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not.’
    ‘She was OK on Wednesday at school?’
    Katherine stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. She stared into the garden and Amy turned to see what she was looking at. But she was staring into space, a peculiar smile on her lips.
    ‘Katherine?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Are you all right?’ Amy asked.
    Katherine blinked. ‘What? Yeah, I’m cool.’
    She still had that look on her face, as if she found the whole thing amusing – or at least intriguing. She was swinging her leg in the same way Gary had been and Amy noticed that she had bruises around her ankles. ‘You were saying about Wednesday.’
    ‘Oh, yeah. We went for a drink after work – most of the younger teachers – to celebrate the end of term. Becky was there.’
    ‘For the whole night?’
    ‘Yeah. Well, we both left quite early.’ Katherine looked over Amy’s shoulder again and this time a black-and-white cat appeared, running past Amy and disappearing into the house. Katherine watched it go.
    ‘And how did she seem?’ Amy asked.
    ‘Normal. Fine. In fact, she was all excited.’
    ‘Excited? What about?’
    Katherine crushed out her cigarette beneath a flip-flop. As she raised her leg, Amy spotted a fading yellow bruise on the inside of Katherine’s thigh. It looked like a bite mark. She looked Amy in the eye. ‘She had a hot date lined up for Thursday night. She was really looking forward to it.’

4
Becky
Wednesday, 15 May
    Kath and I are having a great laugh round at mine, going through the profiles on CupidsWeb.com. I have enlisted her help after the date with Tedious Shaun, which, incidentally, pretty much sums up the inherent flaw in Internet dating: no matter how flirty your texts are before you meet, or how attractive their photo is, or how much you have in common on paper, there is still every chance that you won’t like each other when you do meet; that the most important ingredient of all – sexual chemistry – will be missing.
    Kath keeps telling me to do speed dating instead, but I can’t handle the idea of it. It does make sense, first impressions and all that, but I’m rubbish at making small talk at the best of times, and the thought of some geek asking if I was an item of food what would I be … no thanks.
    ‘I’ll do it if you do it with me,’ I said, making a face at her.
    ‘OK, you’re on,’ she replied, a glint in her eye, clicking back to the main menu and scrolling down a list of thumbnail pictures of men that I can tell, even from a photo one-inch square, I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than date.
    ‘What?
You
can’t do speed dating! What would Clive say?’
    ‘Between you and me, Clive isn’t going to be for ever.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ She and Clive have a mortgage on a tiny cottage that backs onto a railway line. I’ve been to their house for dinner. They have a cat and photomontages in clip frames of themselves on skiing holidays. It’s not exactly a casual relationship. ‘I thought you two were fine. Does he know?’
    She looks shifty. ‘No. I’m not ready to tell him yet either, so don’t mention anything. I’m just window-shopping for now.’
    I feel a bit sad at this. Clive is OK, as far as I can tell. I mean, I wouldn’t date him myself, he’s always apologizing for things, and tells Kath so often that he’s really lucky to have her that I don’t blame her for feeling superior to him. And he
is
lucky to have her. She’s gorgeous – long curly red hair, the right number of freckles, and so curvy in all the right places that she makes me look like an ironing board standing next to her.
    ‘The grass isn’t necessarily greener, you know,’ I say, gesturing to the computer screen.
    Kath snorts. ‘It couldn’t be any
less
green,’ she retorts. ‘Right now, it’s already a bleeding drought situation. Hosepipe ban and everything.’
    We giggle at the innuendo and I pour us each a large glass of wine.
    ‘Poor Clive,’ I say. ‘I’ll make a deal with you –