'Is this a bad time?'

'Not at all. We were about to eat, but that's fine.'

'I've got a favour to ask.'

'Tell me.'

'It's quite a big favour. Can I come and stay at your place?'

'Stay?' There was a violent crunching sound, as if she'd stuck a piece of carrot or apple in her mouth. 'Sure. Tonight you mean? Is everything all right?'

'Yes. No. I mean, everything's all right. Kind of all right. And not necessarily tonight, maybe tomorrow or the next day. But just for a few days

'Hang on, you're not making sense, I can hardly hear you anyway, and the pan's boiling over. Wait there.' There was a pause, then the music was turned down. 'Right.'

I took a breath. 'Kerry and Brendan's flat has fallen through, God knows why, as a result of which they can't move out, so I've got to.' I heard my voice rise. 'I've got to, Laura, or I'll do something violent. Stab him with a kitchen knife. Pour scalding

'I get the picture,' said Laura.

'It sounds mad, I know.'

'A bit. How long for?'

'Just a few days.' I swallowed and clutched my mobile. A young woman with a shaved head came and wiped my table, lifting the two coffee cups and then putting them back down again. 'I hope. I've no idea. Days or a week or so. Not more.' That was what Brendan and Kerry had said to me. Now the flat was filling up with all their things and I was leaving instead of them. A small howl of rage rose in my chest. 'Will Tony mind?' I asked.

'It's got nothing to do with him,' said Laura defiantly. 'But of course you can come. Tomorrow, you say?'

'If it's all right.'

'Really, fine. You'd do the same for me.'

'I would,' I said fervently. 'And I'll keep out of your way. And Tony's.'

'It's all a bit drastic, Miranda.'

'It's like an allergy,' I said. 'I just have to avoid him and then I'll be all right.'

'Hmmm,' said Laura.

I didn't want another cup of coffee and it was too early to go back home. I wandered up the high street until I came to the all-night bagel place. I bought one filled with salmon and cream cheese, still warm in its paper bag, and ate it on the pavement, while people milled past me. Sunday evening and probably they were on their way home, a hot bath and something cooking in the oven, their own bed waiting.

'I thought it would be better this way,' I said to Brendan and Kerry. 'You need to have time on your own.'

Kerry sat down at the kitchen table and propped her chin in her hands and stared at me. She didn't seem so radiantly happy any more. Her face had a pinched, anxious look to it, the way it used to have in her bad old days, before Brendan came along and made her feel loved.

'It's not possible, Miranda,' she said. 'Don't you see. We can't let you leave your own home.'

'I've arranged it already.'

'If it's what Miranda wants,' said Brendan softly.

'Is it so terrible for you, having us here, then?'

'It's not that. I just thought it was the obvious solution.'

'Have it your own way,' she said. 'You always do anyway.' Then she stood up and left the room, banging the door shut behind her. We heard the front door slam.

'What are you playing at?' said Brendan, in a horribly amiable tone of voice. He came and stood over me.

'What do you mean?'

'You don't get it, do you?' he went on. 'You can't win. Look.' He picked up a tumbler still half full of lime juice and banged it hard on the table so the liquid splattered across and shards of glass spun on to the floor.

'Oh shit,' I said. 'What do you think you're doing now?'

'Look,' he repeated and sat down and started squeezing the broken glass in his hand. 'I'll always win. I can stand things you can't.'

'What the fuck…?'

'Mmm?' He smiled at me, though his face had gone rather pale.

'You're mad! Jesus!'

I grabbed hold of his fist and started to pull it loose. Blood seeped out between his fingers, ran down my wrist.

'You have to ask me to stop.'

'You're a fucking lunatic'

'Ask me to stop.'

I looked at the blood gushing from his hand. I heard the front door open again, Kerry's footsteps coming towards us. She started to say she was sorry that she'd stormed out like that and then she stopped and began to scream wildly. Brendan was smiling at me still. Sweat ran down from his forehead.

'Stop,' I said. 'Stop!'

He opened up his hand and shook the glass out on to the table. Blood puddled into his outstretched palm and overflowed on to the table.

'There you are,' he said before he passed out.

At the hospital they gave Brendan twelve stitches and a tetanus jab. They wrapped his hand in a bandage and told him to take paracetamol every four hours.

'What happened?' asked Kerry for about the tenth time.

'An accident,' said Brendan. 'Stupid, eh? It really wasn't Mirrie's fault. If anyone was to blame it was me.'

I opened my mouth to speak. 'It wasn't…' I began. 'It didn't…' Then I ground to a halt, choked by all the things I couldn't say because no one would believe me and I didn't even know any more if I believed myself. 'Fuck it,' I said, mostly to myself.

Brendan was smiling in a drowsy and contented way. His head was on Kerry's shoulder and his bandaged hand lay in her lap. His shirt was covered in splashes of blood.

'You two girls should make up,' he said. 'It was a stupid argument anyway. It's very nice of Mirrie to give us her flat for a while you know, Kerry.'

Kerry stroked his hair off his forehead. 'I know,' she said softly. She looked up at me. 'OK,' she said. 'Thanks.' Then she looked back at Brendan as if he were a war hero or something.

'These things happen in families,' said Brendan and closed his eyes. 'Tiffs. I just want everyone to be happy.'

I left Kerry with him, holding his unwounded hand, and went home to pack.

Moving out had seemed like an essential response to an emergency, like pulling the communication cord on a train. But like so much in my life, it hadn't been properly thought out. I remembered a friend of mine who had been at a dinner party. He'd got into a flaming row with someone and finally shouted 'Fuck off!' at the other person and stormed out. As he slammed the outside door behind him and walked down the steps to the pavement, he realized that he had just stormed out of his own flat. He had to turn round and ring humbly at his door to be readmitted.

Now I was outside and feeling foolish. I had exited at high speed without a plan. On my second evening at Laura's I sat up late with her, drinking a bottle of whisky that I had brought home with me, along with half a dozen bottles of wine, some fresh ravioli and sauce from the deli along from where I was working and a couple of bags of prepared salad. Tony was spending the evening doing something laddish, so I made a meal for just the two of us. It was good spending time with her like that. It took me back to when we were at university, staying up all night. But we weren't at university any more and we both had lives to lead. I wondered how long it would take before her patience started to wear thin. I poured some more of the whisky for both of us.

'You know,' I said, 'I associate whisky with moments like this.' I was starting to slur my words a bit, but then so was Laura. 'When I think of whisky and me and you, I think of very late nights and one of us would be crying and then the other one would start crying as well and we'd probably be smoking too. Like that time when I was on my bike and a taxi ran into me, remember?'

'Sure,' said Laura taking a sip, and flinching with the expression of pain that people display when they have taken a bigger gulp of whisky than they meant to. "Why was it always whisky?'