But by then Oliver was well into the idea. And the thing about Oliver was that once he’d decided on something, it was very hard to make him change his mind.

Secretly she began taking the Pill again. No way was she destroying her precious career.

Ah yes, Lisa’s career. Oliver had objected to that too, hadn’t he?

‘You’re a workaholic,’ he accused, over and over, with mounting frustration and anger.

‘Men always say that about successful women.’

‘No, I don’t just mean that you work too hard, although you do. Babes, you’re obsessed. All you talk about is office politics or circulation figures, or how the competition is doing. “At least we get more in advertising… We did that article six months ago… Ally Benn is out to get me.” ’

‘Well, she is.’

‘No, she isn’t.’

Mad with the irritation of being misunderstood, Lisa glared at him. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like, they all want to be me, all those twenty-year-olds. They’d stitch me up and stab me in the back, given half a chance.’

‘Just because you think that way doesn’t mean everyone else does. You’re paranoid.’

‘I’m not, I’m telling it like it is. Their only loyalty is to themselves.’

‘Just like you, babes. You’ve got so hard, you’ve sacked too many people. You shouldn’t have sacked Kelly, she was sweet, and on your side.’

Shame flickered for the tiniest moment. ‘She couldn’t hack it, she wasn’t tough enough. I need a features writer who isn’t afraid of doing hatchet jobs. Nice people like Kelly hold the magazine back.’ She rounded on Oliver. ‘I didn’t enjoy sacking her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I thought she was all right, but I’d no choice.’

‘Lisa, I think you’re the business. I always did. I…’ he paused as he searched for the right word. ‘I admire you, I respect you…’

‘But?’ Lisa questioned sharply.

‘But there’s more to life than being the best.’

A scornful laugh. ‘No there isn’t.’

‘But you are the best. You’re so young and successful, why isn’t it enough?’

‘That’s the trouble with success,’ Lisa muttered. ‘You’ve got to keep doing better.’

How could she explain that the more she got, the more she wanted? Every coup left her empty, chasing the next one in the hope that perhaps then she’d feel like she’d arrived. Satisfaction was fleeting and elusive and success simply whetted her appetite for more and more and more.

‘Why does it matter so much?’ Oliver had asked in despair. ‘It’s only a job.’

Lisa flinched at that. Oh, he was so wrong. ‘It’s not. It’s… everything.’

‘You’ll change your mind when you get pregnant.’

Instantly, terror bathed her in sweat. She wouldn’t be getting pregnant. She had to tell him. But she’d tried and he’d totally stonewalled her.

‘Let’s go away this weekend, babes,’ Oliver suggested with a brightness that he didn’t feel. ‘Just you and me, hanging out, the way it used to be.’

‘I’ve got to pop into the office on Saturday for a couple of hours. Got to check the layout before it goes to the printers…’

‘Ally could do that.’

‘No way! She’d screw it up on purpose just to show me up.’

‘See what I mean?’ he said bitterly. ‘You’re obsessed and I never get to see you, except at work bashes… And you’re no fun any more.’

There continued a steady, bitter accretion of let-downs and disappointments, a mounting litany of resentments and blame, of withdrawal and isolation from each other. Two people who had blurred into one gradually became two again, sharply defined and separate.

Something had to give and eventually it did.

On New Year’s Day Oliver found a packet of the Pill in Lisa’s handbag. After a savage and lengthy exchange of words, they lapsed into silence. Oliver packed his bags (and one of Lisa’s) and left.

44

‘who’s doing the lunch run today?’ Lisa asked.

‘Me,’ Trix replied quickly. Too quickly.

Trix loved doing the lunch run, not because she wished to be of service to her colleagues, but because it ensured she got two lunch-hours. It took four minutes to walk to the sandwich shop, another six to order, pay for and collect the sandwiches. Which left forty-five minutes to wander around the shops of Temple Bar before returning to the office and shriekingly condemning the indecisive crowds ahead of her in the sandwich queue, the gobshites who worked there who couldn’t tell the difference between chicken and avocado, the man who’d had a heart attack so that she had to loosen his clothing and wait with him until the ambulance came…

Even though everyone was snowed under by work, with just over a month to go before the launch of Colleen, nevertheless they found themselves looking forward to her progressively more outrageous excuses.

Then she would sit and spend fifteen minutes eating her sandwich, before looking at the clock and announcing, ‘One fifty-seven, I’m going on lunch, see you all at two fifty-seven.’

‘I’d like something a little bit different for my lunch today,’ Lisa told Trix.

‘Ah, Burger King.’ Trix understood.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘There’s more to lunch than sandwiches and burgers.’

Trix’s look was baffled.

‘Is it fruit you want?’ Her over-made-up forehead puckered in confusion. She knew that Lisa sometimes ate apples and grapes and that kind of gear. Trix never ate fruit. Absolutely never. She prided herself on it.

‘I’d like sushi.’

The suggestion was such a revolting one that Trix briefly lost the power of speech. ‘Sushi?’ she eventually spat in horror. ‘Do you mean raw fish?’

Over the weekend Lisa had read that a sushi emporium had come to Dublin and she hoped that sampling their merchandise might lift her out of her Oliver-triggered depression. But she’d hoped the comedy gig on Saturday night would do the trick too, and it hadn’t: although Jack had showed up and had talked to her for a lot of the night – when he hadn’t been talking to that pain-in-the-arse Clodagh, that is.