And what would happen if he couldn’t keep his mickey to himself? What if he wasn’t just unfaithful to Janie, but habitually frisky? I’d better not start thinking that I’d be the one to cure him; instead I should start running in the opposite direction at high speed. Then I was back to wondering how Janie was feeling…

She took it pretty good.” Aidan showed up on my doorstep on the Sunday evening.

“Really?” I asked hopefully.

“She kind of hinted…you know…that maybe she might have met someone else, too.”

This was balm—for half a second. You know how thick men can be; no doubt Janie had done what she could to save face, but right at that moment she was probably running a hot bath and getting the cutthroat razor out of the bathroom closet.

As the plane touched down in Logan, full of Thanksgiving returnees, I asked Aidan, “Tell me again, how many girls other than Janie have you brought home for Thanksgiving?”

He thought for ages, counting stuff out on his fingers and whispering numbers under his breath, and eventually said, “None!”

It had become a familiar routine over the previous four weeks, but now that I had actually arrived in Bostonelt this way about anyone else, ever.”

I said nothing. I felt so guilty. But I couldn’t help also feeling…a little…flattered.

“I wanted to talk to Janie before I talked to you. I didn’t know if you’d want to, like, be interested in being exclusive—I hate that stupid word—but either way it’s totally over for me and Janie. But I feel bad that you know before she does.”

Tell me about it.

And shallow girl that I was, I wanted to know what Janie looked like. I had to clamp my lips together extremely tightly to stop myself asking, but it didn’t work and little sounds escaped. Mwahdoz zhee mlook mlike.

“Wha—oh! What does she look like?” His face went suddenly blank. “Um, you know, nice, she’s got”—he made a rotating gesture with his hand—“hair, curly hair.” He paused. “Well, she used to. Maybe lately it’s been straight.”

Okay, he hadn’t a clue what she looked like. He’d been with her for so long that he didn’t look at her properly anymore. Nevertheless, a powerful intuition was warning me that I should not underestimate this woman and the strength of Aidan’s attachment. They’d shared fifteen years of history, and like a boomerang, he kept returning to her.

He went to Boston, and all weekend, I felt mildly queasy; contradictory thoughts chased one another in a never-ending circle. At the air-guitar competition, Shake accused me of not paying attention when he’d been on, and he was right: I’d been staring into space wondering how Janie was taking it—I hated myself for being responsible for someone else’s unhappiness. And how much did I like Aidan? Enough to let him end a fifteen-year relationship for my sake? What if I was only messing him around? Or what if he changed his mind and got back with Janie? That terrified me; I really liked him. Really, really liked him.

And what would happen if he couldn’t keep his mickey to himself? What if he wasn’t just unfaithful to Janie, but habitually frisky? I’d better not start thinking that I’d be the one to cure him; instead I should start running in the opposite direction at high speed. Then I was back to wondering how Janie was feeling…

She took it pretty good.” Aidan showed up on my doorstep on the Sunday evening.

“Really?” I asked hopefully.

“She kind of hinted…you know…that maybe she might have met someone else, too.”

This was balm—for half a second. You know how thick men can be; no doubt Janie had done what she could to save face, but right at that moment she was probably running a hot bath and getting the cutthroat razor out of the bathroom closet.

As the plane touched down in Logan, full of Thanksgiving returnees, I asked Aidan, “Tell me again, how many girls other than Janie have you brought home for Thanksgiving?”

He thought for ages, counting stuff out on his fingers and whispering numbers under his breath, and eventually said, “None!”

It had become a familiar routine over the previous four weeks, but now that I had actually arrived in Boston I felt sick. “Aidan, it’s no joke. I shouldn’t have come. Everyone will hate me for not being Janie. The streets will be lined by angry Bostonians stoning the car and your mother will spit in my soup.”

“It’ll be fine.” He squeezed my fingers. “They’ll love you. You’ll see.”

His mom, Dianne, picked us up at the airport and instead of pelting me with gravel and shrieking “HOMEWRECKER!” she gave me a hug and said, “Welcome to Boston.”

She was lovely—a bit scatty, driving erratically and blathering away. Finally we fetched up in some suburb that wasn’t a million miles different from the one I came from, in terms of demographics, cars in the drive, nosy neighbors staring like hostile village idiots, etc., etc.

The house, too, seemed familiar: with horrible swirly carpets, awful soft furnishings, and crammed with sports trophies, nasty paintings, and gawk-making china ornaments, I felt right at home.

I dropped my bag on the hall floor and almost the first thing I saw was a photo on the wall of a younger-looking Aidan with his two arms around a girl, hugging the back of her body to the front of his. Right away I knew it was Janie. So how did she look? Oh, you know, all smiley and happy, how do people usually look in photos? Those on display in curlicued, silvery frames anyway. I felt a little shaky even before I’d absorbed that she was beautiful: dark, long corkscrew curls (their beauty not even marred by a Staten Island topknot and a green scrunchy) and perfect teeth in a wide smile.

But clearly it had been taken a long time ago, judging by the scrunchy and how bright-eyed and innocent Aidan looked—maybe she’d aged badly.

Someone shouted, “Dad, they’re here,” and a door opened and a young man appeared: dark, built, very smiley, extremely cute. “Hi, I’m Kevin, the younger brother.”

“And I’m Anna—”

“Oh yeah, we know all about you.” He dazzled me with a smile. “Wow. Any more like you at home?”

“Yes.” I considered Helen. “But you’d probably be terrified of her.”

He didn’t realize I wasn’t joking and he laughed, a proper belly laugh. “You’re a riot. This is going to be fun.”