We always knew that he would have a career and I would not, although we didn’t rush straight into having a family. Our daughter, Gail, is ten years old, so I worked for a good few years before taking a maternity break. Most of our friends had families much earlier than us, but we weren’t ready to be tied down by having children. As a result of that, and the fact that Kurt has been really successful in the police force, we have a much nicer house than most of our friends, and we’ve been on more interesting holidays. We’re also in a position to spoil Gail a little bit, and she won’t ever have any brothers or sisters, so she doesn’t have to compete, either for our attention or our resources. I’d describe myself as utterly contented with my life so far; at least, as far as last Saturday night.

Occasionally, I go out with the girls from work. It’s usually a nice meal in town, or sometimes a trip to a show, up in London. We hire a minibus and get all dressed up, and have such a scream. Last Saturday, for a change, we went out in the next town. The temp who was working with us suggested a nightclub, that she said we would enjoy, because it has a great 80s disco, and we’re all getting on a bit, you know. There were six of us: Joanne, tall and blonde, in her jeans and cowboy boots; Emily and Ashleigh, petite and blonde, in their designer stuff; Caroline and Liz, both ever-so-slightly goth; and me. I reckon I’m the plainest of the bunch.

The club was great, it had comfortable booths, and the floor wasn’t sticky; I remember discos as being far more tacky than that. There was waitress service to the tables, which was pretty cool. Before the disco started, there was a sort of cabaret act, so we had a good laugh at that. Then the tables were cleared away, and the disco started. We were pretty drunk by then, so the empty dancefloor held no fear: we launched ourselves into the open space, shaking our booty to the sounds of Kylie and Madonna, laughing our heads off and feeling like teenagers again.

We weren’t alone up there for long; the floor was packed, all ages, all bright and beautiful, bouncing to the music. We reckoned we were probably among the oldest in there, and possibly the drunkest too, which would explain the buzzing cloud of blokes, attracted, perhaps, by our sophistication and evident maturity. Caro said afterwards that it was only because we were so pissed, but I could tell she was secretly flattered by all the attention from little shaven-headed scrotes.

Joanne was pulling them off her arms, and they were springing back like Velcro spiders. Ashleigh and Liz put their arms around each other and pretended to be lesbians; pretty short-sighted, as a measure for getting rid of horny blokes, don’t you think? I haven’t been in the midst of such a heaving, sweating mass of hormones and alcohol for years and years and years. It was ace.

We all pulled. Even me. I wasn’t trying, or anything, just jigging around, having a laugh with Joanne; and then the next minute, this guy has his arms round me, and I’m dancing with him, and he’s looking into my eyes, and smiling at me, and then we’re kissing, tongues and everything, kissing like teenagers who are in love. I mean, you just don’t kiss like that after eighteen years of marriage, I’m telling you.

I caught Joanne’s eye, and she shook her head at me – disbelief, I think. Or disapproval. I didn’t care. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be kissed like that, to have a man press his warm body against me, his hands digging into me a little bit, not quite enough to hurt, but plenty to make me feel wanted. I closed my eyes and let him kiss me, and then I opened my eyes, to check that it was really happening. Inside me, it felt like I was melting, dissolving; the way I felt was like blue ink dispersing in a cloud in a glass of water: stars and dreaminess and novelty.

Caro says I was kissing him for hours, and Liz barely spoke to me in the taxi home. We were all coming down from the energy of dancing and drinking that had given us such a high for a little while. I was so pleased with myself, to have hooked that big handsome bloke; and only slightly miffed that they had dragged me away from him.

I dropped my clothes on the floor and crawled into bed with my makeup still on. At lunchtime on Sunday, Kurt woke me up with a kiss on the forehead and a cup of tea. My eyes were heavy and sticky, difficult to open. As the hot tea flushed out the smoke and dirt from the night before, I realised what I had done, and I choked on my drink.

I put the tea down and pulled the covers back over my head. Go away, I said to Kurt, and it wasn’t his fault that I was unkind to him, but I couldn’t bear to talk to him. My head was aching heavily, and my memory was waking up faster than I wanted it to. I was seeing, or feeling, images of the night before. I was remembering how I had been kissed, and kissed back, and let that man touch me. He had told me his name, and I couldn’t even remember it. I could only remember his mouth.

You have to believe me, I’ve never done anything like that. I’ve been married for eighteen years, and all the time we’ve been together, we’ve been the most normal, sensible couple. We’ve done everything in the most conventional way, and it’s made us happy. What have I done, what have I done? Sobbing like a baby, dirty eyeliner-dyed tears, hoping Kurt and Gail had gone out somewhere, so they wouldn’t hear me, and I wouldn’t have to explain.

I feel as though I’ve betrayed everything, I’ve broken our perfectly good, functional, happy marriage, for no reason at all. I was drunk and stupid, I let a stranger touch me and kiss me, and I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t want to stop. When I think about it, my body gets flooded with pleasure, but I feel so guilty that it makes me sick.

I can hardly speak to Kurt, because I’m so frightened I’ll give myself away. And every time I look at Gail, I’m terrified I’ve done something that will ruin her life. I don’t know if I should confess to my husband or not. I don’t know how he will react, but I don’t know how I can possibly go on with this terrible secret inside me.

When Gerry got knocked up, we were all thrilled. She’s been with her boyfriend for nine years already, and she was convinced he would never marry her. Then, all of a sudden, she’s obsessed with folic acid and baby names, and we all realised that we had grown up, without noticing it.

Personally, I’ve always said I didn’t want to get married or have children; I liked to think of myself as an independent type of girl, although I have actually been living with Charlie for a few years, and my stepmum tells me that motherhood is a defining experience that I shouldn’t miss out on. I don’t think he wants children, particularly; and I’m not sure he would be a very good dad. This is a horrid thing to think, and please don’t despise me for saying it, but he was abused as a child and I just don’t know how he would be around his own children. I guess I don’t entirely trust him. I don’t mean that I think he would be an abusive parent, but just that his own experience of family life wasn’t exactly normal. I don’t know how he would manage to create a stable and loving environment, when he never had one himself.

Ten days ago, Gerry was rushed into hospital. Actually, that’s gratuitous use of a cliché, and there’s no excuse for it. She wasn’t rushed, she got decorously into Mel’s car, and Mel drove her to the maternity unit in the nearest big town for her pre-booked appointment for a caesarean delivery. Gerry’s husband, Jack, was unavoidably out of the country, but he said there wasn’t much he could do anyway; Mel was there to hold her hand, and it wasn’t like there would be much of the pushing and breathing business going on. Apparently he turned up shortly after the baby was all cleaned up and put to sleep, kissed Gerry, and went off to the pub with Charlie.

Gerry was kept in for a few days; apparently the op takes it out of you a bit, and she was a bit distressed. I didn’t go to see her in hospital, but as soon as she and the baby came home, I called in to her house after work. I was shocked by how awful she looked. She was still in bed, because her stitches were not healing very quickly, and it looked like she hadn’t washed her hair since she went to the hospital. The baby cried the whole time I was there, and Gerry looked like she wanted to cry as well. She put a brave face on, but she must have known how untidy and disorganised everything was. I offered to tidy up a bit, and Gerry looked even more upset than she had when I asked her where Jack was.

Apparently, Jack had hardly been home since the baby was born, and he was sleeping in the spare room. Gerry told me, trying to sound like she was justifying and defending him, that he needed his sleep, and the baby disturbed him. She admitted that it was difficult for her to wash and care for herself, never mind the baby, because of the painful wound across her stomach. The baby kept crying, a thin little wail, all the time. Gerry tried to jiggle him a bit, but I think every movement hurt her. I can get out of bed, she said, but I’m so tired.

While I was there, Jack came home. He called hello up the stairs, but he didn’t bother to come up.

I didn’t really want to leave her or the baby in that dirty, hungry state. She said that her mum lived too far away to come and help, and Mel was doing a lot but she had a job too. We don’t have room in our house for the two of them; I felt so helpless.

And still, the girls are talking about having babies. They’re assuming that, in this day and age, it’s just a matter of blooming for nine months, squirting the thing out under the protection of Modern Science, and reclining on a couch for a few weeks while their significant others run around after them. Their equation doesn’t include sedation or caesareans, wrinkled little walnuts of children who cry all the time, or partners with no interest in child-rearing. I realise now that I shall never have a child, because Charlie’s idea of the role of the father goes no further than wetting the baby’s head; the chores just don’t get done around here if I don’t do them, so it’s not really feasible, is it?

She was always hard work. I mean, even before the Alzheimer’s set in; even before my father died, our relationship was never easy, but she was my mum, and in the end, I did what I had to do. She had her own house until the very last years, and then we had to put her in a home. Of course, it was hard to make that decision, but she was becoming a liability. She could no longer look after herself, the neighbours were finding her in the street in her nightie, and she’d come round to our house at all time, staring in the windows with big eyes, telling everyone I wouldn’t let her come to live with us.

Well of course I wouldn’t, we really don’t have the facilities to look after a sick old lady, so a home was the only option. At the time she went in, she’d had a little fall, cracked a hip, and it was felt that she should go straight from the hospital to somewhere that she could get constant care. My kids wanted her to go somewhere a bit more upmarket, but there wasn’t a place immediately available in any of the posher homes in our town, so we found her a room in a place nearby. Seedy, my daughter described it as, at her funeral. Well, she didn’t have the trouble of sorting it all out, and anyway, the sort of place they would have liked cost an arm and a leg, and I didn’t want all her savings to be eaten up in expenses.

You probably know, Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. Mum remained aware of her own deterioration until quite a late stage, and it just put her in a foul mood all the time. She gave us a hard time when we went to see her, and then when we left, she whined that we were leaving her. She spent the rest of the time telling people that we never visited, and of course that slowly turned out to be true. I tried to see her once a week, but it was just too painful for me.

And all this time, I was the sole signatory on her bank account, and I knew exactly how many hundreds of thousands she had in there, and I never touched a penny, over and above what was needed to do her administration. I kept scrupulous books; no-one can accuse me of fiddling her. I was on the bread-line, for some years even before she went into the home, but I never took any for myself. Except if we were entertaining her sister, or something, of course. But that was justifiable. And I stopped her standing orders into the kids’ accounts, because I think she would have felt they no longer needed it by now; it was really just to help them through university, and the youngest graduated nearly ten years ago.

Her final illness was short, and we all saw it coming. The whole family descended on me, all vying for the bed in my spare room, all trying to say what should be said and done at her funeral. Well of course I wouldn’t let them get involved; it’s not like I was celebrating, but you know, I’d had all the trouble of caring for her up to now, and it seemed right that I finish the job. That’s all.

Now I’m waiting for the solicitors and accountants to wind up her estate. There’s going to be a fair bit, and I’m glad that I was so careful with her money, all those years. It will be divided equally between me and my sister, which actually seems a bit unfair, because she doesn’t exactly need it; she’s never been poor, and it’s not like she ever helped me out. But that’s what the will says. I am waiting on tenterhooks for the paperwork to be pushed through; I want that money! I am going to retire, for one thing; and then I am going to go on a cruise. It’s going to be over a hundred thousand, and that will do me, won’t it?

I know it sounds a bit heartless and calculating, and of course I’m sad that mum’s gone, but she had a good long life, and she’s back with my dad now, and she was tired. If she’d been able to tell you, she’d have said she was ready to go. And she always said she couldn’t take it with her.

My poor son was still bewildered by it all, and he would surely never have been so judgemental if his sister had not been so bitter and harsh. He wanted things to be easy and nice, the way they always had been in his innocent world. She wanted payback from anyone she could get her spiteful teenage claws into, but for a little while, she was guilted into being a little more grown-up, and she tried to be less confrontational and more supportive.

During that phase, I found a better house, so that they could come and stay with me more often. Children that age need their own rooms, and the three of us looked at a lot of places before we settled on a little red brick place on the edge of the council estate. It wasn’t the town’s classiest location, but there was central heating and a garden, which made it far more homely than the ramshackle establishment their father had moved them into. They spent more time with me then, and the three of us started to build something that was shaky and new, but positive.

I used to get my daughter to answer the phone, because my not-so well-meaning colleagues had given Lothario my number, and after our first date, I really didn’t like him very much. He was persistent, though, as though the more I turned him down, the more he fancied the challenge. I gave in a couple of times, just because when the kids were with their dad, I got so very bored and lonely. He was quite charming and romantic, and conversation without any teenage agenda made a refreshing change. Because I didn’t like him, it was easy to keep him at arm’s length; and never before had I experienced that kind of hold over a man.

Sometimes I wonder how that relationship would have run, if I hadn’t needed his help one night. I was taking the children to the theatre for a birthday treat, and I forgot to pick up my house key on my way out of the door. As it clicked shut, I realised that we were locked out, and stood on the pavement with two teenagers who still needed their mother to know what to do in a crisis. I had no option but to call Lothario from the phone box at the end of my road, and he shuffled us off to the theatre, and had broken into the house, retrieved the key, and mended the window, all by the time we got back.

It felt so good to have someone around who could and would mend things, paint things, plant things, and at the end of the day, sit down and appreciate a good dinner and a couple of pints of beer. I had forgotten that lovemaking could be so exciting, too, because with the other man, it had always been rather hurried and fumbling, which had seemed exciting at the time, but was ultimately unfulfilling. Lothario started to stay the night sometimes, but never when the children were staying. It seemed like I had been given a second chance at happiness, and we were engaged before my divorce was made Absolute.

If only it had been that simple, but what can be simple when you have teenagers who have labelled themselves Broken Home, to take into account? They took an immediate dislike to him, and it was the same with my parents. If my first marriage had been beneath me, then this one was beyond the pale. He was a yorkshireman through and through, and where I saw reliable, strong, knight errant, the snobs in my family were seeing someone who was socially lower, and ten years older than me.

He suffered bouts of ill-health, because he worked in a factory and lived in a damp terraced house; eventually, though, we were spending so much time together that it made sense for him to move in with me. It was a difficult decision, because I knew the children would hate it, but as he said, I couldn’t deny myself happiness just for them. Their lives were just starting, and they would have many chances to arrange things the way they wanted, but for me, it was time to be a little bit selfish. He always stood by me, however rude and unpleasant the children were to us. We used the money from his house sale to pay off my mortgage, which meant that we could both give up work and run our own business, which is what we had both always wanted.

We’ve had good years and bad years. Now that the children are grown up, they have accepted him, and they come to stay with us sometimes. I wanted to have another child, but was over forty by then, and I smoked, and was under a lot of stress. We gave up after the second miscarriage. Sometimes I try to explain to my children what it was like to live with their father, but they always change the subject. I just feel that they ought to know the facts, in case they are still judging me, after all these years.

My life might not be glamorous or exciting, but I’m happy with our small circle of friends, people who he has known for years and years, drinking in the pub that has been his local for a lifetime. It gives me a real feeling of stability. When he is too ill to work, I manage well enough by myself, and come home to make his tea and spend the evening by the fire with a book.

We will grow old together and I will have no regrets. I will never ask myself how it might have been if I had charmed those society boys, or left my first husband when he had his affair, because those were not the lives for me. I believe that I was always destined to meet Lothario, that fate put him there to rescue me when I needed to be rescued, and that all the decisions I ever made have led me to this point. This is the life that chose me.

So my life has been lived in the C-stream, the bottom set, directed by fate and my own irreversible choices. C-stream girls could either marry or go into nursing, and in fact I did both. It seemed like a way of keeping my options open; but in fact I was pregnant, and therefore all of my options were closed.

My family considers that I married beneath me, because I could at least have quietly charmed some society bachelor at my private school, but I managed to fall for one of the local day-boys, there on a scholarship. I can’t even remember what I thought we had in common, can’t recall a moment’s whispered conversation or a gentle kiss, but it must have been good once, at least for a little while.

We were never going to be rich, but we managed well enough with our young family. Our children were plain and quiet, like me; we never tried to push them, just to give them a happy childhood and a wholesome upbringing. Raising a family is difficult, and we were really still both children when we became parents; all we had to go on was that we didn’t want our family to be anything like the ones that had produced us.

For a long time, I didn’t even consider whether or not this made me happy; it was just what my life was, and as far as I knew, this was how it was going to be for the rest of our days. I was wrong, though, because he started an affair with someone in the office, and it shattered my world.

These days, a marriage ends at that point, but we were still old-fashioned enough to think we had options. We left the area completely. The children were upset about changing schools, and I had to leave a job that I really enjoyed, but the idea was that a complete change would help us to move on. And get us away from that woman.

The town we moved to was a real step down. It was ugly, sliding downhill, with scruffy shops and a biting east wind. Among the few jobs available, there was little that suited me, but I took some work doing telesales. The new school uniforms were just as cheap and ugly, and we were far away from our friends and family. We were all doing penance for him, but maybe if we could survive this, we could survive anything.

In the end, we could not have been more wrong, because in my new job, I met someone who paid me attention in a new, sophisticated way, that I had never quite experienced before. It was exciting and passionate, and this was all new to me. He gave me flowers and chocolates and compliments, and I had never had that before; I loved it, and I thought I loved him.

Suddenly my family stopped being the main focus of my world. I didn’t care for house extensions and new curtains. I wasn’t interested in my daughter’s O-levels and I couldn’t even feel terribly sad that our old dog was sick and dying. Our summer holiday that year was the usual dreary camping trip, and all I could think was that I should have had a better life than this. One stormy night in a tent in Wales, I told him that I wanted a divorce.

My parents disapproved on so many levels, especially because we had almost reached what they considered to be an acceptable standard of living. At one point they even wanted to take custody of the children, to which we both objected strongly. The hardest thing was to tell the children that the family was so badly broken that we could not fix it. They were old enough to hurt, but too young to understand.

I moved out of our comfortable home into a terraced house with a few sticks of second-hand furniture, and I finally passed my driving test, because I had to. The children all but had to be forced to visit me that first Sunday; and their resentment and discomfort was palpable, as they huddled in blankets in front of my fizzing black and white TV. Their view of the world seemed to be just as monochrome and unfocussed: they simply blamed me for leaving their dad, and I knew I could not tell them that it was him who had brought us to this.

The true meaning of being alone is when you have made all the difficult decisions, gone through the administration and made the necessary arrangements, suffered the arguments and the shouting; and you are left reeling and dazed in an eerie calm, with no family to look after. The house is dark and cold, the rented bed is hard and lumpy, and you finally realise that your lover has never had any intention of leaving his wife.

Dougie and I were like that, too, I guess. I’d been designing web pages since I started doing photography at college, nearly three years earlier; and he was more into the behind the scenes stuff, with his techie background. We met after he posted a fairly inflammatory comment on a message board that I’d been using for a while. I couldn’t help but respond, and before we knew it we were embroiled in a deeply geeky flame war.

I say “met,” but the crucial thing, of course, is that we had never met at all. I imagined him to be in his thirties, maybe married, and working as a low-level programmer or maybe in operational research, for some big, bland company. He never, ever passed up the opportunity to correct me, and it got my back right up. It wasn’t long before the moderators asked us to take it off the board and into IM.

Instant Messenger is a whole ‘nother animal. It feels far more intimate, for a start, because you suddenly become aware that only one person is going to read what you say. When someone adds you to their IM buddy list, you start to learn things about them like what time of day they use their computer; and more often than not, you find out their real name, as well. But he was always Dougie to me.

There was a marked difference in style, once he started talking to me on IM. Instead of those abrupt, critical messages, he seemed friendlier and more conversational. You know, an exchange would start with how are you? or a polite enquiry about my day, rather than a bald statement about how the last thing I’d said was completely ridiculous. We found that we had a few things in common, and shared a giggle now and then, when some newb had posted what we considered to be a damnfool question.

I think the real turning point came one day when I was sitting at my computer, too furious to type because of something that had happened in class, and the alert message flashed up to tell me he had signed in. Thank god you’re here! I launched immediately into a full-scale rant, without giving him a moment to draw breath. Cinnamon! he typed (because he always addressed me by my screen name, too); Stop a minute! Calm down, you’re over-wrought!

A new girl had transferred into our class, and the boys had spent the week buzzing around her as though she were a honeypot, which in fact is how one of them had described her in an email that had been suspiciously leaked, describing the rest of us as dags and dogs. I was annoyed enough to make a complaint, but no-one had taken me seriously.

Tell me, is she blonde, with an obliging smile and a short skirt?

Dougie’s assumption was fairly accurate, although she didn’t look like a real blonde to me, having said that.

And if I recall your profile correctly, you’re a bespectacled brunette with a degree of sophistication?

This was true, although that picture was a couple of years out of date by now, as he probably also knew. His words were balm to my battered ego, and I found myself feeling quite warm towards him. I ventured to ask him a couple of questions, and by the end of the evening (which was morning in his world, because I haven’t mentioned it but in fact he did live in quite a far-off land), he had emailed me a photograph. His profile pic, you see, was a cartoon cat.

He sent it just before he signed off to go to work, with a rather bashful covering note. I actually felt so shy about opening it, that I double-clicked with my eyes closed, and then peeped through my hands as it revealed itself, bit by bit, on my screen.

He was much younger than I had imagined: only a couple of years older than me. He was clean-shaven and blue-eyed, and there was a glimmer of arrogance in his smile, as he squinted a little, looking into the sun. I checked the photograph’s properties to see if it was recent, although I know that he could easily have altered that.

I switched off my computer and climbed into bed with his image burnt on to my retina, and his flattering words echoing voicelessly in my mind. I was glad that this crush – because of course that’s what it felt like – had started before I saw his photograph; that helped it to feel a little bit more grounded in reality. I could hardly wait to sign in and talk to him again tomorrow.

I started writing a weblog around that time. Weblogs were a new thing that people were just getting into; usually they were lists of links to good articles or interesting sites, with a bit of commentary from the weblog’s writer, who would add something new each day. Some people actually wrote a diary online, usually under a pseudonym, for obvious reasons. As a budding website designer, I couldn’t resist this interesting phenomenon; and once I had designed my weblog, I used it to post photographs that I scanned in using the machine in the college IT lab. This was before I had such a new-fangled thing as a digital camera, you know.

I showed my weblog to Dougie, who was really impressed by the pictures, and like me, delighted to get involved in something that was obviously going to get really big. We wanted to be there at the beginning, so that we could belong to the elite; you know how it is. We spent many happy hours tinkering with each other’s designs. He even stayed off work, once, because he was helping me to finish off a template that I wanted to submit as part of my final project.

I sent him a book, via Amazon, to say thank you, and he was really touched. The day after he received it, he asked me for my telephone number. Now I’m a cool, rational, no-nonsense kind of girl, but you can’t begin to imagine how my hands were shaking when I picked up that phone. To make matters worse, I giggled like an idiot, before he had even said hello.

I have spent weeks wanting to hear your voice, he said, and I realised at once that I had been wanting the same thing. Do you realise that I spend every spare moment talking to you, and yet I had no idea what you sounded like, and only the vaguest picture of your face? Stop giggling, this call is costing the GDP of a small country!

Once I got over myself, we talked for about half an hour, both aware that the meter was ticking over a very long distance, but not really wanting to hang up. On my minimal student income, I was in no position to call him back. The funniest thing was that, as soon as he put the phone down, we picked up the threads of our conversation, back on the computer.

And then, of course, it came to Christmas, and we both had to go home to our families, where there were no computers, and internet access was something they only knew about from films. I was looking at ten whole days without being able to talk to him, without being able to distract myself online, with nothing to do other than wander around with a long face, taking pseudo-arty pictures of frost formations, to show him as just as soon as I could. It did not even occur to me to try to confide any of this to my family; what a pointless exercise that would have been!

The last post came on Christmas Eve, including a small parcel that had been forwarded from my college residence. I’m glad I picked it up before I had to explain to anyone why someone might think my middle name was Cinnamon. Up in my room, I cut carefully into the wrapping, to reveal a cassette and a thick sheet of paper covered in an inky black scrawl. I had never seen his handwriting before, and for a quiet moment, I just looked at it all in wonder, feeling as though something momentous was happening.

I don’t know if you realise how hard the Christmas break will be [he wrote]. Even though our days are back to front, and your morning is always my evening, and vice versa, talking to you has become an essential part of my daily routine. I like knowing that you will be there when I get home, and I worry if you’re not there when I wake up.

Yours, so very sincerely, Dougie.

My camera was on the bed. I picked it up and pointed it at myself, and snapped a picture of my dazed, rather flushed, wonder-struck face. As soon as the shops re-opened after the holiday, I developed the film and posted it, without a message, to his home address in New Zealand.

Family is very important in our community, so it wasn’t long between meeting and getting married. Quite suddenly, the two of us were all set up in our own apartment, surrounded by cast-off furniture and an air of expectation. That was when we started to get to know each other, and I found it was easy to love him, and looked forward to having a happy, peaceful life with him.

I’m certain that he had no more experience than I did, but his expectations were quite different to mine. It worked, though: he constantly surprised me with new ideas, and it was always pleasant. I wasn’t so naïve as to expect to lie back and think of England while he did his business, but I didn’t know it would be so much fun. Our son was born before our first wedding anniversary.

We’ve had a computer in the house for years. He’s a printer and an artist, so it’s the sort of thing he finds interesting. When the child was born, we got it connected to the internet, and it made up for the fact that I didn’t have as much time for him as I used to. He didn’t seem to miss me; in fact, he was thrilled: there was so much out there for him. He’s into mythological stuff, Dungeons & Dragons, knights and damsels and castles. It didn’t take him long to find his way into the chatrooms.

He told me he was chatting in a fantasy room, so of course I imagined them all pretending to be kings and queens, and having virtual jousting matches. Sometimes he showed me what he was doing, but I couldn’t really keep up with it. While I was feeding or playing with the baby, or cleaning the house, or cooking, he would be up in his study, surrounded by papers and books and the little lead figures that he used to paint; these days it wasn’t the clatter of tiny paint-pots, but the rattle of his fingers on the keyboard, that I could hear from the kitchen below.

He came to bed late one night, and I moved over to kiss him. Baby was sleeping in his own room by then, and I thought it was nice to have our privacy back. He had left me alone for long enough, and I wanted his attention again. I stroked his cheek with my fingers, and he grasped hold of my wrist, suddenly animated, as though someone else’s strength was taking over his body. He pushed me down, pinning my arms to the bed, and I tried to wriggle away from him, but I felt the weight of his knee across my thighs, making it impossible for me to move. He kissed me ferociously, and it frightened me.

I think you’ve been naughty and should be punished. His breath was hot in my ear, and his fingers twisted painfully in my hair. I grabbed the chance to ask him what he thought he was doing, and he slapped my face – not hard – but it didn’t need to hurt to shock me into silence for a moment.

But only a moment; I wasn’t going to let this go any further. I gathered myself and wrenched free of him, and crouched, breathing hard, beside the bed. What’s got into you? What are you trying to do?

His breath was ragged too, and he seemed dazed. I stepped further away from the bed, and he shook his head, as though to clear it. You don’t like it? He almost sounded puzzled.

If you ever try to hit me again, I will leave you. I had no idea if I would ever be able to follow through such a threat. Our families would be horrified if I was to upset our happy home. And what if this was normal too, and I was just being naïve?

Come back to bed. I promise I won’t hurt you.

Cautiously, I crept back beneath the covers, and lay down with my back to him. Don’t touch me.

I lay awake for a long time, wondering about his strange behaviour. In the morning I refused to discuss it with him, and as soon as he left for work, I went upstairs and logged on to his computer. Lots of things opened automatically on the screen, and I waited for it all to settle down, before I looked at the history page. Last night he had done nothing except visit one chatroom, so I simply clicked on the link, and waited for it to load.

Things immediately started to become clear. The room’s title was Rough Fantasies, and I was signed in as George the Destroyer. I saw greetings appeared on the screen, so I typed hello, and then sat quietly and watched.

Before long, little flashing windows were popping up in front of me, mostly from chatters with female names. Some of them were very friendly, as though they knew me; and others were, quite simply, obscene. The overall tone was hardly one of romance. My jaw dropped as I watched the main window scroll past; it may have been virtual reality, but the casual brutality I was witnessing was incredible.

I switched off the computer, and spent a long time thinking about what I should do. There are guidelines in the collective unconscious, for dealing with discovering your husband’s stash of porn, or finding out that he’s having an affair; but nothing for this. I couldn’t consult with my mother or my friends, because they would understand it even less than I did. The only person I could ask was him.

That evening we had the strangest of conversations. First he apologised for springing it on me. He said he had been all fired up and carried away by events in the chatroom, and he tried to explain how involved you could get. I told him what I had done, and in the circumstances, he couldn’t really be angry that I had looked into his computer.

I get into character, he said. I act like a great big warrior, and all these maidens fall at my feet. In the chatroom, men are lords and women are there for the taking, and it just… kind of… spilled over. I’ve been talking to a girl online, who calls her boyfriend Master, and she’s his slave, and he ties her up, and I wanted to see if we could be like that…

He tailed off, and I just stared at him. Wasn’t it enough that I kept house for him, ran around after him, brought up his child, while he sat at his computer before and after meals? I do all these things because that’s my role in the world, and I’m happy enough, but I don’t relish the idea of describing it as slavery. And as for this tying up business; I may be inexperienced, but I do know that some things are outside the normal range of behaviour.

His kind brown eyes looked at me sadly. Darling, you don’t understand how much I want to do this. I think it’s part of me that I need to explore, and I can’t do it without you.

You want to tie me up?

And… hit you.

Have you gone completely mad?

He sighed. You used to like the games we played.

We had never played anything like that, though, and I thought, from the seriousness in his face, that it was more than a game to him. Why did he have to bring something like this into our perfectly happy world? I stood up. I want nothing to do with it. And we won’t discuss it any further.

I went into the kitchen, to prepare supper and try to calm myself down. The baby babbled at me softly, from his chair on the floor nearby. Our cat rubbed against my ankles, requesting to be fed. And I heard George go upstairs to his study, and switch on his computer.

Having kids kept me pretty busy. They’re both very bright, demanding and active, and they’ve been fun to bring up. I can’t tell you what a bitter mixture of pride and pain I felt when they went away to university. I hoped at the time that I had instilled in them a strong sense of belonging to the family, so that they would never entirely go away. Being a mother is hard, because you want to protect your children from everything, but you know you have to teach them to stand on their own feet. I would never interfere with their lives, like my own mother tried to interfere with mine. She had very strong opinions, and was never shy of sharing them with me, however hurtful they were.

When they went to university, I went to college as well. I needed qualifications so that I could get back into the workplace. It felt really good to have a positive plan of action, and helped me not to miss them so much. Holidays were always good, when they came home for weeks at a time. It was nice to know that they were up in their rooms, or out with their friends, and they would be back in time for dinner.

Every year seems to get harder. They have holidays without me; homes in other towns; relationships that go wrong, so that they hurt and I can’t help them; relationships that go right, so that need me less and less. I don’t think it ever crosses their minds that I might need them. I can tell when I telephone them that I’m an inconvenience; there are all sorts of interesting things that they would rather be doing than talk to me. I always remind them that they can come home anytime they need to, or just come up for a visit; I would love to see them.

My husband doesn’t care either. Most of the time, he’s playing golf, or working, or generally in the pub avoiding me. When we’re together, he continues to ignore me. I hear myself being ruder and ruder, just to elicit some sort of response. Even a grunt of acknowledgement would be nice. Nothing. It’s like I don’t exist.

All I’m trying to do is be noticed by the people who used to need me, and care about whether or not I was around. Why have they all stopped caring about me?

I’ve supported her time after time, but I’ve never felt able to rely on her in return. Consequently, I know far more than I want to about her, and she doesn’t really know anything about me. She’s not capable of understanding. I explained myself to her once, how I’d made my decisions, and why I did what I was doing; but I just don’t think she was listening.

And she invariably ignored my advice. She moved in with her boyfriend, when she should have stayed in Halls, so she never got into university life until the last minute; and then she went too far the other way, so I had her crying herself to sleep on the floor of my room, when I was trying to work on my dissertation.

She slept with a mutual friend, who I told her wasn’t any good. He would flirt with just about anybody, and she knew that, but she let him use her. To be honest, I believed him when he told me she’d thrown herself at him.

Making life decisions was never her strong point. I think we’d finished our finals by the time she decided what she was going to do next. Another academic course, to put off the moment of real decision making; and another bunch of unsuitable men.

Then out of the blue, she wants me to be her bridesmaid. Oh, and by the way, she wants me to buy my own dress for the occasion. I wrote her a note politely declining the honour. I gave my reasons in brief, but obviously she wasn’t going to be interested in my position on marriage, if she hadn’t understood it by then.

Her wedding day was pleasant enough. The others went on a bit about her being the first of us to get married, forgetting that I was already divorced when I met them. I knew what they mean, though.

And then, what do you know, she leaves this perfectly nice man for some other bloke. This time I really had to say something, so I wrote, telling her to be really careful, warning her that whatever decision she made now, she would have to live with for the rest of her life.

She didn’t listen.

Of course, I’m probably the kind of girl his parents want him to marry, too. My dad’s a bank manager, and my mother has never worked. I suppose I will keep working after we get married (I’m a nursery school teacher); until we start to have children of our own. Everyone will expect us to have a family, but we won’t rush into anything.

I don’t want us to live together until we’re married. Call me old fashioned if you want, but I just don’t think it’s right. I think a marriage should be built on mutual respect, and this is the way to start.

Just once, we stayed in a hotel together, on the night of his office christmas party. I asked for twin beds, but the hotel made a mistake, and we ended up with a double. I wanted to complain, but Chris said I shouldn’t make a fuss, and promised he would behave like a gentleman. I think we agreed that he would sleep on the sofa, but we were quite tiddly by the time the party was finished.

Maybe it’s because I was tipsy, but it didn’t feel quite right to me. I know it’s supposed to hurt at first, and it did, but more than anything else, the whole thing just felt uncomfortable, all the way through. I was expecting it to be somehow soft and magical, but the thing I was most aware of was his weight pressing me down, and how his breath was noisy and hot, and afterwards I had bruises on my arm. I had to go for a shower, once he’d gone to sleep.

For me, everything felt different in the morning. It was like, well he’ll have to marry me now. He was different with me, too. He was touching me more, and he kissed me in a different way. More wetly. He wanted to do it again, but I didn’t. It’s important that we wait until we’re married. More than ever.

I expect that my feelings coloured the way I told our friends about what she had done, when she asked me to. They couldn’t believe it either. The worst thing, for us, was how she had never confided in us, her best friends; never so much as dropped a hint that something was wrong. As far as we knew, this fairy tale of a romance that she had rushed into – and trust me, we all told her she had rushed, however much we liked Tim – was still the perfect life. It looked perfect. Their house was beautiful, and we were expecting them to be the first of our group to have children. I don’t know what she was thinking, to throw it all away on that awful man.

We were all such good friends at university, but it’s never been the same between us since then. I’m not saying that I exactly stirred it up between us all, but I suppose I did discourage her a little bit. I honestly didn’t like her very much anymore, and she made me feel a bit uncomfortable, so we stopped inviting her along to the things that we did together.

I remember that time she phoned me, to tell me that she was moving to the next town. She seemed genuinely excited, but I can’t say I shared her feelings. She seemed to think we would be going out every weekend, or something. I was just getting back on my feet; I’d started seeing Jonathan, and he didn’t take to her at all, when they met. I’d told him all about her, and she and her horrible boyfriend managed to confirm everything he already thought.

Then they got married. I was ill by then, but none of us were invited anyway; it was one of those secretive things, on an island in the Indian Ocean or somewhere. They probably thought they were being clever, but more likely they were ashamed, or thought that no-one would turn up. I’d invited them to my wedding, under obligation, but they did nothing but make rude comments about the music.

She didn’t know about my nervous breakdown until Sharon told her, a long time afterwards. She came round and spent the day with me once when I was getting well again, but she was distracted and distant, not so chatty like she used to be. I didn’t see her again for ages; and by then she was single again. Well, you can’t say I never saw that coming.

I don’t know why she doesn’t keep in touch anymore, but really, I’ve got quite enough going on in my own life, so I’m not really that bothered.

She was the very last person I could have told. She had always liked me, since the first time David took me home to meet her, and I never quite got round to correcting her assumption that I was his girlfriend.

He was a really nice man, but just not my type. A great friend, a good laugh, a shoulder to cry on; he was my best friend in the world, actually. The only awkward moments that ever existed between us were the ones when he reminded me that he wanted more than friendship.

Of course, he never got on with my boyfriends, and that could be a real pain. This is why most girls have girls for best friends. It makes a lot of sense. Girls don’t tell you they love you, or try to spring kisses on you when your guard is down.

I should have listened to him. Maybe. I don’t know. He told me that Martin was a loser, but I loved him, I really did, and we had a big row about it. It’s not like he was asking me to choose, but he did say that if I stayed with Martin, then he wouldn’t be in my life so much. I hated that. And I hated it even more when he was proved right, when I missed a period, and didn’t see Martin for dust.

I came up with some pretty crazy, desperate plans, but none as crazy as his proposal. I couldn’t believe he meant it. How could we get married, when we didn’t love each other? But he pointed out that he did love me, and I wanted to have this baby, and he could make it alright for me to do that. He had a job by then, and he could support us. And we simply wouldn’t tell people that it wasn’t his, that we’d never even kissed, and we were never going to.

We found it funny when people thought they could see a family resemblance; we laughed about it later, when they left us alone again. We were pretty happy, I suppose; our future seemed to be comfortably mapped out. He went out to work, and I took care of the house and the baby, and we had each other for companionship. We told ourselves that all marriages would be far more successful, if people got together with their best friends, and didn’t let love get in the way.

But then Martin came back, and he wanted to see the baby, and he wanted to see me. I didn’t tell David about it at first; it was easy, because he was at work, and Martin would pick me and the baby up during the day, and drive us out of town somewhere. I just slipped into it, without meaning to do anything so stupid; but then after a while, it seemed like the stupid thing was getting married to David, when I loved Martin, and Martin was the father of my child.

When Martin looked at me, I felt like a teenager, full of giggles and excitement. When he touched me, my skin fizzed. He put his arms around me and made me forget that we had ever been apart. How could I spend the rest of my life with someone who would never make me feel like this?

I realised that I had done something terribly wrong. I’d condemned two people to a life without love, and I had to put a stop to it. I knew David would never speak to me again, once I told him; he would never be able to accept that I had finally done the right thing. I hope that one day, he can forgive me.

I should have tried harder with that one; I never really wanted to live there, and he only stayed there because the kids were at school. I didn’t see why they couldn’t live with their mother, and I managed to get Madam to do that anyway, by letting her know early on that she was unwelcome.

Covertly, mind you. I’m not completely stupid. But over the years I’ve been able to put my foot down more and more, and if I’m not mistaken, neither of them will be sleeping under my roof again. They’ve never liked me, and I can’t say I’ve tried to change that.

The little brother was easier to deal with; well, men are, aren’t they? I could have done without that extra year of having him under my feet while he retook his A-levels, but I’d had a baby by then, and we were married, so my position was a bit more secure. The way I see it, he’ll always look after his new family first. I wish I’d known how much debt he was in, though. He’s bad with money, and a fairly poor communicator; but that makes him easy to manipulate. He doesn’t like a scene, so he caves in, now that he knows the signs. I’ve even heard him request things, like that the kids move their junk out of our garage, without admitting that it’s something I asked him to deal with.

What really pisses me off is the way they assume we will drop everything, and be glad to see them. They’re old enough by now to stay in a hotel or something; I didn’t pay for new sofas, and have that house decorated, so that they could crash on the floor, or hang around my kitchen, drinking my tea. Especially when I’m not there.

They seem to expect him to give them things, share our home with them, support them, even though they’re grown up and they have jobs and partners of their own. Mind you, she changes partner every couple of years. Her bedroom is like Piccadilly Circus, with all the comings and goings. I don’t know whether she makes bad choices, or just gets bored easily, and I can’t be bothered to listen to her when she tries to explain herself, after a few glasses of wine. If she thinks we’re bonding, she’s having a laugh. The latest boyfriend is some geeky boy in his twenties, and they’re moving in together after less than a year. At least she hasn’t married this one yet.

As for the little brother’s girlfriend: you never saw such a pale, colourless creature, with nothing to say for herself. She acts as if she’s terrified of me, which isn’t a bad thing. If she can’t speak up a bit, why should I listen?

Above all, I want to keep them away from my own daughter. I don’t want the mess they’ve made of their lives to rub off on her. She needs to know how badly they’ve got it wrong, so that she doesn’t make those mistakes. I need to protect her, make sure she gets things right. I’ll show them how it’s done.