Psyching myself up to scalp her.

I'm glad I did that to his car, though.

Really, doing that stuff to his Porsche has turned out to be seriously good for my health.

In ancient Greek, I think that's called catharsis.

10 10.

I still get that lemon scent, though it's more muted now. still get that lemon scent, though it's more muted now.

"Where are you, you bitch?"

I slam shut the door of the apartment and flick on the hall light for some extra illumination, throw my reading material down on the banana couch and stand perfectly still, clasping my fingers around the hard, thin shaft of my weapon.

She's in here somewhere. I know it.

And she's mine.

The lemon-yellow Wonderbra is gone, of course. I fasten the chain across the door and draw the bolts across the top and bottom. I will make a Fort Knox out of my front entrance. Like a wildcat, she will scratch and scream and scrape, desperate to escape. While I calmly close in on her and proceed to staple her with my heels to the wood.

The kitchen. I check everywhere. Under the table. Under the sink. In the broom cupboard. Nothing.

On tiptoe, I pass through the second kitchen door, which leads into the lounge. I traverse the lounge and go through the second lounge door back into the hall, cross the hall and search our sleeping quarters. Under beds, in wardrobes, in the hot press, behind the bathroom door, on the narrow bedroom verandas.

But there's no sign of her anywhere. Not even inside our large dirty-clothes basket.

She must have left before Ronan.

The place is immaculate. It is clean and dust-free. The bathroom taps are shining. The hallway smells like a flaming pot-pourri. Ronan would never do this. I would never do this. It's crazy overkill.

His own personal personal grooming is meticulous: he has his shirts professionally ironed, the washing basket receives a daily draft of his underwear, he uses Aramis aftershave, he flosses his teeth nightly and on occasion I've even seen the gobshite pluck his eyebrows. But not grooming is meticulous: he has his shirts professionally ironed, the washing basket receives a daily draft of his underwear, he uses Aramis aftershave, he flosses his teeth nightly and on occasion I've even seen the gobshite pluck his eyebrows. But not once once have I ever witnessed him lift a sweeping brush. have I ever witnessed him lift a sweeping brush.

How is he going to explain this new Hoover-friendly personality implant of his? I can't wait to see what he dreams up.

Once back in the lounge, I pour myself a Cointreau. I notice the level has significantly diminished since I was last here, two hours ago. Ronan never drinks Cointreau. Only I drink Cointreau. Nicole has been guzzling it in the meantime, the greedy glut. And in somebody else's house! No respect.

I drench my gullet with a large burning gulp of the stuff. Suddenly I notice something peculiar. I can feel my body tense up like a tiger.

The french windows are slightly ajar.

She's outside on the balcony.

While I'm in town supposedly dining with Ronan, she's lounging around here, practising being Ronan's future wife.

Heart pounding, I clench my grip on the ice-pick. I proceed forward, but she's beyond my range of vision. She must be at the far end of the veranda. I'm going to push her off the balcony. By accident.

I swing the doors open, remaining inside. "Get in here," I snarl.

No reply. I'll try the sly approach: "We can discuss this reasonably."

Still no response.

"Get in here you bitchl" I'm snarling. "You've been sleeping with my husband!"

Still nothing.

"Have it your way."

I burst out on to the balcony.

It's empty.

There's no one there. Just the white plastic table with two soiled wineglasses standing lonesomely on top.

I send the ice-pick crashing down on to the two glasses, scattering smithereens over the edge and down into the patio far below, and there's this screaming sound now and I'm vaguely aware of our neighbours sunbathing in the adjacent apartment block and my throat tightens up like I'm being throttled and there's this wet sensation filling my eyes and my nose and my windpipe right the way down to my heart and I lurch back into the lounge and stray like a ghost in no particular direction and I end up back out in the hall and my eyes fall on to the couch on to the baby booklet I'd forgotten all about and I go over to it and pick it up and stare at the huge pink grinning face of a baby with its mouth open and its tongue glistening and its beautiful grey eyes and its flecks of straw-coloured hair and its cute ears and the title Your Baby and You Your Baby and You and suddenly I can feel my knees hitting the floor, and I can hear this unearthly wailing soundas if it's coming from outside meand everything I touch is wet and slippery and my knuckles are stuck hard into my eye sockets and I'm ordering myself to stop this ridiculous behaviour, I tell myself that I'm overreacting, that I've been drinking and I might even be hallucinating and now I'm having difficulty breathing and the only thing I can think of to take my mind off this terrible, terrible pain is the Jameson's and I'm begging someone, begging someone with all my heart, would someone please come and take it away... and suddenly I can feel my knees hitting the floor, and I can hear this unearthly wailing soundas if it's coming from outside meand everything I touch is wet and slippery and my knuckles are stuck hard into my eye sockets and I'm ordering myself to stop this ridiculous behaviour, I tell myself that I'm overreacting, that I've been drinking and I might even be hallucinating and now I'm having difficulty breathing and the only thing I can think of to take my mind off this terrible, terrible pain is the Jameson's and I'm begging someone, begging someone with all my heart, would someone please come and take it away...

11 11.

Where am I?

In front of me is an ultramarine-blue wall with a familiar painting on it. It's a group of female nudes, with translucently blue skin. Their hair is long and their flesh is pink, orange and yellow. They have large bums. Mermaids stranded on the shoreline, perhaps, forced out of their primordial submarine hideaway. I know how they feel.

It's Cezanne, that much I know. But whose wall is this? Whose purple colour-washed pine floor? Whose large net curtains billowing gently in the infiltrating breeze?

I rub my eyes.

There's a noise of clinking cups in a nearby room. I try to get up from the comfortable fat couch I'm lying on, but my strength fails.

I've certainly been here before.

Over the mahogany mantelpiece opposite me to my left is another familiar print. The picture is of a pale-faced woman sitting on a chair, caressing the skull of what appears to be her dead husband.

Each to her own.

Suddenly it hits me: this can only be Sylvana's.

I stare at my watch and gasp: a quarter past midnight.

Everything floods back now, memory and anguish, and I collapse into the couch. It's as if I've just had a heart transplant. Only instead of going through the regular surgical channels, Ronan has ripped it out of my chest without permission and now both he and his side piece are playing football with it, kicking it happily from one to the other, so absorbed in their game they've forgotten it's a part of me.

I try to call out.

A familiar voice emanates from the kitchen. "Have you returned to the land of the living, Julie?"

Yes, I seem to remember being drunk out of my brains while I detonated on the hallway floor, haemorrhaging tears.

"How did I get here?"

"I drove you in my car. You called me, remember?"

"No."

"You were in bits."

I want to die. I've had a rotten life.

Firstly, I was born.

Then I grew up. Grew up in the shadow of my parents' mutual trashing sessions, and spent my early teenage years trying to haul Mother from the emotional cesspit into which she fell, after she finally threw Father out. Me the quiet, unacknowledged partner throughout, the silent voice of suffering.

And it goes on: the unrelenting torment to which my life appears equivalent, with fleeting moments of solace in between, thanks to Sylvana and shopping. And whiskey. And chocolate. And Mother, when she's not in excavation mode down your neck.

But what about that card Ronan gave me a year and a half ago, on Valentine's Day? I remember the words he wrote: "This is just to say that since I met you I haven't stopped loving you."

What does that say?

When you handed it to me and saw me reading it, there were tears in your eyes, though you pretended to laugh it off. That says you meant it. And what about all the beautiful things you have given me? What about the twenty-four-carat gold bracelet you bought me for my last birthday? Surely that means something?

Hard heels click against the floor.

Sylvana strides in with steaming coffee and her favourite snack: Ryvita stacked with goat's cheese and peanuts, glued on with mayonnaise. She sits down on the couch, pressing against my thigh. She starts munching a peanut. "So," she says, flicking me her sly, you can't-fool-me look.

I know what she's thinking. "So what?"

"How did the Cherbury Court thing go?"

What a funny way to phrase it. It's like saying: "How did the money-laundering thing go?" or, "How did the drug-heist thing go?" or, "How did the tax-dodge thing go?" She makes it sound like I do this 'Cherbury Court thing' every day as a matter of boring routine. Jesus, what does she take me for?

"Oh, fine."

"Meaning?"

"It was grand."

"How did you get into the house?"

"Oh, you know...I got in."

"That much we have established. But how?"

Like a sadistic dentist who enjoys pulling teeth, Sylvana gets a great kick trawling classified material out of me, and the more the procedure hurts the more she seems to enjoy it.

"You've nothing to be ashamed of." She grins, chewing peanuts in that infuriatingly non-committal way of hers.

"I'm not ashamed."

She's dying for a bit of juice to liven up her day. She would love to discover that I happened to spend part of my Thursday afternoon criminally lacerating an unknown citizen's living-room and leaving her fish world overbowled on the floor. But she's not getting any more out of me than is strictly necessary.

"You prowled around the back, didn't you, when no one was looking? You found an open door and sneaked through it like a thief."

"You're making me out to be some sort of criminal."

"A criminal?" she disdains. "You wouldn't have the guts."

"Actually," I reply, irritation rising, "I dislodged a glass panel in her front door."

Silence, while she beams on me full force. "Dislodged."

"With an...implement. Only so I could reach through and open the latch."

"Of course," she replies. "How practical."

Now there's this slender guilt creeper crawling up my spine.

"I admit I don't do that sort of thing very often."

"Using an implement to smash your way through front doors."

"Yes, Sylvana."

"That's breaking and entering, you know."

"I don't necessarily feel good about it."

"You don't."

"In retrospect."

Tilting her head, she looks at me like I'm a cute newborn puppy. "She doesn't feel good about it," she drawls. "Well, my heart bleeds for you."

"I...I was hammered... hammered... " "

I'm well aware that alcohol is no defence in law.

"You mean," she corrects, "you were doing the hammering."

"Ice-picking." I correct her back.

Her eyes widen. "You used an ice-pick to break in?"

"Sylvana," I blurt impatiently, "how else was I supposed to get into her house after I practically caught her in the middle of shagging my husband?"

She picks up a few more peanuts from the tops of the snacks, pops them into her gob and starts munching. "You could have tried ringing the bell," she replies.

Why is she being such a cow?

"Julie, what you did is what the Indians used to do."