Copyright

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Polly James 2016

Polly James asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007548552

Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780007548569

Version 2016-05-13

Dedication

For Mark, Daisy and Jack, as always – and for Becky Thomas, without whom there would be no book.

“There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.”

François de la Rochefoucauld, 1613–1680

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Twenty-Seven Years Later…

Winter

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Spring

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Summer

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Autumn

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Winter

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

Dan lets go of both oars and searches the front pockets of his jeans, looking more anxious by the second.

“Shit,” he says. “Where’ve I put it?”

I take no notice, as I’m too busy lounging in the stern of the dinghy and trailing my fingers in the water. The sky is intensely blue and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. (I’m about to get even happier, though I don’t know that yet.)

“A-ha!” says Dan. “I’ve found it. Thank God for that.”

I’m still not looking at him, because now I’m friend-spotting amongst the groups of art school students celebrating the end of finals on the banks of the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The sun’s so bright, I can’t see properly without the sunglasses I dropped overboard the last time Dan kissed me, so I just wave vaguely in the direction of the crowds.

Someone shouts something unintelligible across the water, at the same time as a duck squawks and Dan says something equally unintelligible.

“What?” I say. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Hannah,” says Dan, his dark eyes fixed on mine. “Pay attention, will you? I’m trying to do something important here.”

The boat bobs gently up and down as he adds, “I asked you if you’ll marry me.”

I stare at him, wondering if I’ve misheard due to that infuriating still-squawking duck, and then he tries again.

“I love you, Han. Marry me?”

“Oh, my God, yes,” I say, “Yes, please.”

I jump up and hurl myself towards Dan, just as he tries to pass me the small blue ring box that he’s holding, but then the boat rocks and tips me headfirst into the lake.

Thirty seconds later, Dan has already dived in to rescue me from the weeds in which I’m now entangled, and has lost my engagement ring in the process – as well as the boat, which is drifting away.

Fifteen minutes after that, we’ve swum to the bank and are outside the cafe, wrapped in blankets and toasting each other with mugs of hot chocolate, while being lectured on why you should never stand up carelessly in a dinghy by the owner of the one we allowed to drift away. That’s the exact moment at which an off-duty press photographer takes our photograph, the one that appears in the local paper the following day, under the headline: Loved-Up Art Students Make a Splash.

Twenty-Seven Years Later…

Winter

Chapter 1

It’s all the fault of the half-naked teenagers, or most of it, anyway. They’re staggering about drunkenly on the TV screen, and Dan is staring at them as if his life depended on it.

“What the hell are you watching?” I say, as I come into the room bearing two mugs of extra-strong coffee to help prevent the hangover we’ll otherwise be doomed to have.

It’s 12:30am, and we’ve been drinking geriatric drinks all night: Aunt Pearl’s way of thanking us for moving her belongings into her new retirement flat during the day. I don’t think port and lemon agrees with me, and it certainly doesn’t agree with Dan. It’s given him short-term memory loss, judging by the fact that he completely forgot to wish me a happy New Year when we heard Big Ben strike twelve on the radio, in the taxi that was bringing us home.

Once we arrived, Dan got out of the car, unlocked the front door, and then headed straight for the sofa like a homing pigeon. One with opposable claws for operating remote controls, and a tendency to go deaf whenever wives ask awkward questions.

I try again.

“What is this programme, Dan?” I say.

“God knows,” he says, taking the mug I pass him without moving his eyes away from the screen. “Brits in Ibiza, or something like that.”

He must be able to sense my expression, as then he adds, “Probably the channel Joel was watching before he went out tonight.”

It’s so useful having a supposedly adult son still living at home whenever you need to pass the buck. I doubt Joel would be caught dead watching this idiotic programme, not when he can view similar scenes any night of the week when he’s out clubbing – and in the flesh, as it were. God, there’s a lot of that on this TV show.

I shift about in my seat, suddenly uncomfortably aware of what I’m now wearing: mismatched pyjamas, to go with my rather less mismatched face and arse. They say either your arse can look good after the age of forty, or your face, but never both. When you get as close to fifty as I now am, both are past their sell-by date.

“I can’t see the appeal of half-naked teenagers, myself – not since I stopped being one,” I say. “Especially not when they’re vomiting everywhere like this lot will be in a minute. Isn’t there anything better on?”

Dan doesn’t reply. You’d swear he’d been watching this programme for at least the last two hours and it was about to reach a thrilling climax, given how hard he’s concentrating. I repeat what I’ve just said, and then I wave at him across the room, but he doesn’t react, and then I feign a coughing fit. Still no response whatsoever – none – so I pull off one of my slipper socks and throw it at him.

My aim’s a bit off, but I do finally succeed in getting Dan’s attention. In fact, he almost jumps out of his skin.

“What the fuck, Hannah?” he says, fishing the sock out of his coffee, and making a face. “Why did you do that?”

“You were ignoring me,” I say. “Too busy ogling those girls with their boobs and arses hanging out.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” says Dan, who suddenly looks quite angry. Very angry, actually. I’m not used to seeing him like that, even during the stupid arguments we’ve been having recently. He did get a bit cross when I complained about him and Joel never putting toilet-roll inners into the bathroom bin the other day, but nothing like as cross as this. Now he looks as if he can’t stand the sight of me.

“I was joking, Dan,” I say, quickly. It’s only half a lie, but he spots it, anyway.

“Like hell you were.”

Dan glares at me, and then he adds, “All I wanted was to chill out in front of the TV, after a bloody long day dealing with Pearl, and it didn’t matter what I was watching, as far as I was concerned. But if I had picked this programme on purpose, then who could blame me? The only flesh I get to see these days is on TV.”

Dan seems almost as shocked by what he’s just said as I am, and there’s silence for a moment, as we both let his words sink in. Then I swallow, and say very slowly and clearly, “You mean that’s the type of flesh you prefer. You make that pretty obvious.”

Did I really say that out loud? I laugh, to lessen the sting, but Dan has lost his temper now.

“You can’t say something like you just did, and then laugh as if you didn’t mean it, Hannah,” he says. “And how exactly do I make my ‘preference’ so obvious?”

I wish I’d never started this conversation now. It’s one thing to feel inadequate, but ten times more humiliating to admit to it, and then to explain why you do.

“I just meant,” I say, keeping my head down and staring intently at a piece of fluff on the carpet, “that you make it clear that you don’t fancy me any more. I know I don’t look like the woman you married these days, but –”

“You don’t act like her, either,” says Dan. “In fact, you’re nothing like her. You want me to be as miserable as you are, and God forbid that either of us should have any fun. So I don’t quite get what I’m supposed to fancy about someone who’s more interested in Joel and Pearl than in me, as well as in their stupid job, and who’s so obsessed with losing their looks that they walk around with a face like a wet weekend the whole damn time. That’s really bloody attractive.”

I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say, or where to start, so I just sit there, twisting my hands in my lap, and trying to ignore the tear that’s rolling down the side of my nose and heading towards my mouth. Dan spots it and it seems to annoy him even more.

“I don’t know why you’re crying, Hannah,” he says. “You started this, and normally you’d be the one with the killer line to finish it. So why don’t we just get it over with? I know you’re unhappy with yourself, but now you’re blaming me for it, and making me feel like a useless husband, too. I’m sick and tired of you trying to push me into saying I don’t fancy you, so here you are: I don’t. Feel better now?”

I think it’s safe to say I don’t, and I feel even worse when Dan and I end up agreeing to separate. Happy New Year, Hannah Pinkman. Nicely done.

Chapter 2

Huh. Dan’s still sleeping in the spare room and doing that “no-talking” thing the rest of the time, even though New Year’s Eve was days ago. How can you have a row so bad that you decide to separate, then fail to mention it ever again? That’s just bloody typical. He obviously didn’t mean a word he said, which is really annoying, as I haven’t slept a wink for the last three nights.

I’m like a sleepwalking zombie when I go back to work this morning, which doesn’t escape the notice of my boss, the Apprentice wannabe better known as the Fembot. At lunchtime, she writes my stats on the whiteboard in much larger writing than she uses for anyone else’s.

“Hannah’s having trouble keeping up with us young ones today,” she announces to anyone who’s listening, at the same time as rising up on her toes and twirling around to show her arse off to its best advantage. What sort of dingbat wears hot pants to work, for goodness’ sake?

“I’m sorry,” I say, when it becomes apparent that eye-rolling is insufficient, and some sort of verbal response is required. “I’m not feeling well. I’ve got a bit of a stomach upset, to tell the truth.”

“I see,” says the Fembot, in the tone of voice that means, I don’t believe a word of it.

I go to the loo four times in the next forty-five minutes, just to prove her wrong. Then, when she leans over the back of my chair to ask if I realise that I’ve been “spotted leaving my desk four times in the last forty-five minutes”, I tell her that there’s a highly-contagious bug going around.

“Joel’s been ill with it for days,” I say. “He looks like shit. I hope none of you will catch it.”

It’s only a small lie, given that Joel has had a three-day hangover since he overdid the drinking on New Year’s Eve, but it serves its purpose very nicely: the Fembot moves away as if she’s been electrocuted. She’s got a date tonight.

“Go home, Hannah,” she says. “Right this minute.”

“Are you sure?” I say, standing up and following her across the room, getting as close as I can and breathing heavily down her neck. I cough a couple of times, for good measure. Now she’s put the idea in my head, I really fancy an afternoon off – preferably spent sound asleep.

“Yes, I’m positive,” says the Fembot, glaring at me. “You can work from home instead.”

I hate modern jobs. In the olden days, when you were too ill to go into your place of work, no one expected you to work at all. Now you do everything on a computer or a mobile phone, you’d have to be dead and buried before you could get away with claiming to be unfit to work.

I particularly hate my modern job.

It isn’t the type of thing I thought I’d be spending my working life doing when I met Dan at art school all those years ago. Then we both thought we were headed for fame and fortune, or for something creative, anyway. Instead, Dan got such a boring job at the Council that he can’t even be bothered to explain to people what it is, and I ended up as a graphic designer for HOO, a question-and-answer site. (Officially, HOO stands for Helpful Opinions Online, but staff know it better as Halfwits’ Opinions Online, or Halfwits for short.)

“Ahem,” says the Fembot, who’s obviously noticed that I’m no longer listening to whatever it is she’s going on about. “As I was saying, Hannah, you can email me that artwork from home tonight, but don’t forget it’s very urgent.”

Only the Fembot would use the word “urgent” to describe a stupid “thumbs-up, happy face” icon. It’s not half as urgent as dealing with a husband who does his wife’s head in by saying something terrible that he doesn’t mean, then taking a vow of silence afterwards. I’m going to make Dan talk to me tonight, as soon as he gets home, and sod the Fembot’s bloody icon.

* * *

Oh, my God. Dan says he meant what he said the other night. He really did. Twenty-seven years of marriage down the drain, just like that.

He comes home just as I’m waking from my nap, but doesn’t say a word until Joel goes out to meet his girlfriend. Then he takes a deep breath and hits me with it. (Not the breath, obviously.)

“So,” he says, turning off Netflix and putting the remote control out of reach. “I guess we should talk about what we’re going to do. I’m assuming you haven’t told Joel yet?”

“Told him what?” I say, annoyed at missing the last five minutes of Breaking Bad.

“That we’re splitting up,” says Dan, as if it should be obvious. “I haven’t said anything about it so far, as I didn’t see the point in stressing him out until we’d got it organised.”

Oh, brilliant. Dan’s worried about stressing Joel out – Joel, who’s oblivious to almost everything once he’s smoked a joint to celebrate finishing work for the day. And what about my stress levels? I could have a heart attack at any second, at my age.

I think I might be, actually. Having a heart attack, I mean. My breathing’s gone all funny and now I feel genuinely sick. I’ve got pins and needles in both my arms as well, though I suppose that could be because my fists have suddenly clenched so tight.

Dan doesn’t seem to notice there’s something wrong with me. He’s too busy looking down at his hands, which he’s fiddling with in his lap.

“If we’re getting on each other’s nerves so much,” he says, inspecting his fingers as if his life depends on it, “then it seems the only sensible thing to do. Doesn’t it?”

Well, if that’s how he feels, it obviously does.

“Yes,” I say.

Then I run upstairs to the bathroom, and am sick. I never believed it when people in films threw up after they’d had a shock. Now I know it happens in real life too.

When I finally come back downstairs, still shaking and clammy, Dan glances up at me, then says,

“You okay? You don’t look good.”

I forgot that was the explanation, or rather, I must have blanked it out. Dan said he doesn’t fancy me any more the other night, didn’t he? And you can’t make someone fancy you again, once they’ve stopped. At least, I don’t think you can … and what’s the point in being married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to you, anyway?

I reach for the remote, and turn the TV back on.

“I’m fine,” I say, staring back at Dan without blinking, so he’ll believe I’m telling the truth.

I’m not going to cry. I am not. Not when the only thing left to salvage is my dignity.

* * *

Well, my no-crying resolution didn’t last long. I’m standing by the coffee machine this morning, when the Fembot starts holding forth about her date last night.

“I don’t usually fancy older men,” she says, “but I think I’ve been missing out on something. They really know what they’re doing in bed, and they appreciate younger women, too. Probably because the ones their own age are so bloody hideous. They give up bothering about how they look, once they’ve been married for a while.”

She means women like me, doesn’t she? And men like Dan. I hadn’t thought of that. Now Dan’s probably going to start dating a hot-panted child, while I’ll be stuck on my own, consigned to the scrapheap just in time for my fiftieth birthday.

“I think your coffee’s ready,” says someone behind me, so I make a grab for the cup, catch it against the top of the machine, and then drop the damn thing on the floor, narrowly missing the Fembot’s feet – which is a tragedy when she’s wearing her favourite pair of Louboutins.

My legs are covered in hot coffee, though I’m not too worried about that. I’m more concerned about the funny noise that’s just started escaping from my chest. It sounds like the beginning of what could easily end up being a full-blown sob, if I don’t choke it off. I bite my tongue, hard, which seems to do the trick, though the Fembot’s already noticed that something’s up.

“All except you, Hannah,” she says, looking a bit shocked. “I didn’t mean you, even though you are a lot more mature than the rest of us. Like Taste the Difference cheddar, you know.”

Cheddar? Now I’m like cheese? I can’t speak, in case another one of those funny noises makes its presence felt. Luckily, I don’t have to: the person behind me intercedes on my behalf.

“Hannah’s fine,” she says. “Though she may have scalded her legs a bit. I’ll go with her while she puts cold water on them.”

Then she takes me firmly by the arm and shepherds me out of the office.

“Thanks, er … um,” I say, as we make our way along the corridor towards the ladies’ loos. Who is this Good Samaritan?

“Esther,” she says. “We met when I came for my interview, a couple of weeks ago.”

I must have been on another planet at the time as I don’t recall ever meeting this girl before, even though I can see her more clearly now my eyes have finally stopped being so inexplicably watery. Girl is a bit of a misnomer, actually, as Esther is definitely a lot older than the Fembot, at first glance. On second thoughts, though, maybe she isn’t. I think it’s just her clothes and hair which give that impression: she’s probably only about thirty-five.

“Nice to meet you, Esther,” I say, shaking her hand. “And thanks for coming to the rescue, too. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Listening to your boss, I should think,” says Esther, pretty much hitting the nail on the head. “All the other staff seem nice, but does she really despise anyone older than her as much as she just sounded as if she did?”

“Not everyone,” I say, as I finish taking off my tights, then stick one foot into the sink and turn the cold tap on. “Only older women, as far as I can tell. Older men seem to be in a different category: the lust-worthy one. Oh, sod it all to hell and back.”

I’ve turned the tap on too far and now there’s water all over my dress, as well as on my leg. The Fembot will probably assume I’m incontinent, and order a Tena Lady dispensing machine for the loo, clearly marked for my use only. Then she’ll ask Dan out on a date … or someone even younger will.

“A-a-arrhhh,” I say. Out loud, despite biting my tongue again, which just makes the sob more hiccupy. Then, before I know it, I’ve taken my foot out of the sink and am sliding down the wall onto the cold tiled floor, where I sit wailing like a baby. In front of a brand new member of staff. I think I’d better ask for permission to go home. Again.

* * *

That’s better. I’ve got a grip now, thanks to back-to-back episodes of Friends on Comedy Central, though I’ll probably get fired if I take any more time off work. The Fembot made that pretty clear before she told me I could go home early “yet again”.

It was worth her disapproval, though. After four hours of lying on the sofa and watching how much fun you can have when you’re single, I am fine with this. Absolutely, completely fine. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I think it’s going to be exciting, which is one thing life with Dan hasn’t been for donkey’s years.

All I need to do is find somewhere to live – a house-share with a few cool, fun people, preferably my age – and then Bob’s your uncle! Before you can say, “hot pants”, I’ll be youngish, free and single, and having a ball. (I ruled out “middle-aged, free and single” because it didn’t have the same ring.)

I can see my new life now, as clear as day. After work (where I’ll be responsible for something that doesn’t involve icons), I’ll rush home to get changed into something simple and chic (but dazzlingly sexy), then I’ll swig a quick glass of chilled white wine in the kitchen while my funny, affectionate new friends quiz me about whether tonight’s date is “good enough” for me.

Then my taxi will arrive and I’ll waft off into the night, leaving behind a trail of Chanel or whatever’s cool these days, and arrive fashionably late at a little Italian restaurant: one that only the most sophisticated man would know about. It’ll be intime, and the maître d’ will not only know my date’s name, but he’ll give him the thumbs-up approvingly when he thinks that I’m not looking.

I suppose I might have to eat from one of those stupid wooden chopping boards with handles (the ones Dan always calls “totally pretentious”), but the food will be great, and – who knows – being single might prove so good for my cholesterol levels that I won’t have to pull a bottle of Benecol out of my bag and swig it as soon as I’ve finished eating, for once.

And there’ll be conversation, too – proper conversation, not just moaning about work, and Joel, and why he and Dan never throw toilet-roll inners into the bin – and there’ll be eye contact, as well. Lots of eye contact, so intense it’ll fire up all those neurons or whatever those things are that give you the shivers when you’re filled with lust. If my neurons aren’t all dead from lack of use, of course.

Afterwards, my date will say, “I don’t want the night to end yet, Hannah. Your place … or mine?”

I’m having a hot flush just thinking about it. Well, not a hot flush, because sexy single women don’t have hot flushes. It’s a bit humid for January, that’s all.

Where was I? Oh, yes – so while I’m playing at being Charlize Theron or Keira Knightley in one of those perfume ads, and staring deep into Mr Suave’s gorgeous eyes, Dan’ll just be lying on the sofa watching TV, and only remembering that I don’t live with him any more when he glances across to see if I’ve noticed the covert nap that he’s just woken from. No more watching his eyes glaze over when I tell him about the Fembot’s latest idiotic idea, either, or when I ask him where we’ve gone wrong with Joel; no more being “mum” first, and a woman second, and no more boring Hannah without anything resembling a social life. I’ll get a makeover, and become a cougar or whatever Courteney Cox is called these days. It’s all going to be better than fine.

All I need to do to get to Friends-cum-perfume-advert land is take control. No more wallowing in self-pity, and no more keeping what’s happening to myself, in the hope that it will go away. Dan and I will tell Joel when he gets home from work tonight – just like we agreed we would last night. Then, as soon as I’ve found somewhere to live, I’ll move out, leaving the pair of them free to fill the whole house with empty toilet-roll inners, if they like. That’s if they can spare the time to go to the loo while binge-watching episodes of Half-Naked Brits in Ibiza. I won’t care. I’ll be too busy drinking, dancing and being interesting again. Just like I used to be when I married Dan, all those years ago.

Chapter 3

By the time I wake up from another very uncougar-like nap on the sofa, Dan and Joel are both in the living room, though they’re not talking to each other. Joel’s too busy yelling abuse at a faceless stranger who’s annoyed him by killing him when he wasn’t looking. (Young guys are so rude to each other when playing Call of Duty online, I’m sure it’s a major factor in the lack of world peace.)

I pull a disapproving face, then tell Joel to shove up and make room for me on the sofa.

“Keep quiet, Mum,” he says. “I’ve already messed up once, thanks to Dad.”

“I had the temerity to ask him what he fancied for dinner,” says Dan, before he stands up and moves towards the door. He can’t bear to be in the same room as me for more than five minutes at the moment.

“Hang on a sec, Dan,” I say. “I thought we were going to speak to Joel together.”

“But –” says Dan, as Joel throws the controller onto the floor and sighs as if the world is ending. Which I suppose it’s about to, in a way.

“What?” says Joel. “This had better be important.”

I don’t know whether it is, or isn’t, actually – to Joel, anyway. Who knows what’s going on in his head? Sometimes I think he can’t stand either me or Dan, but then sometimes – especially if he comes into a room unexpectedly, and catches me when I’m feeling a bit tearful, or lonely – he’ll say, “Mum! What’s wrong? Come over here.”

Then he’ll give me a big hug, and tell me that everything’s going to be okay, even when he has no idea what I’m sad about. It helps much more than you’d think it would – but I can’t let myself think about feeling lonely at the moment. I have to get this nightmare over and then I can focus on making my Friends fantasy come to life.

“We’ve got something important to tell you, Joel,” I say, “so pay attention.”

“Um, Hannah,” says Dan, shifting about from foot to foot, and looking extremely uncomfortable. “There’s something else I should tell you first.”

I take no notice, as delaying tactics are typical of Dan. He’ll always put off doing anything tricky or emotional if he can, but he’s not getting away with it this time. We said we’d do this together, and we said we’d do it tonight – and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Even if “together” means him standing there like a spare part while I do the difficult bit.

“Your dad and I are splitting up, Joel,” I say.

Joel doesn’t react at all, but when I look across at Dan and catch his eye, he shakes his head and swallows, then decides he’d better help out, after all.

“Joel?” he says. “Did you hear what your mother said? We’re splitting up.”

Dan’s voice sounds deadly serious, if a bit shaky, but Joel just laughs.

“Yeah, yeah – very funny,” he says. “Pull the other one. You two would never split up.”

It takes ages to persuade him that we would – and are – and then he’s incredulous, and extremely upset.

“But why?” he says. “Why the hell would you do that?”

I suggest Dan explains, seeing as the whole thing was originally his idea, but that doesn’t help at all, because he takes so long to get to the point. He starts by telling Joel about the argument, and what it was about.

“You argued about what?” says Joel, staring at Dan and me in turn. “A television programme? Have you both gone senile overnight?”

For a split second, I wonder if we have, but then Dan tells Joel that we haven’t. He adds, “I suppose we’re trying to make our lives happier, before we do.”

When I hear that, I excuse myself by saying I need to make an urgent call. I suddenly can’t face hearing why Dan’s so unhappy with me and, anyway, it’s always good to check that the Speaking Clock still exists. I give myself a talking-to at the same time as I discover it is 7:32 exactly, and then I replay the Mr Suave scenario several times in my head, just to remind myself that everything will be all right, eventually.

It almost works, until I go back to the living room, to find Dan sitting slumped in a chair with his head in his hands, and Joel pacing round and round the room in circles.

“You tell him why we’re doing this, Hannah,” says Dan. “I’ve run out of reasons, and he thinks all the ones I’ve already given him are ‘total crap’. He says we’re both going to be lonely, too.”

“No, we won’t,” I say. “We’ll be fine, Joel. We’ll have our friends to keep us company – and you, of course. You can come and see me whenever you like.”

“You two have ignored your friends for so long, you haven’t got any real ones left,” says Joel, at the same time as Dan says, “What d’you mean he can come and see you, Hannah? See you where? He’ll be here – with you – every day. You’ll need him to pay rent to help with the mortgage, once I move out at the end of this week.”

Oh, dear God. When Dan moves out at the end of this week? This week? And Dan’s the one who’s moving out, not me? I don’t know what to say to any of that, but Joel does.

“I’ve never heard such a dumbass reason for splitting up, in all my life,” he says. “And I think one of you is lying, or both of you. Which one of you is seeing someone else?”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to me until now, but if one of us is, it isn’t me. Not when Mr Suave’s not real. I think I may be about to cry again.

Chapter 4

It seems that one of Dan’s colleagues had a spare room going – really cheap – so Dan says he’d have been a fool if he hadn’t taken it. He also insists that Joel was wrong about him seeing someone else, though he was right about the other thing: I’ve got no friends. Well, I have, but even though I’ve rung all of them over the last few days – while Dan’s been supposedly working late – they all went on so much about how long it had been since the last time I called, that I ended up not telling any of them that he and I were splitting up. They might have thought it was the only reason I was bothering to phone them now.

It was, I suppose, but that’s not the point. They’ve all posted that thing on Facebook about it not mattering how long it’s been since you last spoke to an old friend, so I’d assumed that was genuinely how they felt. Obviously, it wasn’t, so things are already looking pretty desperate on the friends front by the time that Joel gets home from work.

He sits down on the sofa next to me, and kicks off his shoes while I stare in disbelief at his socks. One says, “Fuck” and the other says, “Off”.

This is what you have to endure when your son refuses to go to university, and insists on working in a super-hip streetwear store instead, one where all the staff are required to talk in gangsta-speak even if they’ve never been anywhere near a gang. The whole thing drives Dan mad, and Joel’s still in the middle of a fairly incomprehensible explanation of how he uses the socks to swear at his boss without him being aware of it, when I lose the will to listen and decide to phone Theo and Claire, instead.

They’re neighbours, rather than friends, but Dan and I have probably socialised more often with them than with anyone else over the last ten years (mainly because that keeps us close enough to home to prevent Joel throwing parties while we’re out). I think they’re all right, though Dan’s never been keen on Claire.

When she answers the phone I tell her my news straight away. There’s no point giving myself the chance to chicken out, even though I know it’ll make the whole thing feel much worse once someone other than Joel knows.

“Good God,” says Claire, and then she repeats herself. After that, there’s quite an uncomfortable pause before she adds, “I assume you won’t be coming to our dinner tonight, if that’s the case?”

I’d forgotten all about it, what with what’s been going on with me and Dan, and I’m about to confirm we won’t be there when I wonder if I’m being stupid. You’re probably supposed to start as you mean to go on, when you’re trying to rebuild your messed-up life.

“Well, I guess I could come by myself,” I say to Claire, after taking a few deep breaths. “Seeing as I’m still going to be your neighbour, at least until Joel decides it’s time to move out.”

It sounds as if Claire snorts at the remoteness of that ever happening, but then she pulls herself together and says, “That’s great! See you in a couple of hours.”

Her voice sounds a bit weird when she says it, but I don’t give that any further thought, until the phone rings ten minutes later, and Joel answers it. He sounds very charming and un-gangsta-like while doing so, which is reassuring, but what happens next isn’t reassuring at all. The caller is Theo (of Theo-and-Claire), and he’s obviously drawn the short straw, given that he’s the one making this call.

“I’m so sorry, Hannah,” he says. “Claire asked me to tell you she was so stunned by your news, she completely forgot to mention there’s been a problem with the catering, so we’ve had to cancel the dinner party. We’ll reschedule it for another time.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” I say. “Seeing as it was for your anniversary, and that’s today, isn’t it?”

Their twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, the same one that Dan and I celebrated less than a year ago, not that Theo gives a toss about that.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “It is today. Another year of the life sentence without parole done and dusted. Oh. Um. Sorry, Hannah. A bit insensitive in the circumstances.”

Theo’s not usually so tactless, but he doesn’t sound himself at all. In fact – at the risk of sounding like the Fembot – I don’t believe a word he’s just said about the dinner being cancelled, and that impression’s strengthened when he adds that Claire says why don’t I pop round and have a quiet drink with her next week instead?

“I’ll be away on business then,” says Theo, “so she could use some company when she’s on her own. Oh. Ah, I guess you probably could, as well.”

I’m going to borrow Joel’s socks and wear them during my next visit, if Theo keeps this up. Claire always makes guests remove their shoes.

* * *

When I get off the phone, Joel’s even more furious with Theo and Claire than he is with me and Dan, when I tell him what’s just happened. First he describes the pair of them as “tossers”, and then he invites me to accompany him and his girlfriend Izzy to the cinema, but I refuse. Three’s company at the best of times and, anyway, I ought to go round to Pearl’s. It’s not fair to tell outsiders about me and Dan when I haven’t told her yet.

* * *

I drive across town, while trying to work out the best way to handle what’s bound to be a tricky conversation, but I’m still clueless by the time that I arrive. However I put it, Pearl isn’t going to take my announcement well. She’s always been very fond of Dan, and she knows better than anyone what it’s like to end up on your own after a long-term marriage, since her husband died three years ago. They’d been together for the previous forty-five, roaming the world due to Clive’s job as a senior diplomat. That’s why I visit Pearl so often these days, because I know how much she hates being on her own, especially in the evenings, and she’s bound to be even more lonely now that she’s living somewhere new.

I pull into a parking space directly outside the Elysium Retirement Home, which Pearl renamed “Abandon Hope” when Dan and I moved her in on New Year’s Eve. I can’t see why she called it that, as it looks like a stately home to me. The diplomatic service look after their own, unlike Halfwits, and I’ll be lucky to afford something the size of one of the broom cupboards in a building like this when I retire.

* * *

I push open the main doors, then walk across the lobby and into a wide carpeted corridor that leads to Pearl’s new ground-floor flat.

“It’s open,” she shouts, when I ring the doorbell. “As long as you’ve brought some money with you, that is. We’re not messing about with buttons or IOUs tonight.”

That makes no sense whatsoever, until I open the door to reveal a dozen elderly people playing poker.

The cocktails are flowing and there are already plenty of competitors for the title of drunkest OAP, though Pearl’s not one of them.

“I pride myself on being able to hold my drink, Hannah,” she says. “Unlike some people I could mention. Now let me introduce you to the Hopeless gang.”

There are loads of people in Pearl’s flat, and I doubt I’d recognise any of them again, except for Albert and Fred, who I end up sitting between. Albert looks like Pope Francis, the nice one from Buenos Aires, while Fred looks more like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I must count as a child, given the disparity in our ages, as that’s the only reason I can think of to explain why I keep finding Fred’s hand creeping up my leg under cover of the tablecloth.

* * *

“Bloody hell, Pearl,” I say, when she shows the last guest out, then joins me in the kitchen, where I’ve been hiding from Fiddling Fred for the last half-hour. “That Fred’s a creep, but I like your other new friends. You’ve made so many here, already!”

“You can’t waste time when you get to my age,” says Pearl. “Or yours, for that matter. You look terrible – what’s up?”

I’ve lost my bottle while I’ve been waiting to spill the beans and now I can’t go through with it. Telling people what’s happened makes it all seem far too real.

“Nothing much,” I say, swilling out a cocktail shaker and putting it aside to drain.

Pearl raises her eyebrows and says, “You’ve always been a poor liar, ever since you were a child, so leave the washing up and try again. And this time, make it the whole truth and nothing but.”

I do as I’m told, though I don’t mention that Dan said he doesn’t fancy me any more. That would be too humiliating, so I just say we had an argument about a television programme that turned into something much, much worse.

“Good God,” says Pearl, when I’ve finished. “Are you sure about this, Hannah? It’s no fun being on your own, you know. Why d’you think I agreed to move in here? This place has a better ratio of men to women than every other retirement place I looked at, which is not a lucky coincidence. I did my research, because I’m sick and tired of being alone after the last few years.”

So that’s why Pearl was doing sit-ups when I came round the other day – she’s on the pull, when I thought I was too old to find someone new!

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I mean, I am fine. I won’t be on my own forever, after all.”

I try to conjure up an image of my fantasy Mr Suave, as Pearl looks me up and down, but he won’t appear. I just keep seeing Dan’s face instead, and Pearl clearly isn’t too impressed with what she sees when she looks at me, given how worried she’s now become.

“What?” I say. “Why are you looking at me like that? I’m miles younger than you and you’re not planning on remaining single, so why should I?”

“No reason,” says Pearl. “I just think you two splitting up is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. And who is this colleague Dan’s moving in with, anyway – do you know?”

Why do people keep asking that? I don’t know any of Dan’s colleagues, not least because he usually refuses to go to any of the few social events to which staff are allowed to bring their partners. He claims that’s because I have an even lower boredom threshold than he does, so I’d probably say something to get him sacked – but now Pearl’s implying that might not be the only reason, just like Esther did when I mentioned it to her the other day at work.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but that’s not the biggest problem, is it? Dan swears he isn’t leaving me for another woman, but he’ll find one at some point, once he’s living the single life.”

That thought makes me feel sick, which must show on my face, as Pearl decides the time has come for some distraction.

“Let’s go for a walk while we give this further thought,” she says. “I want to show you the gardens here. The residents can help in them, if they’re up to it, so I’m thinking of signing up myself. It’ll keep me fit, all that physical activity in the fresh air.”

* * *

Although it’s dark, the gardens are illuminated and exceptionally beautiful, even now in what’s still winter, and for the first time in years, I wish I’d brought a sketchbook with me. There’s nothing very artistic in designing stupid icons, but I’d love to draw the view from where we’re standing. It’s on the top of a steepish incline (which Pearl climbed a lot faster than me), and it overlooks a large area of dense, glossy greenery, that eventually gives way to a meandering path that leads to the Elysium building itself. The silver bark of the birch trees lining the path sparkles where the lights hit it, and the effect is spectacular. Abandon Hope, my arse.

“What are these?” I say, pointing at some tiny, glossy-leaved plants peeking out through a mass of dead foliage.

“Violas,” says Pearl, pointing her torch at them. “You can take one with you, if you like? Gardening’s good for the soul and the staff won’t notice. They rarely bother with this section.”

If gardening’s good for the soul, I’ll try it, and I might even draw the viola once it blooms, if I can persuade Dan to get my art materials out of the attic before he moves out – and maybe I’ll come back and sketch this landscape in the daytime, too.

Pearl pulls a tiny trowel out of one pocket, and a plastic bag from another, and then she digs up the plant and dumps it into the bag.

“Did I mention violas are also known as ‘heart’s-ease’, Hannah?” she says, handing me the bag. “On which note, why don’t you get off home now, while Dan’s still living there? You could always try talking to him about staying, instead of wasting time discussing what you’ll do without him once he’s gone.”

Chapter 5

Even though I take Pearl’s advice and drive straight home, Dan’s already asleep on the sofa by the time I get there, and I’m still dithering about whether to wake him up and talk to him about being my soulmate, when Joel turns up. He’s barefoot, and carrying his trainers in one hand.

“You okay, Mum?” he asks, after peering into the living room and spotting the snoring Dan. “I’m sure you guys could get this sorted out if you still wanted to. You don’t have to split up over something so stupid, you know.”

For one wonderful moment I think he may be right, until I recall that Dan doesn’t fancy me any more, and that he seemed pretty definite about moving in with that colleague of his.

“I don’t think I’ve got any choice, Joel,” I say. “Your dad seems determined it’s going to happen, and anyway, who knows? Maybe he’s right, and we’ll both be happier once we’re single.”

“You won’t be happier if everyone starts treating you like that bloody pair of idiots up the road just did, once you are,” says Joel. “I can’t believe they uninvited you from that dinner party just because you’d have been going on your own. Talking of which, that reminds me. Come outside.”

It’s pitch dark and freezing cold by now, so I try to refuse, but Joel insists.

“Put your coat on,” he says, “if you’re as cold as that. It won’t take a minute and it’ll be worth it, I promise. It might even make you laugh.”

I seriously doubt that, though I change my mind when Joel walks me along the road to the place where Claire has parked her car.

“Ta-da!” he says, gesturing at the windscreen, or more specifically, at the windscreen wipers. Each now carries a succinct message – from a sock.

* * *

I still think that Joel’s anonymous message to Theo and Claire was so funny that I tell Dan about it when I get up this morning and find him in the kitchen, drinking coffee, but he doesn’t laugh at all. He just gives me a wan, half-hearted smile, and then makes polite conversation about nothing until the time comes for me to leave.

“Shouldn’t you have left already, if you’re not going to be late for work?” I say to him as I pull on my boots, then start to button up my coat.

He shrugs, then says, “I’ve got a few things to do before I go.”

He looks at me with a really weird expression – and for what feels like a very long time – and it’s as if he’s trying to convey something desperately important, though he doesn’t say a word. I’m going to be late myself, if I don’t leave now, but I’m not comfortable going while he’s looking at me like this.

“What is it, Dan?” I say.

There’s a long pause, but whatever it is, it can’t be that important, because then he just shakes his head and says: “Nothing, Hannah. You’d better go.”

I do, in case the Fembot sacks me for poor timekeeping like the woman Esther was brought in to replace, but tonight, I’m not going to bed until I’ve had it out with Dan, once and for all. This whole thing’s ridiculous, and it can’t go on.

* * *

I can’t settle all day at work, even though Esther tries her best to cheer me up. As this mainly takes the form of telling me how unlucky in love she’s always been, it doesn’t actually serve its purpose, and nor do the cupcakes the Fembot brings in “as a treat” – not once she announces what she intends to do with them.

“We’re all going to take it in turns to bake cupcakes every evening from now on,” she says. “Then we’re going to photograph everyone holding their own cakes and upload the pictures to our social media streams. It’ll help our users get to know us, and to feel they’re a part of the team here at HOO.”

“Well, that’s our credibility shot,” I say to Esther, later on. “Now the whole world will find out that we’re part of the team at HOO – and they’ll know what we look like, too. I’ll never get a proper job as an artist, if prospective employers find out I’m responsible for that stupid ‘thumbs-up, happy face’ thing.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Esther, with a rare flash of humour. “I should think the Fembot will find an excuse not to use our photos. You’re too old and I’m too fat.”

Esther can’t be more than a size 12, so I do wish she wouldn’t keep going on about her weight, but when I tell her so, she just says that, even if fat isn’t an issue, her acne is. She’s only got one or two spots, as far as I can see, but she’s right about one thing, anyway: the Fembot isn’t going to use our photos.

At the end of the day, she calls us both into her office, and says, “I know you guys are busy, and you have a lot more personal responsibilities than the younger ones, so don’t feel you have to join in with the cake-baking thing. You can contribute in some other way.”

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind but, although I’ve got Joel and Pearl to think about, Esther’s only got a rabbit, and just wait ’til I tell Dan about it! There’s no way he can keep claiming his job’s worse than mine – not after this.

Oh, I forgot, he probably won’t be claiming anything, will he? Not if he’s still being as uncommunicative as he was this morning when I get back home. I shall just have to keep talking to him, until he starts talking back. Meaningful looks never solved anything.

* * *

Oh, my God, Dan’s moved out. He snuck out today while I was at work, the bloody, bloody coward. This whole separation thing was his idea and then he hasn’t even got the nerve to face me when he’s bringing our life together to a sudden end. No wonder he was giving me funny looks this morning: he must have been riddled with guilt and, if he wasn’t, he damn well should have been.

“Thought it might be easier on both of us this way, Han,” says the note he’s left on the kitchen counter. “I’ll be in touch about collecting the rest of my stuff, and money for outstanding bills, etc. Look after yourself.”

He’s underlined the last sentence and scribbled over something that followed it. I try scratching the ink off with my fingernails, and then with the edge of a paring knife, but I still can’t tell if Dan added kisses or something, by mistake. My eyes have gone blurry all of a sudden, which is also why I don’t immediately realise that he’s left his keys on the counter, too.

When I do eventually spot his keyring, the one containing a photo of us on our honeymoon, my eyes get a whole lot blurrier and my chest gets tight, and I think I may be about to have a stroke. I call Joel’s name, but there’s no reply, not even when I shout it at the top of my voice, so he must be out and I’m all alone, which makes things even worse.

I spend ten minutes breathing into a paper bag until I don’t feel quite so dizzy, and then I crawl up the stairs and spend the next three hours curled up on the floor of our – I mean, my – bedroom, sobbing and hiccuping into one of Dan’s old shirts. I found it at the back of his wardrobe, and it still smells of him.

I don’t even know why I’m crying, for goodness’ sake. If Dan doesn’t want me any more, I’m buggered if I’m going to want him either. I’m just being stupid and pathetic with all this crying, and I need to get a grip before Joel comes in and sees me in such a state.

I know, I’ll go and plant the viola from the garden at “Abandon Hope”, and see if it survives its change of circumstances.

If it can do it, then so can I.

* * *

Joel’s just come in and woken me up.

“What time is it?” I say, completely befuddled.

“Almost midnight,” he says. “Are you okay? I was in the pub with Izzy when Dad sent me a text telling me what he’d done, so I came home because I was worried about you. I had no idea he was planning to move out today. Did you?”

“No,” I say, though I’m not sure if Joel hears me, as the word comes out more like a hiccup than a “no”, so I shake my head, for clarity. Then I roll myself into a ball on the sofa and start to cry as if I’ll never stop.

“Oh, Mum,” says Joel, in an unusually quiet voice.

He sounds so sad, it makes me cry all the more, and then he tries everything to make me stop, from patting me ineffectually to pushing a large glass of neat vodka into my hand. It must have been left over from when he and Izzy were “pre-loading” before they went out tonight.

Once I’ve drunk the lot, wincing at the taste, Joel leans over me, slides an arm under my shoulders and pulls me to my feet.

“Come on, Mum,” he says, “I’m taking you upstairs to bed. Everything will seem a lot better if you get some sleep.”

“Will it?” I say, as we make our way up the stairs. “Are you sure?”

Joel doesn’t answer until we reach the landing, and then he just says,

“It has to, doesn’t it? It can’t get worse.”

Chapter 6

Well, it’s been two weeks now since Dan left home and my mission to prove to Joel and Pearl that I’m coping is going well. Being single’s a doddle so far, even if I do seem to have signed up for rather more weekly evening classes than there are evenings in a week. In fact, I’m so busy that Joel told me to “take a chill pill and calm down a bit” last night, when I arrived home after mistakenly going to the yoga studio when I should have been at French conversation class. He doesn’t seem to realise that all I’m doing is “getting myself back out there”, like the self-help gurus advise you to – and if you keep busy, there’s no time to think, which is an added bonus.

The Fembot doesn’t know about the lack of thinking, but she does approve of the busy part.

“You’ve been coming into work unusually early, Hannah,” she says, first thing this morning. “I’m impressed. That’s what I expect from a dedicated member of the team. Are you after a promotion or something?”

“God, no,” I say, “I just can’t sleep, so I thought I might as well make myself useful rather than sitting around on my arse at home.”

The Fembot stopped listening at “God, no”, judging by her unamused expression.

Mine is more panic-stricken than unamused, as I probably should be chasing promotion, in case Joel doesn’t pay his new, realistic rent at the end of the month (the one he described as “extortionate” last time I mentioned it), but it’s too late now. The Fembot’s gone off to upload photos of her latest batch of cupcakes to the company blog. They’re owls, with faces made of chocolate icing and chocolate buttons, though I’m not sure about the Fembot’s claims that they denote the wisdom of our users. Most of their opinions aren’t worth having, as I discover when I scroll through the site while eating my lunch.

An hour later, I’ve finished my sandwiches and written a load of answers to questions asked by women worried about ageing, such as, “I don’t think my husband fancies me any more – what do I do?” It’s a lot easier helping other people who are crushed by insecurity than dealing with the same thing in yourself. Even the Fembot’s impressed by the shameless lies I’ve told, of which the most outrageous is “love conquers all”.

The trouble is, I don’t believe a word I’ve said and now I feel a bit depressed, so when Esther asks if I’d like to go salsa dancing after work, I say, “yes”, even though I’ve never been before. It’s got to be better than what I did have planned for this evening: attending a talk on the lifecycle of the electric eel. Much better, when you consider that in a couple of hours, I’ll be salsa-ing my butt off with loads of good-looking, snake-hipped men.

* * *

Esther’s got two left feet, which I know for a fact because she’s the only person who’s asked me to dance all night. The ratio of men to women at this salsa class is 1:20, whether you’re counting ones with snake-like hips or not, and I’m still ranting about why they all refused to dance with any women they weren’t married to by the time Esther drives me home.

When she drops me off, I walk inside and promptly start to rant again, though this time about men in general, not just the salsa-dancing kind. Joel’s broken the tumble dryer and left a mountain of wet washing inside the drum. He’s also left me a note telling me that he’s “just popped out”, together with a totally-useless explanation of what happened to the dryer: “It started rattling like mad, so I turned it off.”

My first thought is that Dan will sort it out, until I recall that he’s not here. At that point I get even crosser, and then I start to cry. Once I’ve stopped, I watch a video about repairing tumble dryers on YouTube and then I have a go myself. It’s not easy when your only equipment’s a knife and fork.

Joel’s obviously been raiding the toolkit I bought from Ikea after Dan moved out because, when I open it, the only things left inside are a full set of screwdriver heads without a single screwdriver to attach them to. Meanwhile, the tumble dryer’s not rattling any more – now it won’t turn on at all.

* * *

“Haven’t you solved the problem yet?” asks Joel, when he walks in at 10pm to find me on my knees, my head virtually inside the drum.

“No,” I say. “And if that’s supposed to be so easy, then maybe you should try.”

“Already did,” says Joel. “Why haven’t you heated this up?”

He points at a pan containing some dried-out pasta sauce he must have made before he went out. It’s the only thing he knows how to make, so I probably shouldn’t keep leaving the cooking to him. The trouble is that Dan always used to do it and I don’t get hungry since he moved out.

I shrug, in answer to Joel’s question about the sauce.

“For God’s sake, Mum,” he says. “You have to eat. I’ll cook you some spaghetti now, and heat this up to go with it.”

While the pasta cooks, Joel explains that he spent several hours trying to repair the dryer but then had to abandon the attempt because he was late to meet someone.

“Who?” I ask, though I’m not really listening any more.

I’m burrowing in the cupboard under the stairs, where the meter is. Maybe the dryer just blew a fuse.

“I met Dad,” says Joel. “Whoa, be careful, Mum! Are you okay?”

No, I’m not. I’ve just banged my head on the shelf that holds the iron and a pile of miscellaneous household goods – all previously broken by Joel – and I banged it so hard that now I’m seeing several Joels, all at once. It’s like looking at a young Henry VIII through a kaleidoscope. After he first grew his hipster beard.

“Did you say you’ve just been for a drink with your dad?” I ask, a few minutes later, while Joel chucks a load of ice cubes into a plastic bag, then hammers the hell out of them with the mallet Dan bought to tenderise meat. It’s the one with pointy edges, so now there’s crushed ice everywhere, except inside the plastic bag.

Joel pauses, picks up the bag and holds it to the light, then nods with satisfaction. He always likes to know why things don’t turn out as expected, though he never seems to retain that information long enough to make practical use of it.

“Holes,” he says, as he scoops the ice up off the counter, wraps it in a tea towel, and then orders to me to press it against the giant bump that’s been forming on my forehead while he’s been considering the physics of the situation.

“You look like one of those body-modification loonies,” he says, when he removes the ice pack ten minutes later, then stands back to admire the effect. “Except they prefer holes in their bumps, so it looks as if they’ve got doughnuts in the middle of their foreheads.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “Tell me about your father.”

“Well, I told him about the dryer,” says Joel. “And he said if you call him tonight, he’ll arrange to pop round and fix it tomorrow if that’s convenient for you. I said it would be, seeing as you never go anywhere, other than to boring evening classes and to Pearl’s.”

Honestly, that’s so not true – and how did Dan know I wouldn’t be able to fix the dryer? I’m not totally incompetent, and I can manage perfectly well by myself, thank you very much. Or I could, if I didn’t have to share a house with the number one tool thief in the country. I’ll prove it, now.

I attack the dryer with renewed vigour, adding a carving fork and a pair of kitchen tongs to my arsenal of tools, along with a pack of bamboo skewers. None of them succeed in removing the back of the machine, but the skewers keep snapping off inside it so that, before long, it starts to resemble a porcupine. Then the carving fork skids off the plate hiding the motor, causing a shower of sparks to fly and me to get an electric shock.

“Phone Dad,” says Joel. “Please, Mum. Before you kill yourself.”

He picks up my phone, keys in a series of numbers and then passes the phone over to me. I sit and fume, while I wait for Dan to answer.

“Hello,” says a voice, after what seems like hours. “Daniel’s phone.”

Since when is Dan called Daniel? And, more to the point, it may be Dan’s phone, but why’s a woman answering it?

Chapter 7

It’s all very well for Joel to say the sex of Dan’s landlord makes no difference, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. She’s one of Dan’s colleagues, after all – he told me so – and I bet he only left me because he wanted to get involved with her. Maybe he didn’t even wait ’til then? He could have been having an affair with her behind my back for months, or even years. I can’t remember how long it’s been since he stopped paying me any attention, so it could have been decades for all I know.

“Well, that would make more sense,” says Esther, when I ask her opinion during this morning’s coffee break. “I mean, if Dan was having an affair before he moved out. Seems logical to me.”

Sometimes, you can go right off Esther. I preferred Joel’s opinion, the one he gave me when I went a bit nuts last night after I finally managed to speak to Dan.

“Don’t be stupid, Mum,” he said. “His landlady’s a right dingbat, and fugly too. I met her earlier on tonight, so I should know.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me about her, then?” I said, “That would have saved me from sounding like a nutcase when I spoke to her.”

Spoke isn’t really the word, though screeched quite possibly is. I blame that on the shock.

“What do you mean, Daniel’s phone?” I said to the mystery woman in the aforementioned screechy tone. “He’s not called Daniel, and who the hell are you to be answering his phone?”

“I’m his landlady,” said the woman. “And there’s no need to be so rude. I can only assume you’re his wife? Or ex-wife, should I say?”

That last bit stunned me into silence, but by the time I felt able to reply, intending to be ruder still, there was a scuffling noise and the woman said, “Oh, all right. If you’re sure?”

She must have handed Dan the phone straight after that, because then he began to speak.

“Hannah?” he said. “Are you okay?”

Oh, my God, I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I’d heard Dan’s voice. Maybe that’s why it sounded so different to how I remembered it. Different, and better, too. Dan’s always had a nice voice, but last night it sounded smoother, and deeper, and – oh, I don’t know – warmer somehow. It was hard to listen to, whatever the reason, so I made Joel take the phone.

“You make the arrangements,” I said. “I’ve got something urgent to do.”

When I’d finished dealing with the emergency – which mainly involved crying myself into a state of semi-asphyxia, due to shoving my face so far into my pillow to muffle the noise – it was past 3am, and Joel was sitting on the floor outside my bedroom door, as if he was my bodyguard, except for the fact that he was fast asleep. I woke him up when I fell over him on my way to the loo.

“She really is just Dad’s landlady, Mum,” he said, “so be cool when he gets here tomorrow night to mend the dryer. Please.”

I agreed, but Joel looked unconvinced by my reply.

“Cool is my middle name,” I said.

* * *

I make it home from work in a panic just before Dan’s due to arrive. I don’t know why, but it seems important to look my best tonight, despite the fact that he hasn’t noticed what I look like for years. Even when I’d really made an effort, the best he could usually do was, “You look fine.” That wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, if he hadn’t always qualified the compliment by adding, “for a woman of your age.”

That’s such an insult, isn’t it? I think it’s even worse than I used to now, because of a question I read at work today, from a man who wanted advice on how to save his marriage. It only needed saving in the first place because he said he couldn’t face having sex with his wife any more, because her appearance now “repels” him. That was bad enough, but then loads of other men joined in, saying they had exactly the same problem, because their wives had also aged so much! I scrolled through hundreds of their horrible comments before I finally found one from a female user. “Do you guys look the same as when you married your wives?” it said.

That shut the men up, and made me laugh, but now I want to look good when I see Dan – or as good as possible, anyway – but then Sod’s law ensures I don’t. I haven’t even managed to change out of my work clothes when the doorbell rings, and Joel shouts, “Mum! Dad’s here.”

There’s a whooshing noise inside my head, and I suddenly feel boiling hot (by which I mean hot hot, not sexy hot), and my legs start to feel all funny. I’ve got pins and needles in my fingers, too and I’m oddly breathless, again not in a sexy way.

I wish I could lie down until I feel a bit more normal, but I’ve got to go downstairs straight away. If I don’t, I’ll look as if I can’t handle seeing Dan – and then he’ll have the upper hand – so I make my way down very slowly. It’s not easy to appear nonchalant while you’re clinging for dear life to the banister, though I do my best.

“Hi, Hannah,” says Dan, at the same time as Joel says, “Well, I’m off out. See you guys later.”

He makes his escape so fast that I can’t stop him, and now I’m all alone with Dan.

“I brought my bike inside,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t want to risk it being nicked.”

“Bike?” I say, as if I can’t see a shiny new one right in front of me, blocking my path to the kitchen and the tumble dryer. The bloody tumble dryer that’s the whole reason I’m having to stand here, with my sort-of ex-husband, in my grottiest dress and shiny-kneed tights. And all while my legs are wobbling and I can’t seem to pull enough air into my lungs. Thanks, Joel. Thanks a bunch.

“Are you all right?” says Dan, moving the bike to allow me to wobble my way past. “You don’t look very well.”

That’s just great, isn’t it? I don’t look very well, when what I wanted to do was look stunningly gorgeous, absolutely irresistible, and totally on top of everything. Especially when Dan looks better than I remembered and has obviously taken up cycling, too.

“I’m fine,” I say, as I drag the tumble dryer out from under the counter. “Absolutely, completely fine.”

“Oh,” says Dan. “Oh, I see.”

He almost looks disappointed. As well as annoyingly attractive.

“How are you?” I say, because I feel I should.

“Um, I’m fine, too … I suppose,” says Dan.

There’s an awkward silence, and then he adds, “You can leave me to get on with this, if you like. If you’ve got anything else to do, I mean.”

He can’t bear to be anywhere near me, can he? Not even for a moment. I’m amazed our marriage lasted as long as it did, when he obviously finds me as repulsive as those horrible men on the internet find their wives. No wonder we hardly had sex any more, and so much for the excuses Dan made when I asked him why he thought that was, in the middle of one of our arguments. Repulsion’s a much more relevant factor than my going to bed later than him, and I’m sure he didn’t seriously think that I didn’t fancy him any more. I only mentioned middle-aged spread once, and I was joking!

Talking of middle-aged spread, maybe I should get a bike, or do something to get myself in better shape. It looks as if that’s what Dan is up to, and I really don’t want to think about why he’s only bothering to do it now. It’s certainly not for my benefit, is it? I think he’s lost some weight already.

I’m still trying to guess exactly how much when he finishes whatever he’s been doing to the tumble dryer, and stands back up.

“Found the cause of the problem,” he says, though he doesn’t look too pleased about it. Bewildered might be a better word.

“Someone’s cut through the wires to the motor,” he continues, “and removed some working parts. I’ll need to order replacements, so this could take a while.”

I bet he thinks I caused the damage when I was trying to fix the dryer, but I know I didn’t. It must have been Joel, the bloody idiot. I wondered why he’d stolen my wire-cutters, along with all my other tools, though I can’t imagine why he thought cutting through wires would solve anything. Dan says he can’t either, “though why Joel does most things is shrouded in mystery”.

We both laugh at that and, all of a sudden, I can breathe again. This is sometimes how it used to be: we could find the same things funny, as well as finding each other irritating.

Dan’s eyes meet mine for the first time since he arrived, then he smiles and says, “You can always send Joel to the launderette.”

“As punishment, you mean?” I say, at which the more relaxed mood evaporates abruptly. I have no idea why, but Dan turns round, grabs his bike and starts wheeling it backwards towards the door.

“Right,” he says. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch when the parts come in.”

Then he opens the door, pushes the bike outside and rides off without a backward glance. Now my breathing’s gone all funny again.

* * *

I’m still sitting on the sofa, trying to work out why Dan suddenly started being so frosty, when Joel finally returns home.

“Where’s Dad?” he says. “Still in the kitchen working on the dryer?”

“He left,” I say. “Ages ago. As soon as he found out what you’d done to break the bloody thing.”

“Ah,” says Joel. He looks a bit embarrassed for a moment, then treats me to the winning expression he used to rely on to get him out of trouble when he was a toddler, more than twenty years ago.

“It worked, though, didn’t it?” he says, ignoring my scowl. “My plan, I mean, not the dryer, obviously.”

“What plan?” I say. “Why on earth would you plan to break the tumble dryer? I’ve got half a ton of damp washing in the kitchen that’s going to go mouldy if it doesn’t stop raining soon. And most of it belongs to you.”

It’ll serve Joel right if all his clothes end up covered in mildew, though God knows how much he spends on them each month. Almost as much as he spends on trainers, I should think, and he’s paranoid about looking after everything he owns, or about me looking after it, anyway. He went ballistic last week when I shrank one of his T-shirts by accident, so he’ll go nuts if his entire wardrobe ends up going mouldy.

“My plan,” says Joel, disregarding the threat of damage to his precious “streetwear” in an uncharacte‌ristically offhand way, “was to get you guys back together again, or talking about it anyway. So, did it work?”

“No,” I say. “And nor does the dryer so, tomorrow, you’ll have to take everything to the launderette.”

Joel looks horrified, though I’m not sure whether that’s due to the failure of his stupid plan, or to the prospect of having to take his clothes to the Eezimat, then sit there for hours watching them dry. I’d find that pretty boring myself.

Oh, shit. I didn’t always find it boring, though. Not when Dan and I got locked inside the art school’s launderette overnight and decided to wash everything we owned, including what we were wearing at the time. That night was far from boring, or from being “punishment”.

Chapter 8

Oh, God, this splitting-up thing must be catching: now Joel and Izzy have split up, too. He told me about it late last night when he came back from a date with her, and said it was his choice, but then clammed up when I asked him why. I try again this morning, when he finally drags himself out of bed.

“Well, you and Dad are hardly a good advertisement for long-term relationships, are you?” he says. “And anyway, I’m fine with it.”

He may be, but he looks a lot more bleary-eyed than he normally does after a night out drinking.

In fact, he looks so rough that I don’t feel I can ask him to go into the loft to find my painting things, so I end up doing it myself, which is not the world’s most enjoyable experience. First the ladder wobbles alarmingly, and then I have to climb off it into the attic, which is so dark that I can barely see a thing, apart from all the horrible cobwebs near the hatch. I hate spiders – and so does Joel – so I’ve no idea how we’re going to deal with them now Dan’s not here.

“You’ve got no choice, so just man up,” I say to myself. (That’s another thing that happens when your husband’s left you: you start talking to yourself, like a lunatic.)

Luckily, my art stuff is in the box closest to the hatch, so soon I’m back downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table and drawing the viola Pearl gave me from the garden at Abandon Hope. My first few strokes of the pencil are tentative, but after that, my drawing becomes more fluid and the result is surprisingly good, given that I’ve done nothing but draw stupid website icons for the last ten years. The trouble is that, once the flower drawing’s complete, I can’t think of anything else to draw and – after a few minutes spent racking my brains to no avail – I realise I’ve been doodling Dan’s name, over and over, by accident.

I scribble all the doodles out.

“What shall I draw next?” I say to Joel.

“I don’t know,” he says, which is no help whatsoever, but then I recall what I used to do whenever I ran out of ideas at art school: go for a walk in the countryside.

I pack up my sketchbook and drawing materials and then I arrange to go over to Pearl’s. I may as well kill two birds with one stone, I suppose.

* * *

“You look terrible,” says Pearl, as soon as she opens the door to me. “I’m surprised you’ve got the energy to go for a walk. Are you still not sleeping?”

“No,” I say, “I mean, yes, I am. But that’s actually worse – because of the nightmares I’ve been having recently.”

Pearl raises an eyebrow.

“Nightmares?” she asks. “What nightmares?”

She makes me a coffee while I tell her about my recurring dream.

“It starts with me and Joel standing on the deck of the Titanic, while Joel keeps yelling at me that Dan has disappeared,” I say, finding it all too easy to visualise the scene that replays itself in my mind most nights: dark water swirling round our ankles, the captain of the ship conspicuous by his total absence, and the deck tilting more and more alarmingly.

“So what happens then?” asks Pearl.

She actually seems interested, which is unusual, given how boring most of us find listening to other people’s dreams. Esther tells me about hers every morning when we arrive at work, and I’m starting to wish she wouldn’t bother, though I’d never dream of saying so.

“Go on,” says Pearl. “We haven’t got all day, so don’t drag this out.”

“I’ve nearly finished,” I say, “and I was only pausing to take a breath. Anyway, when the ship’s about to capsize, Joel and I spot Dan sitting in a lifeboat in the sea below, so we both breathe a big sigh of relief because we know he won’t let us drown. Then we start jumping up and down, yelling, until he spots us …”

My voice tails off again at that point, as I suddenly get a bit choked up, so I try to cover that by slurping at my coffee, which is still so hot I burn my mouth.

“Ouch,” I say, getting up and heading for Pearl’s kitchen for a swig of cold water.

“Don’t change the subject by leaving the room,” says Pearl, getting up and following me. “Not when I’m still waiting to hear how this blooming dream ends – though I don’t see how you can call it a nightmare, if Dan rescues you.”

“That’s the thing,” I say. “When he finally sees us, he waves … but then he starts to row really fast. Away from us.”

“Ah,” says Pearl, who I’ve never known to be lost for words before.

She remains mute until we reach the wooden viewing seat at the top of the hill that forms the outer edge of the Abandon Hope estate, the same hill that overlooks a lake situated in a public park just outside the boundary. If Pearl thinks the sight of a large body of water is unfortunate in the circumstances, she doesn’t say so, and nor do I. I just avert my eyes.

“I want to give you some advice, Hannah,” she says, after a minute or two has passed. “From experience. When you find yourself on your own after a long time of being half of a couple, solitary hobbies like drawing and painting aren’t enough. You need to get out and meet people. You really do. I know it’s terrifying but you just have to face the fear. Take the opportunity to make new friends, whenever it presents itself, and be friendly to everyone you meet. Even people you don’t like.”

“Why have I got to be friendly to them?” I say, as I begin to sketch the view below us. (The one that doesn’t involve the lake. I’ve got my back to that.)

“Because they may have friends you like a lot,” says Pearl. “Ones they can introduce you to – oh, hello!”

She’s addressing one of the men who attended her poker night, the nice one who looks like Pope Francis, not the vile Fiddling Fred. He’s approaching us from the direction of the lake, dressed in a fisherman’s jumper and a very natty cap. The sort that a ship’s captain would wear, if he was the sort of captain who didn’t abandon women and children on the deck of a sinking ship. (I know Joel’s twenty-two, but to me he’ll always be a child.)

The man says hello to Pearl and then he smiles at me, and says, “Beautiful view, isn’t it?”

Pearl steps in before I can tell the truth about how I feel about the sight of large expanses of water at the moment.

“Hannah, you remember Albert, don’t you?” she says. “He’s one of my lovely fellow residents.”

I’d forgotten Albert’s name, but Pearl’s obviously taking her own advice by referring to him as “lovely”. She definitely told me she’d ruled him out as a potential new husband after the poker game, because he was “too quiet” for her taste.

The conversation between them isn’t exactly flowing now, which is a bit awkward, so I escape and walk to the very edge of the hill where I sit down on the grass, and start to draw the other view – the one which does contain the lake. Face the fear, and all that self-help stuff.

“I row my boat across that lake every morning,” says a voice behind me, and I turn round to see Albert looking down at my drawing. “It’s become one of my favourite places in the world.”

I don’t know what gets into me, but – all of a sudden – my mouth opens and I say,

“Albert, would you teach me to row?”

It might be purely symbolic, but imagine how much better I’d feel if I was rowing, not drowning.

Chapter 9

It’s all very well for Pearl to tell me to take up more sociable activities, but after my first rowing lesson, Albert says I’m going to need a lot more, with the emphasis heavily on “a lot”. He claims he doesn’t mind how long it takes because I’ll get the hang of it eventually, and enjoy it once I have, but I doubt I’ll ever enjoy my other new outdoor activity: this ridiculous singles’ walking club.

There’s mud everywhere, and I’m freezing cold and soaking wet. Turns out that Joel’s super-cool “waterproof” jacket (the one I sneakily borrowed while he was still asleep this morning) is not only miles too big for me, which isn’t a surprise, but isn’t rainproof either, which certainly is. And the bloke running this stupid group is bossier than the Fembot, which I didn’t think was even possible.

The rest of the walkers are a motley crew as well, especially the men. There are quite a few young, fit ones dressed in lycra, which is a sartorial faux pas I might consider overlooking if they weren’t also so far ahead of me along the ridge that I couldn’t interact with them if I tried – and the ones staggering along behind me don’t look as if they’ll make it to the next stopping place alive. I hope they don’t, seeing as they’ve talked about nothing other than football and steam trains all the way so far. God knows why I ever thought this was a good idea.

“Too right,” says a voice from somewhere nearby, though I can’t see who it belongs to. And did I really just say what I was thinking out loud? (That’s a very worrying development, especially if I do the same thing whilst at work.)

“Over to your left,” comes the voice again. “Behind the tree. You can join me if you like – I’m going to make a run for it.”

That idea sounds so appealing that I don’t even stop to think before I make a sharp left-hand turn, and nearly send a trainspotter flying off the edge of the ridge. Then I peer around the only tree for miles that’s managed to retain its foliage in the face of the high winds that are presumably the norm up here in the wilderness. (Joel’s useless jacket isn’t windproof, either.)

“Hi,” says a blonde woman who’s standing with her back pressed flat against the tree. “Finally, someone else with common sense. I spotted a pub not far from that dip we passed a little while ago – d’you fancy joining me? I need a stiff drink after this.”

I need a hot drink, rather than a stiff one, but hopefully the pub will have a coffee machine as well as alcohol. I decide to take the risk, and follow carefully in the woman’s footsteps as she steps off the path and heads towards open ground. I hope she’s got a good sense of direction, though I have no idea how she’s walking at all, seeing as her trainers have wedge heels.

“Iz-urgh Mu-unt,” she says, when she sees me looking at her feet, but the howling of the wind obliterates most of each word, so I’m still none the wiser until we eventually reach the pub. I’m not that much wiser then, to be honest.

“I said, ‘Isabel Marant’,” says the woman, as we stand together at the bar.

“Nice to meet you, Isabel,” I say, which proves to be an error on a par with joining this ludicrous walking group, at least as far as my companion is concerned.

“Not me,” she says, looking appalled. “Isabel Marant’s a designer, though I’m not sure these trainers are her most practical creation.”

“Ah,” I say.

Maybe Joel will have heard of this Ms Marant. I certainly feel I should have done.

“I’m Hannah,” I say, for want of a more sophisticated topic of conversation. “Hannah Pinkman.”

“Eva Fraser,” says the woman, as she puts out her hand.

She pulls it back in again when she realises it’s covered in mud, which she wipes off on the bar towel in front of us. The barman notices but doesn’t object, which I can only put down to how glamorous Eva looks in her fur-trimmed parka, immaculately cut jeans and fancy Isabel Whatsit trainers. Even her hair looks good – as if it was intended to look windswept – while I resemble an ageing Afghan hound that’s spent the last hour in a wind tunnel experiment.

I do my best to smooth my hair down while Eva establishes that the bar doesn’t serve coffee, and orders double gins for both of us. We dispose of these with indecent haste, re-order and take our refilled glasses over to a table by the window, where we make ourselves comfortable. I may feel a bit of an idiot for not knowing much about designer footwear, but this is miles better than being outside on that bloody ridge. The weather’s got a whole lot worse over the last twenty minutes, too.

“So, Hannah,” says Eva. “Tell me about yourself.”

Oh, I hate that question. What on earth am I supposed to say? I have a job I hate, an adult son who’s never going to leave home, but a husband who already has? The whole thing makes me sound like a walking disaster. Talking of which, I’ve just spotted one of the trainspotters outside the entrance to the pub, shaking himself off like a dripping dog. He’s purple in the face, and looks even less attractive than he did earlier, when I almost knocked him off the ridge.

“Shit!” says Eva. “It’s the bore to end all bores. Duck – quick – before he sees us!”

We crash heads as we both dive under the table, and by the time we’ve stopped apologising to each other, the trainspotter has chosen the lounge bar, leaving us safe in the snug.

Eva clinks her glass against mine in celebration, then takes a large swig of gin before she begins telling me about herself. Apparently, she’s in the process of moving back to the UK, having spent years working in the USA as the editor of a glossy magazine! It’s a good job I didn’t tell her what I do for a living. Designing icons for a question-and-answer site isn’t going to sound too impressive to the newly appointed editor of the British edition of Viva Vintage, though after a few more drinks I don’t care. Eva’s much easier to get along with than she looks, and not quite as confident either, which is good news as far as I’m concerned. Over-confident people have a tendency to suck all the confidence out of me – the Fembot does it every day.

“I’m not worried about the new job at all,” says Eva, “as it’s not going to be much different from my old one in the States, but I have been worried about making new friends. It’s not so easy when you’re our age, and you’re busy all the time, is it, Hannah?”

“No, it isn’t,” I say, “especially when you’ve let all your old friends slip away. That’s what I seem to have done.”

Eva clinks her glass against mine for the second time.

“Well, in that case,” she says, “why don’t we be friends? Anyone who hates walking-for-singles as much as I do has to be a kindred spirit. Let’s arrange to meet up, as soon as poss. We can go clubbing together and see how many men we can pull.”

I suspect Eva’s score will outstrip mine by quite some margin, but maybe I can pick up the odd cast-off here and there. Things might be starting to look up.

* * *

Esther says that Eva sounds “intimidating”, when I tell her how the walking-for-singles went, but I don’t let that put me off. When I get home from work this evening, I find the business card Eva gave me and then dial her number straight away, before she can change her mind about being friends with someone as unglamorous as me.

“I’ve got an early start tomorrow,” she says, “so I can’t go clubbing tonight, but I’d love a coffee and a chat instead, if that’s any good for you?”

“It’s even better,” I say. “I’ve made cupcakes.”

I haven’t, but I don’t want to make Eva think I’m even less competent than I am. The Fembot let me have the ones she made for today’s cupcake photos in return for a generous donation to the charity box.

“Great,” says Eva. “I can’t cook to save my life.”

* * *

Her new house turns out to be only five minutes away from mine, so she turns up at the door before I’ve finished instructing Joel to be on his best behaviour, and not to mention that I design stupid icons for a living. She kisses both of us enthusiastically, which I have a feeling makes Joel blush, though it’s hard to be sure due to most of his face being covered in beard. Then I make coffee while Eva pumps him for information about when he thinks the hipster beard craze will finally peak, and which vintage sneakers he considers the most desirable.

He’s still holding forth about that by the time I join him and Eva in the living room, bearing the box of cakes in front of me like a prize. I put it down on the coffee table and open it with a flourish, only to find it contains four cupcakes, two of which are iced to look like breasts in frilly half-cup bras and the other two to resemble Kim Kardashian’s naked bum.

Eva raises her eyebrows when she sees them, as does Joel, so then I have no choice but to ’fess up that I lied. That passes off surprisingly well.

“Always fake it, if you can’t make it,” says Eva. “I know I do.”

She takes an enormous bite of Kim’s bottom and starts to chew. Then she tells me some more about herself, like the fact that she was christened Enid, but changed her name by deed poll as soon as she left home. She’s also been divorced for years. Quite happily.

Everyone’s divorced these days, aren’t they? Apart from Theo and Claire, though if it could happen to me and Dan, it could easily happen to them – or to anyone. Not that we’re divorced, of course. Not yet …

Chapter 10

Joel looks incredulous when I tell him I’m going clubbing with Eva tonight, so I decide to go out straight from work, rather than risk going home to get ready and having to endure his probably even-more-incredulous expression when he sees me dressed up to the nines. If I am dressed up to the nines, that is.

I have no idea what people my age wear to go clubbing and Esther wasn’t much help when I asked her advice yesterday, so I just grab my newest dress from the wardrobe, the one I bought myself one lunchtime last week, to make up for bursting into tears in the food section of M&S. (I’d just put Dan’s favourite apricot tart into my basket, by mistake.)

I shove the dress into one of his old suit bags, pick up my most impractical pair of shoes, and leave for work. Then I hang the suit bag in the staff room, hoping the creases will drop out of my dress before I finish work, and hurl my shoes under my desk.

That was a mistake, as – before you know it – the Fembot looks the shoes up and down and wrinkles her nose.

For once, she doesn’t say what the wrinkled nose denotes, but then she wrinkles it again at the end of the day when she spots me sitting at my desk, trying to finish applying my make-up without anyone noticing. Then her comments come thick and fast.

“Ooh, look, guys,” she says, to no one in particular. “Hannah’s tarting herself up to meet a man!”

All the HOO staff dutifully turn round from their desks to look at me, and then turn back again, without saying a single word. For one delusional moment, I think the worst is over, but then the Fembot adds,

“I guess it takes a lot longer once you get to your age, Hannah. Filling the cracks, you know?”

She giggles to herself, twirls around on her toes a couple of times, then says, “There’s some Polyfilla in the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner’s kept, if you need it. ’Bye, everyone!”

There’s a deathly silence for all of thirty seconds and then a series of dutiful grunts by way of response. (It’s a mystery why the Fembot is always the first to leave when she claims the place can’t run without her.)

I sit and glare at her back as she click-clacks her way out of the office on her Louboutins, and breathe a sigh of relief as the door slams shut behind her. Then Esther pops her head over the screen that separates our desks.

“Sometimes, I really hate the Fembot,” she says. “The other day, she told me all my allergies were in my head.”

“I sometimes think she’s got Asperger’s,” I say. “Then, other times, I just know she’s evil. Oh, shit!”

I’ve just looked at my watch, and I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry up. I aim some red lipstick at my mouth without bothering to put my glasses on, then freak out when I check the outcome in the mirror. By then, the lipstick has already sunk into all the tiny lines around my mouth, so I have to wash it off in the staff-room sink, which removes half of my already ill-applied foundation in the process. I dry my face under the hand dryer (which causes an immense hot flush), chuck some more blusher, eyeliner and mascara on, and then revert to my usual nude lipstick instead of the red. That seems a safer option for someone whose upper lip appears to have lost all definition overnight, but whose wrinkles haven’t.

I put on my still-creased dress, my nose-wrinkling shoes and, finally, my padded coat. It’s freezing cold, so I zip it up to the neck, then add a thick woolly scarf.

“Ready?” says Esther, as she comes into the staff room to collect her belongings and walks straight into the cloud of perfume I’ve just squirted up into the air. (I was planning on spinning around in it, but she got in the way.)

“Where are you meeting Eva?” she says, rapidly rinsing her face to get the perfume off.

“At the Habanero bar,” I say. “Wherever the hell that is. We’re having drinks and tapas before we head for a club. Oh, bugger, I’ve forgotten to shut down my computer.”

“I’ll do it,” says Esther. “You go, in case Eva’s waiting. I’ll meet you there a bit later on, once I’ve been home to change.”

My face must be a picture, as then Esther adds, “If that’s okay with you?”

* * *

Luckily, Eva’s fine with Esther having invited herself along – “the more the merrier”, she says – but there’s a reason I haven’t been clubbing for so many years: it’s horrible, and I am the world’s most useless flirt.

It’s not too bad in the pub, although the heating’s broken down so we have to sit there trying to look sophisticated while bundled up in our coats. Eva pulls it off with her usual panache, but Esther and I look like rolled-up sleeping bags. I’m also starting to regret the gins I had while I was trying to think how to tell Eva about Esther, as I think they’re giving me palpitations now.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eva, when I mention my fluttery heart to her. “It’s just because you’re shivering. Have another drink and let’s get this party started.”

Esther and I look over at each other, and – although we don’t say anything – I get the impression she’s almost as tempted to make a run for it as I am. It’s scary going out when you’re not used to it, especially when everything’s changed so much. Although Dan and I used to go to our local pub every now and then, the bar Eva’s taken us to looks more like a nightclub. Most of the women inside are wearing barely any clothes, despite the heating problem, and they’re all wearing loads more make-up than me. There are a lot of those drawn-on, squared-off eyebrows, and everyone’s covered in tattoos. Some of those are spectacular, but others look as if their owners sketched them on the backs of envelopes while they were pissed.

Eva points in the direction of one girl with a shock of dyed black hair and the heaviest eye make-up I’ve ever seen in my life. It makes her look half-asleep, though in a sexy way, and I’d be quite tempted to slap on the make-up myself if I didn’t think I’d just end up looking knackered and ancient, instead of appealing. The girl must sense I’m looking at her, because she turns towards us, revealing a large tattoo beneath her collarbones. It’s a life-size (and very lifelike) portrait of her own face.

“She’s going to regret that in another twenty years,” I say, “when she looks in the mirror and spots the difference.”

“She ought to regret it now,” says Eva, “seeing as she looks as if she’s got two heads, especially from a distance. Whatever was she thinking?”

I can’t imagine, and the tattooed girl’s starting to look a bit irritated by our staring now, so I suggest we go and get another drink before we accidentally cause a fight.

There are people queuing ten deep at the bar, so getting served takes forever. Most people don’t even walk away when they’ve been served, as they’re all drinking shots, so they just chuck those down their necks and order more straight away. We’re never going to get served, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A huge group of girls has just surrounded us, most of them with the kind of voices that make your ears hurt, and they all smell strongly of vanilla.

I like vanilla in food, but not on people.

“Why do all modern perfumes smell like some sort of foodstuff?” I ask Eva, as she waves a fifty-pound note above her head in an attempt to attract the bar staff’s attention. “If it isn’t vanilla, it’s mango or chocolate.”

“It’s because the EU banned all the ingredients that used to make perfumes smell sophisticated,” she says. “That’s why there’s such a market for vintage scents.”

If only there was a market for vintage women – real ones, not the fakes. There are plenty of those in here, ranging from young women dressed like burlesque dancers to those who’ve obviously spent hours creating victory rolls with their hair. I’m starting to feel less pathetic about the half-hour I took to get dressed and made-up now, even though Dan listed “taking ages to get ready” as one of my most annoying habits.

The trouble is, the effort these young women have put into getting dressed up has (largely) paid off, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time. I know I have, once we walk into the club and remove our coats.

“What’s this?” says Eva, pulling a face. “Have you two come as Siamese twins?”

Esther’s wearing an identical dress to mine. She claims it was an accident, but when Eva corners me in the loos a little later, I have to admit I’m sure I showed it to Esther straight after I bought it.

“It’s all a bit Single White Female, isn’t it?” says Eva, as I try to work out if I can get away with wearing my dress back to front.

I can’t, so Eva rummages in her gigantic bag and pulls out a selection of what she calls “statement necklaces”. They all weigh a ton, but the largest one does succeed in making my outfit look marginally different to Esther’s, even if its weight pulls on my neck so much that I feel like a hunchback.

“You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t bend forward too quickly,” says Eva, as I do exactly that to check my make-up in the mirror – at which point the necklace swings into my face and almost loses me an eye. That’s still weeping by the time we rejoin Esther, who’s found us seats in a corner. The Siamese twins impression is now even more marked than it was before, seeing as Esther’s obviously allergic to the perfume I accidentally sprayed into her face. She’s covered in blotches and both her eyes are running continually, so we both sit sipping our drinks and dabbing our eyes with bits of tissue, while Eva concentrates on making eye contact with men – or boys, to be more accurate, if being Joel’s age still counts as a boy.

“I’m going to circulate,” she says after a while. “It’s never a good idea to go hunting in packs, and you two look like wounded animals.”

Apparently, we look less like wounded animals than employees of the club. As soon as Eva walks off, Esther and I are approached by five people in quick succession, who all want to know why women’s handbags are being searched when none of the men’s pockets are. Then some drunken bloke staggers backwards and falls over Esther’s extended leg, spilling his drink onto her dress.

“Watch out, you clumsy idiot,” she says, which turns out to have been the worst thing she could have said. Never insult an 18-stone man who’s drunk his own body weight in beer.

Mr Flobby glares at Esther, and then looks over at me. His vision must have cleared temporarily, because – somehow – he manages to spot our matching outfits. Then he moves closer to Esther, until he’s almost nose-to-nose with her.

“Well, love,” he says, his mouth distorted by a sneer. “I might be clumsy, but at least I’m not fucking ugly. You might dress like your friend over here, but with that horrible spotty face of yours, you sure as hell don’t look like her. You’re fatter, too.”

Then he lurches off to annoy someone else, while Esther stands silently, watching him go. She looks absolutely stricken, and I feel incredibly angry on her behalf as well as horribly guilty. I know I didn’t make that absolute git say what he did, but if I hadn’t sprayed her in the face, she wouldn’t have been blotchy. And she isn’t “fucking ugly”, either – or fat. She’s just got a bigger bosom than me, that’s all, and shift dresses were created for those of us who are flat of chest.

I tell Esther this, several times, but she just raises her eyebrows at me, and doesn’t bother to reply. The whole thing’s getting more stressful by the minute, especially as Eva’s still on the dance floor getting up close and personal with a young guy who looks familiar – and now an attractive man has come over to ask if he can sit next to me.

I have NO idea what to say in reply – and these horrible sensations are definitely not shivers. It is boiling hot in here.

* * *

Well, this is going well. Eva’s still dancing, Esther’s disappeared, I’ve drunk too much and the good-looking guy keeps trying to talk to me, even though I can barely hear a word he says. Have I suddenly developed early-onset deafness or something? There’s a weird roaring noise in my ears, so maybe it’s my blood pressure rising.

Even when I can hear Mr Good-Looking, I’ve just realised that I have absolutely no idea how to talk to men that I don’t know – or how to flirt with them, anyway. Every time Mr GL says something complimentary, I either try to laugh it off or I find myself giving him a sceptical look, as if he’s taking the piss. I even say, “Yeah, like that’s true” once, like a sulky teenager. I don’t know why he’s still bothering with me at all – or why I’m bothering with him, either, if I’m honest. I’d far rather be sitting at home in comfy clothes and watching TV, while chatting sporadically with Dan. That seems far less boring now than it did when it used to happen every evening, and being with someone without feeling you have to talk to them is like the Holy Grail, at the moment.

What if I never find anyone else I can sit comfortably in silence with? Mr GL’s fine to look at, and he could be the world’s most fascinating conversationalist for all I know, but he’s not Dan. That thought makes me feel as if I’m going to do one of those sudden sobs that keep catching me unawares, so I clamp my lips together and concentrate on breathing in through my nose, thus rendering further conversation impossible on my part, though not on Mr GL’s.

He doesn’t give up easily, I’ll give him that. In fact, he leans in closer and keeps up a continual stream of chatter about God knows what for the next few minutes, until the buzzing of my phone gives me the perfect excuse to move away from his arm, which has just started sneaking its way along the back of my seat. Too much, as well as far too soon.

“Excuse me a minute,” I say, meaning “for the rest of the evening”. Or even for the rest of my life.

Maybe it’s suddenly become obvious that’s how I feel because, as I open my messages, Mr GL stands up and says he’s going to the bar.

“I’d offer you a drink,” he says, “but … well, you know.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say. “Sorry, but thanks anyway. It was nice meeting you.”

I can’t do this stuff. I just can’t. And it seems Esther can’t either, as the text’s from her, apologising for disappearing, and saying she started to feel unwell so she walked to the taxi rank and is now on her way home. I think I’ll follow her example as soon as I find Eva … and send Dan a drunken text.

* * *

Two people complain to me about the state of the loos as I make my way across the club towards where Eva’s still dancing her arse off. Another asks why there are so few bar staff on duty tonight. They might as well just come out with it and say, “You look way too old to be here, unless you’re running the place.”

That’s not an attitude Eva seems to be contending with. As I push past a group of young guys who are standing watching while she shakes her enviable booty, I overhear them taking bets on “who’s going to shag the cougar”. I just hope it’s not the one I know: Joel’s best friend, Marlon, who I’ve always thought was such an innocent! I make a point of saying hello to him in a very disapproving voice, because I’m in loco parentis as his mum’s not here.

Eva nearly has a fit when I tell her Esther left hours ago, and then she demands to know why I didn’t come and join her, rather than sitting on my own “like a Billy-No-Mates”.

“I wasn’t on my own,” I say, “but I’ve had too much to drink and now I want to go home. You stay, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Just don’t sleep with Marlon, Eva – his mum would not approve.”

Eva promises she won’t, albeit with a certain degree of reluctance, and then she peers at me suspiciously.

“Are you all right, Hannah?” she says. “You look a bit tearful, as well as pissed. You’re not going to do anything stupid when you get home, are you? Like drunken texting, for example?”

“No,” I say.

I’ll probably do that as soon as I get into a cab.

* * *

Dan didn’t answer my texts, or his phone, when I rang that instead – which may explain why I’m now hiding behind a bush in his new back garden, watching him through a ground-floor window. I am officially going mad.

Chapter 11

I had no idea Dan’s landlady had a dog! Luckily, it’s one of the handbag kind, so although it snaps at my ankles and yaps when it’s let out into the garden, it doesn’t do any permanent damage, although it does nearly give me a heart attack. If the music Dan, Aasim (the other housemate) and the landlady are playing wasn’t so loud, they’d definitely hear the dog barking and come outside to investigate, so I suppose I should count myself lucky I don’t get caught in fully fledged ex-wife stalker mode. The trouble is, I don’t feel lucky in the slightest and I’m worried I may be losing my mind.

I can’t imagine what got into me, telling the taxi driver to take me to Dan’s on my way home from the club, but seeing my husband enjoying himself with his new housemates when my evening’s been so shitty, certainly doesn’t make me feel any better – and nor does having to fend off a stupid sausage dog with chilly blue eyes and very sharp teeth.

When it first starts trying to bite me, I’m stooping down behind a large evergreen bush, looking in through the uncurtained windows of what’s presumably the dining room. Dan’s in there, sitting at the table with a glass of wine in his hand and engaged in what must be a fascinating conversation, given that he’s paying far more attention to what Aasim is saying than he’s paid to anything I’ve said in years. He looks both animated and relaxed, if one of those adjectives doesn’t preclude the other.

After the dog incident, I probably look even more animated than Dan does, though considerably less relaxed – especially since I’ve just realised who his landlady is. It’s Alice, one of the more junior officers in Dan’s department, the one he always describes as bonkers. I’ve only met her once, briefly, at one of the Council’s Christmas work “do’s”, when she looked at me and nodded when Dan introduced us, then immediately turned her head away and carried on talking to him as if I wasn’t there. While wriggling about a lot, and pulling the wide neckline of her dress further and further off her shoulder, as I recall. She kept saying, “Oops” whenever the top of the dress threatened to fall off completely, as if it was an accident.

Dan said he hadn’t noticed, and he found it funny when I told him later that I thought Alice fancied him.

“She fancies anything in trousers,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anyone fancies her back.”

I took that claim at face value at the time, but I spend my next taxi journey – this time genuinely heading for home – stewing about whether what I’ve just witnessed involved any flirting with Alice by Dan. I’m still undecided by the time the taxi draws up outside my house, as I can’t actually remember how Dan behaves when he is flirting. Hopefully, he’s as rubbish at it as I’ve proved to be tonight. On the basis of that embarrassingly shoddy performance, I’m never going to find a new man and I’m going to be doomed to sleep alone for the rest of my life. Well done, Hannah. Fantastic achievement. Ten out of ten for gross incompetence.

I suppose the only plus is that at least I can wear whatever I like to sleep in now, seeing as no one’s ever going to notice. Joel’s not usually sober late at night, so he doesn’t count, as he’ll either see two of me, or none at all, depending on how close to being shut his eyes are when he finally staggers in after yet another night on the tiles. I’m surprised he wasn’t with Marlon at the club tonight, now I come to think of it, especially now he’s single again. He’s definitely out somewhere, though, as he’s nowhere to be seen when I let myself into the house, so I decide to go straight to bed.

The bedroom’s freezing, and so is the bed, now there’s no warm Dan to curl up against, so I put on a pair of very attractive red polka-dot flannel pyjamas. After that, I add green-and-white striped socks and a hideous leopard-print fleece Claire gave me for my birthday last year. When I glance in the mirror before I get into bed, I look like one of those oscillating paintings by Bridget Riley. One she produced on a very off day.

My name is Hannah Pinkman, and I am sex symbol of the year.

* * *

No sooner have I fallen asleep (it seems) than I wake up again. You can’t drink much during the evening when you get to my age, and certainly not enough gin and tonic to fell an ox. They say gin dries you out, but if it does, it’s only because it’s a diuretic. Now I’m dying for a wee.

I try to ignore the sensation for a minute or so, but then roll out of bed and make my way across the room with my eyes still shut. I’m working on the principle that if I keep them closed, I won’t wake up properly, so then I’ll go straight back to sleep as soon I get back into bed, instead of lying awake fretting for the next few hours. That’s what used to happen every night once Dan moved out, until I developed the “eyes-shut” technique. Now there are no more piles of his discarded clothing forming trip hazards across the bedroom floor, I can usually make it safely to the bathroom without having to open my eyes at all. Note the word “usually”.

Tonight, I open the bedroom door and step out onto the landing with my eyes still closed, and my arms stretched out in front of me. I’m using them to locate the banister rail that runs along the landing, in case I miss where landing ends and stairs begin.

“Arrrrgh!”

Now I’m screaming, because my hands have just touched something warm, squishy and unexpected.

“Ow,” says a voice I’ve never heard before.

Oh, my God, it’s a burglar, and I’ve just poked one of his manboobs.

I open my eyes, blink several times to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, and then I close them again, out of a misplaced sense of modesty. There’s a naked girl on the landing, right in front of me. For a few seconds, I try to dodge round her without looking at her, but that just leads to more accidental physical contact, so eventually I have to half-open one eye so I can work out how to negotiate my way to the bathroom without any more squishy surprises. I’m desperate for a wee by now.

“Um, hello,” says the girl, while I stare fixedly over her left shoulder, or as fixedly as you can stare while also hopping up and down.

For one crazy moment, it looks as if she’s going to offer to shake my hand, until she realises that would involve exposure of even greater indecency.

“Who are you?” I say, as we sidle past each other, our eyes downcast.

“Ruby,” she says, as she reaches Joel’s bedroom door, turns the handle and enters the room.

“Nice to meet you,” she adds, before she shuts the door behind her.

I’m not sure I can say the same.

* * *

It’s not just Joel and the naked girl. Everyone is having more sex than me, or talking about it anyway.

I wake up early, despite the hangover, and decide I’ll go to see Pearl, rather than hanging around at home. It’s Sunday, and I’ve no desire to spend the whole morning waiting to encounter Ruby again, whenever she and Joel finally get out of bed.

“Well, you can’t deny your son a sex life, Hannah, just because you don’t have one any more,” says Pearl, as I unpack the blueberry muffins I picked up on my way to her flat.

“I bloody can,” I say, “while he’s living under my roof, and especially when he prevented me and Dan from having one most of the time. We never knew when he was going to come barging in, looking for a missing sock.”

Pearl’s fiddling about with a fancy new coffee machine I’ve never seen before, so I’m not convinced she’s giving the subject of Joel’s inappropriate sex life due consideration.

“He obviously doesn’t realise it’s just as eurgh-inducing for parents to think of their kids’ sex lives as it is the other way round,” I continue. “And my heart’s not up to coping with the stress of meeting naked strangers in the middle of the night.”

Pearl raises her eyebrows, froths some milk, then pours it onto the coffee that she’s already shared between two mugs. Then she starts farting about trying to create fancy patterns in the froth, until I lose my patience and grab my mug. I need caffeine, and I need it now.

“There’s nothing wrong with your heart, my girl,” she says. “Apart from being a bit broken, that is, and that will pass with time. Do you like the coffee maker Dan bought me, by the way?”

Dan’s been to see Pearl? My Aunt Pearl? That’s almost as rich as this fancy coffee.

“Why did he do that?” I ask, putting my mug down and pulling a face. “You’re my aunt, not his, and it’s not your birthday or anything. He shouldn’t be coming to see you now we’ve split up, anyway. What did you two talk about?”

“I’ve been Dan’s aunt-in-law for twenty-seven years,” says Pearl, “and I am fond of him, and he of me. That’s why he bought me a house-warming present, but as for your other question –”

She stops talking and taps her nose. One of her more infuriating habits, I’ve always thought.

“You’ll have to mind your own business on that front, Hannah,” she continues. “I’m following Joel’s lead when it comes to you and Dan. I’m not telling you what Dan says to me, and I’m not telling him what you say, either.”

Joel’s lead? What the hell is going on? Anyone would think that Joel’s the adult and I’m the child, especially now I’m the one having to stuff my fingers in my ears to avoid overhearing him having sex. The world is rapidly going mad.

I scowl at Pearl, then put the kettle on to make some tea. I’ve gone right off coffee now.

Pearl turns the radio on to alleviate the rather awkward silence that ensues, and picks up a magazine from the coffee table. She flicks through the pages while I sit and stew.

“Another muffin?” she says, after a while.

“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine as I am.”

It’s possible that I’m undermining the effectiveness of this claim by the way my feet keep jiggling, and my fists are clenched, so I lean over to the coffee table and rummage around for something to read. Amidst the magazines, I find some of those Sunday supplement-style gadget catalogues, so I choose a few of those. If Pearl can sit there ignoring me by pretending to be absorbed in reading something, then I can do the same to her. And gadgets don’t take much concentration, which is good, given how my mind’s still racing.

I open the first catalogue and flick through a few pages showing incontinence aids, massage cushions and adult bibs, when something slips out and falls to the floor.

“Holy shit!” I say.

Something called “Your Free Kinky Sex Booklet” is lying at my feet. It’s generously illustrated, and it almost makes me lose the will to live. If even elderly people are supposed to carry on like fetish models now, I’m never going to get laid again. Imagine having a hot flush while wearing latex!

Pearl tells me not to be silly when I ask if she owns anything rubberised, and then she orders me to be “more open to new experiences”.

“You and Dan got stuck in a rut,” she adds. “Not just when you were together, but in terms of who you are. You both need to be willing to try different things.”

“What – like some of these?” I say, pointing to the small ads in the back of “Free Kinky Sex”.

The men in the photos are ancient, but the girls look as if they’ve just left school.

“Of course not like those,” says Pearl, chucking the leaflet into the wastepaper basket, “but something more daring than learning to row – though that’s a start. What about internet dating? I’m going to give it a try, seeing as there aren’t any good male prospects here at Abandon Hope. There are lots of men on these websites, though, so you could easily meet someone your own age instead of hanging out with oldies like me.”

She pauses, but she can’t resist. I knew she wouldn’t be able to.

“You can’t keep up with us,” she adds.

* * *

I drive home from Pearl’s thinking about what she said about trying new things and, by the time I get there, I’ve decided I’ll join one of those singles’ supper clubs. That’ll kill two birds with one stone: it’ll get me out of the house and meeting men, and save me the bother of having to cook. Joel can go and eat at Dan’s new place on the nights I’m out if he misses Dan’s cooking as much as he says he does. I miss it, too, though not as much as I miss some of the other things Dan used to do. Like dealing with Joel, when he’s being a pain.

I pause on the front doorstep as I recall the naked girl. If she’s still in the house, I hope she’s put some clothes on now. I’ve seen enough naked people in the course of the last twelve hours to last me a lifetime – which it may have to, if I can’t even get my head around flirting with someone new, let alone seeing them naked. Or them seeing me.

When I open the door and step inside, I can tell immediately that the house is empty. You always can tell, though I don’t know why. It must be something subtle only the lizard part of your brain picks up: a lack of disturbance in the air or something like that. Joel’s probably avoiding me, to give me time to calm down about last night’s shock encounter, though it’s going to take a while for that to happen, when I’m still so cross about it.

The stillness of the house is a bit depressing, so I heat up some more of Joel’s ageing pasta sauce and eat it without spaghetti, but with a spoon. Then I take my sketchbook into the garden to make the most of what little daylight is remaining. I know it’s boring, and solitary, and all that, but for the rest of today I’m going to do something that makes me feel good, and drawing fits the bill.

I spend an hour or so sketching – first the violas, from every angle, and then the dormant lilac tree, though that just looks like a collection of twigs. Now I’m at a bit of a loss to know what to draw next, seeing as most of the garden is still in bleak post-winter mode, much like me.

I stand in the centre of the overgrown lawn and turn around in a circle, looking for inspiration, and then I decide to draw the house. That turns out to be quite testing – getting the perspective right when I’m so out of practice – but when I stop concentrating on how depressed I am, and start concentrating on what I’m looking at, eventually I get my hand in, and the result is pretty good. In fact, the process proves so enjoyable that I feel miles better by the time the light starts to fail and I go back indoors. I haven’t drawn anything for years, apart from stupid website banners and icons, and now I can’t imagine why I ever stopped. Was it something about being with Dan, even though a love of art was the first thing we shared? The whole thing suddenly strikes me as so odd that, if we hadn’t split up, I’d be asking his opinion about it right this minute.

But we have split up, and now I’m miserable again … until I walk upstairs to the bathroom and find a message Joel must have left for me before he went out.

There’s a large piece of paper on the floor of the landing, which looks as if it’s been torn from one of my sketchbooks. On it Joel has drawn a self-portrait in charcoal, showing him wearing a very penitent expression along with an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place on a rap musician. Beneath his feet, which are encased in a pair of extremely elaborate trainers, he’s scrawled, “I’m sorry, Mum”. It’s all a bit smudged due to the charcoal, but the drawing isn’t bad at all, and I’m just wondering whether to suggest Joel reconsider his decision not to go to art school when I hear the front door slam, and then him shouting, “Mum?”

I go downstairs intending to demonstrate that all is forgiven by giving him a hug, but he shrugs off my attempt.

“Have you been annoying Dad?” he says. “Or doing something stupid?”

“No,” I say.

Joel glares at me, then says, “You must have done. Dad says he’s taking that secondment he was going to refuse because he ‘needs some space’. So now he’ll be moving miles away at the end of the week.”

I’m so nonplussed, all I can do is to stand there, my mouth gaping open as if I was a fish, while I rack my brains for why Dan would need more space from me. Maybe he objected to my drunken texts – unless he realised I was hiding behind the bush in his garden the other night? I should’ve killed that bloody dachshund, as soon as the damn thing started to bark.

Spring

Chapter 12

It’s March the 21st today – the first day of spring – but I can’t say I’m enjoying it, so far. It’s pouring with rain when I wake up, and I seem to be pouring, too. I thought all that unpredictable crying had finally stopped after the apricot tart meltdown in M&S a week ago, but this morning I can’t seem to stop because of this secondment thing. If Dan’s not even living in the same town as me any more, then that must mean he’s really gone for good.

Joel’s still pretty fed up, too, though at least he’s stopped blaming me for Dan’s decision now.

“I know it’s a bit shit about Dad moving away, Mum, but maybe it’s for the best,” he says, as he plonks a cup of tea down on my bedside table. “It isn’t easy, bumping into each other all the time, not when you’ve split up. Izzy walked past my shop yesterday and even that was awkward.”

He doesn’t mention Ruby, so presumably Izzy only counts because she’s Joel’s “official” ex-girlfriend, rather than a random naked person on a landing. I don’t say anything, anyway, as I don’t know what to say. “A bit shit” is the understatement of the year, unless it’s being used to describe this cup of tea. Joel never waits for the kettle to boil.

I sit and sip the lukewarm sludge while tears roll slowly off my nose and into my cup.

“You’re in no fit state to go to work, are you?” Joel says, after a while.

I agree entirely, but I’ve got no choice. The Fembot was off sick on Friday, with some sort of unspecified virus, and if she’s still claiming to be unwell today I’ve got to cover for her at the stupid strategy meeting after lunch.

Joel asks what I mean by “claiming to be unwell”.

“I’m not convinced she was genuinely ill,” I say. “She’d already asked for Friday off to have a long weekend at a spa, but the MD refused because we’re too busy. Then she rang in sick that day.”

“Well, if she’s been faking it, then your problem’s solved,” says Joel, passing me a box of tissues. “That’s the great thing about imaginary illness syndrome. You can just say you’ve caught it from her, and then she can’t prove you’re lying without admitting she was too.”

I admire the genius of Joel’s reasoning but go to work anyway, not only because he didn’t inherit his disregard for authority from me, but also because I need to check whether Esther’s got over the Mr Flobby incident at the club by now.

Her face is no longer blotchy, which is a plus, but she’s still in a foul mood with that horrible man, and with me.

“It comes to something,” she says, “when a man thinks someone decades older than you is more attractive, doesn’t it?”

It’s not decades, plural, it’s only one and a half (if Esther’s referring to me, as I assume she is), but I bite my tongue. I suppose I can’t blame her for being upset, so maybe she’ll feel better if I tell her about Dan’s secondment? Then she won’t think she’s the only one whose love life most resembles a pile-up on a motorway.

“Are you serious?” she says, once I’ve finished speaking. “Dan’s gone to Birmingham? Bloody hell, he must have been desperate to get away.”

She doesn’t add, “from you” but it feels implicit, and I’d forgotten how much Esther hates Birmingham, too. It’s where she was living when her last relationship ended badly, though that’s all I know about it, apart from the fact that she now detests anyone with a Brummie accent.

Maybe Dan will hate Birmingham as much as Esther does, and then he’ll come back sooner than planned?

Esther says she thinks that’s unlikely, as she walks back to her desk, humming, while I feel the tell-tale prickle of tears and head for the loo.

By the time I return to my desk, I’m in a much better frame of mind, mainly because I’ve just called Eva who said she’s coming to see me after work.

“It’s time to put Hannah Pinkman Moves On into action,” she explained. “After that, you’ll be too busy having fun to even think of crying.”

* * *

Joel sends a text just as I’m leaving work to tell me to hurry home because he’s locked himself out, so I power walk all the way while talking to Pearl on my mobile. I get horribly out of breath, but Pearl doesn’t notice because she’s too excited. She’s set up her online dating profile and has already been offered loads of dates. I’m impressed, until she admits her profile photo “isn’t one hundred per cent accurate”.

“What d’you mean?” I ask, trying to keep talking-while-walking

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