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excused myself from the room to a distance where I could safely be heard to say things like ‘Tell me you’re joking! and ‘When do they want it by?’ and ‘This afternoon? Bloody clients!’ and ‘Okay. I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.’
    I collected my handbag and promptly made my excuses.
    ‘On a Sunday?’ said Laura. ‘God Sam, that’s not fair!’
    ‘No,’ I agreed, rolling my eyes for emphasis. ‘Story of my life!’
    ‘You’re going to work yourself to death if you’re not careful,’ she cautioned.
    She was wrong. The only thing that was going to kill me at this point was sitting in her living room listening to ten women talk about nothing but nappies and poo.
    I flew out the front door and went straight round to Mands’ apartment where she and Lizzie were waiting with a chilled bottle of wine.

    The following morning I was still unable to get the picture of Tom’s runny poo out of my head. It appeared to be stuck there. I arrived at the office, unfolded the newspaper and set about digesting what useless information the country’s media had to offer. It was my routine to sit at my desk and read the newspaper upon arriving at the office every morning while simultaneously ingesting my first trim latte of the day, which I bought from the café on the corner. All I had to do was walk through the door and it was in my hands within nanoseconds. I didn’t even have to speak. The front page consisted of the usual parliamentary infighting, seabed claims, and more photos of genetically engineered cows, with the headline Her Twin Sister is Her Mother .
    This story only made me happier than ever that I did not eat red meat.
    I threw the sports pages directly into my rubbish bin. The only thing sport was good for, I’d decided long ago, was the ability to get a restaurant booking at short notice while the rest of the country stayed at home and watched a football match on television. I flicked straight to the business section, as I did every morning, only to find a picture of Lizzie’s ex-husband, Bryce the Bastard, staring back at me from page two.
    I quickly scanned the accompanying story. Apparently Bryce was about to start up another e-media company. And make many more millions doing it no doubt, I thought. It had been a tough couple of years, said Bryce, especially with the price of divorce and all that he had subsequently endured.
    But it was better to settle and keep the peace, he said, rather than drag names through the dirt. Even if one was undoubtedly being taken for a ride in the fun park.
    What a complete and utter arsehole!
    I had always hated Bryce and his analogies. He could never just say something without comparing it to something else that was completely and utterly irrelevant.
    Oh dear, I thought. Lizzie was not going to be happy with this.
    Lizzie was a hotshot young lawyer, working for one of the largest firms in the country. She was what my father called a real sweetie and a real beauty and she cut an imposing and alluring figure in her Keith Matheson suits, strutting off to the courtroom. Her parents were both artists. Her mother was a writer and her father a painter. Neither of them could quite fathom how their eldest child could have been born without an artistic bone in her body. In her younger years they had taken Lizzie to see numerous artistic channelers, in the hope they could coax some sort of child-like sketch or poem out of her. But she just wasn’t interested. All she wanted to do was watch Dynasty and LA Law and look at the lovely suits. Telling them she wanted to become a lawyer had been like telling them she wanted to become a crack dealer. She often said it was the sight of her parents still in their dressing gowns when she got home from school, busy painting and writing about the house, which turned her against the arts. It may have also been the fact she and her younger sister, Sara, often went without dinner because their parents hadn’t actually noticed they