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available for hugs and comment for the obligatory five minutes afterwards, then fell into a deep untroubled sleep. We got better with practice though. In fact for a while in our marriage, sex was even fun.
    But I’m not supposed to be thinking of sex. Our thoughts, says Arnie, are like birds flying through a clear blue sky. Though we may see them passing we are not to follow them. ‘Leave your mind and the rest will follow,’ he murmurs. And I try to – I really do – but instead I get all these images. They’re jerky at first – like an old newsreel – and then more real than life. First there’s Charlie’s cat coughing up a hairball, head hanging limply then seized with a husky spasm; then come the clumps of mascara that gather under Katie’s eyes after she’s been crying, followed by – goodness – t hat fat German man in yellow shorts reading Catch 22 on the ferry to Poros. And then a fish – a huge yellow fish with blue stripes that smiles.
    There are twenty people in the room – twenty-one if you count the studiously serene Arnie. The room is quite small and after a while grows rather hot and stuffy. When, after our session, someone comments on this Arnie says it might be something to do with our collective energies. But he also adds that the ventilation in the room isn’t good and that he’d asked Mrs Wakefield – the school principal – if the air-conditioning might be left on after 7.30 p.m. He looks slightly less serene as he says this.
    The subject of air-conditioning is reassuringly prosaic, for the other comments the session inspires are very strange indeed. Mildred, who runs a small tea shop in Rathgar, reports that the cells of her body felt as if they were dissolving into radiant light, and a man in a purple sweater says energy exploded out of him when the Richard Clayderman tape was on, and had ricocheted around the room. Warm loving energy it had been – ‘Did any of you feel it?’ he asked. I’m trying to turn a giggle into a cough when Susan says yes, she had felt the energy. ‘Thank you, Eric,’ she says, giving him a calm but beaming smile. Then piles of other people start reporting tinglings and glows and I begin to wonder if the warm drowsiness I’m feeling is the afterglow of Eric’s warm loving energy or lack of oxygen. Not wanting to be left out I mumble something about the yellow fish with the smile.
    ‘I’m not really sure about all this,’ I say to Susan as we collect our coats. But she doesn’t want to talk about meditation, she wants to talk about Charlie. She wants to know would it be all right with me if she invited him to a film. ‘Of course it would. Charlie and I are just pals,’ I answer. ‘You and he would really hit it off. Remind me to buy a packet of wholewheat spaghetti on the way home, will you?’
    But Susan is so busy talking about when she should phone Charlie and what film they should go to that she doesn’t remind me. So I have to add wholewheat spaghetti onto the ‘We Need’ list in the kitchen. The list that already contains soya sauce, wholemeal flour, toilet paper, olive oil, and Charlie’s most recent addition: love.

Chapter 6
     
     
     
    The collapse of my marriage is taking longer to adjust to than I’d thought. I was fine when I was slopping around indoors, but now that I have to go out more regularly I find myself assailed by sudden panics and deep despondency. For example, as I take the bus to my word-processing course I feel sure that I reek of rejection, and not just ‘Eternity’ – that’s th e name of Charlie’s aftershave. I feel sure that all eyes see the forlorn crumpled creature that I am; not the bright brave female I am trying to be. I fear meeting people I know, and I have a serious dread of bumping into Cait Carmody.
    It turns out quite a lot of people look like her, which is most inconvenient. The mere sight of a back bearing long brown hair makes me scurry across the street, or dart desperately into a