She looked fragile and delicate and beautiful. ‘Really I’m not,’ she insisted, her large eyes pleading don’t-misunderstand-me.

I wanted to puke, but there was a shamed silence from everyone else.

Suckers, I thought, furious that they couldn’t see how they were being manipulated.

‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ she protested, allowing a little quiver to appear on her bottom lip.

More shame. More silence. Josephine watched her with narrowed eyes.

‘I’m actually looking for material for my next book,’ Misty added, almost as an afterthought.

There was a stunned silence, before a clamour of questions broke out.

‘Will I be in it?’ John Joe asked excitedly.

‘Will I?’ Chaquie asked in alarm. ‘You won’t use my real name, will you?’

‘Or mine,’ Neil said anxiously.

‘I’ll be the hero, won’t I?’ Mike swaggered. ‘The one who gets the girl?’

‘What about me?’ Clarence began.

‘STOP IT!’ Josephine roared.

Nice one, I thought smugly. Give her hell. I wondered if I could let this slip to Chris. It would be good for him to know what a shallow little hoor she was. Although, I thought doubtfully, I wasn’t sure Chris was that interested in Misty’s strength of character.

‘This is your second time in this treatment centre,’ Josephine raged. ‘When are you going to take it seriously? For God’s sake, you’re an alcoholic!’

‘Of course I’m an alcoholic,’ Misty calmly insisted. ‘I’m a writer!’

‘Who do you think you are?’ Josephine spat. ‘Ernest Hemingway?’

I smirked with glee.

Great stuff.

Then Josephine tore strips off Misty for being such a flirt.

‘You’re deliberately and extremely provocative to many of the men here. I’d like to know why.’

Misty wouldn’t cooperate, and Josephine got nastier and nastier.

The afternoon was a pleasure from start to finish. But at the end, as I was slipping out the door for the great tea-drinking, Josephine grabbed me by the sleeve. In a second I went from being relaxed and good-humoured to paralysed with terror.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

Oh no, my brain screamed. Oh no! Tomorrow is questionnaire day. How could I ever have thought I’d avoid it?

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I thought it was only fair to warn you…’

I felt close to tears.

‘To give you a bit of time to prepare yourself…’

Thoughts of suicide raised their heads like little buds in the early spring.

‘… Your parents will be coming in as your Involved Significant Others.’

It took a second or two to absorb it. I was so focused on Luke and the horrible things he might have said about me that for a while I didn’t know what parents were.

Parents? Do I have parents ? But what do they have to do with Luke?

‘Ah, right, so,’ I said to Josephine. I walked to the dining-room, absorbing what she’d told me.

OK, I realized, thinking fast, the situation wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been because they knew very little about me. But all the same, I was frightened. I had to ring Mum and Dad and find out what they were planning to say.

The counsellor lurking in our midst was the small and cute-looking Barry Grant. When I asked her if I could make a phonecall, she complained loudly ‘Orr ay, Rrachel gail, I’m ’avin’ me sea.’

She kindly gestured at the cup of tea in front of her, so I had a vague notion of what she was saying.

I fidgeted and fidgeted until she finally stood up and led me to the office. As we passed through reception, I was surprised to see Mike perched up on Bubbly the receptionist’s desk.

Is Bubbly a Madonna or a whore? I wondered.

‘A lovely girl like you?’ He was crooning and twinkling at her. ‘I’d say you have to beat them off with a shitty stick.’

Whore, I think.

‘Oi!’ Barry Grant roared at him. ‘Norr again! I’ll ‘ave you.’

Mike jumped several feet.

‘Ah, good luck, I’ll see you again,’ he said hurriedly to Bubbly, and bolted for the door.

‘Stay away from the gails,’ Barry Grant bellowed after him.

‘And stop encouraging him,’ she barked at Bubbly. ‘You’re supposed to be a professional.

‘Come on, you,’ she shouted at me – I suppose she didn’t want me to feel left out – ‘What’s the number?’

Dad answered the phone by saying ‘El Rancho Walsho.’ I could hear ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ playing in the background.

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said. ‘How’s the acting? The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd?’

I thought it politic to pretend we were friends. That way he might be nice about me the following day.

‘Mad fan,’ he said. ‘And how’s yourself?’

‘Not so mad fan, actually, what’s this I hear about you coming to be my ISO tomorrow?’

I heard an intake of breath so sharp he sounded as if he was being garrotted.

‘I’ll get your mother!’ he squeaked. Then the phone clattered onto the table.

There followed ages of loud whispering, as Dad filled Mum in on the situation and they each tried to blame the other.

‘Whisper whisper whisper,’ went Mum anxiously.

‘WHISPERWHISPERWHISPER!’ Dad replied frantically.

‘Well, whisper, whisper.’

‘You’re her whisper, whisper whisper whisper women’s work!’

I caught the general gist. ‘What’ll I say?’ Mum hissed.

‘Just tell her the truth,’ Dad hissed back.

Then Mum hissed ‘Tell her the truth yourself’.

And Dad hissed ‘You’re her mother, that kind of a caper is women’s work.’

Dad must have threatened to cut Mum’s housekeeping because Mum eventually took the phone and in a shaky, fake-up-beat voice, she declared ‘D’ you know something, but the only good Surrey is a dead Surrey. He has me tormented with that Okla-bloody-homa. And, listen to this, you won’t believe this, do you know what he asked me to get for him in Dunnes, grits! To have for his tea, as it were. Well, what are grits, sez I. Cowboy food, sez he. Sure, the only grit I know is the stuff you find in the bottom of a bird cage…’