Now she bellows something back at me, her refracted utterance containing the words 'never', 'such' and 'bitch'.

I'm supposed to fill in the missing gaps.

"Don't you want to see Max again?" I roar, nice and cruel, taking two steps at a time.

The lobby door bangs.

Bitch.

Suddenly I hear this squeak. It's coming from the mobile I'm still holding in my hand. It's Sylvana. I forgot all about her.

"What was that all about?" grinds her voice through the receiver.

"Sylvana."

"What?"

"Do you like zoos?"

49 49.

Sylvana? Like zoos?

Why, she should have been born in one. She goes ape every time I mention the word. She goes camel. She goes hippopotamic hippopotamic. She's not always the cut-you-dead-rational woman you suspected.

So I just mention the word 'zoo'. Her response?

Unexpectedly, she sighs. "I do so adore watching animals belch and scramble and defecate," she dreamily laments.

"Yes, it's just your sort of place."

"And of course it's important now and then to renew the link with your forefathers."

"Yours, maybe."

"But why, Julie, are you asking me if I like zoos? You're well acquainted with my special romantic relationship with zoos."

"I'm inviting you to the zoo this afternoon. Just meet me there at one thirty, okay?"

"Is this to do with Ronan?" she inquires suspiciously.

She drags it out of me. When I tell her that I intend to trap Ronan in the zoo today at three while he's photographing Nicole beside a giant fish tank, there's this scary hush.

"I thought you'd left him, Julie," she says eventually.

"I have," I lie, uncertain.

"Then why would you want to confront him?"

"I want to humiliate him."

Sylvana is not fully content with my explanation, but since she realizes that I am going to do my own thing anywayplus she doesn't want to miss a piece of the actionshe finally decides to jump on the bandwagon. She wants to be there, she says, to witness Ronan's final disgrace.

We hit the zoo by one thirty. Nicole's car is nowhere to be seen. Presumably she is getting her hair done. We decide to park Sylvana's BMW close to the perimeter wall, as much out of sight as possible.

"We have over an hour to ourselves," says Sylvana, "so we might as well enjoy the animals."

"Right you are."

Nothing like a few armpit-scratching baboons to lift the spirits.

Within minutes we're walking through the narrow pass between the giraffe and camel enclosures.

Right in front of usblocking our pathis this peacock with a shiny blue neck and a brown-plumed behind, and a wide fan sweep of feathers. It's twirling round in a hissing, slow-motion dance, fluttering its huge blue bubble-design fantail.

Sylvana, nervous: "He's coming on to one of us."

"I think it's you."

The bird squawks at us. Interpreting this as a communication worth bearing in mind for our personal safety, we swiftly retreat.

Still in a snot, the piece of colourful poultry draws its huge tail into what looks like a long bushy dust broom, and totters down the embankment bordering the path, traverses the ditch, hops up on to a wall and starts waddling painstakingly across the giraffe enclosure. For there to be a peacock in the giraffe enclosure was clearly not part of the zoo plan. Either the bird is lost or it's manoeuvring a sly short-cut.

One of the brittle giraffe creatures has sauntered lazily over to investigate us, curious specimens of life that we are. We get self-conscious, though, and wander to the other side of the path where these two camels await us. The nearer one, Alf, has a black face with a white snout. He's chewing away like he's been chewing for the last decade and he's happy enough to continue chewing for another. His head and neck form one thick column of brown beard. He's got long, effeminate eyelashes and a mop of red-brown hair over his ears, which according to the blurb protects him from Asian sandstorms, not that he'll bump into too many of those in these parts.

He eyes us scathingly. We are lesser vermin. His partner, Matilda, is lying down and who could blame her? There's not much for them to do around here except chew their own regurgitations, swing their tails and indifferently watch the rooks help themselves to their significant (and clearly tasty) droppings.

"Lovely," is Sylvana's summation.

"It's unfair the way they lock up these animals. They should be out in the wild, doing what they've been doing for thousands of yearsroaming around, rearing their young..."

"Killing," she adds.

"Playing. I wouldn't mind setting them free."

"Fine by me as long as you give me advance warning."

She points to the cheetah in the next enclosure, pacing up and down like a growling sentry on hunger duty. "Don't do anything silly, Julie. I'm opening a new shop next week. My champagne openings are generally more successful with two legs."

"Don't worry," I reply, "they're well enough fed as it is. The keepers feed them thawed fish, apparently, and they have a good diet of chopped fruit and veg."

"I suppose they use a Moulinex mixer," is her slightly unnecessary comment.

The phone rings. Walking towards the hippo enclosure, I input.

It's Nicole.

Sylvana puts her ear to the piece.

"It's you again," I begin.

"Julianne, I just called to say I'm..."

"Has Ronan been in touch?"

"No. Juliannelook, I'm sorry about earlier on..."

"Yes, I seem to remember you calling me a bitch."

"I didn't. I didn't call you that."

"And you called me a cow if I remember correctly."

Pause.

"I didn't mean to call you that."

"You meant to call me a heifer, then."

"No, I...I wasn't myself. I thought you were criticizing my painting even though I know you weren't..."

"It's the last thing I would do."

"I know why you're annoyed with me and I don't blame you: because you think it's wrong to be going out with a married man, because your husband went out with a married woman, because you don't want me to end up hurting myself, I don't know...and I admit...I know it's wrong."

"Hallelujah!"

"But what I've been trying to tell you all along, Julianne, is that no one I've ever met in my life ever gave me the confidence to go ahead and do what I was good at, and now for the first time I am so close to success. I mean, my stepmother kept telling me I was no good at art and even my brothers used to laugh at my paintings. That's only because my father did that and they didn't know any better. Harry was almost as bad: he nearly stopped me painting altogether. It's not that he hated art per sehe was just allergic to the smell of paint..."

"Like cheese."

"So I had to have the attic converted so that I could paint there instead."

"Nicole, you're taking up valuable phone time."

"I know you have to go, Julianne. All I'm saying iswhen you're in love, you just can't help it. Think how you would feel if you fell in love with a man who happened to be married."

I think about this.

She's right.

Love is the bottom line, the baseline of reality. Like a golden paintbrush, it gilds everything it touches. It is a light that bathes all the dark corners of a room in itself. When it is present, there are no shadows, there is no wrong. When there is love, adultery is meaningless.

Love is such a coward that I know I would forgive Ronan if he showed me some decent remorse, some truth.

She tells me she called back to my apartment but I'd left. I tell her I'm in the zoo.

She can't believe I'm in the zoo. She reminds me that this is where she's meeting Ronan at three. She thinks it's wonderful that I am here. It doesn't seem to occur to her that the reason I'm here is directly connected with herself.

"Will you still be there at three?"

"Yes, I'll be very much here at three."

"Are you with Helmut?"

"I'm with a friend."

"I'll introduce you both to Ronan then, if you like."

"NicoleI wouldn't miss it for the world."

At two ten, while Sylvana and I are staring into the flabby pink mouth of a hippopotamus called Linda, we glimpse Nicole walking slowly up the path, arms folded and head tilted down, her countenance sad but illuminated, almost, like a halo. She's still in her lemon-yellow sweater and tan miniskirt, and light-brown knee-high leather boots. Her photo session costume. Her hair looks darker from this distance.

"Remember, Sylv, I'm Julianne. What are we going to call you?"

"I don't know," she says. "Sonya or Marylyn or Roxanne or something romantic like that. Just don't call me Kimberly or Lavender or Lysandra. Or Labia for that matter..."

"Now there's an idea."

"...or Imelda, as I've been called on occasion."

I smile at this rather apt reference to Imelda Marcos.

We turn to face Nicole just as she's walking up to us. She's done something to her face and hair, presumably for the photo session, though I can't tell what.

I do the introductions. The second I baptize my friend Imelda, she gives me daggersthe real, diamond-studded, Arabian Nights, death thrust variety.

"So you're Nicole." She glares sarcastically.

Nodding and smiling warmly, Nicole offers her soft hand to Sylvana, who latches on to it coldly.

"It's lovely to meet you, Imelda," says Nicole.

"That's nice."

Sylvana does not let go of the hand. Nicole's smile is beginning to fade into this forced loony expression. When she gets her hand back she tries to think of nice things to say about the weather, just to keep the show on the road.

"I believe your friend is taking some photographs of you beside some fish," Sylvana remarks condescendingly.

"Yes," Nicole replies, a bit deflated.

There's a slight tension in the air, so I turn the conversation to the hippo beside us, a great hunk of flesh chomping away at the edge of a great basin. "Nicolemeet Linda."

We all lean on the concrete edge of the basin. Nicole takes to the monster with delight. The hippo's massive, blubber-leathery back is almost covered with dirty grey water. She's got this great hunk of a head rested on the concrete side of the pool just inches away from our faces and you want to see it: her Fred Flintstone jaw alone is the size of an articulated-lorry tyre. Short bristles thick as straw spike out of the jaw (you need a make-over, Linda, and you'd better lose some of that cellulite fast) and she's got two nostrils which every so often spout what looks like smoke into the air, and the whole time she's chortling her lips and grunting, and making obnoxiously ugly farting sounds with her slobbering, masticating chops.

"She's lovely," marvels Nicole.

Sylvana: "We should sign her into a beauty pageant."