Saying nothing, I accept one from her and she lights me up.

"I just want to wait," I tell her.

"For what?"

"And see."

"Oh, right, wait until some blinding virtue you never knew he had comes and smacks you in the face?"

"Sylvana, is this code for get lost? Because if you want, I'll go."

I'm sitting forward on the edge of my seat now, glaring at her.

"Have it your way," she replies with indifference.

"I happen to love him. Is that okay?"

"That's fine."

I take a long drag of my cigarette, then exhale a bucket-load of smoke at her. "My marriage happens to be important to me."

"Great."

"In fact," I continue, those meat hooks of aggravation still clutching my gut, "it's so important to me that I might even consider forgetting Ronan's little flirtation."

She takes the trouble actually to look in my direction. "I know you're only joking."

"I'm not joking, Sylvana," I reply, standing up. "Anyway, I have to go home now."

"Julie, for God's sake, don't do anything rash..."

She stands up herself. I feel like I'm on a roll.

"We both know what men are like," I tell her. "When it comes to sex, they get a bit hysterical."

"But..."

"He was just fooling around while I was away."

She stares at me as if I've completely lost it. "You don't really believe that."

"Why not?" I inquire, walking away.

She follows me into the hall. I pull on my jacket.

"Julie, they were sunbathing together!"

"So?"

"She sketched him on a sketch padnude."

"They say that can be quite erotic."

I open the front door.

"Julie, this is more than just a three-night stand. They slept in your bed, for chrissake!"

"But that's what people do when they have flings: they sleep in beds together. Have you forgotten your own philosophy, Sylvana? How women, if they so choose, can turn men into sexual cripples? How if they weren't programmed to think with their cocks the human race would die out? How sex has nothing to do with love and everything with orgasm? How men conceive of sex as remote-control masturbation with zero emotional content? How kings do it, paupers do it and even American presidents do it?"

"Yes, I remember saying that but..."

"Just because he's had sex with another woman doesn't mean he's stopped loving me..."

"Oh Jesus, Julie, you're not thinking clearly. Come back..."

"Goodbye, Sylvana."

I stride quickly through the lobby and pull open the main door of the building. She starts to follow me.

"You'll lock yourself out, Sylvana."

"At least have a drink before you go...?"

"Nice try, I'll call you soon."

The lobby door slams behind me.

I must say, walking out on her like this feels so good.

Sylvana is absolutely brilliant. She is wise, she is clever, she is strong and beautiful and she's a fantastic friend.

But that doesn't mean she's right about Ronan.

Clarification: she's right about the fact that he's a stuck-up, two-timing, arrogant bastard with vanity as thick and immobile as a thousand-year-old oak tree, and it's perfectly understandable why she nurtures long-standing urges to drown him by hand in a septic tank.

But does that mean I should consider him toxic waste?

12 12.

"I noticed your Porsche." noticed your Porsche."

I spread my husband a wide, jolly smile.

He looks up from the white leather couch in which he is relaxingaggrieved and stressed outwith a book about Impressionist art balanced on one crossed leg. He's wearing a light-brown suit, a cream polo-neck sweater and light-brown perforated leather shoes.

Seeing him now properly for the first time since I went on holiday, I suddenly realize that there's something of the poseur about his handsomeness, something slightly disreputable and untrustworthy.

"It didn't look in the best of form," I add.

He is glaring at me now. What a nice way to welcome me home. Nothing about my holiday. Nothing about missing me. No fuss-making. I don't expect a big red-carpet welcome: a nice smile would be enough. But no.

Since he doesn't reply, I decide I might as well indulge him in some small talk. "Did you enjoy yourself while I was away?"

Still no reply. He is clearly in a rotten mood. Lesson: never expect perfection in a man whose car has just croaked.

And croaked it has: as I was parking my MG in the car park just now, I happened to pass the piece of banjaxed-looking junk that once went by the name of Porsche. It was lying in state, mourning under the sparkling light of the night lamp. Truly a sad sight.

"Where the hell were you?" he says.

"Haven't you heard? I was in the Cliff Castle Hotel."

He just observes me.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I got on?"

"You stood me up, Julie."

"Thursday is late-night shopping. I couldn't hold myself back. I craved some kinky lingerie in nice bright colours."

He leans forward. "So you were actually in town."

"I was in town. Yes."

"And you just didn't bother showing up at La Boheme's."

"Kinky lingerie is a vital accessory, Ronan. You of all people should know that."

He sits back in his seat once more. "I assume that that one was behind it." one was behind it."

"Sylvana has a name."

"That wouldn't surprise me."

I smile insanely. "What's that sweet scent, Ronan?"

It's not just the smouldering reek of tobacco. It's what it's attempting to blot out but not quite succeeding.

"Your mother was here this evening," he replies.

"My mother smells sweet, but not that sweet."

"You'd think she might have called in advance to warn me of her imminent approach. She just dropped in as if she owned the place."

"Is it massage oil? I didn't know you practised self-massage."

"I couldn't get rid of her. She plonked herself in front of the television for the whole evening. Her indiscretions never cease to amaze me..."

"You're the height of discretion, of course." I laugh.

"The woman had the nerve to ask me when we were planning on having children. She seems to think that having lived sixty-five years has granted her immunity from proper social intercourse."

"You'd know all about that."

"I know not to be inquisitive."

Ronan has experienced, in a fairly personal way, Mother's antisocial elephant's foot. He assumes it's a lack of social sophistication on her part. Truth is, she gets a real kick out of aggravating him. On the Richter scale of animosity her toleration for my husband is roughly four.

Quite a healthy average, mind you, when set against Sylvana's permanent eight.

I start walking around the room now, making a big deal of sniffing the air. "You still haven't told me what that smell is."

"Tobacco, I'd say," he arrogantly replies, exhaling a fresh cloud of blue smoke into the air above him.

"No, it's a fruity scent. Have you been wearing perfume?"

He continues reading.

"I won't tell anyone, I promise."

He recrosses his legs.

"Or air-freshener?"

"Did you know," he reports from his page, "that French Impressionists in the eighteen-sixties drew inspiration from Japanese woodblock colour prints?"

This is his polite way of telling me to shut up.

"I was in the bedroom just now," I sing.

"Is that a fact?"

"I see you changed the sheets," I add.

I leave this hanging in the air. Although his face betrays nothing I can almost hear his mind unravel at the speed of light. He flips a page.

"I didn't notice any dirty sheets in the basket, though."

This is fun.

Without looking up, he speaks very calmly: "You broke our arrangement to meet in town and you're worried about some dirty sheets."

"Where are they?"

"If you really want to know," he says casually, "I took them to the laundry."

"You?"

He looks up. "Precisely."