‘So I can stay here?’ Who will check how many times the river police and the half-empty tourist boats go past every day if I’m not here to do it?

‘We can discuss that,’ Monica assures me. Which means that some covetous bitch has her eye on my turf for sure.

‘Is this a promotion?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Does it involve more pay?’

‘No.’

‘I bet it involves more work.’

‘My Divorce is a slightly busier magazine than ours.’

Mmm…So, I’m supposed to view this as a positive step. It’s not a promotion. It involves no more pay. But it does involve more work. In other words it’s a sideways move so that they don’t have to look at my maudlin face and I may have to give up my great desk too.

‘I don’t want to do it,’ I say.

‘Well…’ Monica is now very shifty. ‘It’s sort of been agreed.’

‘By who?’

‘Management.’

It’s at times like these when I regret the weakening of the trade unions. None of us are members here, even though we all should be. If we were I’d march down to some bolshy shop steward bristling with indignation and get her to fight in my corner for me. Instead, I say, ‘Okay.’

‘I think you’ll enjoy it.’

I think I won’t. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

‘We think it’s for the best, Lyssa. You were getting a bit…desperate.’

‘Desperate.’ I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to be desperate. It’s been creeping up on me for some time. With each passing year, I guess I realise that time is running out for me. And I know that you read all the time in the papers—and in My Baby—about post-menopausal women who are pregnant thanks to the miracle of technology. But is there any joy to be had in becoming one of the growing rash of ‘grannymothers’? I’m not sure that I want to be pushing a pram around when I’m a white-haired coffin-dodger living off my pension. What if I get Alzheimer’s? I might not even remember that I’ve got a baby!

‘When is this wonderful, positive move going to happen?’

‘Next week.’

If I wanted to change jobs, I’d apply to one of those glamorous magazines where you get Jimmy Choo shoes and Space NK cosmetics and Tiffany jewellery as freebies. What sort of freebies am I going to get on My Divorce?

I’m getting fed up of being dependent on everyone else’s whims—Jake’s, management’s, Mother Nature’s. I cast a wistful look out of the window. ‘No one’s getting my desk,’ I say in as menacing a way as possible.

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty