Apparently she had to sign something called an Acknowledgement of Service and send it back to Oliver’s solicitor. But she was signing nothing. And not just because she hadn’t the will to pick up a pen. Her instinct for self-preservation went very deep.

There was a knock at her door. She actually managed a silent laugh. The thought of her leaving the bed to answer it was so unlikely as to be funny. Another knock. It didn’t bother her in the slightest. No chance she’d respond. Voices outside. Another knock – more of a pounding, really. Then a creak as the letter-box flap was lifted.

‘Lisa?’ a voice asked.

She barely registered it.

‘Lisa,’ the voice called again.

It was so not a problem to ignore it.

‘LEEEEEESSSSAAAA,’ the voice bellowed. She realized she recognized it. It was Beck. Well, that wasn’t his real name, but he was one of the Man-U-loving little boys who lived on the road. The one with the very loud voice. ‘I KNOW you’re in there. I’m on the MITCH too. There’s a BIG packet of flowers here, d’you want them?’

‘No,’ Lisa called feebly.

‘WHAT?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t hear you. Did you say yes?’

Angrily, Lisa dragged herself from the bed. For fuck’s sake! All her life she’d been strong. She’d never given in to PMT or mental-health days or anything. And the one time she decided to have a nervous breakdown, people kept interrupting it. She flung open the front-door and roared into Beck’s face, ‘I SAID NO!’

‘Right you are.’ He crackled a big, cellophane bouquet into her arms and slipped past her into the hall. ‘Quick, before someone sees me. I’m meant to be at school.’

Lisa gazed dully at the flowers. They were good ones. No carnations or any of that cheap-skate unimaginative shit, but lots of weird stuff – purple thistle and orchids that looked as though they came from another planet. Who were they from? Suddenly her hands were shaking and she was ripping open the envelope. Could they be from Oliver?

They were from Jack.

All the note said was, ‘We think you’re great. Please come back to work.’ But, with a flash of insight, Lisa recognized it as an apology. Jack had known she’d had her sights set on him, and he wasn’t interested. He knew that she knew. And she knew that he knew that she knew and all at once it didn’t matter anyway. Though good-looking and hard-bodied, Jack would have driven her loco. He didn’t care enough about the things that were vital to her. She’d only been diverting herself with fantasies of him – Oliver was the man she was really upset about.

Beck was agitating for her attention. ‘I want to ask you something.’

‘What?’ The word was dragged up from her toes.

‘Help me put this in my HAIR?’ He produced a packet from his sweatpants. It was Sun-in.

‘Don’t tell me, you want to be in a boy-band,’ Lisa said.

Beck’s face was a picture as he searched for the right words. Eventually he located them. ‘Would you ever fuck OFF?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m going to be a winger for Man U.’

‘So you need blond highlights?’

‘Duh,’ he scorned her stupidity. ‘’Course I do!’

‘Not now, Beck, I’ve the flu.’

‘No, you haven’t.’ Already he was on his way into her bathroom and he turned and gave a one-skiver-to-another wink. ‘But if you won’t grass on me, I won’t grass on you.’

She leant against the wall and toyed with screaming, then simply yielded to her fate.

An hour later Beck departed, his hair striped with blond. ‘Thanks Lisa, you’re a COOL girl.’

After his departure, she sat at her kitchen table, smoking. She was cold and kept meaning to get a top, but every time she finished a cigarette, she lit another one.

In the silent room the phone rang and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest – her nerve-endings were frayed to pieces! The answer-machine picked up: she wasn’t so much screening calls as stonewalling them. But every cell in her body went on red alert as Oliver’s voice filled the room.

‘Babes, it’s me. Uh, Oliver, that is. Thought I’d give you a bell about the – ’

She snatched up the phone. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’

‘Hey,’ he said warmly. ‘Thought you might be. I called you at work, they said you were at home. Did you get the, um… ?’

‘Yes.’

‘I tried calling you Thursday and Friday at work to let you know it was coming, but couldn’t get you. Left a message with your PA to call me, didn’t you get it?’

‘No.’ Or maybe she did. She had a vague memory of Trix trying to press some message on her on Friday morning.

‘And I would have called over the weekend but I was working. Mental shoot in Glasgow with psychotic models. Twenty-hour days.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘So, um… even though we knew this was going to happen, it doesn’t feel too hot, no?’

‘No,’ she gulped.

‘But one of us had to do it.’ He sounded very uncomfortable. ‘To be honest, babes, I thought it’d be you. I was wondering what was taking you so long.’

‘Busy,’ she swallowed. ‘New mag and all that.’

‘Right! But, hey, I felt a total toe-rag putting those five things on it. I don’t mean to bad-mouth you, you know that, right? Like, I was pissy at the time but not now, know what I’m saying? But they’re the rules. We’ve not been separated two years and adultery wasn’t the reason we split, so we have to give some reason to the court.’

Lisa wasn’t quite ready to speak. She was waiting for the storm of crying that was happening in a locked place within her to pass. If she opened her mouth now it would all come out.

‘Lees,’ he pressed. He sounded concerned.

‘I…’ she managed.

‘Heyyyy,’ he cooed.

‘It’s very sad,’ she shook.

‘I know, I know. Tell me about it!’ After a pause, Oliver seemed to be thinking aloud. ‘Why don’t I visit you? We can sort it, put it to bed and all that.’

‘You’re loco.’

‘I’m not loco. Look at it this way, we can both save ourselves a wedge in solicitor’s fees if we sort out things like the apartment face to face. Any idea how much it’ll cost each time my brief writes a letter to yours? Lots, Lees, I’m telling you.