I didn’t know why, except that I found it very comforting. Especially because I could just open it on any page I liked and I knew exactly where I was. I didn’t have to bother with all that tedium of finding where I’d left off and remembering who was who and all the other problems that assail someone of less than average intelligence with a criminally short attention span.

‘You had a right nerve telling me to take my dress off the way you did,’ I said teasingly, as we lay on my bed. ‘What made you so sure that I would? I might have been going out with someone else.’

‘Like who?’ He laughed. ‘Daryl? That thick-looking eejit.’

‘He’s not a thick-looking eejit, ‘I said haughtily.’ He’s really nice and has a great job.’

‘You could say the same about Mother Teresa,’ Luke scoffed, ‘but I still wouldn’t want to go home with her.’

I was glad that Luke was jealous of me being with Daryl, but I was slightly ashamed of the whole incident. So I tried to change the subject.

‘I wouldn’t have thought that the Llama Lounge was your kind of place,’ I said.

‘It’s not’

‘What were you doing there?’

He laughed and said ‘I shouldn’t tell you this but I had scouts on the lookout for you.’

I had a simultaneous ego rush and a surge of contempt for him.

‘What do you mean?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, except for the huge part of me that wanted to know everything.

‘You know Anya?’ he asked.

‘God, yeah.’ Anya was a model and I wanted to be her.

‘I told Anya about you and she rang me and said that you were in the Llama.’

‘How do you know Anya?’ I asked.

‘I work with her.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Number-crunching, babe.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Accounts work. At Anya’s agency’

‘Are you an accountant?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘No. Just a lowly clerk.’

‘Thank God for that,’ I breathed. ‘My sister Margaret’s husband, Paul, is like an accountant, only worse. You know the things I mean, what’s that they’re called?’

‘Auditors?’

‘That’s right. So tell us, what’s Anya like? Is she nice? Has she any vacancies for friends?’

‘She’s a great girl,’ he said. ‘One of the best.’

As his eyes closed and his speech became faint and mumbly, he lay on his side. I lay myself against the smooth skin of his back and put my arms around him, sneaking a feel to see if his stomach did that lean-to action that mine did. It didn’t.

But after he went to sleep I suddenly became fixated by the condom he’d had in his jacket pocket. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. Even though I knew it was a responsible thing to do, it made me jealous. Jealous of the unknown woman he’d have used it on, if it hadn’t been used on me. And what did it tell me about Luke? I wondered angrily. That he was always on the look-out for a shag? Anytime, anyplace, anywhere? Ever-ready, his trusty condom poised to be called into active service? Mad-for-it-me Costello. How many more of them did he have in his pocket, ready to be used at a moment’s notice? On Anya, probably, if he got half a chance, not that she’d have anything to do with a fool like Luke.

I looked at him as he lay sleeping and decided I didn’t like him anymore.

I woke in the middle of the night with sickening period pains.

‘What’s up, babe?’ Luke murmured, as I writhed in cramping agony.

I paused. How could I say it?

‘I am becursed’? Maybe he wouldn’t understand.

‘I’m blobbing’? Helen said that. Even to men.

I decided on ‘I’ve my period.’ Snappy, to the point, no room for confusion, yet not as clinical as ‘I’m menstruating.’

‘Great!’ Luke exclaimed. ‘No need for condoms for the next five days.’

‘Stop it,’ I groaned. ‘I’m in agony. Bring me drugs, look in the drawer over there.’

‘OK.’ He hopped out of bed and, even though I didn’t like him anymore, there was no denying that he had a fine body on him. In the dark, I watched the silver from the street-lights glint on the hard length of his leg, that lovely line that runs sideways along a well-muscled thigh. Not that I’d know.

He rummaged round in a drawer while I admired the view of him from the side. What a gorgeous bum he had, I thought, dizzy with pain. I loved the hollow at the side of it. I’d love a couple of them myself.

He came back with my big container of industrial-strength pain-killers.

‘Dihydracodeine?’ He read from the label. ‘Heavy gear. You can only get them on prescription.’

‘That’s right.’ No need to tell him I bought the prescription from Digby the smack-head doc.

‘OK,’ he said, reading slowly from the label. ‘Two now and none again for six hours…’

‘Can you get me some water?’ I interrupted. Two, my foot. Ten would be more like it.

While he was in the kitchen, I crammed a handful of tablets into my mouth. Then when he came back I let him give me two, with the glass of water.

‘Manks,’ I mumbled, barely able to speak because my mouth was so full. But I knew I’d got away with it.

35

Naturally I couldn’t go to work the next day. Liberated from guilt because, for once, I really was sick, I took another handful of pills and set about enjoying my day off.

And it was a good one.

Pleasantly floaty from the painkillers and the humidity, I watched Geraldo, then I watched Jerry Springer, then I watched Oprah, then I watched Sally Jessy Raphael. I ate a carton of ice cream and a family-sized bag of tortilla chips. Then it was time for a little sleep.

When Brigit came home from work I was lying on the couch, wearing track-pants and a bra-top, eating Cinnamon Toast Flakes straight out of the box. Because as everyone knows, cereal eaten straight from the packet – like broken Club Milks and any food eaten standing up – has no calories.

‘Did you skip work again?’ were her first words.

‘I was sick,’ I said defensively.

‘Oh, Rachel,’ she said.

‘I really was sick this time.’ I was annoyed. Who needs a mother when you’ve got Brigit?