip to anywayall of whose soulful discretion is beyond reproach."

I now explain to her in broad outline what I personally mean by 'I promise I won't tell a soul'.

I get across to her the general idea that betrayal of the location of this secret residence of mine will result in me taking personal charge of her flaying, but only after her tongue is ripped from its roots and dropped gently into the tropical waters of the zoo aquarium, to be used as nutrition for its rare somnambular fish.