“No. She’s seeing someone. A doctor. I’m expecting her to ring me any day to tell me that they’re engaged.”

“Ahhh,” Dina said, disappointed. “I like Laura.”

“So do I. That’s why I married her.”

“So why did you divorce her, then?”

“I didn’t divorce her. She divorced me.” Laura and I have always done the civilized thing and told people the breakup was mutual, nobody’s fault, we grew in different directions and all the usual meaningless rubbish, but I was too tired.

“Seriously? Why?”

“Because. I don’t have the energy tonight, Dina.”

“Whatever,” Dina said, rolling her eyes. She slid sinuously off the sofa and padded into the kitchen, where I heard her opening things. “Why don’t you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“There’s plenty to eat. The fridge is full. I can make you a stir-fry, or there’s lamb stew in the freezer, or if you want something lighter you can have porridge, or—”

“Ew, please. I don’t mean stuff like that. Fuck the five food groups and antioxidant blah blah blah. I want like ice cream, or one of those shitty burgers you stick in the microwave.” A cupboard door slammed and she came back into the living room holding out a granola bar at arm’s length. “Granola? What are you, a girl?”

“No one’s making you eat it.”

She shrugged, threw herself on the sofa again and started nibbling a corner of the bar, making a face like it might poison her. She said, “When you were with Laura you were happy. It was sort of weird, because you’re not one of those naturally happy people, so I wasn’t used to seeing you that way. It actually took me a while to figure out what was going on. But it was nice.”

I said, “Yes, it was.”

Laura is the same kind of sleek, highlighted, labor-intensive pretty as Jennifer Spain. She was on a diet every day I knew her, except birthdays and Christmases; she tops up her fake tan every three days, straightens her hair every morning of her life, and never goes out of the house without full makeup. I know some men like women to leave themselves the way nature intended, or at least to pretend they do, but the gallantry with which Laura fought nature hand to hand was one of the many things I loved about her. I used to get up fifteen or twenty minutes early in the mornings so I could spend that time just watching her get ready. Even on days when she was running late, dropping things and swearing to herself, for me it was the most restful thing life had to offer, like watching a cat put the world in order by washing itself. It always seemed to me that a girl like that, a girl who worked that hard at being what she was supposed to be, was likely to want what she was supposed to want: flowers, good jewelry, a nice house, holidays in the sun, and a man who would love her and put his heart into taking care of her for the rest of their lives. Girls like Fiona Rafferty are complete mysteries to me; I can’t imagine where you would start trying to figure them out, and that makes me nervous. With Laura, it seemed to me that I had a chance at making her happy. It was moronic of me to be taken by surprise when she, with whom I had felt safe for exactly that reason, turned out to want precisely what women are supposed to want.