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don’t think so. So there you go, love. It all comes out in the wash.’
    “Message Three.
    “ ‘Hi, Liv, it’s Alex. Just arrived in Sydney this morning. I can’t tell you how blue and beautiful it is. Charlie’s mum’s house is amazing. You’d love it. The guys here are incredible, too, in case you were contemplating a bit of cone licking or whatever it was you were talking about the other week. I miss you, sweetheart, and I hope you’re well. I’ll call you at home this evening to check in. Love you lots. Bye.’ ”
    For a split-milli-barely-counts-at-all second Liv thought of the men in Sydney. In fact, she thought of one in particular. But god, that was ten years ago. Ben Parker had been her one and only holiday romance. The love of her life. The man who when she was eighteen she was going to marry and have kids and dogs with. Her family had gone with a group of other families with teenagers to Aix and stayed in the most enormous low-ceilinged farmhouse with a mosquito-infested lake in the woods nearby. The adults would stay up till midnight imbibing the local brews and playing boules while the teenagers either sulked in their rooms or, in Liv’s case, experimented with hash and heavy petting in the ramshackle outbuildings of the farm. Ben Parker’s parents had been staying in a mill up the road, and on their last night, as the rain poured down outside and clung to the jasmine, Liv and Ben sheltered in a barn and they probably had sex. Though she’d never quite been sure if this was the night she lost her virginity or not, because either the fine Moroccan was dope or Ben wasn’t having quite an effect upon her. She still had the occasional dream about his very wonderful lips and surfer’s legs teasing her into a frenzy of adolescent passion.
    Liv’s heart did a whistle-stop tour of a life ahead—it came in flashes. Liv going out to visit Alex and the pair of them drinking margaritas on a beach. The sunlight on her face making her strong again. Ben Parker kissing her in the surf. The two of them holding hands in front of the Sydney Opera House. But of course there was Tim, too. Tim watching the whole thing and being made sick with jealousy. Tim thinking how beautiful and have-backable she looked. Tim scuffing the knees of his Paul Smith wedding suit as he crawled around on his knees in abject misery while she touched Ben’s taut tummy and then accidentally trod on Tim. I’m losing it, she snapped at the whistle-stop tour and jumped off the bus.
    “Liv, are you okay?” Fay was standing behind her looking at the tepid lemon tea Liv had spilled all over her desk.
    “I’m sorry; it was an accident.” Liv hastily mopped up the tea with her shirtsleeve and reached for her lavender oil to apply to her temples for calm.
    “Liv, I’d like a word if you don’t mind,” Fay said, examining Liv’s disarray: spreadsheets and how-to-win-Tim-back strategies pasted damply to her desk with Liptons. Even though she knew her work was up to scratch, Liv felt slightly nervous as she followed Fay into her office. Perhaps her pink eyes were proving an embarrassment during meetings. Or Fay had decided to put a curfew on trips to the loo, which still, despite the bottle of Rescue Remedy and hip flask of Saint-John’s-wort that Liv was averaging a day, amounted to around three an hour. Which was quite a lot of wasted work time, given that each trip involved a snotty sob on the loo seat, the bashing of her head against the wall, a liberal splash of cold water on the face, and a pause to wonder if Tim would have stayed had she not had a balding patch on her right eyebrow.
    “Take a seat,” said Fay as she closed the door softly behind her. Unaccustomed to such time wasting as sitting down and closing doors on Fay’s part, Liv felt mildly claustrophobic and nervous. She perched perilously on the edge of a low filing cabinet in an attempt to defuse the situation. “The sofa’s all yours.” Fay wafted her hand in the