But it was a bit of an adventure. I hadn't left the house in weeks. It was an indication that I was on the mend.

"Have a good time," she said. "And remember, if you change your mind about making the dinner, don't worry. No harm done. You won't be letting any of us down. We can have the usual. No one will mind."

Why did I get the idea that she didn't want me to cook anything? I wondered as I drove away.

I had a really lovely time in the supermarket, strolling the aisles, pushing my cart, with Kate in a sling on my front. Buying the provisions for myself and my child, playing happy families, even if it happened to be happy single parent families.

I bought another twenty tons of Pampers for Kate. Mum and Dad had been so good, buying all the baby provisions while I had been prostrate with either grief or alcohol. But it was time for me to be responsible. I would be the one who took care of Kate from now on.

I flung all kinds of frivolous and exotic food into my trolley. Galia melons? Yes, I'll have a couple of them. A box of handmade fresh cream chocolates? Why not. A bag of highly over-priced glamorous lettuces? Go right ahead.

I was having a great time.

Hang the expense. Because I was going to pay by credit card.

And where did the credit card bills get sent to?

That's correct. My apartment in London.

So who was going to have the responsibility of paying it?

Right again.

James.

92.I smiled at other young and not-so-young mothers who were also doing their shopping.

I must have seemed just like one of them. A young woman with a new baby. With absolutely nothing to worry about except perhaps the possibility of not getting a full night's sleep in the next decade. There was nothing to indicate that my husband had left me.

I no longer carried my humiliation like a weapon.

And I didn't begrudge anyone else her perfect life. I didn't hate every other woman in the world whose husband hadn't left her.

How did I know that the woman I exchanged smirks with over the avo-cados was blissfully happy?

How did I know that the woman I gently jostled as I got my bottle of honey and mustard dressing off the shelf was completely free of all concerns?

Everyone had their own worries.

Nobody was perfectly happy.

I hadn't been singled out especially by the gods for misery to descend on me.

I was just an ordinary woman with ordinary problems, doing her shopping, among other ordinary women.

I passed the alcohol department and I caught a glimpse of rows and rows of bottles of vodka, glittering and shimmering, silver light glinting off them.

Almost as though I could hear them all calling, "Hey, Claire, over here!

Pick me, pick me! Can we come home with you?" I instinctively turned my trolley in that direction.

And then turned it away again.

"Remember Auntie Julia," I told myself sternly.

A little bit shaken, I cruised the frozen desserts aisle. When I was pregnant I'd eaten frozen chocolate mousse by the truckload. In fact, it used to really annoy James.

So I thought I'd get myself one for old time's sake.

And as a mark of defiance.

I held Kate up to show her the rows and rows of boxes of chocolate mousse.

"Meet the family," I said.

I took out a box and held it for her to see.

"You see that?" I told her. "Without that you probably 93 wouldn't be here." She looked at it with her round blue eyes and reached out her fat little arm to touch the condensation on the box. Obviously something in her blood was calling out to the chocolate mousse, something as old as mankind, recognizing something that had befriended her mother through rough times.

I went and paid, gaining a lot of pleasure from the astronomical amount that James would be charged on the credit card.

And home we went.

On the way we stopped at the bank. As soon as Anna got home I was going to give her back every penny that I owed her. At least now she could pay her dealer. And thereby continue to have an intact pair of kneecaps.

94.

nine.

I had to ring the doorbell when we arrived back home as I had left without a key. Mum answered. had to ring the doorbell when we arrived back home as I had left without a key. Mum answered.

"I'm home," I said to her. "We had a great time, didn't we, Katie?" Mum watched me as I carried plastic bag after plastic bag into the kitchen, circling me suspiciously while I unpacked the groceries onto the kitchen table.

"Did you get everything you needed?" she asked tremulously.

"Everything!" I confirmed enthusiastically.

"So you're still going ahead with this idea of making them their dinner?"

she said, sounding on the verge of tears.

"Yes, Mum," I told her. "Why are you upset about it?"

"I really wish you wouldn't do this," she said anxiously. "You'll give them notions, you know. They'll expect cooked dinners all the time after this. And who'll be expected to do it? Not you, that's for sure. Because by then, you'll have gone off back to London."

Poor Mum, I thought. Maybe I was being insensitive, showing off my fancy cooking in her kitchen.

She paused while I cheerfully put some fresh pasta on a shelf in the fridge. "Are you listening to me?" She raised her voice, as her view of me was blocked by the fridge door.

"They're perfectly happy with the microwave stuff," she continued. "Did you ever hear the expression 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it?' And what's that?" she demanded, pouncing on a 95.cellophane bag of fresh basil leaves and poking them suspiciously.

"That's basil, Mum," I said, swishing past her to pack some pine nuts away in the cupboard.

"And what does that do?" she asked, staring at it as if it were radioactive.

"It's an herb," I replied patiently. Poor Mum, I understood how insecure and threatened she was feeling.

"Well, it can't be much of an herb if they couldn't even put it in a jar,"

she declared triumphantly.

She might be feeling insecure and threatened, but she had still better watch her step, I thought grimly.

And immediately I regretted it. I was feeling, hell, almost happy. No need to be mean to anyone. No need to get cross with anyone.

"Don't worry, Mum," I told her apologetically. "I'm not making anything special. They probably won't even notice the difference between this and the frozen stuff."

"Maybe today you won't make it as nice as you usually do," she said hopefully.

"Maybe I won't," I agreed kindly.

I started opening and shutting cupboards, searching for utensils for making the pesto sauce. It soon became apparent that despite our refrigerator-freezer and our microwave, in all other respects our kitchen was the Kitchen That Time Forgot. In one of the cupboards there was an enormous heavy beige ceramic mixing bowl with about an inch of dust on it. It was probably a wedding present when Mum got married nearly thirty years ago. And it looked as if it had yet to be used. There was a charming artifact of a hand whisk that could have been from the Bronze Age or could be even older. It was in marvelous condition, considering its great age.

There was even a cookbook that was printed in 1952 with recipes that included powdered egg in the list of ingredients and faded sepia-tinted pictures of heavily decorated Victorian sandwiches.

Positively prehistoric.

It wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest if a couple of dinosaurs lumbered through the kitchen door, had a slice of bread and butter and a glass of milk while standing at the 96.counter, put their plates and glasses in the dishwasher, nodded civilly to me and lumbered out again.

I thought with a pang of loss of my well-stocked kitchen in London. My blender, my food processor that could do everything except tell funny stories, my juice extractor-not just a citrus fruit one, mind, but a proper juicer. I could certainly have done with them now.

"Haven't you got anything at all that I could use for chopping?" I asked Mum in exasperation.

"Well," she aid doubtfully, "how about this? Would this be any good?"

she said anxiously, offering me an egg mandolin, still in its box.

"Thanks, Mum, but no." I sighed. "What am I going to use to chop the basil?"

"In the past I've usually found that one of these works quite well," she said, now in a slightly sarcastic tone, obviously a little bit fed up with my pretentious antics. "It's called a knife. I'm sure that if we ring around we could find a shop in Dublin that stocks them."

Suitably humbled, I accepted the knife and started to chop the basil.

"And what exactly are you making?" asked Mum, who sat watching me looking half resentful, half fascinated, as if she couldn't believe something as outlandish as cooking was going on in her kitchen.

"A sauce to go with the pasta," I told her as I stood chopping. "It's called pesto."

She sat there silently, just looking at me as I worked.

"And what's in that?" she asked after a while, obviously hating herself for asking.

"Basil, olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and garlic," I told her calmly and matter-of-factly.

I didn't want to panic her.

"Oh yes," she murmured, nodding sagely, knowingly, as if she encountered such ingredients every day of her life.

"First of all I chop the basil very finely," I told her, in the same manner that a surgeon uses to explain to his prospective patient how he will perform the triple bypass.

Gently, thoroughly, dispelling any mystique.

("First of all, I break your sternum.") 97."Then I add the olive oil," I continued.

("Then I open up your rib cage.") "Then I crush the pine nuts, from the bag here," I told her, rustling the bag.

("Then I borrow some veins from your leg-have a look on the chart here.") "Finally I add the crushed garlic and the Parmesan cheese," I finished.

"Simple!"

("Then we sew you back up and in a month's time you'll be walking two miles a day!") Mum seemed to take all this information calmly in her stride. I must say, I was proud of her.

"Well, go easy on the garlic," she told me. "It's hard enough to get Anna to come home as it is. We don't want the poor little vampire to think we're picking on her."

"Anna's not a vampire." I laughed.

"How do you know?" asked Mum. "She certainly looks like one a lot of the time, all that hair and those awful long purple dresses and that desperate makeup. Would you not have a word with her and try to get her to smarten herself up a bit?"

"But the way she looks is the way she is," I told Mum as I put the chopped basil into a saucepan. "It's Anna. She wouldn't be Anna if she looked different."

"I know," sighed Mum. "But I'm sure the neighbors think we don't clothe the child at all. And those boots! I've a good mind to just throw them out on her."

"Oh no, Mum, please don't do that," I said anxiously, thinking that Anna would break her heart without the Doc Martens she had so lovingly painted with sunrises and flowers.

I must admit that I was also slightly concerned about whose shoes Anna would wear if hers were thrown out. I feared for mine.

"I'll have to see," threatened Mum darkly. "And now what are you doing?"

"I'm adding the olive oil," I told her.

"What did you buy oil for?" she demanded, obviously thinking that she had a bunch of idiots for daughters. "There's a bottle of oil that I use to fry french fries. You could have used that and saved yourself the money."

98."Er...thanks. I'll know the next time," I told her.