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has been listening to the whole sorry exchange now follows me back to my table, with her mouth crammed full of croissant.
    ‘SowositBarbra?’ she splutters.
    I shake my head. ‘No, it wasn’t her. Dan asked me that too.’
    Liv nods and I wait while she swallows her mouthful. ‘You’ve seen your brother hey? God. How is he? Still busy being successful,’ she rolls her eyes. ‘Jesus, I’m still recovering from your birthday party last year where he bored the shit out of me.’
    I laugh. ‘Yeah I know you are. I don’t blame you. Still, I think you both would actually get on if you hadn’t got off on the wrong foot.’
    Liv waves her finger at me. ‘Not in this life you crazy lady! He’s just one of those, oh you know, those guys.’
    Upon hearing this, I find myself feeling a little indignant on my brother’s behalf, as this is the same girl who fell for the biggest arsehole this side of the English Channel. My brother may fickle as hell but he would never leave a girl in the lurch like that. Okay, he’d probably take the news very badly, but he’d eventually come round and do the right thing. Eventually.
    ‘Anyhow, that’s enough about Dan. What happened with the job?’ she asks. ‘Tell me before I lose the will to live!’
    I put my hand over my mouth as if pretending to be embarrassed. ‘I quit,’ I purposely mumble.
    Looking for want of a better word, stunned, Liv automatically punches the air with a muffin in hand, sending it flying out the window, hitting a foreign student asking a customer a question for her language school quiz.
    ‘Sorry!’ she says to the girl, before turning around. ‘Oh. My. God. This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard all week! I never thought I would hear you say that. Ever.’
    Okay, she clearly needs some excitement in her life, but she has got a point. This is most unlike me. I’ve been muddling along for a very long time and it has been a while since I did something even remotely interesting.
    ‘Take no notice of my rude colleague here,’ Liv points over at Paolo who is now whispering something to his wife, who’s just staring at me the way small children do but adults rarely get away with. ‘He’s a socially inept son of a bitch and that’s on a good day. You’ll find stuff. You always do.’
    I think to myself that as it is ‘stuff’ that has unfortunately got me here, it’s ‘stuff’ I don’t want.
    ‘Sure,’ I say half-heartedly. ‘Anyhow, I need to get this shopping back home and start looking for a job,’ I gesture to the plastic bags with handles hanging on by a thread.
    ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Liv promises, hugging me again. ‘Let’s hang out this weekend. Come find me here.’ She does a sideways glance at Paolo and Paula who glare back at her. ‘And take no notice of them,’ she whispers. ‘Unlike me, they actually do need to get laid.’
     
     
     

 
    CHAPTER 4 - FLIP FLOPS
     
    I first met Liv while living at a hostel in Sydney, where we happened to end up sharing a room – and a weekend job cleaning it. I tackled the loos and cleaned the kitchen – a traumatic experience given that backpackers just drank beer and ate beige food – while Liv had the slightly easier job of doing the hoovering and finding out who was shagging whom for the owner to then broadcast over the tannoy. Loud, funny and beautiful, Liv has no restraint about her whatsoever. And when someone speaks their mind like she does, it brings out the same feeling as when you go shopping with someone who is a size eight – you live vicariously through them. Liv is this strong, cold blast of fresh air, one of those girls that make life much more interesting by just having her in it.
    I admit I was in awe of Liv when we were first introduced. She just went right in as if we had been friends for years, telling me the finer details of her bikini line and all about the man in room 16 who she’d caught peeing in the microwave. However, I then discovered that