And I’d sort of snap, “I can’t help it! It’s my…thing, my…hobby, it helps me unwind.”

“Can’t you have a glass of wine?” he’d say, and I’d stomp off into the bedroom, where I’d ring someone and gouge away to my heart’s content. Sometime later, I’d reemerge in top form and we’d all be friends again.

Then there was that time we went to Vermont in the fall to see the changing of the leaves and I decided that he was taking too many photos. I felt that he was intent on photographing every fecking leaf in the state, and every time he pressed the button and unleashed that whirry noise, I got a funny, angry feeling in my teeth.

But as differences went, that wasn’t so bad and even our worst row ever had been about something really stupid: we’d been talking about holiday resorts and I said that I wasn’t that keen on outdoor showers. He’d asked why and I told him the story of how Claire had been having an outdoor shower in a safari camp in Botswana and had caught a baboon watching her and having a good old wank for himself.

“It wouldn’t happen,” Aidan said. “She’s making it up.”

“She’s not,” I said. “If Claire said it happened, then it happened. She’s not like Helen.”

(Actually I wasn’t at all sure that that was the case. Claire wasn’t above embroidering a story.)

“A baboon wouldn’t react that way to a human woman,” Aidan had insisted. “It would only happen if he was watching a lady baboon.”

“A lady baboon wouldn’t take a shower.”

“You know what I mean.”

Then the whole thing deteriorated into a “Are you saying a baboon wouldn’t fancy my sister?” sort of thing, but again, we’d had a hard week at work and we were both cranky and would have happily had a scrap about anything.

But, in all honesty, that was as bad as it ever got.

Speaking of sisters, another e-mail arrived from Helen about her new job.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Job!

Colin the bozo brought me a gun—heavy, exciting. Imagine, I’ve a gun!

I’d loads of questions for him. Most importantly…What’s Mr. Big’s real name? (Again, please remember am parrot-phrasing.)

Colin: Harry Gilliam.

Me: Do you really think something’s going on with Mrs. Big and this Racey O’Grady?

Colin: Yeah. Probably. And if it’s true, Harry’ll be very upset. He’s mad about Detta. Detta Big is a lady and Harry’s always thought she was too good for him. Anyway, let’s get going.

Me: Where?

Him: To a shooting club.

Me: For what?

Him: For you to learn how to shoot.

Me: How hard can it be? I just point the thing and pull the trigger.

Him: (all wearylike): Come on.

Went to funny bunker place in Dublin mountains, full of dirt-smeared, starry-eyed men who looked like they ran their own militia in their back garden.

I wasn’t bad. Hit target couple of times. (Pity wasn’t my target, har har.) My shoulder, though, was killing me. No one said shooting people hurts. Well, obviously hurts person who’s shot! (Har har.)

Piss: Don’t worry. Know you’re all freaked out about death at moment, but promise you (a) Won’t get shot (b) Won’t shoot anyone.

The talk of guns had been alarming me, so her promise was a relief. Until I saw the final line.

Pissss: Except maybe some bad guys.

All the same it made me laugh. There was probably no point taking her too seriously—God only knew how much of this was embellished. Or downright fantasy.

43

Monday morning. Which meant the Monday Morning Meeting. And here came Franklin, clapping his hands together, rounding up his girls.

Walking to the boardroom, Teenie linked her arm through mine. She looked almost normal today; wearing a silver, Barbarella-style shift dress and long silver-and-gray sneakers that laced right up to her knee. Only the silver-painted skateboarding elbow and knee guards were evidence of proper kookiness.

“Step right up,” she said. “Get your humiliation here!”

“Be degraded in front of your peers,” I said.

“And undermined by your lessers.”

Easy for us to laugh, we were doing okay.

I was getting good newspaper coverage. No great coups, but at the Monday Morning Meetings, I always had a couple of things to show and tell after each weekend. Maybe the beauty editors felt sorry for me with my scarred face and my dead husband. Mind you, I wasn’t milking it because something like that could very much count against you: I could be seen as tainting Candy Grrrl with my bad luck and my ruined face. Normally when the MMM is over, there’s a feeling that the week can only get better. But not today. Today was day zero for Eye Eye Captain. Today was the day that one hundred and fifty Eye Eye Captain kits would be assembled and packaged, ready to be couriered out to all the magazines and newspapers the following day. The timing was crucial: they couldn’t be sent today, they couldn’t be sent the day after tomorrow; it had to be tomorrow. Why? Because Lauryn was trying out a new guerrilla-style tactic. Instead of doing what we’d normally do with a launch—giving all the beauty editors plenty of advance notice—we were trying the opposite. She’d carefully calibrated the timing to ensure that Eye Eye Captain would arrive on every important beauty editor’s desk just before their copy had to go to press. The idea was to dazzle them so completely with something fresh and new, to make them think that they had a jump on a new product, that they’d bump something else and give us the slot instead. Admittedly a high-risk game but one Lauryn insisted that we had to try.

It could work because the concept was novel—a one-stop eye-care kit. Three different products, each of which worked in tandem to enhance the efficacy of the others (or so they said). There was Pack Your Bags (a cooling gel to zap puffiness and undereye bags), Light Up Your Life (a light-deflecting concealer pen to banish dark circles), and Iron Out the Kinks (a whipped-mousse wrinkle killer).

Just one tiny little problem: the trio of products hadn’t arrived from the manufacturers in Indianapolis. They were on their way. Oh, they were definitely coming. They’d be with us by eleven. But eleven came and passed. Lauryn made a hysterical phone call and got a guarantee that the driver was in Pennsylvania and would definitely be with us by one. One became two, became three, became four. Apparently the lorry driver had got lost coming into Manhattan.