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didn’t bother turning round. Her voice was level and matter of fact as though she was discussing a new recipe for kids’ packed lunches: not edged with panic like the last time. ‘We fell in love. We didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’
    She didn’t sound it. ‘But you ‘fell in love’ with someone else’s husband. My kids’ father. Don’t you feel one shred of guilt?’
    Sharon turned and this time, close up, Lizzie could see tell-tale dark circles under her eyes. ‘Of course I do but I couldn’t help it. Neither of us could.’
    Lizzie wanted to fling the coffee across the table. ‘YOU JUST HAD TO SAY NO! For crying out loud, I’ve told you stuff about Tom. Stuff I’d never tell anyone else.’
    She faltered, remembering how she’d confided, not long ago, that Tom was always too tired in bed. She’d even asked Sharon if she thought that was normal and her ‘friend’ had gone all quiet and asked how Lizzie could expect her, Sharon, a single mother, to know that sort of thing any more. And Lizzie had felt terrible; selfish even for forgetting that ‘poor’ Sharon was on her own. How naïve was that?
    ‘How long has it been going on for, anyway.’
    ‘Two months.’ Sharon coloured slightly. ‘Just after the kids broke up for the summer holidays. You were away. Again.’
    Two months? Tom had said it was ‘a few weeks’. Two days would have been better. ‘Not at all’ would have been best; then she could wake up from this ridiculous treacle nightmare.
    Lizzie stood up and then sat down. Why wouldn’t her legs work? Sharon was beginning to look less confident now, sitting there, at the table, her eyes fixed on an imaginary mark on the wall behind Lizzie, the way their pilates teacher told them to,  two bright pink spots on each cheek.
    ‘But when were you going to tell me?’ Lizzie thumped the table with her fists.
    There was a silence during which Lizzie felt a flutter of hope. ‘Because it’s over now’, she could almost hear Sharon saying. ‘Because we’ve realised it’s a terribly selfish thing to do and we want to forget it ever happened.’ Could she, Lizzie, forget? Yes! Yes! Anything to bring back the normality of family life.
    ‘Soon. We couldn’t put it off any longer. I’m not going to be a single mother any more, you see. So you won’t be able to write about me again.’
    Lizzie winced. That had been another feature Sharon hadn’t been very happy about even though she’d been paid for it. The magazine had used her as a case history in a ‘ How Single Mums Cut Corners’ piece and Sharon had got a bit miffed when Lizzie had slipped in the bit about Sharon dropping off the kids on the corner instead of seeing them in through the school gates so she could get to work on time.
    ‘What do you mean you’re not going to be a single mother any more?’
    Sharon’s eyes gleamed, meeting hers challengingly. And suddenly, Lizzie knew with a sickening lurch in her stomach, exactly what she was going to say.
    ‘I’m going to have your husband’s baby. So it’s over now, Lizzie. You’ve lost. Deal with it.’

 
     
     
    7
     
    ALISON
     
    The hairdresser had been one of Caroline’s better ideas. ‘Fancy a change then, do you?’ said the girl who usually did her hair. ‘Why don’t you have your eyebrows fredded as well?’
    It took Alison a while to realise she meant ‘threaded’ but the girl was right. It did open up her face. As for the shorter, almost elfin style with the reddish streaks not unlike Jules’s . . . she didn’t know what to think! Part of her was appalled and part almost liked it. Those wispy, light brown strands on the floor looked as though they had never belonged to her. Nothing seemed real any more. Not even the hefty bill.
    When she got back home, something made her go upstairs and take all her clothes off. Just like that. Stark naked in front of the full length bedroom mirror at 11.25am without even the curtains drawn.
    What, she asked herself,