Then you go to college and meet one.

You meet one and marry your addiction, and live on a high for a few years, plan babies and suddenly you discover he's been doing the dirty on you. You take a nosedive. You try to cope, to rehabilitate, to forgetand what happens?

Your front doorbell rings.

I don't want to know.

I extract a soggy white top from the basket and attach it to the line by two further pegs. I like pegs in winter: they don't carry tiny spiders that spin webs on your clothes line to trap unsuspecting miniature airborne wildlife. I have a phobia about cobwebs and all they imply.

The bell rings again.

I don't want to know.

I feel like a seagull with a broken wing, but that's okay. That's okay because my wings are getting stronger by the week and even if I can't yet spin in the air, or do a loop, or a roll, or a dive, or astronavigate the heavens like an eagle, I can at least parachute to safety if I get a sudden blackout and hide in a corner like a fragile kitten, and Sylvana and Mother will be there with their conjoint fat feline tongues to wrap me in a protective layer of their dripping saliva.

The very knowledge that this particular contribution to my emotional welfare is at all times forthcoming makes me certain that I will make it through this dark night of the soul.

Saint Julie of the Cross.

But still.

Still, I'm not strong. I'm still not fully myself. I might be strong enough to cruise in the sky, but only at low altitude. I'm still in constant danger of getting splatted against a chimney, or sprangled against a TV mast, or sliced in half by a cable, or scraped by a treetop or cymballed by a satellite dish (Feng Shui is quite right about the negative effects of satellite dishes). I am still fearful of getting nauseous and passing out as I fly through the septic urban air but my parachute fails to open, so I just get splodged on to the pavement like a grave of dogshit and never reawaken to immortalize the memory. is quite right about the negative effects of satellite dishes). I am still fearful of getting nauseous and passing out as I fly through the septic urban air but my parachute fails to open, so I just get splodged on to the pavement like a grave of dogshit and never reawaken to immortalize the memory.

This, precisely, is the reason I do not want to answer the door.

The bell rings a third time.

I just want this interference to go away and leave me in peace. I will survive just fine, provided people whom I'd rather see frozen in a glass cabinet and dispatched to Mars would not decide suddenly to reappear in avalanche form.

I extract a clump consisting of three pairs of frilly white knickers from the washing basket and hang them up in turn, deeming each one no more deserving than a single peg.

It's been truly awful for the last six months. Why do you think Sylvana and Mother still take it in turns to sleep over? Because I'm back on the rails?

Clearly it's because they still don't trust me not to end it all in a bubble bath. I have been a burden on them, a blight in their lives. Like a street littered with misery, they've been picking me up whenever I was down. At one point it got so bad that I begged Sylvana to leave me alone and not stay over any more. Because if I hated what I was doing to myself, I hated even more what I was doing to her. But, like all great friends, she refused to listen.

Mother, too, was an angel, in her very own inimitable way.

But a suicide trough there still was. I had a lot of good ideas about how to do myself in. But the most obvious idea of allflinging myself off the terrace in front of the parknever quite materialized. I suppose I didn't want to upset Sylvanaconsidering she often stayed over to thwart precisely that result and she'd have ended up blaming herself.

Or perhaps it was because in my heart I didn't really want to do anything stupidI just wanted to contemplate death from another angle to prove to myself that life was still worth living.

Or possibly the real reason I didn't jump off the balcony was that it would finish Mother off. Now Mother is bad enough in a confined space like an apartment or a car, but can you imagine what it would be like sharing a grave? A sheer nightmare. Yes, she's the ultimate reason I resolved to stay alive.

But close to death I did come one day. I had been drinking, that old reliable excuse for everything in the world that is excessive, to which I gratefully resort when rational behaviour becomes a burden. I wrote a suicide note to Ronan, care of Lucien Morel. In it, I blamed him for driving me to my death. Tripping over myself with inebriation, I posted it in the local postbox for early collection the following morning. Then I drove round the suburbs looking for something blank to crash into.

I could not find a suitable wall.

Either there were children playing tennis or football against it, or there were lamp-posts or cars in the way. Or dogs (cf. my innate fondness for wildlife). Or someone was in the vicinity: it was important to me that nobody would be ogling me in the process of bleeding to death, slumped over the wheel, body crushed, face smashed, wheezing my last blood-curdled breath. I did not fancy being trapped in gyrated metal, surrounded by people combing my hair and foundationing my face and snapping cameras at me for a complimentary front-page grin in the News of the World News of the World.

Finally I found a wall.

But.

It was situated at the end of a housing estate. It was perfect but for one thing: I had only thirty feet to accelerate up to eighty miles an hour. The worst I could do to myself was give myself a painful whiplash and a bit of light bruising.

I was desperate.

I gave up and came home.

Then I remembered the letter.

That whole night I did not sleep a wink. No way was Ronan getting that letter. The following morning I took up sentry duty at the postbox from six a.m.though the first collection wasn't until eight. When the postman finally arrived I begged him for the return of my letter.

"I'm not permitted to return a letter, miss."

"It's a suicide note," I said quite calmly, though still treacherously drunk and whacked with fatigue.

"It's still not permitted, miss."

I screamed at the poor man and after a brief interlude I asked him politely to consider whether I was or was not dead.

It did not take him long to take out a bunch of letters and start flipping through it for one addressed to Ronan Fitzgerald.

Which he handed me.

Which I promptly burnt in the sink. Washing the last ashes down the drain, it suddenly occurred to me what a dumb fool I was not to have searched out the docklands: there, there were literally hundreds of walls to choose from, walls of all shapes and sizes and colours and degrees of blankness.

Doubly grief-laden, I went to bed (in my marital home) for two whole weeks, despite Mother's valiant efforts to motivate me through pep talks, coffee, chocolate cake, bribery, threats, starvation, Xanax, prayer. She was so worried she even tried piano therapy.

Then one morning Sylvana came to me with coffee and Danish pastries. I felt sufficiently strong in myself to tell her about my suicide exploits. She attempted to comfort me by insisting that the impulse to destroy myself was not a permanent feature of my being but more of a 'temporary blip in my sanity'. I thanked her for her enlightenment, I remember, turned over on my other side and told her to buzz off.

There was this deathly silence from the far side of the bed that made me actually want to turn round and see if I'd hurt her feelingsbut I was too proud to do so. That's when I realized I wanted to live.

I am now over this sad period in my life. Thanks in large part to my wonderful friend who refused to abandon me even when I begged her to. And thanks, of course, to Mother.

The bell rings a fourth time. This is bordering on harassment.

I twine down the spiral staircase with my empty basket.

I can't face it.

I can't.

I will will face it. face it.

60 60.

I open my front door and press for the lift. open my front door and press for the lift.

I travel down the four floors. When the doors open I see the intruder on the other side of the security door, in profile, stooping slightly over the intercom. Her hair seems more blonde than before, but it's probably just Parisian highlights. She's wearing a lemon-yellow anorak, a cream sweater and brown trousers, and she's holding a small package in one hand.

I walk up to the glass door and push it open, and she jumps, turning to face me. Relief washes over her face and she places a hand on her chest.

"It's you, Julie!"

"Yes, you can call me Julieit's short for Julianne."

"You gave me a fright."

"I seem to make a habit of it."

I lean against the open door to signify that I haven't got all day.

She doesn't react to me the way she used to. Her face isn't lighting up happily and she's not nodding her head enthusiastically. There's something different about her. Her head is slightly bowed, her pensive, downcast eyes surrounded by black circles. She looks disconsolate and washed-out.

I suppose that having stabbed me in the back discourages jollity. "What are you doing here?"

"I just...came because...I called your mobilebut the number's been changed."

"I was trying to shake you off."

"I need to talk to you."

Something occurs to me. "You've come here for your cat, haven't you?" I give her a sly look.

"No, I haven't," she croaks.

"You've come for your easel, then," I accuse, somewhat relieved that she has not come here for her cat.

She insists she hasn't come here for her easel either.

"Why, then? Oh, I know: you've come to tell me you're sorry for wrecking my marriage. That you're not proud of what you did. That you're a dreadful bitch. Is that what you want to tell me? You want me to let you off the hook so that you can go back to Paris with a good conscience?"

With an uncertain grimace somewhere between a smile and a weep, she holds out both hands. In them is an object wrapped in soft white paper.

"What's that?"

"I brought this for you."

"What is it?"

She steps forward and offers me the wrapped object. I just stand here staring at it.

"They're my mandarin ducks," she clarifies.

"The orange ones?"

She nods.

"Oh, I forgot. I'm not supposed to know they're orange."

"It's best to keep them on a table in the south-west corner of your bedroom. They symbolize fidelity and happiness. They bring good luck to a marriage."

"Do you want me to hit you?"

She opens the paper to reveal two protruding-beaked, bright-orange porcelain ducks. "They're for you and Ronan," she insists. "I wanted to give them to you before I go to Amsterdam. I won't be needing them any more."

Folding my arms, I bore steel into her. "What do you mean, before you go to Amsterdam?"

"I'm not going back to Paris, Jul...Julie."

"Why?"

"I'm going to live in Amsterdam. I'm staying with my brother Joel and his wife in their apartment. He's arranged a job for me there in his English school, teaching English as a foreign language."

"Sounds riveting."

"I'm catching the plane to Schiphol Airport this afternoon at threein a few hours' time. I left my bags at the airport. I'm not staying."

"What about Ronan?" I wonder, beginning to feel very unsettled.

"It's over, Julie."

Pause.

I try to take in the enormity of what she's just said. "What's over?"

"Me and Ronan."

"Since when?"

"Three days ago."

"Give it a while." I laugh. "In a few days his libido will Rise Again."

She shakes her head and looks like she's about to cry. "We had a huge argument. He accused me of abusing his credit card account. His statement from last June didn't reach our Paris apartment until last week because we'd moved apartment. I was able to account for just under four thousand pounds, which included some purchases I made in Paris. And a lovely Raymond Weil watch I bought him specially to thank him for organizing the exhibition for me there. But he accused me of lying, because there was still about fifteen hundred pounds unaccounted for. Really expensive women's clothes purchased in Brown Thomas."

"I get you."

"He was really furious about the money. I told him it must have been...someone else. But he didn't believe me, because I admitted I'd bought that peach dress on the same day. Things came to a head then, but Ronan was already getting restless. The Chi Chi replica which I painted was a flop. My career went downhill after that. It's my own fault, JulieI don't blame you for doing that to replica which I painted was a flop. My career went downhill after that. It's my own fault, JulieI don't blame you for doing that to Chi Chi."

"Thank you."

"I think that's the real reason Ronan dumped me. Also, he couldn't handle the idea of a baby; he was probably just staying around until it was born."

She informs me that Debbie was born last week.

She has a baby girl.