"So we're friends?" he asked oh-so-appealingly.

"Yes." I nodded in agreement. "We're friends."

Although my brain was saying to me, "Excuse me, excuse me, friends, did you say friends? I don't think mere friends behave in the way you want to with Adam. Laura is your friend and you don't rip the clothes off her back anytime you see her and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that precisely what you want to do with Adam?"

"Shut up," I muttered at it.

"Sorry?" said Adam, looking at me in alarm, obviously thinking, "Oh God no, here she goes again."

"Nothing." I smiled at him. "Nothing at all."

"Well," he said. "Seeing as we've sorted out all this misunderstanding, when can I see you?"

"Oh, I don't really know," I said, going all shy and girlie on him.

"Are you doing anything on Sunday night?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said, pretending to consider. Although my social diary stretched ahead of me as empty and as formless as the Gobi Desert.

"Well, can I cook you dinner?" he asked.

"Yes, that would be lovely," I said.

"Good," he said. "Jenny and Andy have gone away for the weekend so we'll have the place to ourselves."

"Oh," I said.

I was a woman of the world.

I knew very well that to go to a man's house, a man's house where all the other residents were absent, and submit to having a dinner cooked for oneself meant that it was more

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than pork chops and Black Forest g�teau that was being offered.

Great, I thought.

I couldn't believe my luck.

"Right, Adam, that sounds lovely."

And so we agreed on a time for Sunday night. He walked Kate and me to the car and home we drove.

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twenty-one

The preparations for Sunday.

Ingredients:

One neglected, rejected, dejected twenty-nine-year-old woman, who had recently given birth

A generous helping of guilt

A pinch of anticipation

A packet of insecurity about the shape of her body

A sprig of excitement (wild, if possible)

A spoonful of condensed deep despair

A minor stretch marks panic

Two black lace-topped stockings

One interesting pair of black underwear

One black bra, of the miraculous rather than just the plain wondrous variety

One bottle of red wine

One dress

One pair of shoes

Decoration:

Whore-red lipstick

Several layers of dark mascara

Directions:

Put the stockings, panties, and bra to one side, for use later.

Take the woman.

Add the guilt, anticipation, insecurity, excitement, despair and panic.

Mix thoroughly.

Leave to stew for a couple of days.

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In a medium-size bathroom, prepare the woman by shaving her legs, coloring her hair and painting her toenails.

About an hour before commencing, baste generously in expensive body lotion, turning frequently.

Add the stockings, the pair of interesting black undies and the miraculous black bra. Have a couple of practice runs at looking seductive by letting her hair fall over her face and looking up through her eyelashes.

Check that she can still gasp and arch her back and say sentences like, "Oh baby, that was wonderful" and "Oh God, don't stop" while keeping a straight face.

Commandeer a sister, preferably Anna, to look after the aforementioned child.

Add a generous helping of whore-red lipstick, several layers of black mascara, a short purple (it is, after all, the color of passion) dress, sexy black shoes with suede ankle straps and one bottle of red wine.

Always take care not to start swigging from the bottle of red before ar- riving at your destination.

As an optional extra, condoms in the purse are always a nice touch.

If it's not possible to procure them--for example, they may be out of season--you will have to make do with large amounts of self-restraint. Not always ideal, but it does work.

Serve on a bed with a good-looking man.

I followed the instructions to the letter. I was lucky enough to be able to procure condoms--courtesy of Laura--what a woman!

I was feeling pretty good.

I didn't even get upset when I discovered that thanks to my hair color (it's hair enhancer, darling; we don't need to color our hair, we just enhance its natural lights), all right then, thanks to my hair enhancer, my ears and my hair were now color-coordinated.

But I suppose if I had to have colored ears, I could have done a lot worse than a rich, glossy, shiny chestnut color. None of your Ebony Shadow or Plum Sugar for my ears. No sir!

At about seven-thirty on Sunday evening, I was prepared. About to go forth to sin, I kissed Kate good-night.

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As I was furtively making for the front door, my coat buttoned up prac- tically to the eyebrows in case Mum should spot me looking so floozylike, the phone rang.

"Claire, it's for you," shouted Helen.

Oh God!

But it was only Laura.

Calling to wish me luck and wanting to know if I had practiced putting on a condom with my teeth, as per her instructions.

"No, I didn't!" I told her.

I was dying to get off the phone and out of the house because I was ter- rified of being caught.

"Why not?" she demanded. "You can't just expect him to be happy with boring old sex. You have to be a bit inventive."

"But you only gave me two!" I said, all alarm. "I didn't want to waste them. And anyway, what was I supposed to practice on?"

"Well, let's just hope that you perform adequately with the first one. Or else you won't get a chance to use the second one," she said darkly.

"Oh stop it, Laura, I'm nervous enough!"

"Good." She laughed. "It's much better when you're nervous."

I promised to call her the next day and tell her all the gory details.

"Or, if I get in early enough tonight, I'll ring you and tell you everything," I promised eagerly.

"If you get in early enough tonight to tell me everything, there won't be anything to tell,'" she told me.

"Oh," I said.

She had a point.

"Look, I'm going," I said in annoyance, and I hung up on her while she was in the middle of explaining some sort of complicated sexual activity that she said she had seen done in a show in Bangkok. Whatever it was it could only be done by a woman who was a damn sight more supple than me. I did know how to have sex, you know. I had given birth to a child. How did she think this actually came about?