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The Caribbean? She is so exhausted she’d be lucky to make it down the road to the travel agent. Perhaps they could administer her Mai-Tais via a drip.

‘Why spend ages traipsing around town hunting for somewhere new just to prove you’re an exciting, adventurous person who doesn’t always go to the same two restaurants when you already know that you aren’t adventurous and they are clearly the two best places to go? Count yourself lucky you’ve not got much choice.’

‘Tick. Tick. My biological clock. Surely you can hear it? My mother can hear it over fifty miles away apparently. I don’t care. I’ve decided not to worry about having sprogs. I’m just going to get some on time-share for two weeks a year.’

‘Sex? What’s that? Is that the thing that happens somewhere between the first snog and the slamming of the front door? Ah, yes, I had some of that once…’

‘She could be the Dalai Lama in disguise, but let’s look at the most likely option first, shall we? Two people: one male, one female, in a restaurant, in the evening. Sounds suspiciously like a couple having a relationship to me. You ought to know. That’s what normal people do. I read it in one of the Sunday supplements.’

Good grief. For God’s sake, go and have a proper fling, woman. It was all very well having a gap after Patrick, but this was getting beyond a joke. She was probably technically a virgin again by now, all sealed over the way pierced ears went if you didn’t wear earrings in them.

‘There’s no point anyway. Even if I met someone, I never think I know how to do relationships. I can do the going out to dinner bit and the having lots of sex bit, then I get lost. There must be some secret formula that I don’t know about,’ said Bella. ‘Can’t you give me your top ten tips or something? You seem to have it sussed.’

There ought to be some kind of evening class that you could take for all the really tricky stuff. What was the point of worrying about Intermediate Spreadsheets or Creative Machine Embroidery when you really needed Having a Relationship –Complete Beginners or Getting Your Act Together, Level I?

Drawing was rather like being in love, she decided, the completeness of it, no need for anything else.

She was beginning to regret that she’d splashed out and bought a packet of twelve condoms rather than three. At this rate, she’d be lucky to get through it before its expiry date; good grief, at this rate, the packet could constitute a lifetime’s supply.

She tilted the mirror to inspect her lower half. Perhaps she should go wild and buy a full-length mirror one day. Then again, perhaps not; she felt she was best seen only a small portion at a time.

How would she feel if it had been the other way round? ‘You wouldn’t feel anything, stupid, you’d be dead,’ she told herself.