'Sorry. He was so nasty about her I thought it served him right.'

'I know. Bear in mind you could've messed it up for all of us. The public don't tend to make much distinction between good journalists and Grettons. A lot of them don't even understand about open court. They're amazed they can't have us thrown out.'

'I'm really sorry.'

'Ah well ... sensitive "our pain" interviews aren't his forte, I can't see him cosying up to the mum, so it probably won't become an issue anyway. And he'll hack them off by doing lots of gratuitous exploding a.r.s.e stories during the trial.'

Conversation's interrupted while we negotiate road crossing. When we resume progress, Zoe says: 'My mum's large.'

'Really?' I glance doubtfully at her sapling limbs.

'I got my dad's metabolism,' she says. 'Yeah, she looked into gastric banding at one point. But she was too big.'

'Why would they ...' I start again. 'Isn't that the point?'

Zoe mutters something about surgery and anaesthesia risk.

'Then she finally lost the weight and got the band, and started drinking those chocolate-flavoured protein shakes for body builders.'

'Right. Liquids are probably best, at first. What with the smaller s.p.a.ce.'

'Not if you chug them all day and end up the size you were when you were turned down for surgery.'

'Ah,' I say. Poor Zoe her jet-propelled ambition is probably a result of wanting to get a long way from problems at home.

'Gretton hit a nerve,' she concludes.

I feel bad for telling her off. I squeeze her arm.

'Gretton hits all our nerves. Don't dwell on it.'

'Should I take back what I said? Tell the mum I misheard or something?'

'I doubt she'd forget the ice-cream gag. Nah, leave it. Thanks for pointing her my way, too,' I add, not wanting to sound ungrateful.

'Any time,' Zoe says. 'We're a team. Lunch is on me today. I'm going to try a Piscine Ploughman.'

'A p.i.s.sing ploughman?'

'Smoked salmon sandwich.'

'Oh.'

'I made that up.'

'Thank goodness.'

'They call it Fishy on a Dishy.'

'You're ordering,' I say, opening the pub door and ushering Zoe through. 'I suffer enough humiliation without going looking for more.'

25.

'Oi!' Caroline shouted, over the aircraft-like noise of my travel hairdryer. I clicked it off. 'Ben for you!'

I galloped down the stairs of our student house to the hallway. We rarely made outgoing calls our landlord had installed a payphone at his own rate that gobbled up coins like a sweating diabetic with Giant Smarties.

'Ron! Culinary SOS!' Ben said. 'I'm making dinner for Georgina and it has TURNED TO s.h.i.t.'

'You're cooking?' I said, laughing and simultaneously envying Georgina for being the kind of woman men sweat over a flambee to impress. 'Why not go out?'

'She got the wrong end of the stick and I didn't know how to set her straight. She was all ...' Ben affected the breathy, 1950s starlet voice she used with men rather well '... I can't wait to try your cooking, Ben.'

'Haha, this is going to be great! You best call on the little hombre from Homepride.'

'She's not the kind of girl who's going to find it funny to be served a Findus Crispy Pancake sandwich, is she?'

Ben lived with boys who re-used dirty plates by putting clingfilm over them instead of washing up. Georgina was going to need a robust const.i.tution and all her vaccinations, I thought.

'I can't vouch for her sense of humour but I've never seen her crack a smile. Even in those laugh-a-minute linguistics lectures.'

'Help! What do I do?'

I gave an exaggerated sigh.

'How long have you got until she comes round?'

'Three hours ... no, wait, two hours forty-five minutes!'

'And what's my budget if I go to the supermarket on the way to yours?'

'Whatever it takes! You're my angel.'

'Yeah yeah.'

I turned up at Ben's house in my knitted woolly hat carrying misshapen supermarket bags with steadily lengthening handles in each hand.

'Lemme in, these are going to break,' I said, barging through the porch and plopping them unceremoniously on the hallway floor.

'Ah Ron, bless you.' Ben rescued a tub of creme fraiche as it rolled towards the coat-stand.

'I've bought you flowers too,' I said, producing a cellophane cornet of white hothouse roses from one of the bags. 'I feel as if I'm seducing someone by proxy, like Cyrano de Bergerac.'

'Superb!'

I knew I must've been fond of Ben, 'cos I sure as h.e.l.l didn't want to be seducing Georgina Race with anything more than a bouquet of stinging nettles, severed rat tails and tampon strings. And yet, apparently, I was.

With the help of supermarket recipe idea cards, we a.s.sembled something fairly respectable: asparagus starters, stuffed chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, potato gratin, white chocolate mousse with raspberries. I delegated tasks to Ben and he put music on while we worked. He actually proved quite an able deputy. The fridge gradually filled up with foil-wrapped dishes.

'I didn't know you could cook,' he said.

'I can't, really. I'm making it up as I go along.'

'Now she tells me.'

'Here are the timings.' I jotted down oven temperatures on a sc.r.a.p of paper and tucked them behind the kettle. 'Follow them in that order and give her the bubbly as soon as she arrives. You can get away with much imperfection when people are p.i.s.sed. What are you wearing?'

'A shirt?' said Ben, uncertain. He was in a red '66 World Cup top. It directly contravened Article 7.1 of Rhys's w.a.n.ker Law that stated you didn't advertise any event you hadn't attended, any place you'd never been, or any band you didn't really listen to.

'Think smart. No sports-related casual wear.'

'Got it.'

'I'll leave you to get ready.'

I pulled my coat on, picked my hat up. 'Good luck,' I said.

'You are my angel and your reward is in heaven,' Ben said.

'It's certainly not on earth,' I grumbled.

As I walked back to my house, something niggled, and it wasn't the fact I'd cooked a meal I wasn't going to eat.

Knocking round with Ben platonically catching the odd envious look from girls who misconstrued the situation obscured something that could be decreed by any efficient eugenics programme: boys like him dated and procreated with girls like Georgina Race. I didn't want to date, much less procreate with, either of them, but there was something diminishing in having it confirmed.

I was back at those fireworks, remembering that there were females for fun s.e.xy secret times, and then there was good old doughty Ronnie. A minx for spotting a discount deal on Sainsbury's pain de campagne.

The next day, we met up at our ten o'clock lecture, Ben sliding into the seat beside me, wearing a sly grin.

'Soooo ... how did it go?' I said, grinning back, chewing on my pen lid.

'Good,' Ben said. 'She loved dinner. Absolutely loved it. Thanks.'

'You're seeing each other?' I asked.

'Doubt it.' Ben shook his head.

'Oh.' I didn't know if I should ask any more questions, or if Ben wanted me to. I thought he was turning away from me to bring an end to the topic, then realised he was making sure we weren't being overheard.

'She was boring! Christ, she was boring. At first I thought it was nerves, but she's so dull. And self-absorbed. The weird thing is, I don't even think she's that fit any more. The shine's rubbed off. Nice girl and all that. But ... not for me.'

I ignored the lightning-flash of joy that zapped across my insides.

'Never mind. At least I shopped for dinner. You only wasted a trip to Lloyd's Pharmacy ...'

'Oh, we still did it,' Ben replied. 'Not going to all that effort for a conversation about Hertfordshire prep schools and collecting Tiffany bracelet charms.'

I looked at him. His expression was impa.s.sive. I remembered the conversation in MacDougal's about swordsmanship. There was a strange churning where the lightning had been.

'What? That's grim!'

'Eh?'

'You don't like her as a person, but you still had s.e.x? That's shallow and appalling. Poor Georgina, you're calling her boring after she's become a notch on your bedpost? Talk about disrespectful.' Rachel Woodford, defender of Georgina Race's maidenhood. This was a new one.

'Alright, settle down.'

'I thought more of you than that,' I said.

'People do have casual s.e.x out here in the real and imperfect world, you know, it doesn't have to be seen as an aggressive act,' Ben hissed.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'I mean, we're not all lucky enough to be with our soul mates, but we're not going to be celibate while we wait for them to turn up.'

I could've said something here about not harbouring any delusions that he was living like an ascetic monk, but Ben had matched me in righteous anger. I'd never felt so grateful for a lecture starting.

Soul mate. Had I said that? In the Greek holiday blather? Oh G.o.d. Maybe I had. I realised now I'd laid it on thick in case Ben had sussed the fact I'd swooned during last year's kiss. In actual fact, Rhys and I had definitively exited the honeymoon period. Being treated as an equal by peers at university had made me less willing to tolerate the slightly domineering, aloof manner that had felt so Mr Darcy in our early days. In turn, he accused me of 'getting up myself'. If I was truly honest, I knew Rhys's surprise holiday stunt was as much about him re-establishing who had the whip hand as it was about summer lovin' and dolmades.

After a while, Ben pushed his notes towards me so I could see he'd written in the margin: 'Joking.'

I scowled in incomprehension, drew a question mark underneath it, pushed it back.

'We didn't,' he wrote, underscoring the second word several times to make his meaning plain. 'What's the matter?'

Good question. I read it, shrugged, pa.s.sed it back. Was I really so uptight I expected my single friends to live by my rules?

Lecture over, we had tutorials in different parts of the building. I was out of my seat, down the steps and by the door in seconds. Ben caught up with me, grabbing my arm before I could stalk off.

'Look, I was being laddish, you usually find it funny,' he said, under his breath.

I rudely shook my arm free, even though his hold had been gentle.

'For the record, we didn't do anything and I didn't want to,' he added. 'I still can't see why it would've been some moral failure.'

'None of my business,' I said, haughtily, heart suddenly banging against my ribs as if it wanted to make a break for it and scuttle off to the Victorian Essayists ahead of me. My behaviour suggested I'd be a good fit for the era.

'I'd have had a better time if you'd stayed,' Ben said, nailing the source of my anxiety more accurately than I wanted.

'Why do you say it like that? Like it's the lowest standard "I'd have had a better time even if Ron had stayed."'