'On the one hand, this is clearly a story,' I announce, needlessly.

Zoe holds her inked skin up. 'On this hand. It's a cracking story.' Her eyes sparkle, suddenly much brighter and clearer. 'You are a flipping legend.'

Despite the sensation of having peered under a rock and found a creepy-crawly, I feel my head swell slightly. At least I'm showing Zoe a good time.

'Not down to any journalistic nous. But thanks.'

'On the other hand ...?'

'On the other hand, Natalie Shale will be hounded. Lucas's appeal could be jeopardised by all the publicity. Imagine being locked up for something you didn't do, and finding out something like this? Jonathan Grant will most likely lose his job. I don't know exactly how it works in law. I think once you've done something this unprofessional, you get struck off.'

'True. She decided to start s.h.a.gging her husband's brief, and vice versa. That's not your responsibility.'

'I know, but I wouldn't have found out about it if I hadn't snooped while I was a guest in her house.'

'Where was she when you were looking at her phone?'

'Outside talking to a neighbour.'

'But you've got to remember, this is ma.s.sive,' Zoe says. 'This is the story they'd talk about in your leaving speech. You could always call Natalie and see if she'll talk to you about it.'

'Somehow I don't think that's even slightly likely, and I can't test the water without creating a big fuss. I'm friends with her husband's current solicitor.' More than friends, perhaps. 'It'd end up with them freaking out and demanding I spike my interview, I guarantee it.'

Zoe gnaws her lip.

'If I hadn't called that number, you wouldn't have to worry about this.'

'S'alright,' I say, tipsily. 'I'm gonna go to the loo, and by the time I come back, I'll know the answer.'

As I yank paper towels out of the dispenser with excessive force, a drunken thought worms its way into my mind, a worm in the rotten apple I have for a head. Leave Natalie to her affair, leave them all alone, because who am I to say how she's found happiness, anyway? Lucas could've been a tyrant of a husband, for all I know. Jonathan may have swept her off her size three feet. It could all be over by the time Lucas is released. It might've been a 'moment of madness' she regrets, as politicians have it. What truly matters to me isn't the morality of what they're doing, or a front page splash. It's a man in south Manchester. I want to do whatever would make him proud, even if he'll never know a thing about it. Is there a way to break this story and not anger Simon or alienate Ben? Would I take it if there was, turn Natalie over and head off into the sunset? I ball the paper towels, aim a throw for the bin, and miss.

I rejoin an expectant Zoe at the table.

'Well?' she says.

'Well, there was no thunderbolt. Which is frustrating as I usually have all my epiphanies in the bogs at The Castle.'

Zoe laughs. I feel p.i.s.sed.

It's time to stop pretending when I know what I'm going to do. 'No, I'm going to leave it be, Zoe,' I say. 'Not the boldest decision I ever made, but I'll be able to sleep at night.'

'Really?' Zoe says.

'Really. Nothing good can come of what I did. It was wrong. Every instinct I have is telling me to steer clear.'

'I think you've probably made the right decision.'

'Do you know what, I'm absolutely sure it's the right one. I can feel it.'

'G.o.d, can you imagine what Gretton would do if he had this in his sticky mitts?' Zoe giggles. 'He'd die and go to heaven.'

'Gretton's not going to heaven, he's off to the hot place,' I say. 'Speaking of hot, fancy soaking all of this up with a curry?'

46.

I marked my twenty-first with an Indian meal at a restaurant in Rusholme. It was our favourite on the curry mile: the waiters recognised us, made a fuss of us and brought us free kulfi along with mints and the platter of plastic-sheathed tubes of hot, artificial lemon-scented flannels.

When I booked I explained the occasion, and on arrival we saw they'd kindly draped the table with streamers that ended up getting dragged through the mango chutney. It wasn't much of a celebration, as twenty-firsts go, but we were on the verge of our finals and everyone was a little weary, tense and spent up.

As Ben didn't know my friends all that well he brought his latest girlfriend, Pippa, who I'd been told had nursed a thing for him for a long time before they got together. I wondered if he was in love too. I'd heard a male friend of Ben's admiringly describe her as 'the whole package'. He pinned down exactly what made me uncomfortable about pet.i.te Pippa. Ben had been with many honeys but never such a nice one. River of Caramac-coloured hair, proportions like a p.o.r.n Thumbelina and worst of all, the inner to go with the outer.

'You look beautiful,' she said to me earnestly, in her soft Dublin lilt, which made it sound even more earnest.

'Thank you!'

I didn't. I'd spent an hour creating a Shirley Temple do with curling tongs. I imagined loose, glossy ringlets, the type which bounce like telephone wire in the adverts. Instead I looked slightly manic, like the mugshot of a disgraced American prom queen who'd got caught consorting with the king in the parking lot.

As Rhys took charge of dispensing the Cobras, Caroline wanted to know what he'd bought me for my birthday.

'Typical girl things. Perfume, underwear. The grundies are for me, though.'

'You're a cross-dresser?' Caroline asked, heaping a sliver of poppadom with pink onion.

'I'll appreciate her in it. You should see the stuff she usually wears ... like a St Trinian.'

'Shut up,' I barked, covering my mouth to avoid spraying the table with shards of deep-fried appetiser.

'Some men like that,' Caroline said.

'Not st.u.r.dy stuff, like you're doing PE.'

'Rhys!'

'Ooh, I think you'll find they do,' Caroline said, drizzling with a zig-zag of mint sauce from a teaspoon.

'One of my boyfriends made me do role play where I had to call him the Maharaja,' Mindy offered, and we all politely ignored her.

'She's even got pants with pictures of cartoon characters on them,' Rhys continued. 'What's that woolly thing from Sesame Street with a hat called?'

Face on fire, without the help of a vindaloo, I kicked Rhys hard under the table.

'Ow, f.u.c.k! That hurt!'

I glanced at Ben to check if he'd heard any of this. He pretended to be engrossed in the menu for my sake, which made me even more embarra.s.sed.

'Oscar the Grouch,' Caroline offered.

'Grouchy? She's chipped bone,' Rhys said.

'No the cartoon creature.'

Adjusting my dress on my return from a loo trip, I noticed Ben was absent from the table. I spotted him outside, back leaning against the window. The drink was flowing at the table. Everyone was still picking at dun-coloured jalfrezis, dhansaks, kormas and anthills of clove-studded, primrose yellow rice. I squeezed unnoticed through the dining room and out the door.

'What's going on here?'

Ben started at the sound of my voice.

'I needed some air. What're you doing out here?'

I clutched my rounded belly, under the lace of my dress. 'I reached a tandoori grill event horizon.'

He smiled.

A car with a pimped-out exhaust hurtled past, d.i.c.khead music blasting from its four wound-down windows. We said nothing until the noise faded, shivering slightly in the northern England early evening. The air smelled of wood-smoke and the spicy chicken wings shack doing brisk business next door.

'Twenty-one, eh, Ron? Knocking on.'

'Hah. Yeah.'

'Got a plan? Everything mapped out? Career, marriage, kids, that sort of thing?'

'Not really.'

'But you're definitely going back to Sheffield?'

'Well yes, since the journalism course will have me.'

I was vaguely surprised at the question. Since I'd applied, been accepted, and wittered about it at great length, what else would I do?

'What about you? You going to end the Great World Tour in Ireland?' I asked.

Ben and his friend Mark had been planning a six-month globetrot since they were about fifteen. Ben's redoubtable work ethic meant he was sitting on some serious savings. They'd recently bought the tickets and Ben had excitedly shown me their route on a map of Asia spread out on a table in the refectory.

His imminent departure was forcing me to face a thought I'd been trying to avoid: how were we going to stay in touch, in the sense of actually being involved in each other's lives, beyond the odd postcard? Would his serious girlfriends be OK with me? Would Rhys start to make jokes about my Other Man that would make us all uncomfortable?

Ben and I had been this exclusive club of two, both tacitly understanding it was one no one else could join. This exclusivity would likely prove our undoing. With all firm good intentions, I couldn't quite see it working across a geographical distance as well as gender divide. If anybody had asked if Ben and I were going to stay mates, I'd have said yes, but if you took me to an interrogation room and shone a lamp in my face and demanded to know the G.o.dd.a.m.n truth, I was pretty sure how the odds were stacked. There'd be no 'going out for a session and crashing at his' once time had elapsed and suspicious significant others had to sign it all off. Letters and phone calls would entail offers to visit that both of us would find awkward to keep pretending we would make, so contact would gradually dry up. In the face of various practicalities, multiplied by years, friendship would dwindle away and, worst of all, we'd want to forget and let it happen, because it would be easier that way.

'Do you think I should move to Ireland?' he asked.

'Pippa seems lovely,' I said, truthfully.

We both glanced into the restaurant to see an animated Rhys twisting a balloon into a comedy shape to entertain a giggly Pippa.

'That's not an answer.'

'Only you know if you should, Ben.'

'This is true. I don't know.'

Say something meaningful, I thought. Tell him we're going to stay friends and distance doesn't matter.

'Out of all my friends back home I was the one who never stressed about anything,' Ben said. 'I thought it would all fall into place. I've changed my mind. Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they're made for you, but you can't avoid them.'

'You don't have to do anything you don't want to.'

His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it probably was about to rain anyway. With Ben in a low mood, I wished the evening could've been better.

'Sorry about Rhys, earlier. He goes too far sometimes,' I said.

There was a gap where I expected Ben to demur, and he didn't.

'Why do you take it?'

My stomach flipped, full as it was. 'What?'

Ben didn't criticise Rhys. If I ever recounted disagreements we'd had, Ben invariably saw Rhys's side. I feigned annoyance, but it was rea.s.suring, considerate. The same way sensitive friends know not to join in when you're slagging off your family.

'You don't seem very equal, to me. You can be so confident, but that disappears when you're around him. It doesn't make sense.'

My embarra.s.sment curdled into irritation. What the h.e.l.l? It's my birthday.

'I give as good as I get I don't pick fights in public, that's all. Look, you might be feeling down but don't take it out on us.'

The 'us' was deliberate. We stand united, even when Rhys is making a balloon poodle for another woman. Ben frowned and said nothing, staring determinedly ahead. I'd never seen him like this before. I wondered if I knew him quite as well as I thought I did.

Eventually he said: 'To be fair, it's pretty weird to have Oscar the Grouch in the garbage can on your crotch. What's the message? "Here's my junk"?'

The tension eased. I took the olive branch.

'It was Fozzie Bear.'

'Ah, Fozzie. He makes much more sense when wooing is in mind. I take it all back.'

'They say "Wocka Wocka Wocka" on the rear.'

'Hmm. All I can say is, if you were my girlfriend, I'd certainly be desperate for you to take them off,' Ben said, smiling that disarming smile at last, though this uncharacteristically flirtatious remark had already disarmed me.

'We'd better go back in,' I said, nervily.

As the warm smell of spices and tw.a.n.g of sitars. .h.i.t us, a ragged chorus of 'Happy Birthday' started up. Two waiters appeared with a whipped-cream-topped sundae, a smattering of candles sticking out of it. As Ben returned to Pippa's side and everyone started clapping, I blew my candles out, took a small bow and returned to my seat.