But on Friday night, when she realized that she’d be killing so much time over the weekend it would be a veritable bloodbath, she decided she could handle being a tourist in London. Which was when she discovered that all the flights out of Dublin were booked. Everyone was desperate to escape this foul little country. Who could blame them?

As it happened, Saturday wasn’t too bad. She got her hair cut, her eyelashes tinted, her pores steamed and her nails done, all twenty of them. Everything for free. Then she got in her weekly shopping. For the next seven days she was only going to eat food starting with the letter ‘A’ – apples, avocados, artichokes, anchovies and absinthe.

Because she was feeling so fragile, she bent the rules to let an apricot Danish into her basket. Which was greatly appreciated because the unpleasantness of spending Saturday night in, alone, was quite shocking, really.

And here she was on Sunday morning, still with two full days to go.

Go back to sleep, she begged herself. Go back to sleep and massacre a couple of hours.

But she couldn’t. Although it was no wonder, she thought bitterly, seeing as she’d been tucked up in bye-byes at ten o’clock the night before.

She got out of bed, had a shower, and even though she took an inordinate amount of time over it and almost scrubbed herself raw, she found she was dressed and ready by quarter past nine. Ready for what? Buzzing with energy that had nowhere to go, she wondered, what do people do?. They went to the gym, she supposed, throwing her eyes to heaven (and wishing there was someone there to see her do it). Lisa prided herself on never going to the gym, especially not in Dublin. It was wildly passé, all that stair-mastering and cross-country rowing. The Irish fitness industry was so behind the times they still thought spinning was a novel idea! No, Lisa was more interested in the less violent and more fashionable forms of body sculpting. Pilates, power-yoga, isometrics. Preferably one-on-one with a body doctor who included Elizabeth Hurley and Jemina Khan among his clients.

The only problem with something like Pilates was that, as it didn’t actually raise your metabolism, best results were achieved when combined with a starvation diet. Which was where devices like the letter–’A’ diet came in. Surprisingly few foods started with the letter ‘A’. If it had been ‘B’, things would have been very different. Bacon, Bounties, Bacardi, brie, bread, biscuits… And if she ever really needed to streamline down to the bone, she’d spend a week doing ‘Y’. Yams, that was about it. And yellow peppers, at a stretch. Oh, and Yorkies, she’d forgotten about them. Perhaps ‘Z’ would be safer.

After breakfasting on an apple, an apricot and a glass of Aqua Libra, she managed to make it to ten o’clock. But when she feared she might attempt to strike up a conversation with the walls, she made a decision. She was going to go shopping. And it wasn’t just free-form retail therapy, either – she had a purpose. Sort of, in any case… She planned to organize floor-to-ceiling wooden blinds for an entire wall in her bedroom, to counteract the country-cottage feel and endow it with a more cubey, urban air. Then she’d run a piece on it in the magazine and let them pick up some of the bill.

But when she reached Grafton Street she was shocked to find that none of the shops were open yet and the only other people around were bewildered-looking tourists.

This fucking country, she thought, for the hundredth time. Where was everyone? Probably at church, she decided contemptuously.

One o’clock, the man in the newsagent’s told her. The shops opened at one o’clock. So she sat in a café, her legs crossed, drinking almond lattes and reading a newspaper. Only the frenzied bouncing of her foot as she tried to chivvy along time gave any indication of her inner hysteria.

And what was with the freak meteorological conditions, she wondered. There was a total absence of torrential rain or gale-force winds – surely a first for a bank holiday? Instead there was brave, jaunty sunlight against the hopeful blue of the sky and for some reason this reminded her of other times, which in turn made her sad, and she couldn’t be doing with that. Oh no!

Quickly she reminded herself of her theory – she wasn’t sad, her life had just dipped below the required Fabulous level. There was no negative emotion that couldn’t be cured by the application of a little fabulousness and it was very important that she remembered it during these turbulent times. She’d admit that she’d forgotten it recently – last Sunday, for example, when she’d spent the day isolated and in despair.

Eventually the blinds emporia flung wide their doors, and then Lisa felt that they needn’t have bothered. None of the pathetic interiors shops could handle a request for such a large blind. They recommended that she try a department store. And even though Lisa wasn’t a department-store kind of girl, she decided that beggars couldn’t be choosers.

On the fourth floor, in the curtain department, she bagged a busy little man hurrying past with a tape-measure around his neck.

‘I need custom-made blinds.’

‘I’m your man,’ he confidently assured her.

But when she gave him the dimensions, then pointed out the wooden slats she wanted, he changed colour. Becoming a much paler one.

‘Nine foot long?’ he hooted. ‘And fourteen foot wide?’

That’s right,’ Lisa agreed.

‘But missus,’ he protested, ‘that’ll cost a fortune!’

‘That’s all right,’ Lisa said.

‘But have you any idea how much it’ll cost?’

‘Tell me.’

He did a series of speedy calculations on some brown wrapping paper, then shook his head in anxiety.

‘How much?’

But he wouldn’t tell her. Whatever it was, it was too much, he’d decided.

‘Hold on, hold on, I’m thinking. How about getting it in a cheaper material?’ he said, flicking his trained eye along the shelves. ‘Forget about the wood altogether. We could do it in plastic, how about that? Or canvas?’

‘No, thank you. I definitely want it in wood.’

‘Or you can get ready-made blinds.’ He changed tack. ‘I know they wouldn’t be quite the right size and the material wouldn’t be as nice, but it’d be miles cheaper. Come over here and look.’ And grabbing her by the hand, he tugged her over to inspect some hideous vertical office-window blinds.