‘I have some stuff.’ Ashling fished a mascara and eyeliner from her bag.

‘Your tardis,’ Clodagh laughed. ‘Hey! Chanel mascara? I mean, Chanel?’

Ashling beamed with embarrassed pride. ‘It’s my new job, you see. I got it free.’

Just for a moment Clodagh couldn’t move. She swallowed and it sounded very loud to her. ‘Free? How?’

As Ashling launched into a garbled story of how someone called Mercedes was off in Donegal and how someone else called Lisa had gone to a charity lunch to bond with posh Dublin people and how someone else called Trix looked too like a Spice Girl to be allowed out, so Ashling had to represent Colleen at the Chanel Face of Autumn. ‘And they gave me a goody bag when I left.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ Clodagh said hollowly. And she looked at Ashling’s happy delighted smile and of course it was brilliant. But where had all the promise of her own life leaked away to?

‘Come on, let’s burn plastic,’ Ashling urged.

‘Where’ll we start?’

‘Jigsaw. My magic lose-half-a-stone-in-an-instant trousers have gone a bit bobbly on me and I’m hoping to replace them… Although I don’t give much for my chances,’ she admitted gloomily.

‘Why? Horoscope not good today?’ Clodagh teased.

‘Actually, smarty-pants, it wasn’t bad, but that makes no difference. The minute I find something I like, they rush around and take them off all the hangers. Next thing you know the line is discontinued!’

In shop after shop, as Ashling tried on pair after pair of very disappointing trousers, Clodagh wandered through a parallel universe of clothes. She couldn’t imagine wearing any of them.

‘Look at how short these dresses are!’ she exclaimed, then clutched herself. Did I just say that?

‘That’s good, coming from the woman who once wore a pillowcase as a skirt.’

‘Did I?’

‘Oh, they’re not dresses anyway.’ Ashling had just noticed what Clodagh had been looking at. ‘They’re tunics. To wear over trousers.’

‘I’m completely out of touch,’ Clodagh said forlornly. ‘But it happens without you noticing and suddenly what you look for in a garment is how well it hides puke stains… Look at the cut of me,’ she sighed, indicating her black flares and denim jacket.

Ashling twisted her mouth wryly. Clodagh mightn’t be a fashion queen but she’d still give anything to look like her – her legs short and shapely, her small waist emphasized by her fitted jacket, her long thick hair wound casually on top of her head.

‘See that colour green?’ Clodagh pounced on a pale-mint top. ‘Well, can you imagine that in a blue?’

‘Um, yeh,’ Ashling lied. She suspected this had something to do with decorating.

‘That’s the exact colour we’re getting the front-room papered in,’ Clodagh glowed. ‘They’re coming on Monday and I can’t wait.’

‘Already? That was quick. It’s only a couple of weeks since you first started talking about it.’

‘I decided to just go for it, that awful terracotta’s been bugging the life out of me, so I told the decorators it was an emergency.’

‘I thought the terracotta was beautiful,’ Ashling opined. So had Clodagh not so long ago.

‘Well, it’s not,’ Clodagh said firmly, and turned her attention back to clothes, determined to get a handle on them. Eventually she bought a tiny slip-dress from Oasis, so short and see-through that Ashling thought even Trix might baulk at it – and you don’t get too many of them to the pound!

‘When will you wear it?’ Ashling enquired curiously.

‘Dunno. Bringing Molly to playgroup, collecting Craig from painting. Look, I just want it, OK?’

Defiantly she paid with a credit card that declared her to be Mrs Clodagh Kelly. Ashling experienced a pang – and she could only presume she was jealous. Clodagh earned no money of her own, yet she always had plenty. Wouldn’t it be lovely to live her life?

Off they set again.

‘Oh look at those little dungarees!’ Clodagh declared, diving in off the street to a chi-chi children’s shop. ‘They’d be dotie on Molly. And wouldn’t this baseball cap be gorgeous on Craig?’

Only when Clodagh had spent more on each of her children than she had on herself did her guilt abate.

‘Will we go for coffee?’ Ashling suggested, when the spending frenzy ended.

Clodagh hesitated. ‘I’d rather go for a drink.’

‘It’s only half twelve.’

‘I’m sure some places open at ten.’

That hadn’t actually been what Ashling had meant, but however.

So while Dubliners basked in unexpected weekend sunshine, drinking double skinny mocha lattés and pretending to be in Los Angeles, Ashling and Clodagh sat in a gloomy, old men’s pub, where the rest of the clientele looked like a government health warning against the dangers of the demon drink. Not an unbroken vein between them.

Ashling chattered excitedly about her new job, about the famous people she’d nearly met, about the free T-shirt she got from Morocco, and Clodagh’s spirits slid into the bottom of her gin-and-tonic.

‘Maybe I should get a job,’ she suddenly interrupted. ‘I always meant to go back to work after Craig.’

‘That’s right, you did.’ Ashling knew Clodagh was vaguely defensive that she wasn’t one of those super-women who did a full-time job as well as rearing children.

‘But the exhaustion was beyond belief,’ Clodagh insisted. ‘Whatever you hear about the agony of labour, nothing prepares you for the hell of sleepless nights. I was forever shattered and waking up was like coming round from an anaesthetic. I couldn’t have held down a job.’

And luckily Dylan’s computer business was doing well enough that she didn’t have to.

‘Do you have time now for a job?’ Ashling asked.

‘I am very busy,’ Clodagh acknowledged. ‘Apart from a couple of hours when I go to the gym, I never have a moment to myself. Mind you, it’s all inconsequential stuff; changing clothes that’ve been puked on or having to watch Barney video after Barney video… Although,’ she said, with a glint in her eye, ‘I’ve put an end to Barney.’

‘How?’