In the past she knew she had tended to gloss over the occasional less-than-perfect paella, the chef’s overexuberant use of salt, the insufficiently chilled vichyssoise.

Maybe she was about to have her chance to bitch it up a bit, here at the Songbird. Liza glanced across at the flustered waitress on her knees sweeping up broken glass and mentally hardened her heart. If the meal wasn’t up to scratch, she decided, she would go for it.

She still had the remains of her hangover too. That would help.

To begin with, Liza chose deep-dish aubergine Parmesan torte. Which was good, if a bit on the heavy side. The accompanying tomato sauce could have done with being a little less sweet.

Bah, humbug.

Mark had Provençal fish soup. He pronounced it delicious. Liza tasted some.

‘Too much saffron,’ she remarked briskly. ‘And the bread should be hot.’

Mark raised his eyebrows.

‘Whose bed did you get out of on the wrong side this morning?’

‘No one’s. I’m in training to be a cow.’

The restaurant was beginning to fill up. The party of eight, seated by the window at the front of the restaurant, emptied bottles of wine at a rate of knots and sang rousing choruses of ‘Why Are We Waiting?’. The flustered waitress, serving them finally, got her bottom pinched. The other girl, the blonde, came out of the kitchen and told them sharply to keep their wandering hands to themselves. Three fingers on her own left hand were adorned with blue catering plasters.

‘What happened?’ jeered the chief bottom-pincher. ‘Don’t tell me, you tried to stab the chef and missed.’

For their main course, Mark had ordered tournedos of beef with wild mushrooms and vin santo.

‘Is the steak tough?’ Liza asked eagerly.’No.’

‘You asked for it rare. That’s not rare, it’s medium.’ Mark sat back in his chair.

‘I don’t think I like you like this.’

‘It’s my job.’ Narrow-eyed, she surveyed her lamb with polenta and artichokes. It looked divine, which was no good at all.

Happily, when she tasted the lamb with its herb and breadcrumb coating, she hit paydirt. The garlic they had smelled burning earlier was right here, on her plate.

The wine was good and Mark stubbornly refused to fault his sweet – which was a trio of home-made ice creams in a brandy snap basket – but Liza was well into her stride now. Her plum and apricot tart was definitely stodgy, the sweet almond pastry case way too thick. The crust around the edge, which had been doused with icing sugar in a futile attempt at a cover-up, was burnt.

‘It’s busy,’ said Mark, valiantly defending the little restaurant. ‘Must be good to be so popular.’

‘It’s New Year’s Day.’ Liza wasn’t to be deterred. ‘Everywhere else is shut. Anyway,’ she pointed out, ‘you’re only saying that because you fancy the blonde.’

‘I feel sorry for her. Poor thing, she’s in a flap.’

‘Not surprising. I’d flap too, if I had to serve up burnt offerings like this.’

‘Shall we ask for the bill?’

‘No way. I want to try the coffee. Wouldn’t it be fab if it was instant? Oh my God—’

Liza stared at the door, opening to admit two more customers.

‘What? What?’

Twisting round in his seat, Mark craned his neck to see who had come in. Liza was just glad she was wearing her glasses and mousy wig.

It was Phil Kasteliz, Pru’s husband. He was laughing and holding the hand of a woman with piled-up white-blonde hair.

Her leopard-print top ended above her belly button, and a black rubber skirt began several inches below it. The amount of make-up she wore was staggering. She looked like Lily Savage, only less demure.

She wasn’t Pru by a long chalk.

‘That bastard,’ Liza hissed as the waitress showed them to their table. The moment they were seated, the blonde slipped off one spiky black stiletto and began teasing Phil with her toes.

Mark looked ill at ease. He hated scenes. (It was another reason Liza had gone off him; his anything-for-a-quiet-life attitude had driven her to distraction.)

‘Who is he?’ He prayed it wasn’t the latest man in Liza’s life. She was in such a weird mood today. He prayed even harder she wasn’t about to start a cat fight.

‘His name’s Phil. He’s the pig my friend Pru’s married to.’ Her dark eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I think I want to kill him.’

‘So that isn’t his wife?’

‘That old bike, are you kidding? My God, the nerve of the man!’

Liza’s knuckles were white around her pudding fork. Mark envisaged the headlines: RESTAURANT CRITIC PUNCTURES DINER TO DEATH.

Or: WOMAN FORKED TO DEATH.

Feeling sick, he said, ‘I don’t think you should cause a scene.’

Liza gave him a pitying look. ‘No, I’m sure you don’t.’

But for once Mark was right. Maybe it was just as well Phil hadn’t recognised her, although his attention was so clearly taken up with his companion she doubted whether her disguise was even necessary. From the look of him, he’d hardly notice if the SAS stormed the restaurant and smoke-bombed the place.

Liza had never had much time for Phil Kasteliz. She wouldn’t have liked him even if he wasn’t an estate agent. Despite working long hours – allegedly – he always seemed tohave plenty of time left over for gambling, drinking and having a laugh with The Lads.

Pru, who adored him, stoutly maintained that she didn’t mind her husband’s late-night excursions to Bath’s clubs and casinos. Phil worked hard, she explained patiently whenever anyone dared to criticise him. He needed to relax. He wasn’t the stay-at-home, watch-a-bit-of-TV and put-up-a-few-shelves type. Anyway, Pru invariably ended up saying, where was the harm? At least Phil wasn’t a womaniser, she had no worries on that score. He was far more interested in roulette.

Shame it wasn’t the Russian kind, thought Liza, who had never believed a word of it anyway.

When you were as generally lacking in moral values as Phil Kasteliz, what would be the point in making the effort to remain faithful? It was like expecting a crack addict to throw up his hands in horror and say: Oh no, I’d never touch grass.

So it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to find Pru’s husband dabbling in adultery, but the urge to kill him was still there.

What annoyed Liza more than anything was the kind of woman Phil was with. It was shaming to Pru. Letting her down.

If he had to cheat on her, he could at least have had the decency to do it with someone who wasn’t a complete dog.

‘Umm ... would you like coffee?’

The young waitress was back, escaping further hassle from the rugby types and looking closer than ever to a nervous breakdown. It occurred to Mark that any stabbing spree instigated by Liza would give the waitress just the opportunity she needed to join in.

Imagine the headlines then:

BLOODBATH AT THE SONGBIRD.

No, even snappier: BLOODBATH IN BATH.

He began to nod. Liza shook her head.

‘Just the bill, thanks.’

As the waitress hurriedly began clearing their table, her hand slipped. The chargrilled pastry Liza had left on her plate slid on to the tablecloth.

‘Oh God I’m sorry—’

Liza wasn’t normally rude but Phil Kasteliz hadn’t improved her mood. She picked up the pastry, examined it speculatively for a moment and said, ‘So am I.’

On their way out they passed within feet of Phil and his lunch companion. The woman, pretending to read Phil’s palm, was saying, ‘... I predict an afternoon in bed with a sexy blonde.’

Phil’s answering smirk was too much for Liza to bear. Just loudly enough for him to hear – and when she was sure he couldn’t see her face – she murmured to Mark, ‘Yes, but where on earth’s he going to find one?’

There was no denying it; when you were in the mood, writing a really bitchy review was fun.

And easy, too. The six-hundred word piece practically wrote itself.

‘Was the chef at the Songbird having an off-day,’ Liza tapped into her word processor, ‘or a day off?’

Too cruel? N000.

.. I couldn’t help noticing the management’s advice to book early in order to avoid disappointment. Well, if you really want to avoid disappointment, my advice to you would be don’t book at all.’

Unfair? Unkind? Maybe, but it was the truth.

.. unable to face the prospect of coffee, we left. Happily, the day wasn’t totally wasted. On our way home we stopped at Reg’s mobile café on the A46. Reg’s egg and chips,’ Liza concluded with a flourish, ‘were heaven on a plate. Not a speck of burnt garlic in sight.’

True? Well, not quite. Reg’s had been shut. But if he had been open, she was sure she would have enjoyed his egg and chips.

Chapter 3

Liza might have envied Dulcie her marriage but as far as Dulcie was concerned, marriage sucked.

Anyway, she had made her New Year’s resolution now. And she was jolly well going to keep it.

Yes, it was a shame, especially when everyone was forever telling you how lucky you were to be married to someone as dishy and wonderful as Patrick Ross in the first place, but they didn’t know what it was really like. Because what was the point of having a dishy and wonderful husband when you hardly ever got the chance to experience his dishyness because all he ever did was bloody work work work?

It was particularly annoying, Dulcie mused, when you had been so sure you’d hit the marital jackpot. After years of falling for the wrongest men imaginable – and boy, had she had a talent for sniffing them out – meeting Patrick had come as such a shock to the system she’d barely known how to handle him. It had taken her months to learn to trust him, to realise she didn’t need to know how to handle Patrick, because he wasn’t playing an elaborate trick on her, he actually was as nice as he seemed.