I don't have to knock on Mindy's front door in Whalley Range as she's heard the taxi's engine and is already waiting, arms folded, as if I've overshot my curfew. She's also obviously on high alert due to my text insisting I was on my way to hers and not under any circ.u.mstances to go to bed, however much the Shipping News encouraged it. As I reach her, I see Caroline's head bobbing over her shoulder, both of them wearing forehead-crumpling expressions of concern.

'What's up?' Mindy demands.

They stand back as I sweep into the kitchen and throw my bag down on Mindy's kitchen table. I must look a state: up-do unravelling, smoky eyes gone full polecat-smudgy, problems with normal respiration.

'Olivia tricked me into admitting me and Ben slept together at university and went supernova and said I could never come near either of them ever again.'

Mindy and Caroline stare at me with dull stupefaction, as if I've blown in from another world using an alien language, which this Sat.u.r.day night, I sort of have.

'Wait, wait.' Mindy holds a hand up. 'You slept with him?'

'Once. Right before we left university. Remember Rhys and I called it off around graduation?'

'You wily lady!' Mindy squeals. 'Why'd you never tell us? When? Where?'

'Mindy!' Caroline barks. 'What the f.u.c.k does it matter where it was?'

'I'm just trying to get the facts established!'

'At our student house. You and Caro were home the night before the grad ball? Then.'

'Why did you never tell us?' Caroline echoes Mindy, with a different intonation.

I slump down into a chair, stifling a wince at how my heat, food and booze-swollen body strains against the seams of the dress as I do so.

'It was totally unexpected. I was in love with him and I messed it up and somehow let him think I wasn't that keen and it was over before it began. Rhys walked back into the ball, Ben legged it and never took a phone call from me again, went off travelling, that was that. I've never been able to bear talking about it. It was as if, if I pretended it hadn't happened, it couldn't hurt as much.'

'Ooh G.o.d,' says Mindy, under her breath.

'And what happened with Olivia?' Caroline asks.

She looks, if not stern, then wary. This is all too much what she predicted. I outline Olivia's specific objections to me, and Simon's more general ones.

'Get tae f.u.c.k!' Mindy shouts. 'Who's he to say that? And what a b.i.t.c.h!'

Caroline says nothing. I put my head in my hands.

'Come on, come to the sofa,' Mindy says, guiding me. 'Those chairs aren't really for sitting, I got them because they look great with that table.'

Once I'm deposited on softer seating I feel myself under intense scrutiny.

'It was one night? Ben liked you too?' Mindy asks.

'At the time he said he loved me. He was about to go travelling, I had my post-grad course. The timing was all wrong.'

Caroline still says nothing.

'You don't have to say it, you were right,' I tell her. 'I should never have risked being Ben's friend again.'

'I don't get what you did wrong. Are you supposed to say sorry for something that happened years before he met his wife?' Mindy asks.

I chew my lip.

'Let me get this straight, have you been trying to lure Ben away?' Mindy asks.

'No, but ...'

'Then I don't blame either of you for not making a thing out of it. If you'd dated before and kept it quiet now, OK, that's deception. Anything less is sparing people's feelings. No one hands over a full disclosure list at the signing of the register. It's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."'

I laugh weakly, despite myself. 'Like gays in the US military?'

'Yeah!'

I glance at Caroline. I look back at Mindy. Am I going to say it? I've barely admitted it to myself. I am. I'm going to have to say it.

'It's a bad idea for me to be his friend because ...'

Two pairs of eyes widen in expectation.

'... Seeing him again has made me realise the ridiculous truth. I'm still in love with him.'

Caroline and Mindy look at each other and then at me again.

'Really?' Mindy breathes.

'It's demented and tragic, I know,' I say.

'It's crazily romantic.'

'He's married, Mindy,' Caroline says, flatly.

'Yep, he's married, so it's nothing but sad and wrong,' I say, horribly aware that Caroline must feel as if she's being asked to sympathise with the kind of woman who fooled around with Graeme. 'I was stood there with Olivia insulting me thinking, I deserve this.'

'You don't deserve it!' Mindy says, but her eyes flicker towards Caroline in uncertainty.

Pause.

'Look,' Caroline addresses us both, 'you've been great about Graeme behaving like an utter d.i.c.k but I feel as if you expect me to take some hard line or want to treat me with kid gloves and I'm the same person. My views are still my views and, Rachel, yes, I said I thought you should be careful of the spark between you and Ben before this, and before I became a scorned woman myself. But as for this evening, I think the row with Olivia is Ben's fault.'

Even in my relief at being excused I feel a pang of protectiveness.

'Olivia deserved to know the full history and he was the one who had a duty to tell her, not you.'

'Yeah. What were you supposed to say?' Mindy says. 'Hi, nice to meet you, by the way, I've had your husband?''

'And you broke off your engagement not so long ago. You're bound to be vulnerable and he's the married one. He should've known better to let things get to this point,' Caroline concludes.

Long pause. Amid all the mess of cans and worms, I feel better for having told them.

'Is she going to give me evils if I ask more questions?' Mindy points at Caroline.

'Oh, do what you like, Mindy,' Caroline says, with a shrug, though I can see she's amused. She asked for business as usual, she's got it.

'One night, ten years on, you still love him. It must've been quite a night?'

'Er ... yes.'

'I mean. He was amazing? An amazing boff?'

'I got what you meant, Mind. Yes. He was.'

Mindy pulls her legs underneath her on the sofa, trying not to look like she's enjoying herself. Mindy loves a drama, and that goes treble for a drama that involves someone who's amazing at boffing. 'When did it change? I mean, when you were at uni and with Rhys, when did your feelings towards Ben change?'

'I don't know, exactly. It happened by degrees without me ever noticing and by the time I did, it was sort of overwhelming. I'd ignored it, and then WHAM he says I love you ...'

'He loved Wham?' Mindy asks.

'No, "WHAM", like a cartoon explosion sound effect. He loved me ...'

'Sorry, sorry! Of course. Carry on.'

'And there it was, he said it and I knew I loved him too. I thought he was so far out of my league, I hadn't even dared think it, let alone say it.'

'If he ran off, he could've had second thoughts, though?' Caroline asks, and I know she's not being unkind, just trying to take the edge off my regret.

'I'm not sure. He brought it up, when we went for a drink the other night. It was clear he thought I'd got back with Rhys at the ball and that I didn't feel the same way.'

'What did you say?!' Mindy wails, as if I keep issuing cliffhangers from The Young and The Restless.

'I had to more or less go along with it. Not as if I could say, no, it was all a huge misunderstanding, I miss you every d.a.m.n moment.'

'You don't know that it was a mistake,' Caroline says. 'Maybe you and Ben would've imploded in three months flat after a huge fight in a tuk tuk.'

'Maybe.'

'OK. I'm going to make cups of tea and put whisky in them,' Mindy says.

Caroline and I sit in silence for a short while, listening to Mindy pottering around in the next room.

'Aren't you going to say I told you so?' I say to Caroline. 'I deserve it and then some.'

'You didn't say that to me about Graeme.'

'You weren't remotely to blame!'

'You and Graeme have never exactly been close, I know you don't have much time for him ...' I open my mouth and Caroline shakes her head to stop me politely demurring '... but you've never said a word against him and you didn't pull him to pieces over this latest ... transgression or give me grief for taking him back and I appreciated it. None of us are perfect. I warned you about Ben. I thought you were going to unintentionally hurt other people. I didn't realise you were mainly h.e.l.l bent on hurting yourself.'

'I knew it was doomed, Caro, I just wanted to see him again so much,' I say, mournfully.

'I know, I know. It was me opening my big mouth about seeing him at the library anyway,' Caroline says, leaning over and giving me a shoulder pat. 'He's unfinished business. It's bound to have stirred you up, him coming back when he did. Don't be too sure it's love.'

Good old Caro. She will always 'see it, say it'.

Mindy comes back in with mugs of tea. Caroline sniffs hers and wrinkles her nose. 'Jeez, what's this, eighteen per cent proof builder's?'

'My dad gave me some Glenfiddich for Christmas, I've been looking for a use for it.'

'You tipped a Scottish single malt in tea? This is a terrorist act.'

I sip mine. Hot, sweet, laced ideal for a shock. All I need now is the marathon runner's foil cape.

'Try to remember this,' Caroline says, getting back to the topic. 'A proper relationship with Ben would've involved arguing over his c.r.a.p DIY, the stage where he thinks he can do the squeeze-and-splash into the toilet when you're in the shower, and visits to Dunelm Mill.'

'Where's Dunelm Mill?' I ask.

'It's an outlet shop. My point is, the life with him you feel like you lost out on, it's perfect because it's a fantasy and it's a fantasy because it's perfect.'

Mindy places a consoling hand on my arm. 'And look at this way. What you and Ben had, one night, it was this ideal thing, like in Casablanca when they say we'll always have Paris.'

'We'll always have the Wilbraham Road boffing?'

'Yeah. With how things have turned out, you don't have to spoil it. You don't have to slowly go off each other, see the other one get senile and die.'

I sweep my sweaty fringe out of my eyes.

'The problem is, after all these years, I can't think of anyone I'd more like to slowly go off, see get senile and die than Ben.'

65.

At least the maxim about newspaper people 'short tempers, short memories' has some truth: no one's entirely forgotten what happened with Natalie, but with each pa.s.sing day, I see that if it's not quite old news yet, it's getting older every day. I can survive it.

Zoe gets her name in the Mail regularly. It turns out one of the 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' is being a shocking piece of work. I'm sure she'll end up with her own column by age thirty. She'll use it to berate venal politicians and hypocritical celebrities for lying to us, with one of those byline photos where she looks like she's staring down someone taking a dump in her garden.

Speaking of ordure and questionable hacks, Gretton's taken to bringing me a dung-coffee in the press room every morning. It's nice of him and yet it makes me mildly uncomfortable. Have I been brought so low that even Gretton feels sorry for me?

'You're more stream of p.i.s.s than Jesus's sunbeam!' is a typical gee-me-up greeting.

He's also started sharing story tips, with predictably horrifying results.