Actually, Biggles and I had a bit of a drama the other day. I’m sure this was Alex’s doing too. I was just sitting at my computer, trying to think of something interesting that my characters might say to each other, when I heard from upstairs the unmistakeable and depressing sound of a vomiting cat. I ran up the stairs, two at a time, and sure enough, Biggles had chucked up enough of his guts to string a tennis racket. All over my bed. He was heaving and shivering, and he had that terrible ashamed look that they get. So of course we had to dash for the vet’s, with him hawking and groaning all the way there. I was terrified that he was going to die, and that he had been poisoned. But the vet said that this was extremely improbable, and that it was more likely to be a virulent strain of cat-flu that’s going around. Or a bad mouse. I still have my doubts though, and I disinfected all Biggles’s bowls and threw away his opened Munchies when we got home. The vet gave him the world’s most expensive injection – the feline equivalent of Botox, costwise cc for cc, and he seems fine now. It probably wasn’t anything to do with Alex, but everything seems so…I don’t know…amplified at the moment. I can’t seem to help but jump to conclusions.

Funny that I haven’t been able to write about it since it happened; not until now, that is. I haven’t written anything for a week.

I think I know the reason though. It’s just that I always leave my diary face-up on my bedside table, and when I came in from tennis that day, it was face-down. I’ve got a horrible, horrible feeling that Alex might have been reading it. In a way, that’s almost as bad as rape. I mean, I know this diary is more Bridget Jones than Proust, but it’s still totally private. The thought of anybody else reading it makes me feel violated and sick. Every time I’ve reached for it in the last week, I’ve seen it through the eyes of somebody else: flicking through the pages, noting all the banalities and shallownesses.

Ironic, really – being stalked is about the most bloody interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. Was it Dorothy Parker who said, ‘Only good girls keep journals; bad girls don’t have the time’? Probably.

I shouldn’t have the time to keep a journal. I should be hacking through the rainforest with a machete, or building clean-water wells in Africa. Or writing that novel. Or, at the very least, be run off my feet by a couple of small children and a weary but affectionate husband.

But I’m doing none of these things. I’m moping around self-indulgently, blowing some relatively small incident – from which I emerged completely unhurt – into some giant event.

Still, look on the bright side. Everyone is being so supportive (apart from Phil, who’s still not returning my calls. Well, sod him). Mum and Dad wanted me to move home, but I couldn’t face it. They eventually stopped banging on about it after I got the lock changed, and Paula stayed with me a couple of nights after it happened. I even had lunch with Jess and Tom the other day, which was when she bought me the pepper spray. My godson is really sweet. He sits up in a high chair and bangs spoons now – last time I saw him, all he could do was loll around farting (not unlike Phil then, really. No wonder I wasn’t much cop as a godmother). I’m definitely going to try harder to keep in touch with them, and Jess was all ears to get the latest in the Alex saga.

But apart from the thoughts of Alex buzzing like a bluebottle stuck inside my head, life continues the same as ever. I write about 75 words a day on the book. I play tennis with Dennis. I lock up the house like Belmarsh every night, get cabs home, rush to the post to see if Alex’s cheque has arrived – but nothing. No hang-ups on the phone, no skulking outside the curtains. He’s got a month to pay me back, then I really will go to the police.

I think.

Nobody questioned it at the writing class when I said that Alex had left. The heart’s kind of gone out of that class since Kathy died, anyway.

Although we had quite a decent session last week. My heart was in my mouth as I got out of the car in the college car park, but if Alex was there, he was hiding himself very efficiently in the bushes. I felt horribly nervous, going back into the classroom, but again, all was the same. Barbara still had her great big purple veiny calves sticking out from under her polyester skirt. Jane’s phone still vibrated noisily in her bag until she turned it off and apologised – this happens every week. The worst thing that happened was my feeling of missing Kathy – it just seemed so weird that she wasn’t there. Even weirder than Alex hiding in my house when I was in the bath, somehow.

Anyhow, I got through it. I burbled a lot about knowing when to write dialogue scenes, and when to use a narrative voice; that kind of thing, then we did an exercise, and then the time was up.

Frankly, I’ll be glad when I can stop teaching this course..

Chapter 16

Alex

I heard someone come home at about 6.30 this evening. I didn’t really feel like seeing anyone; I just wanted to sit in my room and think about Siobhan and what the hell I was going to do next. Siobhan’s letter – her invoice, I suppose you’d call it, with the amounts I’d spent on her card neatly totalled – lay on my desk. I had read it over twenty times, trying to take it in, desperately attempting to come up with a solution. How could I turn things around with Siobhan? By getting the money. How could I get the money? By getting a job. But how could I get a job when I felt like this?

I was fretting and re-reading the letter when I heard a cry come from the living room: a high-pitched yelp followed by a gasp. I stood up. Were Natalie and Simon having sex in there? No, I had only heard one person come in and this hadn’t sounded like a cry of ecstasy.

I ran out of my bedroom and into the living room.

Natalie was sitting on the sofa, leaning forward, her head between her knees. She was panting.

‘Natalie?’

She looked up. Her face was awash with sweat, her eyes narrowed as if I was a brilliant light. She said something in French.

That’s when I saw the blood – a trickle running down the inside of her leg, creeping down from beneath her short skirt towards her trainers.

‘Fuck.’

I swivelled and grabbed the phone, pressing 999. I told the operator I needed an ambulance. They asked me questions: What’s the problem? My friend’s bleeding. Is it an emergency? Yes, of course it fucking is. Calm down, sir.

They told me the ambulance would be with us soon. I dropped the receiver and went over to Natalie, leaning down and touching her on the shoulder. ‘It hurts,’ she said. Her voice was like a little girl’s.

I grabbed the phone again, punching in the number of a local taxi company. ‘I need a taxi now. To the hospital. Please.’

The woman on the other end was kind, concerned. She promised a cab would be with us within two minutes. I went and sat beside Natalie, putting my arm around her, telling her that it would be okay, that a taxi was on its way. She nodded, sweat dripping from her nose and chin. She looked like she was giving birth or something, and as I thought that, I realised what was happening.

I heard the taxi pull up outside, and ran to the front door, showing the taxi driver that we knew he was there. Next, I ran to the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Then I helped Natalie up off the sofa, not knowing if this was the right thing to do, just knowing that I had to get her to the hospital, all these horror stories about hour-long waits for ambulances floating through my head. I helped her to the taxi and put the towel on the back seat, worrying that the cab driver wouldn’t let us in if he thought we were going to get blood on his upholstery. I was trying to think of everything.