Scalded, she thumped back in. Eventually the first rush of bilious rage passed, and she tried to talk herself into something positive. At least she was rid of Marcus and his jokes and his novel and his moods – that had to count for something.

And it was then that she realized she was in a bit of a bind. No husband, no boyfriend.

Oh fuck.

The Jack Devine fanclub were in full flow. Robbie, the Honey Monster and Mrs Morley were clustered together outdoing each other in their bid to wax lyrical.

Jack had recently passed through the office, looking better turned out than usual. Which, as Trix said, wouldn’t be hard.

‘I wonder,’ she often mused, ‘if anyone has ever come up to him in the street, given him ten pence and told him to buy himself a cup of tea?’

But this morning he was spruce and glossy, his dark suit pressed, his cotton shirt snowy. Even his tumbled hair wasn’t too bad – he sometimes came to work with only the sides of his hair combed and the back still a complete bedhead.

He scrubbed up well, no doubt about it. But when he stopped to pick up his messages from Mrs Morley, his shirt gaped where a button was missing midway down his chest.

This inflamed the fanclub further.

‘A tormented man who can save the world but who needs a good woman to take care of him,’ Honey Monster Shauna declared. She’d been at the Mills & Boons again.

‘Yeah, like he’s got that boho chic thing going on,’ Robbie concluded.

‘He does to be sure,’ agreed Mrs Morley, who wouldn’t have known boho chic from a bar of soap.

‘Wouldn’t you ride him as soon as look at him?’ Robbie asked. ‘Ashling?’

A frantic mouthing session of Don’t ask her began.

But it was too late. Obedient Ashling was already imagining riding Jack Devine, and several emotions galloped across her face, none of which served to reassure her anxious colleagues.

‘She was badly let down,’ Mrs Morley hissed. ‘I’d say she’s off men.’

‘I shouldn’t have gone there!’ Robbie exclaimed. ‘I feel a valium moment coming on.’ Any excuse. He was always popping valium, librium and beta-blockers, for his ‘nerves’.

‘D’you want one?’ he asked Mrs Morley. ‘I’ve had three already today.’

Her eyes gleamed. ‘I suppose it couldn’t do any harm.’

Then she spent the rest of the day lurching around like a zombie, banging into desks, catching her fingers in the keyboard, while Robbie had built up such a tolerance he was blithely unaffected.

Meanwhile, Ashling was nearly as stunned as Mrs Morley. Robbie’s question had knocked her for six and she couldn’t stop thinking about Jack Devine. Her heart swelled up like a balloon as she thought about his narkiness and his kindness, his crumpled suits and his sharp mind, his hard bargains and his soft heart, his high-powered job and his missing button.

He’d washed her hair when he didn’t have time. He’d treated Boo, a piece of human detritus, as the person he actually was. He’d refused to sack Honey Monster Shauna after she’d mistakenly included an extra zero in Gaelic Knitting and people ended up knitting christening shawls that were seventeen feet long instead of three.

Robbie’s right, she realized. I would ride Jack Devine as soon as look at him.

‘Ashling!’ Lisa cut in irritably. ‘For the fifth time, this intro is too naffing long! What is wrong with you? Have you been dipping into the valium too?’

They both automatically looked at Mrs Morley, who was slumped on a chair, dreamily painting her thumb-nail with Tippex.

‘No.’

Lisa sighed. She should be kinder. Ashling hadn’t been like this for ages, not since the first few weeks after Marcus had left her. Perhaps she’d just found out something new and unpleasant – like Clodagh being up the duff. ‘Has something happened with Marcus and your mate?’

Ashling made herself focus on something other than Jack Devine. ‘Actually, yes. Marcus is knobbing someone else.’

‘That comes as no surprise,’ Lisa said scornfully. ‘You know that type of man.’

Lisa had the ability to make Ashling feel very gauche.

‘What kind of man?’

‘You know – not a bad bloke but insecure. Addicted to being loved, but only reasonably good-looking.’ Blimey, she was being polite. ‘Suddenly women like him because he’s famous and he’s like a child let loose in a candy-store.’

But these words of wisdom did little to snap Ashling back to alertness. If anything, they had the opposite effect. She seemed to slide further away from the world and mumbled, ‘Oh, my good God,’ in a startled kind of way. Then her face cleared.

‘Revelations are like buses, aren’t they?’ she asked in wonder. ‘None for ages, then several come at once.’

Lisa gave a smothered scream, and swung away.

Meanwhile, Ashling fidgeted wildly until it was time to leave work and meet Joy. She wanted to share her mind-blowing insights. Well, one of them anyway. The other would have to wait until she’d made sense of it herself.

The minute Joy arrived at the bar in the Morrison, she was subjected to a hail of words from Ashling.

‘… Even if Marcus hadn’t met Clodagh he would still have done a legger sooner or later, he’s too insecure and needy and I should have seen the signs.’

‘Oh. And they were?’ Joy was tugging off her coat and doing her best to rally.

‘I knew he’d given a Bellez-moi note to another girl. Tell me, what kind of man goes around handing out his phone number? If he’s interested in you, he asks for your number, right? Instead of trawling for… for… what’s the word? A positive reaction, I suppose, by giving out his number and seeing who’ll bite.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I gave him my number twice and he didn’t ring the first time. It’s clear now he was playing some sort of game. Seeing if I liked him enough to give him the number. He wasn’t really interested in me – he was interested in what I thought of him. It was only when I went to his gig that he deigned to ring me.

‘And when I wouldn’t sleep with him the first night. Sulky or what! Such a baby. And all that “Am I the best?… Who’s the funniest of them all?” And you know something else, Joy? I wasn’t exactly without sin, either. Part of the reason I went out with him was because he was famous. So if it backfired, I’ve only got myself to blame.’