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spoke. “How's work?”

CHAPTER FOUR
    I WAS DREADING the first night away from Garv. (And all the subsequent nights, but first things first.) I was sure I wouldn't sleep, because wasn't that what happened to people in distress? But I needn't have worried. I slept as if I was dead and woke up in a bed and a room that I didn't recognize. Where's this ? For a moment my curiosity was almost pleasant, then reality tumbled down onto me.
    That day was one of the most dislocated of my life. With no job to show up at, my time was spent mostly in my bedroom, keeping out of Mum's way. Even though she was very vocal about how this was just a phase I was going through and that I'd be back with Garv in no time, my popularity with her was enjoying an all-time low.
    Helen, on the other hand, was treating me like a visiting freak show and dropped by to torment me before she went to work.
    Anna came too, in an attempt to protect me.
    “God, you're still here,” Helen marveled, marching into the room.
    “So you've really left him? But this is all wrong, Maggie, you don't do this sort of thing.”
    I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with my sisters the previous Christmas—we were trapped in the house without even a Harrison Ford film to take our minds off things and were driven to wondering what each of us would be if we were food instead of people. It was decided that Claire was a green curry because they were both fiery, then Helen

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    decreed that Rachel was a Gummi Bear, which pleased Rachel no end. “Because I'm sweet?”
    “Because I like to bite your head off.”
    Anna—“This is nearly too easy,” Helen had said—was some kind of nut. And I was “plain yogurt at room temperature.”
    Okay, so I knew I'd never been within a shout of being, say, an After Eight (“thin and sophisticated”) or a gingersnap cookie (“hard and interesting”), but I saw nothing wrong with my being a trifle (“has hidden depths”). Instead, I was the dullest thing, the most flavorless thing anyone could think of—plain yogurt at room temperature. It cut me deep, and even when Claire said that Helen was a human durian fruit because she was offensive and banned in several countries, it wasn't enough to lift my spirits.
    Back in the present, Helen continued gibing me. “You're just not the type to leave her husband.”
    “No, having a broken marriage isn't the sort of thing that plain yogurt at room temperature does, is it?”
    “What?” Helen sounded confused.
    “I said , having a broken marriage isn't the sort of thing that plain yogurt at room temperature does, is it?”
    She gave me a funny look, muttered something about bridesmaids who looked like the elephant man and what was she supposed to do about it, then finally left. Anna got into bed beside me and linked her arm through mine.
    “Plain yogurt can be delicious,” she said quietly. “It's perfect with curry. And…” After a long, searching pause, she added, “And they say it's very good for a yeast infection.”
    I languished in the house, with no real idea of what I was doing there. I let telly programs wash over me: “Smokin' crack ain't so all that”; “Girlfrien', your butt is bigger than my car.” Whenever they finished I'd find myself looking around, confused to find myself no longer in the Chicago projects, but in a flowery-curtained, befigurined, suburban Dublin house. And not just any flowery-curtained, befigurined, sub

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    urban Dublin house. How have I ended up back here? What happened ?
    I felt like such a failure that I was afraid to leave the house. And I thought about Garv and the girl—a lot. So much that I'd had to go back to using my much-hated steroid cream on my unbearably itchy arm. I was tormented by her identity. Who was she, anyway?
    How long had it been going on? And—God forbid—was it serious?
    The questions scurried around incessantly; even as I watched two obese girls punching each other and Jerry Springer