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than the Pope and she’s noteven Catholic. ‘When he sobs I forget that his kindie is a perfectly pleasant place and that the carers do actually care. I imagine it to be a fascist dictatorship, where tearing out fingernails is an acceptable response to a four-year-old refusing to eat his carrots.’
    I pat her hand.
    ‘He seemed so distraught this morning that I seriously considered making a run for it.’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘No. Eddie’s key care worker, Linda, scooped him into her large breasts.’
    ‘Did he smile appreciatively?’ I ask.
    ‘No, he’s about twelve years too young. He just looked at me with his sad, blue eyes. Linda firmly and fairly declared that it is “silly to be clingy”.’
    ‘Bit harsh, he’s only a tot,’ I comment sympathetically.
    ‘She was talking to me,’ explains Laura with a grin.
    I go to the counter and buy two more coffees and a blueberry muffin each. We always wait until our second coffee before we eat cake. Our ritual puts me in mind of my mum, who would never let alcohol pass her lips until after 7 p.m. She insisted it was important to have ‘standards’. Her approach was rare. Like me, she was born and bred in Kirkspey, a small village in a colourless, dreary corner of the north-east of Scotland: a community that historically had been dependent on the fishing industry. In Kirkspey whisky was known as ‘the water of life’ and was as appreciated as mother’s milk. I guess it dulled the pain and terror of the ever-present threat of injury or death. Events that were dreaded but not unexpected in a fishing town. Now, the area is blighted by drug addiction,high unemployment and incurable economic decline. You can’t spit without hitting a forsaken boatyard but the passion for ‘the water of life’ is unabated. If anything it’s more ferocious. I mean, I enjoy a glass or two with friends (well, three or four sometimes) but in Kirkspey I’d be regarded as pretty much teetotal.
    In Kirkspey, riotous mood swings, unjustified insult, physical and verbal invective against strangers, vomiting and urinating in the streets, self-harm, lewd exposure, memory blackout and insolvency are rife. All because too many people worship ‘the water of life’ and don’t have my mum’s ‘standards’. Blueberry muffins, of course, are a lot less damaging.
    ‘You know what you need?’ I ask Laura, pushing all thoughts of Kirkspey from my head, not a difficult task as I’m practised at doing so.
    ‘A six-foot-two, handsome millionaire, who dotes on my every word and wants to make an honest woman of me,’ answers Laura succinctly.
    ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
    ‘Good thing – you got the last one of those. Lucky bint.’
    ‘I was going to suggest a night out.’
    ‘I can’t afford it.’
    I am used to Laura’s stock answers: she has been reeling them out for all of the three years I have known her and has recited them with increased vigour since I married Philip. When we were both on the pull she was prepared to launch herself into bars, pubs and clubs every second Friday but she is much more reluctant now. Who can blame her? It’s a disaster movie out there.
    ‘We don’t have to go anywhere expensive,’ I counter.
    ‘But even if the venue is cheapo I have to pay a babysitter, that’s if I can find one who doesn’t come with a million terms and conditions. The last babysitter specified which takeaway pizza supplier she wanted
and
she wouldn’t let me record
Footballers’ Wives
because she wanted to watch it and tape the other side!’
    I’ve heard this before; it is shocking.
    ‘You could come to my place, bring Eddie. We could open a couple of bottles of wine.’
    ‘But the cost of a cab home.’
    ‘Stay.’
    ‘I’d be in the way. Philip works hard – he doesn’t want to come home to a house full.’
    ‘Philip is away most of this week and won’t be back until very late Friday night. I could do with the company.’ I can see that she is tempted.