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coming to a bowling alley. He arranged it for Jessica’s twenty-first birthday last year and she loved it.’
    ‘It was brilliant,’ piped up Jessica, putting her arm around Adam’s spare tyre, which he’d tried, and failed, to conceal underneath a vintage Hawaiian shirt. ‘A totally wicked idea.’
    Frankie tried hard to silence the scream within. Wicked wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Dreadful. Awful. Hideous. They were more like it. She gave Adam, the pleased-as-punch instigator of this heinous crime, a withering look. This couldn’t be happening. Surely it was some kind of practical joke. Wasn’t it?
    It wasn’t.
    ‘Keeping secrets can be difficult, but Hugh must be pretty good at it.’ Adam chuckled loudly and looked at her high heels. ‘You didn’t have any idea, did you?’
    Forcing a ventriloquist’s smile, Frankie muttered through gritted teeth, ‘No, I guess not.’

5
    It was the bitterest pill she’d ever had to swallow. Standing in her red, white and blue lace-ups, Frankie felt she was doing a bad impersonation of Paul Weller in his Jam days. She looked at Jessica, flicking her curtain of glossy blonde hair around as she skipped to and fro in her cut-off logo T-shirt, hipster jeans and pierced bellybutton. Tiny, Kylie-esque Jessica could make even Union Jack shoes look cute. Next to her, Frankie felt like an old frump. Three-inch snakeskin stilettos had given her designer outfit a sexy edge, but a pair of scuffed, rented laceups made her feel as if she were a Volvo-driving mum on the school run.
    Things couldn’t get any worse. Or so she thought, until she saw Jessica in action. Not only did she look the part, but she’d obviously been a champion bowler in a former life. Wiggling her hips, she strutted daintily to the line and, with a flick of her wrist and a toss of her hair, scored a perfect ten each time. Every male in the bowling alley was mesmerised by her technique: cardigan-wearing OAPs out on their weekly bowling night drooled over her ball control; young lager-drinking trendies salivated at the power in her fingertips. Yep, there was no doubt about it, Jessica had them well and truly by the balls.
    If only the same could be said for Frankie. Like a loose cannon, she flung her ball half-heartedly down the alley, trying not to fling herself with it, and cringed as it veered off to one side, missing every single skittle.
    ‘Better luck next time,’ giggled Jessica, who giggled at everything. When she wasn’t giggling she was, well, giggling.
    Fighting back tears of disappointment and frustration, Frankie glanced across at Hugh for support, but he was being the absent boyfriend. Drinking beer with Adam, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, halfway through a witty anecdote of how he’d just gazumped an offer on a four-bedroom semi. Frankie sighed. Boyfriends were always the same, always leaving you to chat to their friends’ girlfriends while they discussed business/golf/rugby scores. Not that there was anything wrong with Jessica, unless you counted the fact that all she talked about were clubs, DJs and her collection of underground garage and hip-hop CDs. Frankie tried to look as if she knew what Jessica was going on about, but her clubbing days had finished when her pension contributions had started and her CD collection was made up from the easy-listening section: Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Abba. Two dead crooners and a retired Swedish import. Hardly cutting edge.
     
    After sixty minutes had ticked painfully slowly by, Frankie could no longer pretend she was enjoying herself. She was bored, knackered, completely fed up, and to make matters worse she was lucky to be in even fourth place. Every skittle was standing, every fingernail was broken. And while Hugh had hardly spoken to her, preferring to discuss endowment mortgages and interest rates with Adam, Jessica hadn’t stopped. Thankfully she’d finally come up for air, complained she was ‘totally starving’ and dragged