"Do you like Garth?'

Maggie half laughed, half sobbed. 'No, not much at the moment, but fortunately I'm too busy to think about it.'

Pam put her elbows on the table, cupped her face in her hands and looked Maggie straight in the eye. 'Don't you wonder what life might have been like with Jack?'

Oh no, not again. Maggie could feel an unpleasant shiver go right down her spine, as if to her toes. She glanced at her hands. Her knuckles were white from being clenched. She took another slug of wine for comfort.

'There was never going to be any life with Jack,' she said in a voice as firm as she could muster. 'That night we were supposed to be getting back together, the night he never showed up, was the worst night of my life. No show, no phone call, no letter, no apology, nothing. Just silence. So I'm sorry, but there was not going to be any life with Jack.'

The sheer physical pain of loss, the buckets of tears for months and months afterwards, the constant scanning of faces and crowds, hoping subconsciously for a glimpse of his soft tanned face, china blue eyes and mop of wavy brown hair. The shudder of disappointment every time the phone rang and it wasn't him. The anticipation of picking up the post, to find only the gas bill, yet another piece of junk mail, a letter from Mum or a jolly postcard from a girlfriend. The throaty roar of every old MGB's exhaust, TV reruns of Casablanca, From Here to Eternity and all their other favourite old films, everything Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald had ever recorded, a long green dress he'd sworn made her look more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman. These were the symptoms of the terminal illness that was called simply 'Jack'.

'I loved Jack very much,' she said, suddenly fighting hot tears, 'but it's no good loving someone who failed to show up. At least Garth is here. He might not be Mr. Congeniality, but at least he's stuck it out with me.'

She got up to get a piece of kitchen towel to wipe her eyes.

'I know I married Garth on the rebound,' she said slowly, as she said down again. 'There - I've said it aloud for the very first time. Admitted it, not just to myself, but to you. And I know he's a male chauvinist pig, but he didn't get a very good bargain either. I don't think he got a very loving wife and I often feel guilty about that. He doesn't know about Jack and all that emotional baggage. He doesn't know that I couldn't ever have made the same commitment to him that I would have done to Jack. So in a way, I've cheated him by not giving him one hundred per cent. What he thinks of me, I have no idea these days. But I need a different kind of commitment, one that didn't have the potential to hurt. If it was a rebound marriage, so be it. But no matter what Garth ever does to me, he will never have the capacity to hurt me in the way that Jack did. There - I've said it.'

She blew her nose noisily into the kitchen paper and chunked the screwed up sheet in the bin.

Pam sat open-mouthed at this sudden confession. Now it made sense why Maggie had stuck with Garth. She had never realised that Maggie felt such guilt at her lack of emotion where he was concerned.

'I realise,' she began apologetically, 'how lucky I am with Tom.'

'Yes you are,' said Maggie firmly. 'You made an active choice to marry him. You married for love, lust and sheer joy at the prospect of living with him for the rest of your life. I married for the companionship of a man who would be incapable of hurting me. It was a good enough reason then, and it's probably still a good enough reason now. Except that I feel I have short-changed him in a way. Now, let's change the subject and sort out my horrible wardrobe.'

They polished off the last of the wine and went upstairs.