My mum leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. 'Come on, no one likes a bitter lemon. Show me your new digs.'

We take the stairs instead of the lift, me walking with the heavy tread of someone on their way to the electric chair, not the kind of lifestyle flat that has a pink fridge. I pull the key out of my pocket and let us in. It smells strange in here, as in, not like home. I stare balefully at the mini-mountain of my c.r.a.p that's blotting the manicured landscape.

'Goodness me, very gaudy, isn't it. Like the 1960s have been sick.'

'Thanks Mum! I like it actually.'

'Hmm, well as long as you do, that's the main thing. I can see that it's different.'

Different is usually an innocuous word, but it's one of my mum's most d.a.m.ning verdicts.

She unhooks her handbag from her shoulder and sits down next to me. I know exactly what's coming. She clears her throat. Here it comes ...

'Now. You and Rhys. I understand you're going through a crisis-'

'Mum! I'm not going through it, like a squall of bad weather on the road to still getting married. We've broken up.'

'If you'd allow me to speak, as someone who's been married forty years ...'

I pick sullenly at a seam on the sofa.

'... Marriage is difficult. You do get on each other's nerves. It's relentless. It's very, very tough and quite honestly, even in the good times, you do wish they'd go boil their head, most days.'

'I'm not too bothered about missing out on it then!'

'What I'm saying is, what you're feeling it's perfectly normal.'

'If relationships are only ever what we had, I'd rather be on my own.'

Pause.

'You could be throwing away your only chance to have children, have you thought of that?'

My mum: not a loss to the world of motivational speaking.

'Amazingly enough I had factored it in, but, thanks ...'

'I simply want you to be very sure you're making the right decision, that's all. You and Rhys have been together an awfully long time.'

'That's why I'm sure.' Pause. 'It'd mean a lot to me if you took me seriously and accepted I know my own mind about who I do and don't want to marry, Mum. This is hard enough as it is.'

'Well. If you're absolutely sure.'

'I am.' And of course as I say it, I realise I'm not absolutely sure. I'm as sure as I a.s.sume you need to be, given I've never broken off an engagement before and have nothing to compare this to.

My mum stands up.

'Your dad and I will be round soon. Let us know if we need to bring any odds and sods you're short of.'

'OK, thanks.' Suddenly my throat has furred up and I give her a tight squeeze, inhaling her familiar scent of YSL Rive Gauche in place of Rupa's flat's olfactory newness.

With my mum's departure, relief though it is, I feel almost as bereft as I did when waving my parents off from the halls of residence car park. I need a ma.s.sive cup of tea, one that requires two handles on the mug in order to lift it. With a tot of Maker's Mark in it.

I stare out of the huge window and suddenly the vastness doesn't seem glamorous, but precarious. I imagine how tiny I'd look from the other side of the gla.s.s. A little scared sad insignificant figure peering down over the Manchester rooftops.

For a lurching moment, I'm so homesick I almost shout out loud: I want to go home. But home and Rhys are indivisible.

13.

In late afternoon, when I've filled dead air with impersonal radio, a weird additional sound echoes round the room and I realise it's the doorbell. I unlatch the chain and swing the door open to see an explosion of pink and white flowers and a pair of legging-clad legs beneath them.

'Happy Moving-In Day!' Mindy shouts.

'h.e.l.lo, wow, lilies. That talk. That's lovely of you.'

Mindy pushes her way through the door, Ivor trailing behind, hands in pockets. He leans in and gives me a peck on the cheek. I can tell from his reluctant demeanour that Mindy's given him a 'Congratulate Her On Making A Good Choice' lecture on the way here. He holds out a Marks & Spencer bag.

'From me, but not chosen by me, I hasten to add,' Ivor says. 'I did not touch cloth, as they say.'

I peer inside. Pyjamas. Really nice ones, in cream silk.

'You're not going to cry are you?' Ivor says. 'The receipt's in there.'

'I'm not going to cry,' I say, tearing up a bit. 'Thank you.'

As Mindy turns this way and that, looking for the right surface to put the flowers, she leaves a ma.s.sive sweep of ochre pollen on the pristine, wedding cake wall.

'They're from Ivor too,' she adds, finding her pitch and marching over to the coffee table, more pollen from the trembling flowers shaking a fine, fire-coloured powder in her wake.

I discreetly put a hand over my mouth, surveying the mess.

'You're welcome!' Mindy sing-songs, turning round and seeing me, taking it as being agog at the gift.

Ivor has followed my line of sight. He adds under his breath: 'Let's say they're from you. I'll clean up, shall I?'

'What do you think, Ivor?' Mindy calls, doing a gameshow-girl twirl to indicate she means the flat.

'I think it looks like a female American Psycho's lair. Patrick Batewoman.' He rinses a chamois under the tap, which is on one of those bendy arms you usually see in industrial kitchens. 'In a good way.'

As Mindy potters around in vermilion ankle boots, taking it all in for a second time, Ivor gingerly dabs at the damage. He turns to me and nods, to say it's coming off, and gestures for me to join Mindy.

'Drink?' I ask, wondering as I say it where my kettle is and what I'm going to do for milk.

'I can't stay actually, I've got a date,' Mindy says.

'Bo ... Robert?' I ask.

'Bobby Trendy's been given his cards,' Ivor interjects, breaking off from his cleaning up.

Robert was always head-to-toe in All Saints with bicycle chains hanging out of his back pocket and got the nickname 'Bobby Trendy' from Ivor. Unfortunately, once uttered, it was hard to un-stick it from your mind.

'Yeah, he sacked my family dinner off for a paintballing thing with his brother-in-law.' Mindy waves her hand. 'Enough was enough. There should be a TripAdvisor on dates, so you can give feedback. Nice view. Bad service. Book waaaay in advance.'

'Small portions,' Ivor coughs into his fist.

'Who's this one from, Guardian Soulmates?' I say.

'My Single Friend.'

'Is that the one where a friend recommends you?'

'Yeah. I posed as a man and sold myself as a low-maintenance mamacita who "works as hard as she plays".'

I make an 'oh dear' face.

'It only means solvent, not a clinger, potential for s.e.x,' Mindy adds. Ivor grimaces.

'Yes, I know,' I say. 'Isn't someone else supposed to do it?'

'How could anyone else describe me better than I can describe myself?'

'Why join a site where that's the point then?'

Mindy shrugs. 'Men trust tips from other men. Recommendations from other women are like, "bubbly, great social life" and they think, ho hum, hooched-up woofer.'

'Narcissism and deception, the cla.s.sic inceptors of healthy relationships,' Ivor says, dropping down on the sofa next to us.

'Anyway. I've kind of over-fished on Guardian Soul Destroyers. Waiting for stocks to replenish. This one's twenty-three.' Mindy chews her lip. 'And he likes grime. The music, you know, not dirt. G.o.d knows what we're going to talk about.'

'Well, him, if your previous experiences are anything to go by,' I say, and Ivor laughs.

'But his profile picture young John Cusack,' Mindy sighs.

Ivor gives me a look. I return it. Neither of us say anything. Mindy has a theory of compatibility and none of us have ever been able to persuade her out of it. She says instant physical attraction is a pre-requisite for any successful relationship it's either identifiably there, or not, from the start. Thus she's only ever bothered with boys who she thinks are good-looking, reasoning she needs to find a handsome man with whom she has other things in common. No amount of contradictory examples or criticism about being shallow has ever moved Mindy an inch on this. Of course, it means she's dated a procession of vain Prince Charmings with the souls of frogs.

I check my watch.

'When is this date? Are you going for high tea?'

'It's not until eight but I've got to get ready. I'm going to get some pure oxygen and have my eyebrows threaded.'

'You know how it works. Mindy goes into pre-production, like an over-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Development h.e.l.l,' Ivor says.

'Obviously, I should just change my t-shirt and pour a bottle of Lynx Caveman all over myself,' Mindy snaps back, standing up.

'I wouldn't do that,' Ivor says, mildly, 'Lynx is for men.'

Mindy shakes her head at Ivor and gives me a hug. 'Start planning the party. Who knows, if this goes well, I might bring Jake.'

'Jake,' Ivor scoffs. 'He's even got a name that dates him as post-1985.'

'Says Ivor.'

'My name's never been in fashion so it can't go out. It only dates me as post ninth century, dear.'

'Whevs! Bye, Rach.'

'Good luck with the Relic Hunter!' Ivor shouts, as I show her out.

Mindy turns in the doorway and gives him two fingers.

'Do you think,' I drop down on the sofa and squeeze an oyster coloured cushion to my body, then feel the shop-fresh plump starchy newness of it and realise these cushions aren't for squeezing and put it back, 'Mindy will ever revise this ruthless policy of looks first, personality a distant second, compatibility irrelevant?'

'Probably not.'

We shake our heads.

'What're your plans? Want me to stay?' Ivor asks, and I wonder why today feels like a series of polite rejections. 'Or go?'

'Erm,' I say, trying to work out what he wants me to say. I feel as if a strange stigma is clinging to me. I have some insight into how the newly bereaved crave people who don't walk on eggsh.e.l.ls around them.

'I was going to make use of Katya being away for the weekend and have a Grand Theft Auto marathon and eat vacuum-packed pork products,' he continues. 'You're welcome to join me.'

'Hah, no, thanks, I'm fine. Enjoy killing all those hookers.'

I see Ivor out and tell myself sternly that I'm very lucky to have supportive friends, and being single means getting used to your own company and not inventing excuses to keep people around you. None of which makes me feel any less bereft. The latest revelation: you have to relearn being on your own again. Rhys and I had separate interests. We didn't live in each other's pockets. Yet the empty quiet of the flat stretches like an island around me, and the city an ocean beyond that.

I do some more unpacking until the discovery of the old framed photo from university starts me crying, and the intensity of the urge to call Rhys and say I've changed my mind is like Cla.s.s A withdrawal. I sit scrolling up and down to his name in my mobile phone address book. I wouldn't have to say anything desperate: all I'd be doing is checking in on him. I stop. However he's getting through today, I need to let him get on with it. I've put myself beyond being able to help him, on this. I imagine him alone in that bed tonight and think: I'm lucky. I get a fresh start in new surroundings. He has the site of our old life, minus me.

Unbidden, my mind starts playing me a montage of our edited highlights. The first night we spent together at his old flat and me falling out of bed and onto his effects pedal, which was a baptism of fire for new love I screamed the place down and had a bruise the size of a handprint on my back. The run to the shops to get painkillers and the breakfast he made me the next day, involving seven pans and three types of eggs. The day I met his family, when I was virtually levitating with nerves, and Rhys saying on the doorstep: 'They'll love you. Not because I do. Because everyone with eyes and ears does.' The weekend in Brighton with the world's worst car journey down, the dubious n.a.z.i-run B&B that was nowhere near the seafront and the bistro with the horrible waiters. It could've been awful but instead I remember laughing like a pair of school kids for two days solid. The day we moved into our house and drank champagne out of mugs, sitting on the stairs, in a furniture-free desert of sandy carpet, arguing about whether his frightening Iggy Pop photo had too many p.u.b.es on show to be fit for the 'reception rooms'. The scores of in-jokes and shared history and special knowledge I couldn't imagine having with anyone ever again, not without a Tardis to whisk me back to being twenty.

What was I doing, throwing all this away? Did it all add up to say I should stay with Rhys? Was I making the biggest mistake of my life? Probably not, purely on the basis that award has already been handed out.

I tell myself, this day is as bad as it's going to be. This is a day you have to get through. It occurs to me that it'd be easier to get through unconscious. I crawl to the huge bed, cover my face with my arms and weep myself to sleep.

As I drift off, I imagine the supermodelly Indian girl animating in her portrait, looking down, saying: 'Well, that's not what this flat is for.'