We stayed friends, on and off. We would probably be married now, if I hadn't loved her. For a long time my life was hinged on a fantasy that she would change. I used to buy houses for her to live in, rambling country retreats and elegant city flats, but she never came. When I mentioned love she would stop seeing me for months at a time, and during these periods I tried to forget her. I made some money, met a woman and had a child, got divorced and went bankrupt. But at the end of it all Caro was still there.

It was rare that she called me. Caro had a lot of friends. I hadn't seen her for nearly a year and things were picking up. My girlfriend, Annie, had just moved in with me and I was starting to believe in love again, so I paused just a little before accepting Caro's invitation to dinner. Annie looked worried when I kissed her goodbye and part of me just wanted to call it off and stay at home, like I probably should have done fifteen years before. But Caro sounded in a bad way.

She didn't look so bad though. A bit thinner, more tired. She was barefaced and she always looked plain without her make-up. I don't think it was ever beauty that made people love Caro.

I hugged her but she avoided my lips so I just kissed the side of her head before she extricated herself and went to the fridge.

"I'm so glad you came, Sam," she said, handing me a beer. "Now sit down and tell me everything."

"I thought you wanted to talk to me."

"Yes," she said. "Later."

I would have pushed it but Caro began asking me questions and, as always, she knew what I needed to talk about. Divorce, pain, separation, Caro wolfed it down and I felt myself getting lighter and lighter as I toyed with the plate of food in front of me. A whole trout sat watching me regurgitate the last year.

"I've missed you," I said.

Caro snorted.

"You must be mad," she said. "After all I've done to you? You should hate me."

I took a small mouthful of trout. The flesh was pinkly succulent, almost alive.

"I've never heard you say that before," I told her. "That you treated me badly. Sometimes you even made me believe it was all in my head."

She bit her lip.

"Yes, I know, I've messed you about. Sam - I'm sorry - you know how I am - that's why I wanted to see you so much. You know me Sam, don't you? You know how foul I am and yet you still want to see me."

I could feel a small fish-bone stuck in my throat and I coughed. I was trying to concentrate on what she was telling me but I felt like I was about to choke.

"You're the only one who knows," she was saying. "The only one I can really talk to." She frowned at me. "Are you okay?"

I nodded, tears welling in my eyes and went into the bathroom. After some violent coughing I felt better, but I could still feel a sharpness at the back of my throat. She handed me a glass of water when I returned, and rubbed my back.

"Okay?"

"Yep." My voice sounded a bit strange. "What were you saying?"

"Oh nothing - maudlin rubbish - I'm sorry, Sam, I'm not much company at the moment."

"What's been going on?"

She didn't really tell me. We took some wine into her lounge and lay end-to-end on her sofa and somehow I got talking about me again, my plans and my fears, and by midnight I was still no clearer what it was that Caro had wanted to talk to me about. She had split up with a lover, she'd been ill, she had no money, but all that was nothing new. I don't know what it was I was reaching out for but I reached out to her anyway and pulled her next to me.

Caro had never liked kissing. Not mouth-to-mouth, that is. Someone told me prostitutes don't do it either. But she buried her face in my neck and licked my shoulders, and then she lifted up my T-shirt and kissed the hairs on my belly. Her breathing quickened suddenly and I felt her shiver as she moved downwards and pressed her breasts against the lump in my jeans. I kept very still as her hands tightened around my buttocks but then she groaned, long and low, and sat up with her hands over her eyes.

I let out my breath.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't know what came over me." She giggled.

There have been few women in my life whom I've wanted to hit. Possibly only one. I pulled my T-shirt down over my belly which now looked to me fat and sad. I swallowed, still feeling the sinister pricking in my throat.

"What do you want?" I asked her quietly.

"I think you'd better go home," she said. "Back to your nice little domestic haven."

It wasn't bitter. I couldn't work out what it was. I thought about Caro a lot over the next couple of weeks. I cursed her and wished her dead and swore never to see her again, but her voice kept creeping into my thoughts, "You're the only one I can really talk to."

I really expected her to phone. After all, she had wanted me. You could feel it in Caro like the tremor before an earthquake, and fifteen years hadn't calmed her at all. Like some moon-faced adolescent I kept catching myself still believing I could make her happy.

In the end I phoned her. I was going to give her a really hard time but I never got the chance .

"Sam? Oh my God I am really so sorry - I've been meaning to phone you but I just chickened out - I felt so horribly guilty."

She sounded happier than I'd heard her for years.

"So," I said. "What've you been up to?"

"Oh - gadding about - actually, Sam I've been dating - seriously - no shagging, dating."

I tried to make my voice sound casual. "Really? Who?"

"Well, he's called Marcus, and he's a stockbroker and he looks like Al Pacino and he takes me to all these expensive restaurants in his Jensen, and he makes me laugh all the time."

I felt slightly sick.

"Sounds brilliant," I said. "Well I was going to invite myself for dinner again, but are you too busy?"

"No, Sam of course not - I'd love to see you - I didn't think you'd want to see me, that's all."

"Why not?"

She paused.

"Well - you know - I was a bit of a prat, wasn't I?"

"Caro - you're always a prat."

She laughed, relieved.

"Next Tuesday?"

"Fine," I said. "Will Marco be there?"

"Marcus. No, just you and me."

She looked different, excited. She looked like the Caro of fifteen years before, not just because of the tiny mini-skirt which showed off her long legs, but more the shining in her huge eyes, the vitality which so many people must have mistaken for happiness. She hugged me back this time and for a moment I wondered if it was all to do with me after all. She gave me a beer and we sat by the window, looking at her garden. Caro was unusually silent.

"About last time," I ventured.

She pulled a face, an apologetic cringe.

"What was going on?" I asked.

"Nature."

I raised my eyebrows.

"You know something, Sam," she said. "Sometimes I feel like a rat in a cage, and there's this scientist peering down at me from this big laboratory in the sky. And sometimes he'll shove in another rat, a male one, to see what happens."

"Sorry," I said. "You've lost me."

"It's just - I mean - I can't help it,"she said. "It's a biological urge. Put me in a room with a man and the chances are I'll try and shag him."

"Any man?" I asked.

"Depends," she said thoughtfully, "on where I am in my menstrual cycle."

She looked at me and burst out laughing. "Oh, God, Sam, I'm sorry I don't mean that like it sounds it's just - don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about - you're the same, I know you are."

I smiled, thinking of all the women I'd been alone in rooms with.

"Nothing more than that?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"I'll just see to the dinner," she said.

"Actually, I'm not very hungry," I told her. "Can it wait?"

"Sure," she said, but she left the room anyway, to fetch some olives.

I was waiting to ask her about Marcus, of course, and when she returned I couldn't I hold back any longer. She started eating the olives, putting two or three in her mouth at once. Sometimes Caro got so hungry that she would bite the ends of her fingers, accidentally and painfully, as she pushed food into her mouth.

"So lets get this straight," I said, teasing her. "You're now dating a man and not shagging him?"

She laughed.

"That was last week."

"Well?"

"Well it was odd, Sam. I've known Marcus ages, vaguely, always thought he was drop-dead gorgeous, in fact about a year ago I made a pass at him and he refused."

"Refused? One of the few who got away?"

"Be serious! You know, he was in a steady relationship and all that, and I coped admirably with the humiliation. He went to South America and then suddenly - there he is, back on my doorstep - every evening!"

"Changed his mind?"

"Well - obviously - but he took his time, I mean I just spent two weeks eating like the queen and him dropping me off home every night - and driving away."

"And then?"

She smiled out of the window and I began to feel sick again.

"And then we did it," she said, staring at the flowers. "It was just the most perfect evening and it ended, well ... perfectly." She smiled. "The next day I was grinning all over my face like the cat that got the cream and I was so happy, Sam. Everyone kept asking me what had happened. And you know, Marcus phoned me from work and said he'd been smiling all day too - and everyone was asking him what had happened. It was like the world changed - off we went to our little jobs but it was all different - we were both different - do you understand?"

I sighed.

"Do you mean you're in love?"

Caro raised her eyebrows, like the idea had never occurred to her.

"In love?"

"Well - what's happening?"

So she told me again what had happened. How he had taken her to his favourite restaurant and fed her huge mussels full of quivering meat, all the time looking into her eyes. He never stopped looking into her eyes, she said, all night long.

I hated him already. I hated him for his big brown eyes and his wit and his flash car and his beautiful body which Caro had said nearly made her cry. But I wanted desperately to meet him, to prove to myself that he was worthless and could never, for all of this, make Caro happy.

"So," I said. "When are we going to make up a foursome? What about bringing Marcus for dinner next week - it's about time you met Annie, too."

She looked at me strangely, as if she didn't quite understand. But it was me who wasn't understanding.

"Oh no, Sam. No - that's it really. I shan't see Marcus again."

"But - the way you were talking - I thought ..."

"Yes," she said. "Yes, we could draw it out, I suppose. But why spoil it? I don't ever want to lose that perfection, Sam. I don't ever want to see him flossing his teeth."

"So?"

"So that's it," she said smiling. "This way I guess I'll love him forever."

I couldn't really talk much more about love that evening. We just gossiped and ate dinner and I hid my hopeless feelings until I was safely in the car. Driving home I was glad I hadn't told Caro what I thought. I had always tried to change her, to make her live like everyone else, and I think it was only on that journey home that I realised she never would. In a way it would have been easier for me if she had stayed with Marcus. I wanted her tied up. I wanted someone to stop her chasing the dream, because then I could stop believing that the dream might be me.

Annie was getting ready for bed when I got in and she hugged me hard through her pyjamas. Her face was shiny and she smelled very familiar, comfortable, of soap and the TCP ointment she had rubbed on a spot on her chin. I was thinking about love as I followed her into the bathroom and stood watching as she brushed her teeth.

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