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into the security entry box,  he couldn’t dump Tatiana. Not just yet. He’d have to soothe her over the emergency,  whatever it was. After the initial panic, he’d worked out it couldn’t have been the condom because she’d had a period just before going away. Clever stuff, periods, provided they stuck to their timetables. So it was probably a broken nail. Or a few split ends.
    ‘Ed!’
    She was sitting with her back to him, completely stark naked on one of his new silver chrome chairs from the Design Gallery, with thick black hair trailing over a bare shoulder. Wow. The bits below his waist began to question the ‘ I don’t think this is working’ bit in his head.
    No. something was wrong. She was wearing something after all. A kind of beige body suit over, he could see now, a pair of gold, shimmery jogger things. ‘You’ve grown your hair,’ he said, stunned.
    Tatiana ran her fingers through her long black hair which had been a green bob when she’d left, with pink streaks.
    ‘Extensions, Ed.’ She was staring at him now with those amazing green eyes which had bewitched him at the beginning. Bloody hell! He must have been mad to have thought of letting her go! Her skin was so smooth and white that he wanted to run his fingers over it. Wanted to . . .
    ‘Ed.’
    Why was she speaking without a fake accent?
    ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Ed. Can you sit down? Please. Just for a second.’
    So he did.

Sometimes it seems like years, since it first happened. Sometimes, like days. It’s like being run over by a lorry. You hurt so much you cannot breathe. But no one else can see the gaping, raw flesh.
    You carry it around like a silent scar on your arm. You try to hide it with new clothes. New houses. New thoughts. Maybe even a new man.
    But none of it works. Because you can never get rid of the stain. A large, brown stain which seeps into the present, the future and the past. When we were on that happy family holiday in Spain, that summer, you say to yourself, he was really thinking of someone else. When he had to use the mobile to phone the office, he was really ringing her. And the thought is enough to make you rip out the snaps from the photograph album.
    This time, he says, there’s no one else. But I don’t believe him. Do you?

 
     
     
    Session One: Getting To Know  You
     
    Do you feel:
    Shocked?
    Numbed?
    Scared?
    Lonely?
    Don’t worry! You’re not alone. At this session, we’re going to talk about why we’re here and what we hope to get out of it.
    We’ll also get to know each other and make friends!
    And – most important of all – we’ll start talking about the person who really matters.
    You!

 
     
     
    5
     
    LIZZIE
     
    ‘A singles group!’
    Lizzie stared in disbelief at the leaflet her mother had pressed into her hand. It had barely been a month since Tom had moved out and already Mum was trying to find her someone else!
    ‘It’s not a dating agency, darling, although I wish I’d used one before I married your father.’ She clinked her sherry glass against Lizzie’s Cath Kidston coffee mug. ‘It’s a group of other people like you on their own. My neighbour told me about it.’
    So Mum had started telling the neighbours! Why didn’t that surprise her? Mum had been livid about Tom; Lizzie had had to stop her from going round and beating him on the head with her latest Saga magazine. Dad, on the other hand, had seemed strangely philosophical. ‘Maybe it’s for the best, dear. I was never quite sure he was right for you.’
    Thanks Dad. Things like this didn’t happen to her. They happened to people on the ‘Dear Kelly’ problem page of Charisma (not to be confused with her own family page) although most of them were made up anyway.
    ‘You’ve got to accept it.’ Her mother was virtually wagging her finger in front of her. ‘These things are always happening nowadays. Much better than in our day when we had to grin and bear it. Now don’t argue.