Chapter Two

In which our cunning plan is hatched, parenthesis, thunderclap, sinister laugh, ha, ha, ha, parenthesis . . .

JUST ONE MORE friend to introduce you to and then we’re done, I promise.

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the youngest-looking, hottest babe I know,’ calls Laura, my oldest and dearest buddy, waving at me from across the swishy, Dublin 4 restaurant where we’re having lunch with Barbara the following Saturday who . . . well, that might just be information overload, I’ll come to what’s she’s up to in time.

Laura first.

‘Look at you, not a line on your face, God bless your collagen levels, that’s all I can say. Honestly, you’re even more like Jennifer Aniston than Jennifer Aniston,’ she says, as we and ooh and ahh, and generally squeal at each other like two dolphins on a nature programme having a dire emergency.

You know, all the normal ladies-who-lunch stuff.

Not that you could call either myself or Laura a lady who lunches, not by the longest of long shots. In fact, most days I’m doing well if I manage to wolf down a wrap at my desk in-between strategy meetings at the office. This is just the type of restaurant that seems to bring out the inner diva in all of us. Oh, you know the kind: where they bring fourteen types of bread to the table, when a plain old roll would do, and where they call gravy ‘jus’, and when you ask for water they automatically bring the posh kind in blue bottles that immediately add another eighty euro on to the bill.

God, just listen to me. Age is definitely making me narkier. The only difference between me and my moany Auntie Maisie is a plaid shopping trolley and a tracheotomy.

‘Either you’re lying or else you’re only saying that cos I straightened my hair especially for today, but bless you anyway,’ I say, plonking down beside her and gratefully accepting the wine list she’s thrusting at me.

I’m really delighted to see Laura, I never get to spend enough time with her. She . . . well, she leads this incredibly hectic, full-on life and is never able to come out on the razz at night-time with Barbara and me. (Childcare issues, don’t even GO there.) So, anyway the three of us have this deal. The Saturday after any of us celebrates a birthday, said birthday girl is required to host lunch in the poshest restaurant that her budget will allow. This first commandment of our friendship dates back to when Laura had her first baby, not long after the three of us graduated from college together, and we’ve stuck to it through thick and thin, for richer for poorer, all the way from McDonalds, via Pizza Hut to the super-posh dining-room of Roly’s Bistro which we’re sitting in now.

On me. Ah sure, what the hell.

Plus I am so bursting to tell her about the exhibition we were at, and the law of attraction, and how it’s finally, finally going to turn my love life around – and all the amazing wonders I’ve learned since I last saw her. Oh shit, does that make me sound like a Southern Baptist preacher that’s trying to convert someone on the God channel? Better tread carefully, if so. If you thought that Barbara was a tad disbelieving, then I’m about to introduce you to the Dark Lady of cynicism. Like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, back in college, Laura was even a founder member of the Sceptics Society.

Really, I am not kidding.

‘So, another year older and wiser,’ she says. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Honestly?’

‘The whole truth and nothing but.’

‘OK, put it this way. It’s like Oscar Wilde said, the tragedy of ageing isn’t that you’re old, it’s that you’re young. I mean, look at me. I am now officially old enough to know that there’s more to life than sex and shoes and boyfriends and partying, and yet still young enough to know that they are the best bits.’

And up until yesterday I might have added that, lately, I’ve been seeing damn all of any. But then I always feel a bit guilty for moaning in front of Laura, on the grounds that there’s nothing worse than the failure stench from a lonely, single woman who desperately wishes that she wasn’t. Besides, note to self: now that I’m a new convert to the awesome power and majesty of the law of attraction, I really shouldn’t moan, sorry, sorry . . . ooops, I meant to say . . . attract negativity into my life.

Plus, further note to self: let’s never forget that the second commandment of being a good friend is ‘Thou Shalt not Bore’. So I opt for changing the subject instead.

‘No, you first with the news, babe. So how are things on the home front?’

‘Vicky. Today is your day. We’re here to celebrate your birthday lunch. So by asking that question you’ve just confirmed that the vein in my forehead must now be pulsing like a thunderbolt. Like Harry Potter’s proverbial scar, if you will.’

No kidding, this is actually the way that Laura talks. Sharp, clear and clipped. Witty, even without trying to be. She used to be a lawyer, which might go some of the way towards explaining.

‘Tell me everything, honey. Omit no detail, however trivial,’ I say in what I hope sounds like a sympathetic yet encouraging tone, which, trust me, always works best with her when she’s . . . well, whenever she gets a bit overstressed like this.

‘Ordinarily, I’d prefer to have some alcohol inside me to answer that question, but . . . all right then, seeing as you’ve asked,’ she sighs, shoving her glasses into her hair and palming her tired, bloodshot eyes. ‘Firstly, my dearest eldest son was caught shoplifting last night and at 4 a.m. I was still in the police station trying to troubleshoot. Secondly, my daughter, who’s already behaving like a pre-teen, delivered me an ultimatum over breakfast. It seems the little madam now prefers living with Daddy and his new girlfriend, and that if I don’t stop nagging her, then she’s permanently moving in with them.’

‘And I suppose by “nagging” you really mean trying to coax her to eat a little bit more than one packet of breath fresheners every day?’

I’m actually not messing here; this is a child whose main ambition in life is to out-skinny Nicole Ritchie or one of those ‘sleb’ types you read about in magazines. You know, the ones who all go around Beverley Hills looking like malnourished thirteen-year-olds, toting handbags that probably weigh more than them.

‘Correct. Oh and speaking of my soon-to-be-ex husband, he is now almost four months behind on paying child maintenance. Which means I have to suffer the utter humiliation of going cap in hand to my mother to pay this month’s mortgage. Not to mention next term’s school fees which are also due. Does my self-esteem need any of this, I ask you?’

Well, I did warn you. Laura’s life makes mine seem like a Disneyland infomercial by comparison. I nod supportively, and do my best not to interrupt with insulting yet insightful comments about said soon-to-be-ex husband. With the balance tilted strongly in favour of insulting, on account of the fact that I can’t abide the sight of him.

On she goes. ‘Then for added entertainment value, my darling seven-year-old, who’s still bed-wetting by the way, not only is taking the divorce worse than the whole useless lot of them put together, but I was reliably informed by his headmaster yesterday that lately he’s started mitching off class and, as of this morning, my baby girl . . .’ she pauses here, just to catch her breath, ‘now has a highly infectious case of head lice, picked up from a neighbour’s child while I took my eye off the ball for all of two minutes. So, all in all, how great is it that I’m on Zanax?’

‘Ooh, honey, not good,’ I wince. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

‘Yes, dearest. You could do what you always do and make me laugh.’

‘OK,’ I say slowly, racking my brains for a decent gag. ‘Ehh, well I could try and hire a full-time nanny on your behalf, you know, the sort who’ll hopefully confuse child-rearing with criminal law enforcement.’

Bingo, I’m rewarded with a sly smile, just as Laura’s mobile beep-beeps.

‘Mary Poppins on a minimum wage, that’s what I need,’ she says, fishing around her overstuffed handbag for her mobile and dumping a tub of Sudocrem and a packet of Heinz banana biscuits on the table. It’s a text from her mother, who’s babysitting, to say that a Third Gulf War has erupted in the house over who had the remote control last.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ says Laura. ‘I’m really sorry about this, dearest, but do you mind if I just phone home and really give my babies something to cry about?’

‘Course not, go ahead.’

‘Serves me right for thinking that I could actually skive off for two niggardly hours and, who knows, maybe actually enjoy myself for once,’ she says, furiously stabbing at the speed dial on her phone. ‘This is your day, and look what I’m having to deal with. Just wait till I get home. I can tell you right now, they’re in for a WORLD of pain. Yes, it’s Mummy here, kindly roll your eyes BACK into the forward position,’ she snaps crisply at whatever poor unfortunate child happens to answer. ‘Now go and get Granny for me this instant. WHAT did you just say? Well I hate to disappoint you, but no, you are not a secret agent and you do NOT have a licence to kill your brother . . . hang on, is that the unmistakable sound of a Band-Aid wrapper that I hear being unpeeled?’

Oh dear. Right then, nothing for it but to order a bottle of champagne from the wine waiter (what the hell, when you’re out, you’re out), and let her get on with doing a major damage-limitation number on the home front.

Poor old Laura. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that she doesn’t love and adore her kids, of course she does. It’s just that, well, things haven’t exactly been easy for her of late. In fact, not for a long, long time. Put it this way, if you’d met Laura when I first did, back in school, in a million years you would never have predicted this kind of life for her. No one’s fault, no one to blame, it’s just that things didn’t quite work out for her the way you’d have foreseen.

Or for any of us, come to think of it, but let me tell you a bit about Laura.

OK. For starters, she comes from a very well-known and highly regarded political family, the Lennox-Coyninghams. Now we don’t exactly have dynasties in this country, but believe me, Laura’s family come pretty darn close. On pretty much every page of our recorded history, there’s a Lennox-Coyningham in there somewhere: one of her illustrious ancestors had fought in the War of Independence, her granddad was Minister for Justice and her father served three terms as Attorney General. I remember as a kid going to play in their huge mansion of a house and being completely intimidated by the fact that they would hold heated political discussions around the dinner table. Honest to God, it was like being pals with a Kennedy, minus the suntan and the toothiness. Especially as in our house, mealtimes revolved around whatever soap happened to be on TV at the time, and the only house rule was whoever got to the microwave first, got fed first. (We were a very microwave and freezer-dependent family.)

Anyway, from a very early age, great things were expected of Laura, a cherished eldest child, all of which were entirely justified by her perpetually stunning grades. She effortlessly graduated from college top of her year in law studies, and everyone – absolutely everyone, from her tutors and lecturers down – agreed that Laura Lennox-Coyningham had what it took to be a minister, an ambassador or maybe even (and I can still hear her father whispering this in suitably awed tones) . . . President.

It wasn’t an impossible dream. She had everything going for her, the whole package. Brains, charisma, popularity, pedigree, wealthy political connections, great communication skills, the lot. She’s even good-looking, photogenic in an Emma Thompson, dippy-quirky sort of way; but you’d have absolutely no difficulty at all picturing her smiling face on election posters hanging from lamp posts far and wide with a caption under her saying: ‘Vote Lennox-Coyningham No. 1’.

But it wasn’t to be. That summer we graduated, when we were all aged twenty-one, in a long family tradition, Laura went off to King’s Inns to become a hardworking, high-powered barrister, a necessary stop-off on her merry route to the presidental office in the Phoenix Park. And shocked all of us, not least her family, by falling madly in love with George Hastings, one of her senior professors.

Now, kinder people than me called George, a dusty academic type, cuddly, if you didn’t have a problem with either dandruff or patterned cardigans. Put it this way, while the rest of us were all drinking Malibu and thinking ourselves fierce posh, slumming it around Europe on cheapie InterRail tickets and debating as to whether Heaven 17 or MC Hammer would have a longer shelf-life (no, really), George was escorting Laura to cello recitals and violin concertos at his elitist, members-only, old-man’s club on Stephen’s Green, that somehow always, always smelt of boarding-school food, stinky cabbage and watery rice pudding. And I wouldn’t have minded, but he can’t have been any more than mid-thirties then; a young fogey before they’d even invented the term.

Anyway, like him or loathe him, George and the lovely Laura were married before she’d even reached the age of twenty-two. By thirty she was a mother of three, still ambitious and still practising as a barrister you understand, but well . . . It was just so difficult, if not impossible, for her to put in all the networking hours and late-night drinking sessions in pubs near the Four Courts that you practically have to, if you want to get on in that profession. Her kids came first. Of course. Then she fell pregnant again and was forced to take a career break just so all her hard-earned cash wasn’t entirely going towards childcare. I often think she has the days counted until her youngest is in ‘big’ school, so she can get back to the workplace, knowing all her kids are safely tied up in full-time education. She’s aching for it, itching to get back inside a courtroom, but right now and for the next couple of years at least . . . she’s a separated, soon-to-be-divorced mother of four, while George is still actively, you might even say aggressively, dating some of his students right under her nose.

Like I say, not a destiny you might have foretold.

She finishes her call and apologizes profusely.

‘Look at me, I’m calm, I’m cool and I’m keeping my peace, even with God. Even with George Hastings.’

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. She always, always, refers to her ex by his full name. I think, by doing so, she’s imagining she’s in court and about to send him down for arson or, you know, some grade A crime that carries a mandatory life-sentence and that his trial will end up on the Six O’Clock News with close-up shots of him looking miserable in handcuffs, with a raincoat over his head.

‘Come on, then, Vicky, now that my heart-rate is back into double figures, please, for the love of God, can we have an adult conversation?’

‘I’ve ordered champagne. And if Barbara is very much later, then too bad, we’re drinking it without her.’

Barbara, by the way, is always late. In fact there are times when I’d nearly swear she’s staged it just so she can swan in and make an entrance. Her being an actress might go some of the way towards explaining it, but unfortunately for her, I work in PR and know all the tricks. As it turns out, though, Barbara and the champagne arrive simultaneously.

‘Hello, darlings,’ she puffs, out of breath and air-kissing us both theatrically. ‘Sorry I’m late. Audition ran over.’

‘What was it for again?’ I ask her as we hug. She’d told me and all I could remember was that it was for something so bizarre you couldn’t possibly make it up if you tried.

‘A tableau vivant for a detergent commercial.’

‘Sounds pornographic,’ says Laura drily. ‘Is that what you wore?’

‘Yeah, what’s wrong with it?’

‘OK, if I may just take a moment to mock here, do tell, Barbara, the history of that particular dress. Did it start out as furniture fabric? You know how I hate to criticize, but honestly, I wouldn’t let you wear that on a desert island. Dearest, you’re dressed like a homeless person.’

She isn’t really. Barbara just looks the way she always does, like she fell out of bed and pulled on the first clean thing she picked up off the floor. Sexy, in a rumpled, crumpled, couldn’t-be-arsed way that men just seem to lose their reason over. No make-up, and streaky fake tan like she put it on half of her body then got bored, gave up and found something more interesting to do. Unlike our Laura, who for some reason always manages to look neat. Scrubbed. Impeccable. All the Lennox-Coyninghams are the same: no matter how stressed their private lives are, like politicians, they’re always ‘on’. Always well-turned-out, always up for re-election.

‘Ooh, look,’ says Barbara in her ‘acting the eejit’ voice, as she and Laura pick up their menus together. ‘Today’s soup is crème de narky cow.’

‘Ooh, look,’ says Laura, well able for her. ‘The only dish on my menu is dog’s dinner.’

OK, so it may not actually sound like it, but trust me, this pair do love each other dearly. This is just the way they spark off each other, with the kind of intimacy you really only get with old, old friends. You know, the ones who never fail to remind you that you had a fringe in the eighties or that you used to work out to Milli Vanilli. And at this stage in our friendship, honestly, the three of us know each other more intimately than jailbirds sharing a cell. Besides, I think the main reason Laura gives her such a hard time about the way she looks is that, on the rare occasions when Barbara does pull out the stops, she can look traffic-stoppingly stunning. This is just Laura’s way of exercising her mammy-gene. She’ll be whipping tissues out of her bag, licking them and then wiping dirty smudges off Barbara’s face next.

‘Pay absolutely no attention to her, Barbara,’ I say. ‘You look fab. Any hotter and you’d set off the sprinkler system. And here’s the proof . . . how many men have begged you for a date since you left your house today?’

‘The casting director, who’s a bit of a sleazeball so . . .’

‘Curse your fatal allure,’ I joke and they laugh. The champagne’s started to kick in now and it’s faaaab.

God, even the snooty wine waiter can’t take his eyes off her, I can’t help noticing. When we were all in college together, some wag nicknamed Barbara ‘The Loin Tamer’, and you can kind of see where they were coming from.

‘Cheers,’ she says, oblivious as usual to any fella eyeing her up, as she takes a big gulp and smacks her lips. ‘Aaah, lovely. I’ve noticed I only ever have bad luck whenever I’m not drinking. Anyway, birthday gal, I bring you a gift. Now I don’t want to over-exaggerate, but this could possibly be the most amazing pressie you’ll ever get in your whole life. Prepare to be blown away, baby.’

She roots around in her bag on the floor and starts flinging the contents up on to the table, beginning with a copy of Celebrity Heat magazine, with a questionnaire half-filled-in.

‘What’s this?’ says Laura, idly picking up the magazine at the page it has opened on. ‘“Am I an Adult-escent?”’

‘Oh yeah,’ says Barbara. ‘It’s a quiz I started doing while I was waiting to do the audition. New cultural sub-group they’ve just discovered, which I think might include you and me, Vick. It’s for, ahem, the thirty-somethings who still think they’re teenagers. You know, who watch The Office and actually get it, and know all the characters on The Simpsons, and still shop in Top Shop and H & M and think they’re cool.’

‘God, I wish I was a teenager again,’ I muse, swirling the champagne around the glass. ‘I’m telling you, girlies, if I could go back, if I had my time over, I’d do things differently, and that’s for sure. You know, reprioritize.’

‘Explain,’ says Laura, looking at me in that really focused, intent way that she has.

‘Well, it’s like this. Take, for instance, the two young girls I have working for me in the office. I’m not joking, their number-one priority in life is to get a nice, wealthy, eligible husband. Honestly, they’re like this whole breed of neo-Victorians, and I wouldn’t mind, but they’re barely out of college. They’re looking at my generation and thinking: “OK, so maybe you have a great career and money and a home of your own . . . but you’re alone and that doesn’t make you any role model for me.” Ten years ago I’d have laughed at them, but now . . . today, it doesn’t seem quite so funny.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Laura says, sounding a bit exasperated. ‘I could be sitting here, blissfully happy, about to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary, but I’m not. This conversation is pointless. I mean, for God’s sake, Hitler could have channelled all his energies into opening a nice chain of vegetarian restaurants, but guess what? That didn’t happen, either. There is absolutely nothing to be gained either from beating yourself up over the choices you didn’t make, or congratulating yourself on the ones that you did. Pretty much every decision you’ve ever made was half chance, same as the rest of us.’

‘Or perhaps not,’ says Barbara in a vaudevillian-baddie voice, producing a crumpled paper bag and spilling the contents out on to the table.

It’s a hardback book, so dusty and old that you almost feel you should be wearing latex gloves just to touch it, like they do in those TV documentaries about museums, where they’re handling bits of papyrus from Tutankhamen’s tomb and the like. But that’s not what’s making me look at Barbara, gobsmacked. It’s the book’s title, almost faded but still legible.

Oh my God, I do not believe this.

The Law of Attraction.

‘Barbara, you angel,’ I say, a bit stunned. ‘This is it; this is exactly what that amazing American woman was talking about only yesterday . . . where in God’s name did you come across this?’

‘Second-hand bookshop right beside where the audition was. I wanted to buy you something quirky slash unusual slash cheap for your birthday, and we all know how much you love self-help books, or anything with a title that promises you can change your life in seven days, and then I stumbled across this. So happy birthday, babe. Good, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t believe it,’ is all I can say, delicately fingering the book like it’s a first-edition copy of the Bible, signed by all four apostles, who wrote it when they were on a book tour of, I dunno, Galilee or somewhere.

‘“The law of attraction,”’ says Laura, filching it from me and reading from a page at random in her best news-anchor voice, ‘“clearly states that like attracts like, so by the very act of summoning a thought, you are attracting like thoughts to you.” Oh I see, so now it seems I attracted an ex-husband with a girlfriend who makes him look like human Botox, i.e. twenty years younger.’

‘No, no, this is amazing stuff,’ Barbara and I chorus.

‘I’ve actually been bursting to tell you about this ever since we got here,’ I say, gulping down another big glug of champers. ‘Right, Laura, just hear me out. Now, OK, I admit, I may not have consciously attracted ovaries with a sell-by date that, honest to God, at this stage might as well be carved in stone and written in Roman numerals, but maybe, just maybe, I’ve been so focused on what I don’t want, that that’s what the law of attraction is delivering, each and every time. If you’re with me.’

‘Just like me with work,’ explains Barbara. ‘I’ve spent years resigning myself to the fact that I’ll never get offered anything other than Fakespeare and third-prostitute-from-the-left-type roles in crappy old cop operas; ergo, that’s all I do get. It’s almost like I’m attracting by default.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Laura crisply, ‘but the pair of you are sounding dangerously close to butterfly net territory.’

‘Look, there’s a bit here about quantum physics,’ I say, shoving the book under her nose and hoping that this will appeal to her brainy nature.

‘“Imagine yourself like a human transmission tower,”’ Laura reads aloud in her best Nine O’Clock News voice, ‘“transmitting a frequency with your thoughts. If you wish to change anything in your life, first you must change the frequency of your thoughts.” OK, my biggest fear in life is that I’ll end up pole-dancing to pay for my kids’ braces. So this book is effectively telling me that I should just flick a mental switch, think that I’ve won the lottery and that should do the trick? Please. This conversation demeans all of us. If life was that easy, then why isn’t everyone doing it?’

‘It says here,’ I say defensively, reading from another yellowy page that flipped open, ‘“that for over two thousand years, five per cent of the world’s population have controlled ninety-five per cent of the world’s wealth. Now that is not a coincidence . . .”’

‘And at fifteen ninety-nine for a copy, I’m not a bit surprised,’ Laura says as her eagle eye spots the price tag still stuck to the back of the book.

‘Well, girlies, it’s like this,’ I say, undeterred. ‘We’ve tried just about everything else, so why not try using this to our advantage for a change? If you ask me, this law of attraction lark couldn’t be more of a doddle, really. I mean, for God’s sake, all we have to do is ask the universe very nicely for whatever we want, no matter how ridiculous it seems, believe that somehow it’ll miraculously come to us, then sit back and wait for our dream lives to start. Come on, who wouldn’t welcome that into their life?’

‘To hear you talk about the universe,’ says Laura drily, ‘you’d think it was a giant mail-order catalogue in the sky – only free.’

‘Which, when you think about it, is the perfect excuse to go out and buy that fab new Marni dress I’ve had my eye on for ages. Ooh, whaddya know, this law of attraction lark is fun.’

‘Just listen to you,’ says Laura, topping up our glasses. ‘You sound like Pollyanna, except with a Magic Eight ball, a job, a mortgage, a healthcare plan and a lot of champagne.’

‘No, I’ve just had enough stinking thinking,’ I say a bit defensively. But then, sometimes this is just the way you have to handle our Laura. ‘And I for one believe it’s time we took matters into our own hands.’

‘One of you better start making sense,’ says Laura, ‘or else I’m calling the Priory’s bunny-boiler division. I’m sorry to pour cold water on this, but it seems to me that this new fad of yours is nothing more than a few grains of common sense dressed up as the Holy Grail. The great mystery of life, reincarnated as a House of Fraser catalogue. You’ll forgive my bluntness, but I have a very finely tuned crap-ometer.’

Now Barbara rows in. ‘OK, Laura, just shut up and listen. Now I may not believe in this stuff any more than you do, but here’s the way I’m seeing it. Girlies, just take a look at us. Between the three of us there’s a perfect life in here somewhere. For my part, I’ve diligently pursued my dreams with acting, and the hard, cold fact is, that up until now, it hasn’t worked.’

‘But on the plus side, you have guys practically impaling themselves to date you,’ I say. ‘Look at me; I’ve been to hell and back so many times, with so many guys, I might as well have frequent flier miles.’

‘Excuse me, if we’re having a contest, then can I have a turn?’ says Laura. ‘So. I married my soulmate, then fast forward twelve years, to when he moves on and starts actively looking for his.’

‘Laura, for all George’s shortcomings, at least you had someone,’ I insist. ‘And, OK, I know half the time you feel like ringing social services, but you do have four healthy, wonderful kids. Take a look at me. I’m how you end up when you never find a soulmate in the first place. I mean, come on, is there anything more pathetic than a childless spinster who wishes that she wasn’t?’

‘A notion entirely peddled to you by Hollywood,’ says Laura crisply. ‘Every few years a movie will emerge targeted at women like you, which is calculated to scare you into marriage and motherhood. And to denigrate your self-esteem for being single. Fact.’

‘Come on, Vicky, you do have a very successful career,’ says Barbara. ‘Your company’s doing brilliantly, you’ve a home of your own, you’ve plenty of money, and you can afford to eat in fancy places like this. Look at my life. You know there’s a high probability I’ll end up a bag lady if I don’t get work soon.’

Now it’s like the floodgates have opened and there’s a ‘whose life is worst’ contest raging between the three of us.

‘George Hasting’s last book,’ says Laura, slowly and precisely, holding on to the edge of the table, like she’s just warming up for a good old ding-dong, ‘sold precisely ninety-one copies, thereby putting me into the acutely embarrassing position of having to beg my mother on bended knee for a hand-out.’

OK, so maybe she wins this round.

‘What was the book called again?’ Barbara asks.

‘A Brief Treatise on the Laws of Sewers, Including the Drainage Acts, 1980–2007.’

‘And you’re telling me that wasn’t snapped up and made into a movie?’ says Barbara.

Laura gives her cute, slightly lop-sided smile. She knows she’s been out-wisecracked.

‘My go,’ I say. ‘The last DSM I dated, that merchant-banker guy, broke up with me via a message on my answering machine. Bastard said he felt he was seventy-five per cent compatible with me, but only twenty-five per cent compatible with himself. Now you can both laugh all you like, but that is without doubt the lamest excuse for being dumped ever, and I should know, I’ve certainly heard a few.’ (A DSM, by the way, is our code for a decent, single man, something that eejit definitely wasn’t.)

‘Requiem for a relationship,’ muses Laura, swirling her drink. ‘I only hope you’re keeping a diary.’

‘But there are thousands of available guys out there,’ says Barbara, while I look at her, thinking, yeah, easy for you to say. ‘All you need to do is flex your dating muscles a bit, that’s all.’

‘Sorry, but when you say thousands of available guys, I hear, great, thousands more opportunities for me to be humiliated.’

‘Oh, come on, you’ve got a dream home,’ she goes on, ‘or at least, it will be by the time the builders are finished, and—’

‘A mother who thinks I can be cheered up with lovely new bedding plants and an order of guilt on the side?’

‘I can top that,’ says Laura.

‘Oh come on, you’re a wonderful mother and you know it.’

‘Yes, you’re probably both just waiting for the Disney bluebird to land on my shoulder. Anyway, during the course of my daily rummaging, I found a condom in my son’s jeans pocket.’

‘But isn’t that an OK thing?’ says Barbara, looking a tad confused. ‘I mean, you know, he’s being safe and . . . emm . . . responsible and all that?’

‘Barbara, he’s twelve.’

‘Oh, right. Sorry.’

‘My only fervent hope is that he doesn’t know what it’s for. Ladies, I just don’t get it. I took a break from a hugely satisfying career at the Bar so I could be a full-time, stay-at-home mom, and I have the baby-vomit-stained T-shirt to prove it. I’ve invested all of this time and energy in my kids, so why couldn’t I have reared the Waltons? Or the Railway Children?’

And then a eureka moment hits me more sharply than a chilli finger poked into my eye. ‘I have it,’ I say. ‘It just came to me.’

‘Top up her glass,’ says Laura bossily. ‘The girl looks as if she’s having a road-to-Damascus moment. Come on, spit it out.’

‘My birthday wish,’ I say firmly. ‘I know what it is.’

‘Shoot.’

I pick up The Law of Attraction and shove it into the middle of the table.

‘We’re doing it,’ I say. ‘The three of us.’

‘The three of us are doing what? Forming a jazz trio?’

‘We, ladies, are going to project-manage each other’s lives, according to the rules laid down in this book,’ I announce, in what I hope is the same assertive tone of voice I use with my bank manager.

‘Cool. Loving it. I’m in,’ says Barbara, beaming.

‘Project-manage?’ Laura asks. ‘Do you mean like Svengali? Or Henry Higgins in an all-girl Pygmalion, perhaps?’

‘Ehh, well I was actually thinking more in terms of Simon Cowell on The X Factor. But same idea, yeah.’

‘And exactly how much champagne have you had?’

Great, now she’s looking at me like I’m only a few coupons short of a special offer.

‘No, this time it’s not the drink talking. Barbara, I’m putting you in charge of my love life, and I for my part will come up with as many ways as I can to turn you into a household name within . . . within . . .’

‘Twelve months,’ Barbara interrupts. ‘Let’s give ourselves till your birthday next year.’

‘A good suitable bookend, I agree,’ says Laura. ‘Rest assured, I’ll be observing how both of you progress from the sidelines, with great interest.’

‘Sorry, Laura,’ I say. ‘You may not fully buy into all of this, but that’s too bad. We need your particular no-nonsense approach here, so you’re in. Welcome to the wonderful world of “got no choice”. And if we happen to come up with a sure-fire way to make you a fortune into the bargain, so much the better.’

She tops up our glasses, doing her lop-sided smile. Which is always a good sign with her.

‘I suggest we hold monthly, organized meetings in each other’s houses,’ I go on. ‘Kind of like a book club, but without the homework, and with margaritas instead of tea and sandwiches.’

‘Free booze. Always sounds good to me,’ says Barbara.

‘And we’re really going to work on visualizing our perfect lives, too. You know, like they do on the space programme, Apollo Thirteen or one of them.’

‘Well, maybe not thirteen,’ says Laura quietly. ‘Pick another Apollo. One that didn’t almost kill everyone.’

‘Girlies, I haven’t a clue what the coming twelve months hold, but I can promise you this. If we just stick to the plan, by this time next year, our lives will be unrecognizable. Deal?’

I don’t even know if what I’m saying is making any sense. I can’t describe it, I just feel like I’m acting on inspired thought.

‘Up until yesterday,’ says Barbara, ‘I’d have said it’s useless to dream because nothing ever changes, but that American chick was pretty bloody convincing. So today, I’m prepared to give it a go. Right, I’m in.’

She clinks glasses with me and looks like she’s really up for it, bless her.

‘Against my better judgement,’ says Laura slowly, ‘and only because it’ll mean I get to see more of you pair, then, OK, count me in, too. I don’t particularly think it’s going to work, but I am rooting for you. In short, you, my dears, have a deal.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’