I had finished my meal or rather, I had pushed it away, hardly touched, and was now sitting in a state of light-headed contentedness, blowing blue smoke over the debris of the table. I waved over the Italian waiter, and pointed at the empty wine bottle.

'Another of these please.'

I tapped the chimney of ash into the ashtray.

'More than thirty, I hope. I'm going to stop soon. Honestly. The trouble is, I do enjoy it so much. It doesn't make me feel ill or anything.'

The waiter came over, uncorked a bottle of amber wine and poured it into my gla.s.s to taste.

'I stopped quite easily before. I'll stop again.'

'Yesterday I saw the results of a woman I referred for a chest X-ray. She had a persistent cough and some mild chest pains. She'll be dead by this time next year. She's forty-four, with three teenage children.'

'Don't.'

'And how's your hostel coming on?'

'Don't.'

It wasn't coming on at all. It was a site marked on a piece of paper; a conversation in the office; a matter for meetings at the council offices; a subject for planning permission. At work, I had dozens of large sheets of graph paper on which I had blocked in my proposals : geometric designs, square by square, with sharpened pencils. I was just waiting for someone to tell me I could go ahead. Meanwhile, there was talk about consultation with local people. I didn't like the sound of that.

'Okay, let's not talk about the hostel,' said Kim. 'Let's talk about you. What are you doing with yourself now that you're alone?'

'I lit another cigarette, and poured another gla.s.s of wine.

'I've become a convenient single woman,' I said. 'I'm starting to find myself seated next to the divorced man at dinner parties. Does that happen to you much?'

Kim shrugged. 'Not any longer.'

'We don't usually have much to say to each other,' I continued. 'Then there are friends whom I haven't seen for ages, who suddenly ring me up, and they sound so sorry for me now that Claud and I have separated, and I can't help feeling some of them are quite pleased to be able to be sorry for me. But actually, I'm quite enjoying living on my own.' I was surprised by the firmness in my voice. 'I watch films on TV in the middle of the day, and go to exhibitions, and get in touch with people I'd let slip. I can be untidy. The house feels large, though. For ages, there have been four of us living there, and now there's just me. There are some rooms I never go into. I suppose I'll have to sell it one day.'

It wasn't just that the house felt large; it felt lonely. I spent as little time as possible there now, though in the past I had loved it when Claud and the boys had all gone out and left me alone. For nearly two decades I had gone out to work every weekday, and raced home to a large rackety house which was full of noise and mess and loud boys shouting for my attention. I'd vacuumed and ironed, and done the washing, and cooked, and as they'd grown older I'd ferried the boys back and forth from increasingly alarming social venues. I'd given dinner parties for colleagues mine or Claud's. I'd gone to Christmas plays and summer sports days and cobbled together packed lunches from an empty fridge. I'd played Monopoly, which I hate, and chess, at which I always lose, dreaming all the while of a book by the fire. I'd made cakes for the school bring-and-buy. I'd baked late at night to make myself feel a good mother, especially after my own mother had died. I'd suffered loud records from the latest groups that had made me feel middle-aged when I was in my thirties. I'd overseen the acne and the sulks and the homework. I'd stayed in our bedroom when the boys had had parties. I'd sat, evening after evening, sipping a gin and tonic with Claud before supper. I'd woken up night after night with my head full of lists, woken up in the morning with a tired headache, gone to sleep in the evening knowing that my day was so full there was no room left for me.

Now there was no loud music, no sulks, no calls from a phone box at one a.m., 'Mum, I've missed my lift home, can you come and get me?' They'd all gone, and I could do whatever I chose : my time was my own, which was what I had always missed. But I didn't know how to deal with time, so I filled it up. I spent long hours in the office, often staying until eight o'clock in the evening. And then, as often as not, I went out. It's true that I was receiving lots of invitations from people who thought I might be in need of cheering up, or people who needed an extra female for their table. I went to films, sometimes illicitly in the middle of the day.

When I got home, I would drink a gla.s.s of wine, smoke a couple of cigarettes, and go to bed with a thriller. The long Victorian novels which I'd promised myself would have to wait. At weekends, I watched film matineees, and went for walks on the Heath. Were autumns always so damp?

One Sunday, I'd gone to Dad's house to cook lunch for him, and after we'd eaten I'd asked if I could look through the old photographs. I'd wanted to find pictures of Natalie, I didn't have a single one. Without realising it, Claud and I had erased her from our life. Now I wanted her back again. I leafed through old alb.u.ms, looking for her image. Often she was only a blur at the edge of a picture; or a just-recognisable face in the group photos that we'd posed for each summer : eleven faces staring at the staring lens. There was Alan and Martha, young and glamorous and exuberant; Mum, always to one side and looking away how she'd always hated having her photograph taken. After she died, Dad had searched for her perfect likeness among all the years of memorialising her but always her head was turned towards something else. There were lots of Paul and me tiny, with round tummies and bare legs, solemn at six or seven, awkward at thirteen caught by the camera's eye and pasted down in Dad's book, with his looped script underneath. I found one of Natalie and myself at eight, standing hand in hand in front of the Stead, and staring at the camera. We looked quite similar then, though I was smiling anxiously and Natalie was glaring from under beetle brows. Natalie had rarely smiled, never to please. I'd taken away that photo, and another which must have been taken only a week or so before she died. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and cut-off denims, and she was reading a book on the lawn at her house. Her lanky bare legs were tucked under her; a single lock of black hair fell over her pale face; she was absolutely absorbed. Had our last words been friendly, I wondered, or had we quarrelled? I couldn't remember.

What could I remember? I remember going with her to a party at Forston, near Kirklow, when we were about fourteen. I'd told her about a boy I'd been looking forward to seeing. What was he called? He had dark hair, parted in the middle. After a bit, Natalie had disappeared. Later, wandering about, I'd almost stumbled on Natalie and the boy with blond hair entwined on the floor. They were together for the whole party. It had seemed like for ever. Alan had picked us up at eleven o'clock in his Rover. I had sat in the back seat, crushed, and Natalie had slid over to me. Without a word she'd put her arms round me and held me close. I could smell his patchouli in her hair. Was I forgiving her or was she forgiving me?

One evening, the month after the discovery of the body, I'd been at a private view of an artist's paintings and I met William, a solicitor who had once been married to a woman with whom I had long since lost touch. He was a tall, blond man, handsome in a smooth, unfocused way. I remembered him as lean, but he now had a visible paunch. We strolled round the room together with our tall-stemmed gla.s.ses of sparkling wine, looking at large and derivatively painted canvases. The wine relaxed me. I told him about my marriage ending, and he asked what had made me actually leave Claud. I didn't want to get into this.

'I suppose,' I answered slowly, 'that I couldn't bear to think that this was my life. It's hard to put into words.'

He told me that he had separated from his wife, Lucy, seven years before, and saw his daughter every other weekend. They had broken up because he had had an affair with a woman in his office.

'I don't know why I did it,' he said. 'It was like a madness, like a landslide which I was helpless to resist.'

I said that I had heard that excuse before and he gave a pained smile.

'G.o.d, Jane, I know. When Lucy left, I looked at the other woman and, of course, I didn't feel a nicker of desire for her : nothing. I destroyed my marriage and lost my only child.'

He stared at an orange splash (750, according to the catalogue).

'I hate myself for it,' he said.

He didn't seem to hate himself so very much. He took me to a bas.e.m.e.nt wine bar and ordered a bottle of dry white wine and some chicken sandwiches. He told me that he'd recognised me as soon as he'd seen me at the preview; that he'd always found me attractive. I was slightly drunk by now but at the same time eerily clear-headed. I thought to myself, I can get away with this. William was not a man who would leave much trace. I felt nervous though. I smoked, coiled my hair around my finger, chewed the dry salty chicken, drank some more. When we'd finished the bottle of wine, he asked me if I'd like another, and I heard myself saying : 'Why don't you come back to my house and have a drink there? It's just ten minutes in a taxi.'

At home, I drew all the curtains, put on some music, and even turned down the dimmer switch. I poured two gla.s.ses of wine, and sat on the sofa next to William. My mouth was dry and I could feel my pulse in my ears. William put a hand on my knee, and I stared down at the unfamiliar, broad fingers; out of the corner of my eye I saw the answering machine winking messages at me. I'd forgotten to ring my father. I turned towards William and we kissed. His breath was a bit sour. I felt his hand under my skirt and along my stockinged thigh, and I wondered how often he did this kind of thing. I pulled back and said, 'I'm out of practice; I've forgotten how to do this.' He shook his head and kissed me again.

'Where's the bedroom?' he whispered.

He took off his shoes and tucked his socks neatly into them. I took off my jacket, and started to undo the b.u.t.tons on my shirt. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his trousers, which he folded neatly and laid on a chair. I felt a flash of dislike for him, but at the same time a muted desire. My flesh felt chilly when I took off my shirt; my body felt unused, awkward. I saw myself in the mirror as I unhooked my bra : there were faint stretch marks on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the scar from the caesarean I'd had when I'd given birth to Jerome puckered my stomach. I'd lost weight since October; my arms looked thin and wrists bony. I turned back to William, who was now standing in his underpants.

'What do I do now?' I asked.

'Lie on the bed and let me look at you. You're lovely, you know.'

I pulled off my knickers and laid myself out on the large bed, closed my eyes. A mixture of excitement and embarra.s.sed self-consciousness gripped me as William's hands began their slow journey up my body. I heard the telephone ring, then the answering machine switched on. The voice carried up the stairs quite clearly : 'Mum, h.e.l.lo it's me, Robert, on Thursday evening. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Let me know what you're up to.' What was was I up to? I wondered. I up to? I wondered.

I didn't tell Kim much about William that evening, just mumbled that I'd had s.e.x with someone other than Claud for the first time in twenty years and it had been all right, a bit nerve-racking.

'I kept expecting to hear the front door open, and Claud come in.'

'Did you enjoy it?' Kim was looking at me strangely.

'In a way. I mean, he was nice, I got pleasure. Kind of. But, well, I suppose that the next day I felt a bit odd about it. I still feel a bit odd, as if it happened to someone else.'

'Come on, Jane.' Kim got to her feet. 'I'm taking you home.'

I made coffee, and Kim made a fire. She'd always loved building fires, even when we were students. We'd shared a house in my second year at university, and Kim had often spent hours gazing into the flames, feeding them with wood, sometimes even with old essays, like a provincial version of La Boheme. La Boheme. As if she knew what I was thinking, Kim said : As if she knew what I was thinking, Kim said : 'Do you realise, Jane, that we've known each other for more than half our lives?'

I tried to say something, then stopped. Kim crouched by my chair, took both my hands, and gazed at me.

'Look at me, Jane,' she said.

I stared into her intelligent grey eyes. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks.

'Your mascara's run everywhere,' she said. 'You're not going to attract men looking like that, unless you want to go out with a zebra.'

'I don't know why I'm crying,' I sobbed. There was a block of grief in my chest, my nose was snotty. 'I just feel so tired. Honestly, I'm just tired, Kim, it's been an emotional few weeks.'

'My darling Jane,' she said, 'listen to me now. You've stopped eating. You chain smoke. You drink more than usual. You work ten, twelve, hours a day. You can't sleep properly. You go out every night as if you're on the run. Look at yourself in a mirror : you're not tired, you're completely exhausted. You've left Claud, your boys have left you, you found Natalie's body lying in a hole. In the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks, your whole life has turned upside-down, and it's more than you can bear, so don't try so hard to bear it. Don't be so brave. If you were one of my patients, I'd advise you to seek professional help.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think you'd benefit from counselling,' Kim said. 'You're in shock. It might help you to talk to someone.'

I blew my nose and wiped my face, and I lit another cigarette, then we sat with a pot of tea and some shortbread biscuits and played a game of chess, which I lost, of course. Then I cried again, great gulps of misery, and I wailed that I missed Claud, I missed my boys, I didn't know what to do with my life, and at last Kim put me into my bed like a child, and sat beside me until I fell asleep.

Five.

She was younger than I expected. And she was a she. And it must have shown on my face.

'Is everything all right?' she asked.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I was probably expecting an old man with a white beard and a Viennese accent.'

'Do you mean a Jew?'

'No, I don't mean that.'

'Do you feel uncomfortable with a woman?'

'Well, I haven't even had a chance to sit down yet, Dr Prescott.'

Dr Prescott was at least six feet tall which lent force to what was already a most striking appearance. She was pale, almost transparent-skinned, with a long, thin artistic nose. Her wavy brown hair was deftly arranged so that only a few strands fluttered around her neck, giving her the appearance of a Bronte sister. A robustly healthy Bronte sister. A robustly healthy Bronte sister who power-dressed. I was stopping in on my way from Waitrose to the proposed hostel site and I felt faintly shamed by her crisp business suit. And then rather ashamed of being shamed. Did I expect female therapists to wear cheesecloth and light joss sticks?

'Should I fill out a form or something?'

'Jane is it all right if I call you Jane ?' Dr Prescott shook my hand but then maintained her grip as if she were weighing it. 'Does it feel important to you to make this a formal occasion?'

'Is this part of the therapy?'

'How do you mean?'

I paused for a long time and breathed with slow deliberation. I was still standing up. My new a.n.a.lyst was still gripping my hand.

'I'm very sorry, Dr Prescott,' I said with elaborate calmness. 'I'm living rather a chaotic life at the moment. And a friend of mine, who is a doctor, and whom I trust more than anybody else in the world, has told me that she thinks I'm at a moment of crisis. And I'm having a rather chaotic day as well. I was at Waitrose when it opened and then I dashed home and unloaded everything, although, now I think of it, I haven't put the ice-cream in the freezer, and then I dashed over here. When I'm finished here I have to drive to the site of a building I've designed. I'm going to meet an a.s.sistant planning officer, and she is going to tell me that changes have to be made to my plan using money that doesn't have any prospect of being forthcoming and that's only the beginning of a project that is close to my heart and that's going to make me very miserable.

'Now I'm here in your office and I had some hopes that it would be something of a refuge from what I think of as my troubles. I suppose I thought we could begin by discussing what a course of therapy might be able to achieve for me. We could discuss ground rules, establish what sort of things we are going to talk about, that sort of thing. But just at this very moment I want to sit down and get going in some sort of sensible way.'

'Then sit down, Jane.'

Dr Prescott gestured towards the battered couch over which an eastern-looking rug was draped. I quickly looked around the room. It was obvious that every detail had been planned. There was an armchair at the head of the couch. There was a Mark Rothko poster on the wall that would be invisible to the rec.u.mbent patient. On the window ledge behind the armchair there was a small abstract sculpture with a hole in it, carved in, I think, soapstone. The walls and the ceiling were painted a supposedly neutral white. There was nothing else.

'Should I sit or lie down?'

'Whichever you feel like.'

'It's a couch.'

'Whichever you feel like.'

I huffed and lay down on the couch and stared at the wood-chip paper, a product of a shoddy eighties' conversion. G.o.d knows what was under it. If she bought after '87, Dr Prescott was stuck with negative equity. She sat down behind my left shoulder.

'Can't we have a straightforward transaction about anything at all?'

'Why do you choose the term "transaction"?'

'No, no, no, no, no, I don't want to talk about why I chose the term "transaction". Dr Prescott, I feel that we've got off to the wrong sort of start. At this rate we're going to spend an hour without having reached "Good Morning".'

'What do you want to do?'

I felt a p.r.i.c.kling in the corner of my eyes as if I was going to cry. 'I would like to smoke a cigarette. Is that all right?'

'I'm afraid it isn't.'

'Why are you afraid?'

'It's just an expression.'

I forced my neck rather painfully around so that I was able to meet Dr Prescott's eyes. 'Just an expression?'

She was unamused. 'Jane, what do you want?'

'I suppose I was expecting that you would ask what my problem was and I'd talk about what was on my mind, the pressures that I've been under, and we'd take things from there.'

'So talk.'

'Dr Prescott, can I ask you something?'

'You can say or ask anything you like.'

'Are you experienced at this? I'm in a ragged, vulnerable state. Perhaps we should talk about how I can feel confident about entrusting myself to you.'

'Why do you need to feel confident?'

'If I was dropping my car in to a garage to be repaired I would want to know that the mechanics were competent. I'd find out if the garage was any good. Before I give myself up to this therapeutic process I need to have some sense of what it's going to do for me.'

'Jane, this is is the therapeutic process. In this room there is nothing outside the process. The way to feel confident about it is to trust it, give yourself up to it.' the therapeutic process. In this room there is nothing outside the process. The way to feel confident about it is to trust it, give yourself up to it.'

They were all laughing around the table. It had seemed like a nightmare at the time but, as I described it, later that evening, it somehow mixed with the wine and the creme brulee and now the cheese, and it became a comic turn.

'I was feeling that I couldn't cope,' I continued, 'I was desperate for some sort of rea.s.surance and I stumbled into this remedial cla.s.s for deconstructionists. There was no way I was going to pin her down. Every time I asked a question she would be like Macavity the cat. She wouldn't be there. She'd have dodged to the side and she'd be saying that the real thing we ought to discuss is why I felt the need to ask that question. I would have needed a .45 Magnum to get her to tell me the time.'

This was the sort of therapy I needed. I was at Paul's and Erica's opulent house across in Westbourne Grove, the exotic bit of London I never felt really at home in. Around the table for dinner was Crispin, who was one of Paul's directors on his game show, Surplus Value Surplus Value, and his girlfriend, Claire. There was Gus, the obligatory eligible single man in whose direction I was being pushed. He was all right but I was much more attracted to the two other men, two Australian builders called Philip and Colin, either of whom would have been far better choices for my crying-for-help one-night stand than whateverhisname was, but unfortunately they were not only both gay, but living together. I wasn't particularly drawn to their technical expertise but they had benefited in other ways from their time in the sun moving heavy objects around.

'So you never managed to get through to her?' Paul asked.

'Yes, I did. In the end there was only one thing I could do : I stood up and said, "I'm going, and I mean that in the sense of walking out of the room and never coming back into it again." To which she replied, she really did, "What is it that you're trying to resist?" I suddenly saw myself trapped in this conversation for the rest of my life like someone being pulled into a whirlpool. So I'm sorry to say I finally told her to f.u.c.k off and stormed, it's the only word for it, I stormed out of the room.' I took a sip of wine and the most beautiful drag on a cigarette. 'And the next thing I knew, I found myself here telling you this story.'