‘And I live right here.’ He demonstrated his whereabouts by gently circling the tip of his finger on my tender white flesh. ‘Just here,’ he repeated, continuing to stroke the inside of my thigh.

‘Thank you.’ I was sure he could feel the heat coming at him from down there.

‘You know what?’ His smile was suddenly wicked. ‘I live pretty near to the Hollywood Bowl, but if I showed you where it was, I bet you’d slap my face.’

It took a moment to understand what he was talking about.

‘Prob’ly,’ I managed, while a small, sweet spasm jumped from my Hollywood Bowl.

One final touch from his feather-light fingertip, a regretful look at my denim crotch, then he was getting to his feet. ‘Do you want a beer?’ he asked as he headed to the kitchen.

Tons of people came. There wasn’t even time for the obligatory standing around in the empty house, looking at the acres of drink, feeling fearful and friendless, the way people usually do when they have a party.

One of the first to arrive was Nadia, Lara’s new girlfriend. She was a lollipop girl, her head big with dark, swingy hair, her limbs shrunken sticks. I wasn’t surprised by her sexy glamour – after all, meeting Lara had dissolved my subconscious preconception that all lesbians look like Elton John – but I was surprised by the instant dislike I took to her. Two seconds after being introduced, she snapped gum in my face and confided loudly, ‘Right this afternoon, I got me a Playboy wax. There is totally not one pube left on me!’

‘Lovely!’ I said, mildly mortified. ‘Will you have a peanut?’

She shook her enormous head, barely drawing breath before launching into an account of how she’d had to get on her hands and knees and stick her butt high in the air so that the beautician could properly get at her. Then she’d had to lie on her back and put her ankles behind her head. They’d tell you anything, these Angelenos. Compulsive Disclosure Disorder, that’s what they had.

Then came Justin and Desiree, who brought two jockish men and three dogs with them. They’d all become friends when they’d gone to the dog park, trying to meet girls. Next at the door was Emily’s friend Connie, a short, strident, bandy-legged Korean-American: sexy the way very sure-of-themselves people are sexy. She was accompanied by her sister Debbie, her friends Philip and Tremain, and her fiancé Lewis, who barely spoke –I suppose she was such a great talker that his ability had simply atrophied. This was the first time I’d actually met Connie, and I hadn’t wanted to; something to do with her imminent wedding. Emily had been my bridesmaid and she was going to be Connie’s too, and I felt on the wrong side of the being-married divide. Connie had a happy future ahead of her, while my happy future was far behind me.

Tendrilly Kirsty showed up and unsettled me by making a beeline for Troy. Mike and Charmaine showed up too, as well as a load more people whom I didn’t know from a plate of chips. Even David Crowe dropped in briefly, charmed his way past everyone, then left again.

‘He didn’t stay long,’ I remarked.

‘Are you kidding me?’ Emily grabbed Troy away from Kirsty and ordered him, ‘Tell her the joke. The agent joke.’

Deadpan, Troy began. ‘Man gets a visit from the cops. “We’ve bad news, sir,” they say. “Someone broke into your house and killed your wife and child.” The man is distraught and says, “Who could do such a terrible thing?” And the cop goes, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, sir, that it was your agent.” And the man says, “My agent? My agent came by my house?! Oh boy! “‘

‘See?’ Emily said.

‘I see.’

The house was full and the party had spilled out into the backyard. Somehow, in the warm, twinkly-blue night, I ended up in conversation with Troy and Kirsty. Kirsty had just been to a two-hour power yoga class and was extolling the benefits of exercise, when I said vaguely that I really should go to a gym while I was in LA. To my astonishment, Kirsty said, ‘That’s a neat idea.’ She looked me up and down and concluded, ‘You could drop, say, five, six pounds.’ She swept a critical gaze from my feet to my upper arms. ‘And you could use some toning. It’s worth doing,’ she said with utmost seriousness. ‘I mean, look at me. I work out and I –’ she did a little wiggle of her little hips, ‘am in purr-itty good shape.’

OK, so most of it was for Troy’s benefit and it was probably all true. Of course I’d be delighted if I woke up one morning and found I’d miraculously lost half a stone during the night –who wouldn’t? But nevertheless, I was speechless. I’d never before come across a woman who claimed, by her own admission, to be in good shape –I thought it was simply Not Allowed. That you say it about everyone else, whether it’s true or not, while berating yourself for being a hippo/heifer/Jabba the Hutt, even if you’ve been on the grapefruit diet for the past month. All right, maybe it’s dishonest, but it somehow seems less offensive.

In that moment, I hated Kirsty so much I wanted to hit her, and for the first time in ages I got a stab of pain up into my back tooth. Even though I’d only spoken to her to prevent her having a one-on-one with Troy, I had to get away. Muttering some excuse, I promptly got buttonholed by Charmaine.

She was nice, if a little intense. Yes, she stood just a teensy, weensy bit too close to me, and whenever I moved back a little, she moved forward a little more, until my head was almost fully immersed in a lilac bush, with only my nose peeping out, but no one’s perfect. She wasn’t exactly a laugh a minute, but I got the feeling she was broadly sympathetic to me, so I ended up telling her about me and Garv.

‘Do you still love him?’ she asked kindly.

‘I don’t know,’ I said despairingly. ‘How would I know?’

‘How did you know when you were sure?’

‘Dunno. It just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?’

‘No one event?’

‘No.’ But then I remembered something. ‘The snail!’ I exclaimed. ‘Huh?’

I explained. Garv, being a man, had been the one in charge of all insect removal: spiders in the bath, moths around lights, wasps on window-sills were all his department. I never used to lift a finger, just used to yell, ‘Gaaarv, there’s a wasp!’ and he’d come with his rolled-up newspaper and do battle. But he had a thing about snails, a bad thing; he was so grossed out about them, he was almost phobic. And when we’d been going out about six months, a snail crawled up his car’s windscreen, then settled in for what looked like a long stay. (On the driver’s side, too, at eye-level just to make it worse for Garv.) A high-speed burn along the dual carriageway didn’t budge it, so in the end I put on some rubber gloves, lifted it off and threw it at a passing Nissan Micra, packed with nuns. I wasn’t wild about snails either, but I did it because I loved Garv, and ever since then I’d been head of snail extermination.