LITMIR.BIZ

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now? You try to do my job for me?’ Mr Ahmed throws his hands up in the air when I bring in only a silk blouse and my ancient woollen jacket.

      ‘Mr Martin no longer lives at home,’ I tell Mr Ahmed without looking at him. Behind him, Mrs Ahmed’s eyes grow round and she stops unfolding clothes.

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mrs Martin…’ Mr Ahmed tugs one end of his thick grey moustache.

      Mrs Ahmed draws up to the counter, a jumper in her hand. ‘These English men. No sense of family. The Queen’s children, look at them: they too, all divorced.’

      ‘It’s not quite like that.’ I find myself trying to defend Jonathan, and the Windsors, to our dry cleaner and his wife.

      ‘Tchtch!’ Mrs Ahmed shakes her head woefully, and her plump body beneath the red and yellow sari jiggles. ‘They want fun and new things all the time.’

      Mr Ahmed leans over the counter. ‘You need an Asian man.’ He takes my blouse and jacket and hands me a receipt for them. Then, taking one of the lollies he keeps for his customers’ children, he holds it out to me. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘you take this.’

      Nadine, my hairdresser, is also full of sympathy. ‘What?! With whom?! What a bastard!’ She tugs at my wet hair with a comb.

      ‘That hurts,’ I protest.

      ‘I know, I know. Trust me, I’ve been there. Me, it happened six years ago, and let me tell you, I lost two dress sizes, I cried so much. You know what makes it so hard?’ she asks my reflection in the mirror: I shake my head, no. ‘That he’s doing it to you at our time of life.’ I flinch: surely Nadine is a good ten years older than me? ‘It’s hard to get dates at our age. Show me a man who notices you when you’re over twenty-two,’ she goes on, addressing the woman with the stringy wet hair and pink towel on her shoulders. ‘But I’ve got a good book for you. In fact two: Couple Uncouples and Split Does Not Mean That’s It. Really deep stuff. Written by psychiatrists. Take up yoga, too; it really helps with the pain. It’s all in the breathing.’

      ‘This won’t do.’ Jill shakes her head as she undoes my top three buttons. ‘It’s not Sunday school, you know.’

      ‘What’s going on?’ I look from Jill to David as they draw me into their smart, ultra-modern sitting room. Black-and-white photographs decorate the walls, tall white orchids sit on window sills and mantelpiece. Jill ignores my query as she pushes back the hair from my face. David smiles mysteriously.

      The door bell rings. Jill brings her index finger to her lips. ‘Not a word,’ she hisses over her shoulder at her partner as she opens the front door.

      ‘How funny!’ Jill trills as she walks back in, a handsome man in her wake. ‘David and I were just telling Rosie how wonderful your Romeo and Juliet is, and here you are, in the flesh. What a coincidence!’

      ‘Well, you did invite me,’ the new arrival replies, puzzled. He’s youngish, copper-haired and white-skinned, tall and wiry. He wears a purple velvet jacket and his hair in a ponytail: I take it he’s one of David’s friends—they’re all theatrically turned out.

      ‘Must be fate!’ Jill drags the ponytailed man to where I’m standing. ‘Orlando, Rosie. Rosie, Orlando.’

      As I smile up at him, Orlando looks at me expectantly: I wonder if we’ve met before and I’ve forgotten.

      ‘You may recognise Orlando,’ David explains while his friend smiles modestly, ‘from his theatre work. He’s been in some very famous productions.’

      ‘Uh…I wonder…’ I try to rack my brains about the plays I’ve seen, but the only recent production I remember is the panto, Aladdin, when I accompanied Freddy’s class last Christmas. I sit on the huge grey silk sofa, wishing that I wasn’t wearing my most comfortable and least attractive jeans and a boring button-down shirt. Couldn’t Jill have given me some warning?

      ‘Did you see The Importance of Being Earnest last May?’ Orlando asks hopefully as he sits on the zebra-skinned stool in front of me. ‘I was Algernon’s butler.’ I shake my head.

      David hands me a glass of wine. ‘Fabulous, he was, too. The Ham and High said he was “a scene stealer”.’

      ‘What about Oliver!?’ Orlando tries again. ‘I was one of Bill’s boozing buddies.’ I shake my head guiltily. ‘OK, you must have seen Wuthering Heights two years ago, with Heathcliffe as a Shia Muslim and Cathy as a Hasidic Jew? Everyone saw that!’

      ‘No,’ I confess. Then, seeing Orlando’s dejected expression: ‘But everyone did say how marvellous it was.’ Orlando shakes his head forlornly over his glass of wine. ‘It’s me,’ I try to console him, ‘I’ve been going through a philistine patch lately.’

      ‘Nonsense, Rosie!’ Jill interrupts me. ‘You’re very artistic. She once made me a lovely Christmas card—a collage of wrapping paper, really striking.’ She sits beside me on the sofa, nudging me with her elbow. ‘And she studied Shakespeare, didn’t you, Rosie?’

      ‘Well, yes, but only for A Levels.’ My admission earns a furious scowl from Jill. And her elbow in my side.

      ‘Tell Rosie about Romeo and Juliet.’ Jill smiles encouragingly at Orlando.

      ‘It’s a fab adaptation.’ Orlando bobs up and down enthusiastically, and some long copper curls slip out of the neat ponytail. ‘We’ve got an all-male cast. So it’s homophobia not a family feud that keeps the lovers apart.’

      ‘How interesting…’ I try to imagine the balcony scene between Romeo and Jules? (Julian?) and fail to. David holds up the bottle, enquiring if I’d like some more. ‘Thanks, yes, it’s delicious.’ I might as well get drinking at this point.

      ‘Hmmm, lovely, vino.’ Orlando holds up his own glass for seconds.

      ‘You both like Sauvignon Blanc: you’ve got so much in common!’ Cringing at Jill’s indefatigable matchmaking, I try to draw away from her on the sofa, but she goes on, heedless: ‘Like—divorce.’

      Orlando’s eyes grow wide and round and interested. ‘Really? You too? I’ve just come out of three horrible years of it.’

      ‘Marriage?’

      ‘No. Divorce court. The harpy was determined to get her mitts on the Hall and I wasn’t going to let it happen.’

      ‘Northlay Hall is Orlando’s ancestral pile,’ David explains. ‘Adam. In Wiltshire. Stunning.’

      ‘Once she landed a role on EastEnders she got ideas above her station,’ Orlando explains. Then, in a high-pitched whine, ‘“Orlando, if I can’t have you I want your house.”’ Now he lowers his voice back to normal, ‘“Look, Violet, it’s been in my family for centuries, it means nothing to you but everything to my father.”’ He switches to the high-pitched voice: ‘“It means a lot to me, too. It means I wouldn’t have to slog all day and all night.” “You’re being unreasonable!” “You’re being mean!” “I need closure!” “You need a shrink!”’

      I watch, baffled, as Orlando alternates his wife’s voice with his own. When Jill goes to the kitchen to fetch some nibbles, I follow her.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me to expect a ventriloquist show?’ I whisper, cross.

      ‘I wish you’d get into the spirit of it,’ Jill scolds me as she opens the bag of handmade potato crisps. ‘Orlando’s gorgeous.’

      ‘He’s also bitter about his divorce and horrid about his ex.’

      ‘Everyone’s bitter about their divorce.’

      ‘Not me, and not Jonathan.’

      ‘Your attitude to this divorce is just not healthy.’ She fills the square glass bowl with crisps. ‘Divorce is as close as two people

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