"What you can do for me, Claire," he said, "is see me. Will you do that?"

"Of course," I said obediently.

How else can I break every bone in your body? I thought.

"You will?" he asked, sounding surprised. As though he had been anti- cipating some kind of battle.

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"But certainly." I gave a little laugh. "What are you sounding so shocked about?"

Because when I've finished breaking every bone in your body, I'm going to cut off your penis and stick it in your mouth and I certainly can't do that over the phone either, now, can I? I thought.

"Well, um...nothing, nothing. That's...um...that's great," he said.

He still sounded surprised.

He'd obviously expected me to refuse to see him. That would account for the coaxing tone and the surprise at my calm agreement to meet him. But what would I gain from refusing to see him? I wanted the answers to a couple of questions.

Like, Why did you stop loving me?

And, How much money are you going to give me for Kate?

How else were we going to sort out our respective legal positions and our relationship to Kate if we didn't meet to talk about it?

Perhaps he expected to find that I'd gone to pieces totally.

But, well...hey!...I wasn't in pieces now, was I?

I wasn't better or anything like it, but no matter what way I looked at it I couldn't deny that I'd greatly improved.

How odd!

When did that happen?

You know that bit at the end of a relationship when all your friends gather around and say lots of annoying things like "Plenty more fish in the sea" and "He would never have made you happy"? Well, when they get to the part about "It'll mend with time," try to fight your initial instinct to give them a black eye.

Don't knock it, because it really does work: I was living proof. The only problem with time mending things is that it takes longer. So, effective and all as it is, it's precious little use to those of us in a hurry.

I suppose the sex with Adam hadn't hurt my recovery either. But I had to drag my thoughts back to the present. James was talking again.

"Where should we meet?" he asked.

"Why don't you come out to the house here?" I suggested.

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I didn't want this to be an away game. I wanted this meeting to be on my turf, if not on my terms.

"You can get a taxi. Or if you prefer you could take a bus and ask the conductor to let you off at the traffic circle at the end of--"

"Claire!" he interrupted, laughing at how silly I was being. "I've been out to your house plenty of times. I know how to get there."

"Of course you do," I said smoothly.

I knew that.

But I couldn't resist the chance to treat him like a total stranger. To let him know that he no longer belonged.

"Will we say eleven-thirty?" I said with authority.

"Er, fine," he said.

"Lovely," I said acidly. "See you then."

And I hung up without waiting for his reply.

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twenty-six

Now, I would be lying to both myself and you if I didn't admit that it would have given me a great deal of satisfaction if James had returned to me on his knees, a broken man. I would have been delighted if he had crawled up the driveway on all fours, sobbing and begging for me to take him back. I wanted him to be unshaven, filthy and wearing torn clothes. I wanted his hair to be all long and matted and for him to be looking de- ranged and obviously demented with grief at the terrible realization that he had lost the only woman he had ever loved. And indeed could ever love.

So vivid was this mental image of mine that when eleven-thirty rolled around and he appeared at the gate, I was hugely disappointed to find that he was in fact walking fully upright. Prehistoric man must have felt the same sense of disbelief when one of his fellows hopped down out of one of the trees and started to parade around on just two legs.

I stood at the window and watched him as he walked up the short drive. Mind you, I stood well back. I didn't think that it would enhance my dignity for him to see me with my nose pressed up against the window.

I had been wondering what he would look like. And now I would see.

That gave me a violent twist of pain.

He was no longer mine, so he would look different. My subtle but definite mark on him would be gone. And what did he look like?

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Was he different?

Had Denise made him fat?

Was he badly dressed?

Had Denise sent him out in the same little jackets and sweatpants she dressed her three little boys in? All purples and turquoises. Very nasty.

Would he look like a cruel and heartless bastard, coming to take my home and my child away from me?

But he just looked so normal.

Walking along with his hands in his pockets. He could have been anyone going anywhere. Although he looked different from the way that I'd re- membered him.

Thinner, I thought.

And I was sure that something else was different too...what was it?...I wasn't sure...had he...had he always been that short?

And he wasn't dressed the way I'd expected him to be.

Every time I'd thought of seeing him, I'd imagined him dressed in the same Grim Reaper suit that he wore that day at the hospital. Today he was wearing jeans, a blue shirt and some kind of jacket.

Very casual. Very laid-back.

Obviously not treating this occasion with the great weight that it de- served.

It felt wrong.

Incongruous.

Like a hangman turning up to do a day's work wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap on back-to-front, grinning from ear to ear as he told knock-knock jokes.

He rang the bell. I took a deep breath and walked to answer the door.

My heart was thumping.

I swung back the door and there he stood.

The same. He looked so heartbreakingly the same.

His hair was still dark brown, his face was still pale, his eyes were still green, his jaw was still lean. He gave me a funny twisted half smile, and after an awkward pause, he said expressionlessly, "Claire, how are you?"

"Fine." I smiled slightly--politely--at him. "Why don't you come in?"

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He came into the hall and I almost keeled over as a wave of nausea hit me.

It was one thing to banter calmly with him over the phone. But it was a hell of a lot harder to deal with him in the flesh.