I’m not passing any comments, I’m just saying it’s surprising, that’s all. I wouldn’t have had her down as someone with a happy-ever-after addiction. Anyway, as chance would have it, a few days later I had a chance to ask her about it. A proper conversation, that is, as opposed to the monosyllabic grunts that I normally get out of her. She had some kind of bug and she wasn’t making it up either, I knew by her face that she was genuinely ill. The giveaway was that Sharon loves nothing more than to talk about the food she’s going to eat, while already eating. But this particular day, she physically turned green at the sight of me opening the fridge and producing the leftover pizza from last night, which would be her normal breakfast.

‘Do you want me to ring in sick for you?’ I offered.

She look at me, surprised at my being nice to her. ‘Jeez, would you mind? It’s not a word of a lie either. Look at the state of me, I’m sicker than a plane to Lourdes.’

So I rang Smiley Burger for her and over-egged it, as you do on these occasions, making it sound to the sixteen-year-old junior floor manager that she was in stage four of swine flu. ‘Well, if she’s that unwell, she can have the day off,’ he said. ‘But no more. Back to work tomorrow, Saturday, no excuses.’ So, all delighted, Sharon settled onto the sofa for a twenty-four-hour TV marathon.

Now it so happened that particular Friday was the very day Sam was due to travel to Marbella with Eva and Nathaniel, so I was on double doses of Zanax and moving around the house at quarter speed. I really did try my best to get through my list of jobs, thinking that hard work and manual labour was just what I needed to distract me, but no such luck. Sure, how could it? By then I was clutching at straws thinking, maybe, just maybe, he didn’t go on the trip at all. Maybe he figured he’d only miss me too much. Which of course was immediately followed by the tacked-on awful, aching thought, So if that’s the case, why hasn’t he just picked up the phone to call me?OK, I decided, enough with the housework. Need a distraction. Need telly. So I plonked down on the sofa beside Sharon. But, as bad luck would have it, she was watching one of those glossy holiday magazine programmes about Spain, full of sandy beaches and sangria and fabulous tapas bars. Where I should have been headed to with my boyfriend, right there and then. Suddenly, it was just all too much for me and next thing I was howling, really wailing from the bitter depths like I hadn’t allowed myself to do in weeks and with nothing to wipe my nose in, only a J Cloth that smelt of Mr Sheen.

Sharon looked over at me, puzzled and confused, not knowing what to do with me, without back-up. If Maggie was here, she’d cut me down with some one-liner and they’d both snigger at my expense and that would be that. But Maggie wasn’t there. It was just her and I, alone.

‘Ehh…Jessie, what’s wrong with you? Is this about me asking you to dust my room?’ she asked tentatively, clearly uncomfortable with all overt displays of emotion.

‘No,’ I wailed back at her. ‘It’s just…’ But I was too choked to finish the sentence, so I just waved the J Cloth vaguely in the direction of the TV instead.

‘Oh!’ she said, misinterpreting. ‘’Cos if you hate travel shows that much, I can easily change the channel for you.’

‘It’s not the travel show,’ I sobbed bitterly. ‘It’s…it’s…’ Then I looked over to where she was sprawled out under my duvet, looking a lot weaker and more defenceless than she normally would. And so in that second, I made a snap decision. What the hell, having someone to confide in and talk to was better than no one, even if she mightn’t exactly be the most sympathetic of audiences. ‘Sharon, can I ask you something?’

She just looked at me, puzzled.

‘Have you ever had your still-beating heart ripped out and dangled in front of you by a man you loved so much that it hurt? Because if you have, then you’ll know exactly how I’m feeling right now.’

There was a long pause and I swear I could physically see her weighing up whether or not she could talk to me. Really confide in me, I mean, girl to girl. Then a thought struck me. God, maybe Sharon with her romance addiction did once have a boyfriend, maybe more than one and maybe she too came off worst like I did and just maybe…it could be something we could bond over. Maybe. An outside shot I know but stranger things have happened.

‘No,’ she said, firmly.

Now I could have let this go, but some voice in my head told me not to.

‘Well, if you’ve never had your heart broken, never once in your whole life,’ I sobbed, ‘then lucky you.’

Then it all came pouring out, about how right then I should have been snuggled up with Sam on a flight to Malaga, how much I miss him every day, how I just don’t work without him. Simple as that. Maybe it was just the release of being able to actually talk about him out loud after so long, instead of just having endless conversations about him in my head, but pretty soon the tears started to dry up and the howling abated. I looked over to Sharon, where she was staring back at me, with a funny look on her face.

There was a long, long pause where I was silently willing her to say something. Anything. After all, I’d just spilt my guts out on the table in front of her, surely this was something that might, in theory, bring us a bit closer?

Eventually she spoke. ‘Well, if you ask me…’

‘Yeah?’ I said, hopefully.

‘That fella Sam Hughes is just a big knobhead. With no knob.’

‘Oh right. Well thanks then.’

‘And his hair is very tufty. I mean, I know I’ve only seen him in photos, but he always struck me as having seriously crap hair.’

OK, so it wasn’t exactly the Gettysburg address, but nonetheless one small step for mankind and all that. So then I figured, the least I can do for her is ask her if there was anything she needed. Quid pro quo and all that. ‘Emm, do you want me to call a doctor?’ I offered tentatively.

‘No, ta. I just drank a bad pint last night. There’s nothing really that wrong with me.’

‘Dad’s last words,’ I said and we both smiled.

But if I thought I’d chipped away at some of her armour and gained an ally here in the Hammer House of Hell for myself, I was sadly mistaken. Because that night as soon as Maggie got home, it was right back to the grunts and monosyllables and horribleness. So that’s my relationship with Sharon for you then. A perpetual game of one step forward, two steps back.

God I miss my old life. Back then, I used to hold actual, proper conversations with people. We would discuss art, politics, music, culture, whatever was going on in the world. Well, actually, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, as a lot of what I used to talk about was a load of gossipy shite, but you get my point. I once lived a life where you conversed with other human beings and they conversed back and it was all lovely. Now the only person from those glory days who bothers contacting me is Emma. Even though she’s down in Wexford with her family, she still calls regularly, telling me to keep the faith, that everything will be OK. Sending a bright blast of positive energy through my day. Course, that rosy glow only ever lasts for about three seconds or so after I hang up, but you see what I mean. It’s cheering to think that at least someone remembers me and is actually prepared to talk to me. Because the golden rule in this house is that you’re never, ever in any circumstances allowed to talk while the TV is on, which is pretty much most of the time, and basically if my stepsisters aren’t watching TV then they’re talking about it. And nothing else. You want to hear some of the conversations.

For instance, last night, myself, Maggie and Sharon were tucked in front of the TV watching an old black and white movie on TCM, Brief Encounter.Or rather, they were watching it and I was supposed to be dusting in the background, but then exhaustion got the better of me, so I just collapsed down on the end of the sofa beside them and no one said anything. Wonderful, poignant, romantic tearjerker of a movie and all Maggie could say was, ‘Could you imagine how much easier life would have been if they’d just all had mobile phones back then? No pissing around waiting on some bloke in a railway station in the back arse of nowhere, for starters.’ Then we watched Pride and Prejudice,one of my all-time favourite books and movies and as the credits rolled, Sharon’s one and only comment was, ‘Jaysus. Imagine living in a world with no gay men.’ So then they switched over to a TV documentary called Three Sisters Make a Baby,about one sister who surrogates for another, so the third can adopt the baby.