‘No.’

She draped it around her anyway and admired herself in the full-length mirror, a stout little figure in flowered leggings and a yellow T-shirt.

‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ Lisa asked wearily.

‘Nah.’ Francine did a scornful swagger. ‘It’s Sunday.’

Blimey, Lisa thought in idle wonder. I’ve lost track of the days.

‘Though even if it wasn’t Sunday and I didn’t want to go to school, I wouldn’t go,’ Francine boasted.

‘But you won’t get an education and then you won’t get a good job.’ Lisa didn’t care whether or not Francine got an education, but she wanted to annoy her so that she’d leave.

‘Don’t need an education. I’m going to be in a girl-band and my da says they’re all as thick as bottled shite. Here! Will I show you my dance routine?’

‘No. Just piss off and leave me alone.’

‘D’you’ve a stereo?’ Francine stalwartly ignored Lisa’s hostility. ‘No? OK, I’ll hum. Right, you’ve to imagine that I’m in the middle and that there are two girls on this side of me and two on that side. Hold on.’ Quickly Francine rolled up her T-shirt into a makeshift crop top, displaying her childish, rotund belly.

‘What’s that gold mark on your stomach?’ Lisa asked, interested, despite everything.

‘My belly-button ring.’ Francine was defensive.

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Look, I had to draw it,’ Francine insisted. ‘My ma says I can get a real one when I’m thirteen – though I’ll be dead by then,’ she added gloomily.

Then she rallied. ‘Two, three, four.’ She tapped her foot on the floor and counted herself in, then launched into her routine. Right elbow ‘chickened’ to the side twice, then left elbow. Two jerky hops on the right foot, two jerky hops on the left, then with a sharp smack to her plump buttock, she turned her back on Lisa. Humming all the while, she swung her hips, getting lower and lower to the floor. An exotic dancer couldn’t have been more explicit. She undulated back to normal height, then did an ungainly jump to the front again, her expression a fist of grim concentration. ‘This is the best bit,’ she promised. ‘Shimmmmmeeee.’ Stretching both arms out as far as they would go, she wriggled her shoulders and did a bosom-free shimmy at Lisa. ‘Da-dah!’ She finished by attempting to do the splits. She got nowhere near the floor.

‘Amazing,’ Lisa acknowledged. It had certainly been that.

‘Thanks.’ Francine was breathless and red with pleasure.

‘’Course I’ll be singing as well. I’ll be the lead singer. You get paid more for that. And I’ll write the songs too. You get even more money for that.’

Lisa nodded at her enterprise.

‘And merchandising, I’ll be in charge of that too,’ Francine promised. ‘That’s where the real money is.’ She gave Lisa a sharp look. ‘How’s your flu now? Better?’

‘No. Go away.’

‘Are you eating that KitKat?’

‘No.’

‘Can I have it?’

It was only when Lisa couldn’t get out of bed to go to work on Monday morning that she suddenly realized she was losing it. Apart from skiving off early on Friday, she couldn’t remember when she’d last missed work. Had she ever? She’d gone in when she had period pains, head colds, hangovers, bad-hair days. She’d gone in on her holidays. She’d gone in when her husband had left her. So what was she at now?

And why wasn’t it nice?

She’d always been such a control freak that she’d never been able to understand those who’d cracked up, who’d been led sobbing from their desks and had never returned. But she’d entertained a perverse curiosity about losing it, suspecting that there must be some comfort therein. Wouldn’t it be liberating to be utterly incapable, to have no choice but to let others take charge?

Well, apparently not. She was unable to function and she hated it.

She should go to work. She was needed there. The Colleen staff was too small to accommodate absenteeism, especially with Mercedes gone and Ashling laid low also. But she didn’t care. Couldn’t care. Her body was too heavy and her mind was too weary.

Eventually she became aware that she had to pee. She battled it, pretending it wasn’t happening, but eventually the discomfort got so great she had to go to the bathroom. Passing the kitchen on her return she noticed the divorce petition lying on the counter. She hadn’t looked at it since Friday, she never wanted to see it again, but she knew she had to.

She took it back to bed and forced herself to study it. She should hate Oliver. The fucking nerve of him, divorcing her! But what did she expect? Their marriage was over, ‘irretrievably broken down’ if you wanted to be technical about it, and let’s face it, he did.

The language on the petition was pompous and impenetrable. Again she realized how badly she needed a solicitor, how frighteningly out of her depth she was. She skimmed the stiff pages, trying to understand, and the first thing that actually made sense was that Oliver was seeking a divorce on the grounds of Lisa’s ‘unreasonable behaviour’. The words jumped out and stung her. She hated being accused of doing something wrong. The marriage breakdown wasn’t her fault, she fumed. They’d just wanted different things. Fucking bastard. She could come up with some unreasonable-behaviour accusations of her own, if she put her mind to it. Wanting her barefoot, pregnant and manacled to the kitchen sink – that’s pretty unreasonable.

But the anger cooled as she remembered the unreasonable-behaviour accusation was only a formality. He’d explained all that when he’d come to Dublin – they had to have a reason to give to the court and she could just as easily have sued him.

Reading on, there were five examples, just as he’d told her there had to be. Working nine weekends in a row. Missing his parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary due to work commitments. Cancelling their holiday in St Lucia at the last minute because she had to work. Pretending she wanted to get pregnant. Owning too many clothes. Each instance cut through her like a knife. Apart from the owning-too-many-clothes one. She presumed that by example five he’d run out of real complaints. Costs would be shared and neither would be seeking maintenance from the other.