‘Why are you asking me about money?’

‘I was thinking you might like to hire a car while you’re here.’

‘Can’t I get the bus?’

A funny noise made me look up. It was Emily, laughing.

‘What did I say?’

‘“Can’t I get the bus.”’ Next you’ll be offering to walk places. You’re a tonic!’

‘I can’t get the bus?’

‘Not really, no one gets the bus. The service is beyond shite. Or so I’m told, I’ve never actually experienced it first-hand. You need a car in this town. There are some great pick-up trucks for rent,’ Emily said dreamily.

‘Pick-up trucks? Do you mean jeeps?’

‘No, I mean pick-up trucks.’

‘You mean… like hill-billies drive?’

‘Well, yeah, but new and shiny and without hogs sitting up front.’

But I didn’t want a pick-up truck. I’d been entertaining a pleasant vision of zipping around in a foxy little silver convertible, my hair flying out behind me, lowering my heart-shaped sunglasses and making eye contact with men at traffic lights. (Not that I ever would, of course.)

‘Only tourists and out-of-towners drive convertibles,’ Emily scorned. ‘Angelenos never do. Because of the smog.’

I remembered that Emily had picked me up from the airport in a huge, jeep-style, four-wheel-drive type of yoke. She’d looked as if she was driving a block of flats, and I’d almost needed a rope and crampons to get up to the passenger seat. ‘Pick-up trucks are very now,’ she advised. ‘And if not a pick-up truck, then get a jeep like mine.’

‘But I just need something to get me from A to B.’ And it was all right for her, living in year-round sunshine, but when would I get another chance to take the roof off my car and not get soaked to the skin?

‘You see, your car is how you’re judged in this town. Your car and your body. It doesn’t matter if you live in a cardboard box, so long as your car is cool and you’re in the terminal stages of anorexia.’

‘Well, I think convertibles are cool. That’s the car I’d like.’

‘But–’

‘My marriage has broken up,’ I said, playing dirty. ‘I want a convertible.’

‘OK.’ Emily knew when she was beat. ‘We’ll get you a convertible.’

*

Just before we went out, my mother rang. ‘That entire seaboard could fall into the Pacific at any moment.’

‘Is that right?’

‘I’m only saying it for your good.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is it sunny there?’

‘Very. I have to go now.’

The beach was no distance, I could easily have walked it. If I’d been allowed. I abseiled down out of the car and away Emily drove, perched high and tiny in her mobile block of flats.

The scene ahead of me looked like a postcard. Bathed in citrus light, lines of high, spindly palm trees brushed the jaunty blue sky. Stretching far away in both directions was a wide expanse of powdery white sand, and beyond that was the glinting rush of the ocean.

We’ve all heard that Californians are gorgeous. That through a combination of good-living, health-consciousness, sunshine, plastic surgery and eating disorders they’re skinny, muscled and glowing. As I arranged my towel on the sand I suspiciously watched other people on the beach. There weren’t that many –possibly because it was a weekday – but there were enough to confirm my worst fears. I was the fattest, saggiest person on that stretch of sand. Possibly in the entire state of California. God, they were thin. And I was filled with resolve – tinged with despair – that I was going to start exercising again.

Two Scandinavian-looking girls took up a position far too near for my liking. Immediately I wondered if either of them were divorced; I was driving myself mad speculating about the marital status of everyone I met…

They whipped off their shorts and tops to reveal tiny bikinis, flat stomachs and golden thighs, shaped and curved with muscle. You never saw two people more comfortable with their bodies; I dearly wanted to shoo them away.

Their arrival meant that I couldn’t remove my sarong. Time passed, and when I had managed to convince myself that no one had any interest in me, I slid it off. I held my breath, wondering if the lifeguard would jerk with sudden shock and break into a slo-mo, red-rescue-pack-under-his-arm, pounding-rock-soundtrack run towards me and order, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave. This is a family beach, you’re upsetting folks.’

But no drama erupted and I slathered myself in factor eight and prepared to bake; skin cancer seemed the least of my worries. God, I was white! I should have lashed on some fake tan before I came. Immediately this made me think of Garv –I always snapped on surgical gloves before applying fake tan and he used to say, ‘Oooh, matron, a surgical-glove moment!’

Oh, God. I closed my eyes, lulled by the rhythmic rush and suck of the waves, the yellow heat of the sun, the short-lived, skippy breezes.

It was actually quite pleasant until I turned over on to my stomach and found that there was no one to put sun-tan lotion on my back. Garv would have done it. I suddenly felt very lonely and the feeling hit anew, My life is over.

As I’d packed, the night before I left Ireland, I’d told Anna and Helen the very same thing. ‘My life is over.’

‘It’s not.’ Anna had been visibly distressed.

‘Don’t patronize her,’ Helen had urged.

‘You’ll meet someone else – you’re young,’ Anna said doubtfully.

‘Ah, she’s not really,’ Helen interjected. ‘Not at thirty-three.’

‘And you’re good-looking,’ Anna struggled on.

‘You know, she’s not bad,’ Helen admitted grudgingly. ‘You have nice hair. And your skin isn’t bad. For your age.’

‘All that clean-living,’ Anna said.

‘All that clean-living,’ Helen echoed solemnly.

I sighed. My living wasn’t that clean, it just wasn’t as unclean as theirs, and my good-for-my-age skin was thanks to slathering on so much expensive night-cream that I used to slide off my pillows, but I let it go.

‘And… ‘Helen said thoughtfully. I leant forward on the bed, all the better to be praised. ‘… You have a lovely handbag.’