She dashed her hand away. ‘But I don’t want these! I want the wooden ones and I promise I can afford them!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said humbly. ‘I just didn’t want you having to shell out all that money, but if you’re sure…’

Lisa sighed raggedly. This fucking country. ‘I’ve been saving up,’ she decided to reassure him. ‘It’s OK.’

‘You’ve been saving up?’ All at once he rallied. ‘Well, that’s different, then.’

As she gave him her details, her irritation faded. When he leant over and confided to her that he thought the prices in the shop were shocking, that he and his wife waited for the sale, she became almost touched by his concern. I’m losing it, she suddenly thought. It’s official, I’m going round the bend. Touched by a curtain salesman who won’t sell me what I want.

It was barely six when she reached home. Scraping the bottom of the barrel in the search for activities, Lisa rang her mum and gave her her new phone number. Though she wondered why she bothered because her mum never rang her. Too worried about her phone bill. Even if there was some disaster, Lisa thought sourly, like if her dad died, her mum would probably still wait until Lisa rang to tell her.

After the usual enquiries into each other’s health, Pauline had some good news for Lisa. ‘Your dad says that that funny wedding of yours probably isn’t valid here anyway and that you probably don’t need to get divorced.’

The word ‘divorced’ slammed into Lisa with abrupt force. It was such a heavy, final word. Quickly she recovered to snippily tell her mum, ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong.’

Pauline swallowed at the expected censure. Of course she was wrong. She was always wrong around Lisa.

‘Oliver registered it when we got back.’

‘Well, that’s that, then.’

‘That is that, then.’

In the silence that followed, Lisa found herself remembering the Friday morning in bed when she and Oliver had decided on a We’re-young-and-fabulous-Londonites’ whim to fly to Las Vegas for the weekend and get married.

‘We’ll never get flights,’ Oliver had laughed, wildly taken with the whole idea.

“Course we will.’ Lisa had the confidence of one who always gets what she wants. And of course they did – those were the days when the world still worked for her. That very evening, giddy with excitement and alarm at what they were doing, they flew to Vegas. Where, weirded out by jet-lag and the spooky-blue desert sky, they found that getting married was frighteningly easy.

‘Should we?’ Lisa giggled, about to lose her nerve.

‘That’s why we’re here.’

‘I know, but… it’s rather extreme, isn’t it?’

Oliver’s exasperated eyes collided with hers. Lisa knew that look. With Oliver you didn’t start things that you didn’t mean to finish.

‘Come on, then!’ Exhilaration and terror gave her laughter a shrill edge.

They plighted their troth in the twenty-four-hour Chapel of Love, their vows witnessed by an Elvis Presley lookalike and a Starbucks server. The bride wore black.

‘Yew may kiss the braaaaade.’

‘We’re married.’ Lisa was in fits, as they were shunted out to make way for the next couple. ‘This is unreal.’

‘I love you, babes,’ Oliver said.

‘I love you too.’

And she did. But most of all she was dying to get back, to madden everyone with envy of the kitsch glamour of their marriage. Beach-side ceremonies in Saint Lucia didn’t hold a candle – this was a scoop! She couldn’t wait to go to work on Monday, for someone to ask, ‘Do anything nice at the weekend?’ – so that she could reply casually, ‘Actually, I flew to Las Vegas and got married.’

‘You’d want to get a good solicitor, then.’ Pauline’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘Make sure you get what you’re entitled to.’

‘’Course,’ Lisa said irritably.

Actually, she had no idea what getting divorced entailed. For one so pragmatic and dynamic, she’d uncharacteristically dragged her feet on the ending of her marriage. Perhaps her mum was right and she should get a solicitor.

But after she hung up Lisa couldn’t stop thinking about Oliver. Pesky feelings popped to the surface like blisters and out of nowhere, in some sort of a mad lapse, she was on the verge of lifting the phone and ringing him. The thought of hearing his voice, of making up with him, filled her with surging hope.

She’d had compulsions to call him before, but this was the worst so far, and she was only able to talk herself down with the reminder that he was the one who had left her. Even if he had said that she’d left him with no choice.

She moved away from the phone, suffering actual physical symptoms from the effort. Her heart pounded from thwarted chances. Only moments before, reconciliation had seemed possible, and the low that followed the high made her giddy. Lighting a cigarette with a trembling hand, she urged herself to forget him. Out with the old and in with the new. Think of Jack. But Jack was probably having non-stop sex with minxy Mai.

Jesus, she yearned, she’d love some sex… With Jack. Or Oliver. Either of them. Both of them… Her head filled with an image of Oliver’s hard body, looking as though it had been carved out of ebony, and the memory made her actually groan out loud.

She looked at her watch. Again. Half past seven. Why couldn’t the day just hurry up and end?.

Then her doorbell rang, and her heart leapt into her throat. It might be Jack doing one of his unscheduled house-calls! Thrusting her face into the mirror to check that she was presentable, she quickly smoothed mascara away from under her eyes. Stroking down her hair, she hurried to the door.

Standing on her step looking up at her was a small boy in a Manchester United T-shirt and with an elaborate, shaven-headed, long-fringed haircut. All the little boys on the road had similar ‘dos.

‘How’s it GOING, Lisa?’ he said, in a remarkably loud voice. Confidently he leant against the doorpost. ‘What are you UP to? Will you come out to PLAY?’

‘Play?’

‘We need a REF.’

Other children appeared behind him. ‘Yeah, Lisa,’ they urged. ‘Come on out.’

She knew it was absurd, but she couldn’t help being flattered. It was nice to be wanted. Blocking out memories of other bank-holiday weekends when she’d variously helicoptered to Champneys, flown first-class to Nice and holed up in a five-star hotel in Cornwall, she fetched a jacket and spent the rest of Sunday sitting on her doorstep, keeping score while the children on her street played a very aggressive form of tennis.