Nicole is saying something to me about her beautiful baby girl now, but I'm barely listening. I put my head back against the glass door and take a deep breath. A baby. I'm beginning to feel this dread, this utter desolation, an inkling of the huge chasm in my world, of the giant empty treasure chest inside me.

I try to distract myself by focusing on her gift.

"Aren't those the very same ducks that brought you and my husband together?"

She nods reluctantly.

"So now that it's all over, you just dump your ducks on me."

"It's not like that."

Her fingers curl slowly back over the bright-orange ornaments, enclosing them like a cage.

"Ronan never really loved me anyway," she mourns. "I thought when he came to the birth and saw his child, it might be different. But you were right: you're the one he loves."

"I hope it was sheer murder," says I.

"I..."

"The delivery. I hope it was sheer murder."

"It wasn't easy."

"Good."

"Julie, listen to me: it's you you he loves. He really does." he loves. He really does."

I crack up now. "Amn't I so lucky? He loves me. Hurray! What am I supposed to do with that useless piece of information? I've gone through hell. Have you gone through hell?"

She just stares at me. "He wants to see you."

"I'll send him a photograph."

"He told me himself that he wanted to make his marriage work."

"That was just an excuse to get rid of you."

"He really meant it, Julie. He repeated it on the plane from Paris this morning."

"He was on your plane?"

"Yes." She nods earnestly. "He's coming back for good, Julie. He's going straight to your home this afternoon."

"This is my home. I hope you didn't give him the address."

She swears on her mother's grave that she didn't.

"Good. Now you can go."

"Julie, I know that nothing can make up for what happened."

"You heard me."

"I just want to say..."

"Go."

"I just want to say that I'm sorry about everything."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Please."

"I'm not interested. You've messed up my life. Now just take your stupid ducks and leave, and this time don't come back."

She stares at my wall of hardness, mouth trembling, as I point to the car park. I feel no pity. She deserves no pity. She's had my husband's baby. She's a whore. I want this disease away from me.

She bursts into tears before me.

I stand and watch, cold and unfeeling. I want to be cruel. I want to see her in agony. She ripped through my life and caused me such pain, and she thinks everything will be okay again if she comes here and says sorry and gives me a few ducks and walks away again. Just like that. I hate her.

I hate myself.

There's something else. Something inside me. A feeling within that makes me scared. I am frightened, repulsed by what is on my mind. I am staring at the misery of another woman and all I can think of saying is: "Well, when you've finished crying you can get the hell out of here and never come back." Is that not revenge? Is this what all these months have been about? Revenge? Is this what I want? To make her suffer because she robbed from me a priceless gold chain I had no idea contained a permanently weak link?

Face to face, looking into her pained eyes, it's not so easy to hate. I can feel it beginning to evaporate in the wash of her tears.

I tell her to stop crying. I tell her to come up to my place for a cup of tea and something to eat.

No, she says, I'm right; she should never have come. She's only making things worse. She'll call a taxi immediately on her mobile phone. She will leave now and never bother me again. She's sorry for bothering me in the first place.

And I'm standing beside her ordering her to come up to my place before I create a scene.

She puts her ducks into her pocket and suddenly turns round and walks away. I take a step in her direction, then halt. She stops at the low wall just outside the entrance, semi-concealed by a conifer in a huge earthenware pot. She takes a small rucksack off the wall and swings it on to her back, and now she lifts something else off the wall.

At once I recognize what it is. It's a baby's carrycot. Turning to face me again from a distance of about twelve feether cheeks runningshe says she's sorry about everything and she hopes that one day I will have it in my heart to forgive her. Then she turns on her heel.

"Nicole!"

She stops. She doesn't turn round.

I command her to, in effect, get her and her baby's sorry ass up to my place before I throw a temper tantrum.

She turns slightly, head lowered, baby-bearing, forlorn.

"I've already put you through hell," she says, weeping.

"At least," I say, uncertain, "let me see the baby."

She turns slowly and reapproaches me.

"Step inside or else the door will lock."

She comes into the lobby. The door bangs shut behind us. She lifts up the carrycot and my heart literally skips a beat. The tiny baby's dazzling eyes. Her minute, cherubic, snow-white face. As I stroke her cheek, little Debbie's expression now smudges up like a wrinkled glove.

I poke my small ringer into her left hand, which curls round it like a baby crab. Her infant odour is upsetting me. Nicole is smiling sadly at me now. She says Debbie likes me.

"Do you really think so?" I wonder, my heart falling. I gently stroke her tiny, light, fawny head and now she starts wailing like a siren. Is she hungry? That's what babies do when they're hungry, isn't it? Wail? Either that or she's allergic to me.

Nicole hands me the carrycot and while I'm holding it steady she lifts Debbie out of it and cuddles her. Then, because she must see how attached I am to events, she asks me if I'd like to hold her.

I could easily have said no. I could have said: I'm useless with babies; I drop them like a bad juggler (of course, the whole point is I haven't dropped even one yet). I could have said: babies make me nervous. They make me unbalanced. Neurotic. Cantankerous. They bring out the psychopath in me. They're not safe with me, I mass-murder them in my spare time. Give me the mandarin ducks insteadway safer.

I could have said: Please go away, you wagon, and take bambino with you and die of disease Please go away, you wagon, and take bambino with you and die of disease.

But no, like a fool wallowing in a pool of misery I willingly accept her offer to cradle in my arms the result of my husband's fornications.

I can just picture Sylvana admonishing me with raised finger: "This is the best it gets, Julie. They might look nice dolled up in a cradle but the truth is other. Truth is, babies represent being pissed on, squawked at, puked over and shat upon for three years, and thereafter the very same, metaphorically, for a generation."

But.

It doesn't seem to matter any more; I love holding Debbie. I want to go on holding her for ever. I am amazed at how light this wailing noise box is, wrapped in her tiny pink shawl. I stare at her cute wet eyes and can't help feeling fantastic.

In minutes this wailing dream has turned my upper arm into a soggy handkerchief. I'm rocking her gently to and fro, and stroking her beautiful little head. I'm all over her, shushing and purring and murmuring and humming to her like a primeval Italian mama. Soon she calms down.

"She's taken to you already." Nicole smiles.

"Do you think so?"

I don't want to let go of her. This beautiful, fleshy, talcum-powdered, baby-smelling creation is knocking out a hole in my heart. I have both arms wrapped round her, protecting her just underneath my neck, this tiny being who is presently chortling and dribbling and scratching my left ear (does my maternal manner please her?). She's burrowing her tiny warm head into me, so I kiss it and I am speaking to her, rocking her to and fro very slightly, stroking her forehead ever so gently, smoothing down the thin strands of her fair hair and now I kiss her ever so softly on the cheek and nose, and she's making a chuckling, breathy, coughing noise, which might well be an infant's version of a pleased laugh, and I respond by making these cooing noises in her ear.

Now Debbie's face contorts into a smile, rather like that of a wrinkled old man.

Perhaps this is my vocation? Motherhood. Perhaps being a barrister never really was for me? All the struggle, the aggressive competition, the discipline, the rigid cold reasoning. What's it all for in the end? Money? Status? Power? Authority? The latest MGi? The penthouse apartment with the greatest sea view? The best holiday locations? The best restaurants?

But with whom? With a man who no longer wants to be with you? What do these things matter when you come home each day an emotional wreck, only to be supported by an emotional bankrupt? What do these things matter when you feel trapped? When the most beautiful things in this world are so simple to achieve, so possible, available practically at the ring of a bell?

Debbie.

I turn away from Nicole now because, pathetically, my eyes have filled with tears. I lead the way over to the lift.

The elevator doors open and I walk in. Nicole follows me, bearing the carrycot. A middle-aged woman who has just entered the main door comes in after us and presses number four for the whole party. The woman spends the whole joyride smiling slant-headed at the baby in my arms, telling me how beautiful she is and how lucky I am to have her, and me standing here, agreeing, craving the fourth floor, secretly wanting to believe it's true.

The woman exits first and walks down the corridor. As soon as she's disappeared Nicole giggles at the mistake. And when I giggle back at Nicole it's not because I'm necessarily having fun or anything incomprehensible like that, but more because I'm feeling this total resignation, this helplessness.

Outside my door I hand Nicole's baby back to her. A vacuum, an empty and cold longing now enters the space left vacant by Debbie. I rummage in my pocket for the keys.

Nicole's eyes are beginning to reveal their old merriment once more. She and Ronan have split up, but things aren't so bad now that her good friend (me) is showing her some humanity.

And she's got Debbie.

Me, I've got no one.

After several cups of coffee and an orgy of chortling over Debbie and what a wonderful gift to life she constitutes, etc. etc., Nicole wonders if she might take her into a bedroom to change her nappy. I show her into the spare room facing the road, forgetting completely that there's a copy of Your Baby and You Your Baby and You on the bedside table. I put it there recently just to annoy Sylvana when she last stayed over. on the bedside table. I put it there recently just to annoy Sylvana when she last stayed over.

While she's removing Debbie from her wrap, I'm standing behind her, watching her glance at the publication from time to time.

"I ripped that baby magazine off in your place," I confess, just to break the tension.

"Oh, it's no problem," she says quickly and she starts humming a tune like it really isn't a problem.

"I also ripped off that small Feng Shui Feng Shui handbook of yours." handbook of yours."

She just shakes her head as if it really isn't a big deal.

While Nicole is powdering Debbie's bottom, the phone goes off. It's the landline. I run out. Mother, wouldn't you know.

"Julie, dear, something has come up."

"What?"

"Ronan's in the kitchen; we're having tea together."

It takes me just a few seconds to grasp this point. "That sounds very civilized," I say.

"He's very respectful for a change."

"He's up to every trick in the book."

"He's actually talking to me. He's telling me all about Paris, he's practically cataloguing the whole interior of the Musee d'Orsay for me. It's as if nothing happened. Do I take it that you don't wish to see him?"

"Does he want to see me?"

"He does."

"I'll be there soon, Mother."

"I understand. Oops! Here he is now. I'll pass you over."

Pause.

"Julie?" he says.

"Yes."

"Julie, the situation has changed somewhat. I need to meet you."

"What for?"