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fantasising about marrying Fred. Their wedding day would be at Christmas, so he would never forget their anniversary, and the buffet would include deep-fried mince pies.
    ‘The ancient Britons and the Celts both worshipped the horse,’ said her mum suddenly, just as Jess was about to give birth to divinely beautiful twins called Freda and Freddo – painlessly and without blood or slime. ‘You’ve probably seen those big white chalk horses on hillsides – installation art from the Bronze Age.’
    ‘When was the Bronze Age?’ asked Granny.
    ‘About two to four thousand years ago,’ said Jess’s mum. ‘You’d have loved it. There was a large amount of gratuitous violence.’
    ‘Oh, lovely, dear!’ said Granny. ‘I love those archaeology programmes on the TV. Especially when they find those skulls that have been bashed in with a heavy object.’
    Jess sometimes thought that, in a previous existence, her granny might have been a ruthlessly brutal warlord.
    ‘There’s a figure I want you to see,’ said Mum. ‘It’s in Dorset, on the hillside, cut out in the chalk. But it’s not a horse.’
    Thank goodness , thought Jess. She had never really got into that whole horsy thing. She could imagine Flora galloping along a beach, her hair streaming in the wind like a shampoo ad, but Jess was sure that if she ever tried to meddle with horses, she’d find herself upside down in a hedge, with her bra straps wrapped round a bird’s nest.
    If they were going to have to look at some of that Celtic chalk art stuff on a hillside, Jess would prefer it to be an amusing chimp or a cute meerkat.
    ‘OK, here we are,’ said Mum, giggling rather foolishly as she pulled off the road and into a car park. ‘Don’t look yet – just get out of the car and keep your eyes down on the ground.’
    They piled out and kept their eyes down. Jess hoped her mum wouldn’t go in for this surprise surprise thing too often. It seemed ever so slightly infantile.
    ‘Right!’ said Jess’s mum. ‘Now look across the valley – over there.’
    Jess glanced up and almost died with embarrassment. Across the valley, on the opposite hillside, and cut into the chalk like the white horse, was the gigantic figure of a naked man. No detail was missing, not even his private parts. In fact it would be true to say that no parts have ever been less private.

Chapter 10
    ‘Mum!’ shrieked Jess. ‘How totally gross! What did you want to show us that for? It’s disgusting!’
    Granny was screwing up her eyes and peering intently at the figure.
    ‘It seems to me, dear,’ she said, ‘that his head is much smaller than his whatyamacallit.’
    ‘Well, that’s men for you,’ said Jess’s mum. ‘Tiny brains, obviously. He’s a sort of fertility god. They did think he was thousands of years old, but now they reckon he only dates from maybe a couple of hundred years ago.’
    ‘These fertility figures!’ said Jess. ‘Always lying about their age. Trying to get into the history books. Like me trying to get into an eighteen certificate film – which, incidentally, I would never dream of doing.’
    ‘Well, that was the Cerne Abbas Giant,’ said Mum as they piled back into the car. ‘And now we’ll find a sweet little tea shop for lunch.’ It was the first sensible thing her mum had said all morning.
    The sweet little tea shop proved to be just moments away, in the village. Jess devoured a massive chunk of cheese and potato pie. Her next challenge was to control her burps as her half-pint of Coke jostled up unpleasantly against her massive high-fat lunch, which had been the size of a small but delicious child.
    The waiter was a really cool guy, plump and with black curly hair and long dark eyelashes. When he brought the pudding menu, Mum looked up and gave him a cheeky grin.
    ‘Has anyone ever said you look just like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot ?’ she asked.
    The guy shrugged, shook his head and gave a doubtful smile.
    ‘Most people say I