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genie, Mark turned up again. He seemed to have a habit of doing that. He offered to look after the kids for the afternoon.
    ‘You need a break,’ he said. That was kind.
    ‘What about your work?’ Lisa asked.
    ‘Terry can manage on his own,’ said Mark.
    Lisa didn’t think so. Terry looked about the same age as Kerry. He was in fact twenty. But then, to Lisa, policemen and footballers didn’t look old enough to tie their own boots.
    They decided to visit the cinema, all of themtogether. Paula agreed as long as everyone walked behind her and didn’t talk to her. Jack, on the other hand, was really chuffed. He was very happy when Mark bought a family ticket. Lisa liked buying a family ticket too – mostly because it saved three quid and they supersized the popcorn.
    The moment the lights went down Lisa fell asleep. She missed all the film. She only woke up when Mark gently nudged her. Jack said she’d been snoring. Nightmare! The nightmare was made worse when Mark said, ‘Maybe you should get a test done. Gill might be right.’
    Gill must have talked to Mark too! Lisa stared at him. She was too stunned to reply. Her mind was full of slow and painful ways to kill her ex-friend. Lisa didn’t feel in control. Not one bit.

9
    31 October
    It was Hallowe’en, and Lisa was fighting demons of her own.
    Keith had called to ask when the kids’ half-term was. It made her feel fed up.
    ‘Last week,’ Lisa said crossly. She’d left him a lot of messages asking if he’d help out with looking after the kids. The kids liked to go to his place, because you couldn’t spit without hitting a flat-screen TV. Keith had not called Lisa back.
    ‘Oh. What a shame. I’d have loved to have them stay,’ said Keith.
    Clank, clank, what’s that I hear? The binmen collecting the rubbish he spouts. She didn’t believe him. It was a sort of progress. Now she knew every word he said would be a lie.
    ‘Where were you last week?’ Lisa asked.
    ‘The Canary Islands. It’s the only place to get any sun this time of year,’ said Keith.
    The kids would have loved that. Suddenly, herweek filled with mornings in the café and afternoon trips to her mum’s, the cinema and the swimming-pool seemed dull. Lisa wondered if she could prevent the kids from hearing about Keith’s holiday. No, Keith and the Big Breasted Woman probably looked bright orange. And they would make everyone sit through a slide-show of photos of the two of them drinking Bacardi. The poor kids! They’d be hurt.
    ‘How’s the DIY course going?’ asked Keith.
    Mostly Lisa was enjoying it. Although she wasn’t talking to Gill any more, since Gill had wrongly told everyone she was pregnant. But she liked the idea that she could cope if she had a DIY problem. Still, she wished it hadn’t been Keith’s idea to do a course in the first place. He’d been very smug ever since.
    ‘It’s OK,’ Lisa said. She didn’t want to give too much away. But she sounded a bit like Paula.
    ‘I was wondering if you knew much about overflow. We’ve got a back-up in the downstairs loo. Do you think you could fix it?’ asked Keith. ‘It really stinks but I don’t want to pay a plumber.’
    Lisa thought her sawing skills might finally come in useful. She could cut Keith up into little bits and feed him to wild cats – not thatyou got many wild cats around there. Luckily the beep-beep of ‘call waiting’ cut the chat short. Keith was saved by the bell.
    The person on the end of ‘call waiting’ was Lisa’s mum. Lisa moaned that Keith could offer the kids more than she could. It left her feeling bad. Lisa’s mum pointed out that even though Keith could offer the kids more, he never did.
    Lisa then confessed to feeling jealous of the Big Breasted Woman’s curtains. In fact she was also jealous of her trim size-ten body, her clothes, the hours she spent at the beautician’s and her foreign holidays. But Lisa knew she’d have the best chance of her mum understanding if she