No, indeed it was not.

But it meant that I could stop feeling guilty for a couple of hours.

So spirits were high around Thursday lunchtime.

Happily, I picked Kate out of her bassinet and twirled her around. What a beautiful picture we must make, I thought. The beautiful child being lovingly held by her devoted mother. Kate just looked frightened and started to cry, but never mind.

I meant well. My heart was in the right place, even if Kate's center of gravity wasn't.

"Come on, darling," I said. "Let's put on our best outfits and go into town and see the people."

And so Kate and I went into town. I couldn't, in all conscience, buy any more clothes for me, but I could buy clothes for Kate.

Every day I was finding out more good things about Kate. She continued to enhance every aspect of my life.

I bought her the tiniest, most beautiful denim dress. Even the smallest one was too big for her, but she'd grow into it. It was gorgeous.

And I got her the sweetest little jumper, light blue, patterned with dark blue polka dots and--get this--a matching little jacket with zip front and a hood.

So that she'd fit in if she ever met any cool street kids.

And the socks!

I could go on for hours about the socks I got her. So tiny

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and fluffy and snuggly and warm and soft, to cover her tiny, tiny, tiny little pink feet. Sometimes I got such a rush of love for her that I wanted to squeeze her so hard I actually feared for her safety.

Then we wandered around a bookshop for a while. My adrenaline started pumping any time I was within about a hundred yards of a bookshop. I loved books nearly as much as I loved clothes. And that's saying something.

The feel of them and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin's cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look.

So the entire world and life that I chose to enter belonged to someone called Samantha, who apparently "had it all." A palazzo in Florence, a penthouse in New York, a mews house next door to Buckingham Palace, more priceless jewels than you could shake a stick at, a publishing house or two, a Lear jet, a hot boyfriend, some count or duke or something, and the absolutely essential dark secret and hidden tragic past.

My money was riding on her having been a lesbian prostitute before her luck changed.

I could have bought an "improving book," I suppose.

Something by one of that Bront� crew. Or maybe even a bit of Joseph Conrad. He was always good for a laugh.

But I wanted something that wasn't very taxing. So, just to be on the safe side, I bought complete trash.

After I came out of the bookshop, clutching my child and my gold-em- bossed best-seller, I just happened to be passing the caf� that I had gone to with Adam the previous Saturday and I just happened to have an hour or two to kill so I just happened to sit there and--guess what?--Adam just happened to walk in only an hour and a half after I arrived.

What a coincidence!

Well, I suppose I had better come clean.

I had kind of, I suppose, nursed a little hope that maybe, just maybe, if I were to go into town that maybe, just maybe, I might run into Adam.

So I suppose that, when he finally walked in, I couldn't call it either a spiritual or a metaphysical event.

I could even be said to have engineered our meeting.

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Although, dammit, that's not fair.

God helps those who help themselves.

God can't drive a parked car.

If I had stayed at home in bed with the chocolate and the Marie Claire would I have met him?

The answer has got to be no.

I was sitting there, with half an eye on Samantha's takeover bid and the other eye on the door. Although I was hoping that he'd come in and even half expecting him to appear, I wasn't prepared for how I felt when he ac- tually did arrive.

He was so, he was so...so gorgeous.

So tall and strong-looking. But at the same time so boyishly cute.

"Easy, easy," I told myself. "Take deep breaths."

I resisted the urge to dump Kate on the table and run over and fling myself on him.

I reminded myself that I had used up my neuroses quota on him and that it might be a good idea to behave like a normal well-balanced woman.

Hell, after a bit of practice I might even become one.

So I sat there, poised and perched, trying to exude calmness and well- balancedness and unneuroticness.

Finally he saw me.

I held my breath.

I waited for him to rear and neigh like a startled horse and then make for the door like the hounds of hell were after him. I expected him to run like a hare through the caf�, knocking over tables and chairs, spilling pots of tea and cups of coffee over innocent bystanders, his hair standing on end, his eyes wide and staring, and shout at anyone who'd care to listen, stabbing his finger wildly at me and Kate. "She's crazy, that one, you know. Pure mental. Have nothing to do with her."

But he didn't do anything of the sort.

He smiled at me.

I have to admit that it was a bit of a wary smile.

But it was a smile.

"Claire!" he said, and came over to the table.

"And Kate," he continued.

Correct on both counts.

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Not much got past him.

He kissed Kate.

He didn't kiss me.

But I could live with it.

I was just so glad to see him, gladder still that he wanted to speak to me. I really wasn't that concerned with which one of us he kissed.

"Why don't you sit down and join us?" I said politely.

Poised. Polished. The hostess with the mostest, that was me.

Impeccably mannered. Emotions--if indeed I had any at all, that is--firmly, strictly even, bound and strapped into place.

"All right," he said.

Wary. Cautious. Watching me carefully. Maybe waiting for me to accuse him of having the hots for my mother.

"I'll just go and get a cup of coffee," he said.

"Fine," I said, giving a magnanimous smile, well-balancedness and re- laxedness exuding (I hoped) from my every pore.

Off he went.

And I waited.

And waited.

Oh dear, I thought sadly, he must have made a break for it. He mustn't want anything to do with me at all. I seemed to be developing quite a knack for this.

He was probably wedged in the tiny window in the men's room, strug- gling to get out among the smelly trash and cabbage leaves and empty brandy bottles that are found outside the back exits of restaurants and caf�s.