‘How do you do,’ Kathy said, wondering what a husfriend was. Perhaps it was something like a gal pal.

When Kathy left, they lapsed into extra-nice, super-jovial awkwardness – although they were well disposed to each other, there was no doubt but that this was a very strange situation with no clear code of behaviour. Oliver over-enthusiastically admired the house and Lisa grandiosely outlined her plans, with specific reference to a wooden blind.

Eventually they both calmed down and began behaving more normally. ‘We should get started, babes,’ Oliver said, and unloaded from his bag something that, for a heartbeat, she thought was a present for her, then realized was a box-file of documents: deeds, bank accounts, credit-card statements, mortgage bumpf. He put on a pair of silver-framed glasses and, though he looked deliciously professional, all her fluttery, nervy, girly anticipation abruptly vanished. What was she thinking of? This wasn’t a date, this was a meeting about their divorce.

Her spirits suddenly slithered to the bottom of the pole. Heavily, she took a seat at the kitchen table and set about the severing of their two financial lives, in order to restore them, functioning and complete, to their single status. It was as delicate and complicated a process as separating Siamese twins.

Playing paperchase with bank accounts that went back five years, they tried to list all the different payments they’d both made on their flat. Between deposits and endowment policies and solicitor’s fees, the two distinct strands were regularly obscured.

A couple of times it got jagged and ugly, as things often do over money. Lisa insisted quite forcibly that she’d paid all the solicitor’s fees, but Oliver was certain that he too had contributed.

‘Look here,’ he rustled and located a stiff-paged invoice from their solicitor, ‘a bill for five hundred and twelve pounds, sixteen pence. And here,’ he jabbed at his bank statement, ‘a cheque for five hundred and twelve pounds, sixteen pence, issued three weeks later. A coincidence? I don’t think so!’

‘Show me that!’ She examined them both, then muttered, ‘Sorry.’

The doorbell rang and Francine waltzed in. ‘Hiya Leeeeesa. Er, hiya,’ she nodded at Oliver, shyness eclipsing her confidence. She turned back to Lisa. ‘We’re having a slumber party tonight. Me and Chloe and Trudie and Phoebe. Will you come?’

‘Thanks, but I’ve already got plans.’

‘OK. Um, have you any spare face-packs we could use?’

Lisa bit back annoyance. ‘Sorry Oliver, just a sec. Come into my bedroom, Francine.’

‘Bless!’ Oliver exclaimed, when Francine departed with a plastic bag full of face-packs, nail polishes, exfoliants and other slumber-party paraphernalia.

Lisa twitched irritably. ‘She only called to get a look at you.’

They returned to the paperchase and kept stumbling over memories.

‘What the hell did we buy at Aero that cost so much?’

‘Our bed,’ Oliver replied shortly.

Stillness descended, dense with unexpressed feelings.

‘A cheque to Discovery Travel?’ Lisa asked later.

‘Cyprus.’

That one word hurled a bomb of emotions at her. Dazzling warmth, limbs tangled while late-afternoon sunshine slanted shadowy patterns across their sheets: she was intensely in love, on her first ‘married’ holiday, unable to imagine ever being without Oliver.

Look at them now, coming across the cheque as they prepared for their divorce. Wasn’t life weird?

A couple of hours on, the doorbell rang again. This time it was Beck. ‘Lisa, do you want to come OUT? We’re just kicking a BALL around.’

‘I’m busy, Beck.’

‘Hiya.’ Beck tried a man-to-man nod at Oliver, but couldn’t hide his manifest awe. ‘How about yourself?’

‘He’s busy also.’ Lisa was getting increasingly pissed off. They were treating Oliver like a freak-show.

‘Actually,’ Oliver put down his pen and took off his glasses, ‘I could do with a break. This is doing me in. Half an hour?’ He unfolded himself fluidly and Lisa watched his muscular grace.

‘You coming, LISA?’

‘Might as well.’

‘At the start she used to play dirty,’ Beck confided to Oliver, ‘but she’s stopped now.’

‘She plays football with you?’ Oliver sounded astonished.

‘’Course she does.’ Now it was Beck’s turn to sound astonished. ‘She’s not bad. For a girl.’

Open-mouthed, Oliver said – almost accusingly – ‘You’ve changed.’

‘I haven’t.’ Lisa’s voice was level.

The thirty minutes spent skidding and scuffling after a ball around the cul-de-sac was a good idea. They were breathless and elated when they returned to the kitchen table strewn with documents.

‘Oooo-weee,’ Oliver winced when he saw it. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Hey, let’s leave it for tonight.’

‘Best not, babes. A lot to get through.’

Knocked back but hiding it well, Lisa rang for a couple of pizzas and they started work again. It was midnight before they stopped.

‘What’s the time-scale on all this?’ Lisa asked.

‘As soon as we’re in agreement over the finances we lodge it in the court, and the decree nisi will be delivered two to three months later. Then the final decree comes six weeks after that.’

‘Oh. That quickly.’ And Lisa couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The day had left her exhausted, sullied and sorrowful. Her neck hurt, her heart hurt and now it was bedtime and she so didn’t want to have sex.

Neither did he. They were both much too sad.

He undressed unthinkingly, wearily, letting his clothes lie where they fell, then climbed into Lisa’s bed as though he’d been there a million times. He held out his arms to her and she went to him. Skin against skin, they assumed their normal sleeping positions – spooned together, her back pressed tightly against his chest, her feet between his thighs. More intimate, more tender than sex. In the darkness she cried. He heard her and could find nothing within him to comfort her with.

The following day they took up their positions at the table once more and worked until three o’clock, when it was time for Oliver to leave. She took a taxi with him to the airport and when she returned to her cavernously empty house, her bed beckoned lasciviously. She was so depressed. But she resisted climbing back in and checking out of things again. Life must go on.