Now she's opening her mouth. Linda, that is. It's a huge pinky white mass of flab. The teeth. They're as large as horns. And they're brown-stained like she's been cultivating a secret nicotine addiction. Something huge and heavy just flicked out of the thing's mouth and back in, fast as a lizard. It was her tongue. She closes her mouth again.

"What a vile creature," says I.

"Leave Linda alone," says Sylvana. "She's a perfect peach."

Nicole is still fawning over her. She is mollycoddling a hippo. She's behaving like she's just seen a baby wrapped in a pink blanket instead of a mammoth slab of fat, wet, slimy, Jurassic junk.

All the kids gathered around us are now chanting, "Linda, open your mouth! Linda, open your mouth!"

We decide it's time to head off for a coffee, taking in the shop on the way. When we get inside Nicole and I spend a fair amount of time feeling and stroking and touching some odour-free wildlife: the synthetic-furry variety.

Sylvana, who has no interest in furry creatures, queues up for a map of the zooshe likes to be in control of her environmentthen she goes off to the ladies across the way. While she's away, Nicole buys a few things from the girl, then comes over to me and takes something out of a paper bag and hands it to me. It's a simple white rabbit attached to a keyring.

"Look what I got you," she says, lowering her head.

"It's a rabbit." I laugh, taken aback.

"Rabbits represent happy relationships and warmth. It's auspicious to keep the rabbit in the relationship area."

"Thank you, Nicole."

"Also, the rabbit belongs to the wood element."

Sylvana reappears with her new map.

"Look what Nicole gave me, Imelda."

She looks.

"It belongs to the wood element," I explain to my friend.

Only her eyebrows move.

Nicole removes something else from her paper bag: it's a squashy plastic brown hippopotamus with a wide, highly evil grin. Smiling, she assures us that she will name it Linda and hang it from the rear-view mirror of her Fiat.

Very quietly, Sylvana observes Nicole as if unsure what to make of her. Noticing this, Nicole throws me a quick glance for moral support, ever so slightly embarrassed.

I'm beginning to feel tugs of sadness for her again.

She has just given a person she now regards as her firm friendmea present of a rabbit keyring. She has taken the risk, unusual considering I hardly know her, of opening herself up to me despite not knowing my name, my address, my background, my history.

Let's face it, Nicole is so ignorant about me that she makes these kind inquiries after Helmut's health.

She has such hope and optimism. It's horrible to have to snatch it away from her even as I place this token of her friendshipher cute rabbitin my pocket. She has literally no idea that in under an hour her wonderful life with Ronan will come crashing to an end.

How could you feel anything other than sorry for the pathetic creature?

50 50.

Sylvana has such a tough, calmly obliterating personality that she would not melt if you inserted her into a microwave oven and turned the knob to ninety minutes on full power.

It is to Nicole's credit, therefore, that a mere ten minutes after we sit down in the zoo cafewith our chemical diarrhoea referred to by the menu as 'nutty Brazilian coffee'she has succeeded in using her poor-little-me charm to transform Sylvana into a grovelling amoeba.

Sylvana has caved in: she is telling Nicole all about herself.

I've just opted out. Sitting back in my chair, I'm smoking John Player Blues in packets of ten because they ran out of twenties. I'm staring out of the window at the heads of distant giraffes, trying to tell the males from the females.

But I am unable fully to tune out of their conversation. Somewhere in the rear of my mind I am aware of Sylvana recounting animated stories to Nicole about her father. Right now she's telling her how difficult it has become to accompany the old man to the theatre. The principal problem, apart from the fact that he's confined to crutches and has crap eyesight, is that he's totally deaf.

Nicole is nodding gravely, a portrait of total concern. She appears to be deeply affected by the fact that Sylvana's father is thus misfortuned.

"So what he does is this," my friend continues, encouraged. "He buys the play first and reads it, commits it to memory and follows it on the night from the actors' lips."

Nicole is now shaking her head in awe, chanting what a wonderful achievement this is for Sylvana's father at his age, adding at the last minute that age shouldn't matter at all.

Sylvana, clearly, is deeply impressed by Nicole's demonstrated human qualities. So she launches into the topic of her father full whacktelling her about his devotion to learning despite his disabilities, his interest in everything around him, his kindness, his infuriating habits such as picking his ears in the middle of the city's auditoria.

Nicole should be a nunshe's the perfect listener. She is nodding and smiling, and shaking her head where appropriate. She's a better listener than I am, though I have to say she's not too hot on irony. And let's face it, anyone who can paint grass without green in it has to be a few sandwiches short of ironic.

Fifteen minutes later Sylvana has told Nicole something which it took her three years to confide in me: that she was adopted. She says she has recently made strides to locate her birth parents. She says she hopes she won't be too disappointed when she does manage to locate them: she's terrified they won't turn out to be multimillionaires.

She's scared from another angle too: that if she ends up a multimillionaire in her own right, she'll be destined to spend the rest of her days fending off alleged relatives.

But her worst nightmare of all, she says, is this recurring dream of hers, which she refers to as a 'backward premonition'. In the dream she meets a sturdy woman in her early fifties who informs her that she, Sylvana, was conceived in the back of a Morris Minor outside the Top Hat disco in the early hours of one morning in August 1970.

"I mean," she drawls laconically, "when you think about it."

Nicole is frowning, getting very involved.

Now it's Sylvana's turn to ask Nicole about herself. And so, in the minutes that follow, we get a rundown of Nicole's life, her art, her music, her obsessions in general. The topic of Ronan is discreetly avoided.

Just ten minutes later we have established that Sylvana felt closer to her father than Nicole did to hers, but that Nicole hated her mother only slightly less than Sylvana hated hers. The main point is that both have gained a thorough appreciation of each other's feelings in regard to the emotional traumas they endured as small girls in families respectively racked (like my own) by dissension and plate-smashing.

All I can do is glare viciously at Sylvana whenever possible.

Now, Nicole is showing Sylvana the gold necklace Ronan got her. She flips it out over her top and points to a small shiny pendant. She says it's a Mayan Mayan ball, which she bought separately. ball, which she bought separately.

"They're great if you're in a difficult relationship. Also, if you hang it from the rear-view mirror of your car it reduces accidents. I tell everyone to do that. It works."

Me, sarcastically: "Have you tried it out?"

Sylvana leans forward for a closer look at Nicole's Mayan Mayan ball. I am beginning to hate my so-called best friend intensely. She can't seem to grasp the meaning behind my spiteful glares. I'll try a few Indian smoke signals instead. ball. I am beginning to hate my so-called best friend intensely. She can't seem to grasp the meaning behind my spiteful glares. I'll try a few Indian smoke signals instead.

Carelessly, I blow several rings of smoke into Sylvana's face. There's no reaction: she just sweeps it away with her hands and continues her exclusive with Nicole, who is so full of talk and enthusiasm that it doesn't seem even to occur to her that I might wish her an early death. Doll-like, she sits across the table in her own dreamworld, blissfully zombified by Sylvana's attentions.

I shouldn't worryit will all be over in about half an hour.

"Tell me about Ronan," says I, blowing smoke in her face.

Sylvana eyes me warily.

But a genuinely happy smile beams across Nicole's countenance. She shrugs as if she can't think where to start. She runs her fingers through her long, golden hair. "He's very romantic."

"Romantic."

"And thoughtful."

"Aha. Listen to this, Imelda."

"And he's so generous."

"Is he?"

"He used to send flowers to where I worked every few weeks. I kept telling him not to, but he wouldn't listen."

Ronan hasn't given me so much as a petal in the last year. Before that he'd given me flowers all right, but usually the service station variety. For instance, the time I severely sprained my ankle playing chess with him at homeI had to go to hospital for tests and I stayed in overnightRonan brought me flowers, which he almost fooled me into believing weren't from the lobby shop downstairs. They were shrivelled begonias.

"Also," Nicole says, "he gave me these bangles. They're gold."

She stretches out her wrist. Four thin golden bangles with tiny intricate designs tinkle against one another like wind chimes.

"When did he give you these?"

"Last March, on my birthday."

I sit back in my seat and blow a few more smoke rings, one at Sylvana, one at Nicole and one into empty space. "I wish my husband were as generous with me."

"I'm sure he is, Julianne," she says, tilting her head sympathetically towards me. "What did Helmut give you for your last birthday?"

"Helmut?" says our Imelda, incredulous.

"Let's not get hung up on names, Imelda. He gave me a book."

Audible gulp of sympathy from Nicole: she has grasped my misfortune. What was the book about, she wonders.

"Bumblebees."

Yes. Not very romantic.

"Once we were watching a documentary about elephants," I explain, "and I told him that I loved animals..."

"You?" Sylvana grins.

"...and a month later he gave me a book about bumblebees. It was the best he could come up with. He was probably trying to give me a hint about my deadly sting or something. The idiot can't give you a present without making it symbolic."

Nicole: "That sounds a bit like like Ronan."

It's nearly three o'clock.

We're walking along a path bordering a lake, approaching the monkey enclosures. These are large cabins with glass fronts through which you can spy (if you're so inclined) the inner details of these primates' lives.

First are the colobus monkeys, each of which sits alone on a small length of knotted rope suspended from the ceiling. Their heads are bowed, their eyes closed as if in prayer. Buddhist monkeys. They are black, with a white tufty tail and a cloak of white hair on their backs. Nicole tells us about them off the top of her head: diet, group life, mating habits. And their religious obsessions, naturally.

The spider monkeys next. Black as coal, they hang down limp as a wet shirt on a clothes line, attached to the branch by a tiny fist and a spindly tailthe other limbs hanging loose. Perched on a thick branch at the far end are three of them snuggling up close together like a large coil of shiny black rope. Soon something moves and a tiny black face separates itself from the folds, wrinkled and old-looking. The monkey in question scratches his head and yawns, bewildered.

We stop at the glass enclosure housing the Celebes macaques, dark monkeys who seem to be tearing each other apart, under the bored, benign gaze of the elders of the tribe.

I'm still feeling annoyed at Sylvana's warmth towards Nicole, so I tell her that Nicole plays piano. Chopin, to be precise.

"Really?"

"Yes," Nicole admits. "I'm really into Chopin." (She pronounces it 'Cho-panne'. ) ) Sylvana and I exchange meaning-loaded glances.

Nicole says that when she found out how much Ronan liked Cho-panne Cho-panne, she went straight out and bought the notes to his favourite nocturne in C minor. She finally got to play it for him last Tuesday evening. In Paris. On the hotel piano before going out for dinner together. She was a bit rusty, she apologizes, but Ronan loved it. "It's a really soul-stirring piece," she explains.

What do you bet poor Cho-panne Cho-panne rotated in his grave? rotated in his grave?

"The piano is wonderful," she adds. "It's a great stress reliever."

"Like the sex."

"Sorry?"

I shrug at her. "How is the sex between you?"

"Don't ask!"

This issue is one I worry about. For months, Ronan has shunned just about every erotic procedure imaginable. For him, oral sex has come to mean talking about sex. Foreplay has come to mean fumbling with condoms. And orgasm has come to mean annual pilgrimage. If you're lucky.

My point: is it different for Ronan and Nicole?

"You can tell us, Nicole. Sex should be a meaningful experience."

"I agree with that," she says.

"Is it meaningful for you and Ronan?"

A smile slowly and temptingly spreads across her wide mouth, as we cross a narrow bridge over a small stream and head towards the orang-utan enclosure.

"The sex is..."

She falters.

"Go on, Nicole. We don't mind."

"It's wonderful." She says this almost nostalgically.

This issue has been nagging away at me, really plaguing me.