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By Root 1483 0

was far too late. She was often in bed by then. She liked to get a few hours’ kip in before having to rise at four a.m. to sit and sing songs in the dark for an hour. Dylan and Clodagh were the first diners to arrive. They proceeded in hushed, reverential silence into the empty, white, Grecian-columned room and Clodagh became ever more anxious about her dress. It seemed to draw astonished looks from the po-faced staff. Trying to tug it down to make it longer, she hurried to the safety of the table. She’d been out of the loop too long and no longer knew what was the right or wrong thing to wear. Sinking into her chair and shoving her thighs under the forgiving cover of the table, where the error of her on-display knickers was hidden away out of sight, she gratefully ordered a gin-and-tonic.

As she perused her broadsheet-sized menu, twelve or fourteen black-and-white-attired staff stood to attention in various parts of the silent room. When she looked up from her menu, they’d all exchanged places, but neither she nor Dylan had seen them move.

‘It’s like something out of a science-fiction film,’ she whispered.

Dylan laughed, the sound loud in the empty room, and Clod-agh’s head abruptly tightened as she experienced that peculiar feeling again – that she didn’t know him. But this was the man she’d once thought she’d die if she didn’t possess. Stirred by an echo of that intense love, she was suddenly struck dumb. Perplexed because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.

Only for a second. Then, of course, she had oodles of stuff. I mean, she thought, loose with relief, this is Dylan.

‘Do you think I should take Molly to the doctor?’

Dylan didn’t answer.

‘If she doesn’t knock off the hunger-strike soon,’ Clodagh chattered, ‘I’ll really have to. She’s getting no nourishment from all the chocolate and –’

‘What are you having to start?’ Dylan interrupted, brusquely.

‘Oh! Oh, I don’t know.’

‘The menu’s spectacular,’ Dylan said, a little too pointedly.

‘Oh right.’

‘Can’t you forget about the kids just for a couple of hours?’

‘Sorry. Am I driving you mad?’

‘Round the bend,’ he agreed, in exasperation.

She began to settle down. After all, she was in a lovely restaurant with her lovely husband. They were drinking gin-and-tonics and eating tomato bread. Delicious food and several bottles of wine would soon be on their way, and her children were safe at home with two people who weren’t paedophiles or child-batterers. What could be nicer?

‘Sorry,’ she repeated, and this time really did study the menu. ‘I see what you mean,’ she acknowledged. ‘Oh, they’ve mussels. And goat’s cheese soufflé. Bloody hell! What’ll I have?’

‘Starter or soup,’ Dylan said thoughtfully, ‘that is the question.’

‘“Or?”’ Clodagh challenged. ‘What’s this “or” word? I think what you mean is “and”.’

With the desperation of one who rarely gets out, Clodagh over-ordered wildly, mad-keen to wring as much enjoyment as possible from this infrequent treat. Starters and sorbets and soups and side-orders. Main-courses and red wine and white wine and water.

‘Sparkling or still?’ The waiter asked, his hand hurting. Now he knew how Tolstoy felt, having to write War and Peace.

Puzzled, Clodagh looked at him – surely it was obvious? –’Both!’

‘Very good.’

‘Is there anything else we can order?’ Clodagh shivered gleefully, when he’d gone.

‘Not for the moment,’ Dylan laughed, swept up in her enthusiasm. ‘But wait till we’ve got this consignment out of the way.’

‘Will we have dessert and cheese?’

‘’Course. Irish coffees?’

‘And dessert wine. And petit fours.’

‘French coffees?’

‘Mais oui! I might even have a cigar.’

‘That’s my girl.’

By the time they were a couple of courses in, Clodagh was dreamy from food and drink, but still bothered by an inability to relax. Then she realized what the problem was.

‘It’s such a long time since I’ve had an uninterrupted dinner that I can’t break the habit,’ she said. ‘I keep getting the urge to jump up and cut up other people’s dinners for them… See your man over there?’ – she indicated a New-York-loft-boy type