PROLOGUE

I was going to be late. Again. Even though I am devoutly agnostic, I was praying while on the Gatwick Express. It was my only hope of getting to the airport for 7.45AM, the latest I could check-in for my flight home to Glasgow. But it wasn’t working. The train seemed to be moving at a slower pace than a brontosaurus.

Suddenly, an image of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland appeared in my mind. He was clutching a large, golden pocket watch while huffing and puffing, ‘I’m late! I’m late!’ My own version of the frantic refrain started playing on a loop: ‘Come on, come on, please God, come fucking on. I'm late! I’m late! I’m LATE, LATE, LATE, LATE, LATE, LATE, LATE. Arrrrrrgggggghhhh!'

Every few minutes, I tried to distract myself by reading a newspaper or listening to my iPod. But it was futile. The words I was staring at disintegrated en route from my retina to my cortex. They could have been written in Chinese or Arabic for all the sense they made to me. So I tossed the newspaper back into my bag. As for my ‘favourites’ playlist, I could only tolerate the first five seconds of each tune before fast-forwarding to the next one. My top twenty tracks were condensed into 100 seconds. I couldn't concentrate on anything other than time. Every ounce of my energy was devoted to trying to deliver subliminal messages to the train driver to crank up his speed. When I closed my eyes I saw, seared into my inner lids, a giant egg timer with luminous pink grains of sand trickling away at what seemed like an ever-increasing rate. When I opened them, I stared psychotically at the clock on my mobile phone and watched another precious minute as it disappeared.

I'd already missed two flights the previous week. This would make it three in ten days. Somehow, this seemed slightly too chaotic. As was the fact that I had also, the previous week, picked up my ninth penalty point for speeding and narrowly escaped having my driver’s licence taken away altogether. In the 'losing it' stakes this wasn't quite on a par with Britney Spears shaving her head in public, but I can see now that I was obviously trying to communicate something.

My sister, Louise, and our mutual friend, Katy, who both work as therapists in the famous Priory chain of private psychiatric hospitals (Britain's answer to the Betty Ford clinic for people with addictions, depression and other mental health problems), and who have an annoying habit of being right about most things, have always inferred a lot from my perpetual lateness. They say it's a sign of repressed anger and inherent selfishness, and they look at me with pity when I insist it's just because I am hopelessly disorganized and I don't like to wear a watch ('I don't want my life to be ruled by time,' I once declared, provoking widespread ridicule).

This issue had reached its tearful nadir a few years ago during a night out to celebrate Louise's upcoming wedding. I burst into the restaurant, over an hour late, with a gushing apology and a rosy glow on my face. I'd been having fun and lots of it with my lovely new boyfriend. It was the first time in six years that I'd managed to sustain a relationship for more than half a dozen dates and the sense of achievement together with the early flush of love was making me feel somewhat euphoric. But I was brought quickly back to earth when Louise and Katy launched their verbal assault. Could I be any more selfish? How special did I think I was? Did I not realise that my constant tardiness indicated passive-aggression and an overdeveloped sense of self-importance combined with massively low self-esteem?

'I just lost track of time,' I whimpered pathetically. 'I was having fun. With my new boyfriend. I thought you'd be happy for me. And anyway, this is Louise's
second wedding. It's not that big a deal. Surely.'

I tried not to think about their comments (or mine) that morning as the Gatwick Express approached its destination. Instead, I noticed that my heart was pounding, my palms were sweating and I had the first signs of a self-induced tension headache coming on. Breathe in, hold, breathe out, I coached myself while I waited for the train to stop. Before the doors were even half opened, I had squeezed through them like a greased weasel and was running as fast as I could towards the lift and escalator. They were jam-packed. I eventually arrived, breathless and perspiring, at the check-in desk, only thirty seconds late. I actually felt quite pleased. Compared with my recent form, this was progress.

When the assistant said the flight was delayed for forty-five minutes, adding that she'd ask her supervisor if I could slip through, I was ecstatic, filled with hope and optimism and thanking my lucky star or whoever it was out there who always seemed to bring me back from the brink of disaster. Unfortunately, the good vibes ended abruptly moments later when she sauntered back with the bad news.

'Please,' I looked at her beseechingly. 'It's an emergency. You see, I'm a journalist and...' I paused. '...and I have a really important interview to do with, er, um, er, the First Minister of Scotland.' I said this in the sort of tone that would be better suited for someone who had just landed a world exclusive with Osama bin Laden.

But even if I had had a date with the world's most wanted man, I doubt it would have made any difference. Judging by the expression on the assistant's face, she was not about to be swayed by the highly pressured demands of my chosen profession.

So I changed tack. 'This isn't just about my job,' I lied frantically, 'I absolutely need to get home as a matter of urgency because my...' I hesitated for a moment, crossed my fingers inside my coat pocket, then continued: 'I need to get home urgently because my gran's, um, my gran's been taken ill.'

She looked at me with sympathy. Or perhaps it was pity. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But my supervisor said no. And she told me to point out that our check-in desks close exactly 30 minutes before the scheduled departure of the flight and that we do strongly recommend checking in two hours before departure.'

I opened my eyes as wide as they would go and didn't blink for a while in an attempt to stop the tears of self-pity that were threatening to erupt and were already blurring my vision, which probably made me look deranged. 'Please. I know you probably get all sorts of chancers concocting all kinds of ridiculous excuses to try to get through. People who think they're so special that the normal rules don't apply to them. That they're somehow exempt. But I promise I'm not making this up. My gran's just had a...' I paused. 'My gran's just been rushed to h...h...h...'

No. I couldn't say it. I couldn't say that my little old gran, an amazing ninety-three-year-old woman, had been taken to hospital with something terrible in case she ever was and I'd have to shoulder that terrible burden of responsibility for the rest of my life. Imagine the bad karma.

The assistant looked at me with a knowing smile. 'There's another flight in three hours.’

'THREE. HOURS.' These two little words sent a signal straight to the floodgates, bursting them open. 'Three hours. My gran could be d...d...d...' I sobbed and stuttered. Carried away by my own performance, I'd apparently managed to convince myself that my grandmother, who would have been at home doing her knitting while waiting patiently for This Morning to come on, had actually taken seriously unwell. 'My gran. Three hours. Anything can happen in three hours. My gran's ninety-three. Nine. Three. Can you imagine being nearly a hundred years old, sitting in your high-rise, lonely, waiting for, you know...just waiting? Your time, your precious time, running out.'

I went on to rant about the unfairness of it all: about passengers getting penalised when they're late; but the airline getting off scot-free when it's delayed. 'It's a travesty,' I said, my lips quivering.

I wiped the snot dripping from my nose with the back of my hand before storming off to the bar, still sobbing and mumbling an ignoble string of obsenities under my breath, not giving a damn who saw me or how demented I must have looked.

The targets of my rage included: budget airline companies for their double standards and appalling inflexibility; the check-in assistant for not being able to persuade her jobsworth supervisor to let me through; and Britain's entire railway network for failing in its duty to get me to the airport on time in the first place.

This would never have happened in fucking Germany or fucking Switzerland, with their super-efficient, integrated and well-invested transport systems, I thought, as I fleetingly considered moving. And it wouldn't have happened if I'd been travelling with British Airways, I thought, vowing never to travel budget again. And if it wasn't for that supervisor being such a petty bitch, well I'd be sitting on that plane - that one out on the tarmac, right now. The one that's not going to take-off for another fucking hour.

It was everyone’s fault, anyone’s fault, but my own. Scapegoats were my best buddies. I was surrounded by them and oh, how I loved them. Blaming them was my default position and was far easier than facing up to the uncomfortable and inconvenient facts: that I had a complete and utter lack of personal responsibility; that I'd wasted hundreds of pounds that I could ill-afford on unnecessary flight changes and hotel bills in the past few weeks as a result, and, worst of all, that I'd just invented a desperate and morally indefensible lie in a vain attempt to save my own skin.

Five minutes later, I had broken my rule of never drinking before lunchtime, and was sinking into the soothing embrace of a lovely, strong gin and tonic. The scapegoat was swiftly demoted to second best friend. While the early-morning alcohol began to course through my veins, the rest of the world went about its normal activities around me: businessmen and women talking on their mobiles as they rushed to catch a plane; friends squeaking excitedly as they waited to go on holiday; young couples with their hands entwined, in love, talking and laughing and gazing adoringly at each other, oblivious to everyone but each other.

They are going to get fucking married and have fucking children and live happily ever fucking-well after, I thought, struggling to stop myself from resenting complete strangers. Then I quickly soothed myself with the comforting thought that it wouldn't last; that he'd soon get bored and run off with someone else - a younger, prettier
model - because that's what always happens.

Would I ever be able to form a normal, mature, functional relationship with the male of the species, I wondered. I'd been offered this and more, but when it was there on a plate for me, I had bolted, too afraid and not yet ready, willing or able to give up my cherished freedom and independence. Instead I'd chosen to walk open-eyed into the most destructive relationship of my life.

In the recesses of my bag my mobile phone still held a saved message from Emily, one of my best friends. It was a week old. I opened it and read it for something like the 200th time. 'Sorry Lor. But u asked 2 be told. They were seen having another v cosy tete-a-tete ystrday. Also heard she spent the morning in his office. Blinds closed!' I read it again. And again. And again, before hurling another silent stream of obloquy, this time directed at the two villains referred to in the message: Christian, a handsome, intelligent lawyer, who also happened to be married; and Charlotte, a legal trainee, who happened not to be his wife.

Although I'd never laid eyes on Charlotte, I had several well-informed sources who spent their days in the city's law courts and their evenings in the bars around the Merchant City area of Glasgow to help me fill in the blanks. According to these informants, Charlotte was stunning and clever and so petite that she had to buy all her clothes from kiddies' departments. (She didn't like to keep this burden to herself, however, and apparently made a point of telling every woman she met.) Being a size sub-zero wasn't the only cross she had to bear, though. It seemed she had no girlfriends because, as she reportedly repeatedly explained: 'I'm so pretty. Girls don't like me. They feel threatened by me. Which is why I prefer to play with the boys. It's why I'm a man's girl.' Oh, and Charlotte currently worshipped the ground Christian walked on. The problem was: so did I.

I know this is no defence or excuse, but I had spent my entire adult life regarding adultery as a crime almost as heinous as murder. Although I'd never exactly advocated death by stoning, I wasn't far off it. I held extreme views on this particular sin. During wine-fuelled conversations with my friends, I was the one who would vow with all my heart never, ever in a million years to cheat on a guy I was with or to inflict that kind of pain on another woman. I knew from experience the agony of betrayal and I had often pledged, with 100 per cent total absolute, conviction that I wouldn't do it. That I couldn't do it. It was immoral. I looked down from my perch on Other Women as pathetic, predatory homewreckers. (The guys? Well, guys are guys, aren’t they? How is a poor, helpless man supposed to resist when a devious, shameless woman’s throwing herself at him?)

And yet, and yet...there I was, the third point in a messy love triangle that appeared to be on the verge of flourishing into a thoroughly unholy love quadrangle.

Once I had crossed the line, I kind of split into two for my double life. When the two Lornas collided, the bad one told the good one that everyone was doing it - 80 per cent of people at some point in their lives, according to one convenient (if unscientific) survey I'd discovered - and, most importantly, that I had complete control over my feelings. 'I'm just having a little fun,' the devil said to the angel. 'I don't want him. I don't love him. I'm just being a little naughty for once in my life. Don't worry. Chill out. It's all under control.'

But when I found out about Charlotte, the Other Other Woman, I started behaving like a betrayed spouse in a novel, declaring my undying love to a bewildered Christian, and even scheming to ruin his life by telling his actual wife everything. I knew my reaction was not only tragically ironic - other adjectives which came to mind included inappropriate, disproportionate and completely misdirected – but I felt as if I was on the moon looking down at the earth through a telescope and eavesdropping on a story of someone else's screwed-up life. Only I wasn't. It was my screwed-up life.

A tear plopped into my gin and tonic. I was in serious danger of turning into the kind of pathetic person I'd always despised.

***
Two years earlier, I'd landed my dream job with the Observer, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world. My family was thrilled and proud. When I told my gran she was more excited than I was. She said she couldn't wait to tell the family, the neighbours, the health visitors and district nurses, then she asked if I'd get to meet the Pope. She was visibly disappointed to learn that it was the Observer (circulation nearly half a million; famous writers: George Orwell, Michael Frayn, Hugh McIllvanney et al) and not the (Scottish) Catholic Observer (circulation 16,000; famous writers: the local priest).

Although I too was initially ecstatic about my new job, I was also plagued by the never-ending feeling that I wasn't good enough for it, that they'd made some terrible mistake in appointing me. My sister, in an attempt to be helpful, would say things like 'dare to be average' or 'wake up to the fact that you're not that important' or she would point out something she'd read recently stating a little-known law of the universe: 87 percent of all people in all professions are incompetent.

Terrified that I might be exposed as one of the 87 per-centers (even though I told myself I was one of the lucky 13, or should that be unlucky 13?), I often fantasized about quitting, especially in the wake of the whole Christian debacle. And it wasn’t as if I lacked for other offers. Only a fortnight earlier I had been asked to move to Egypt to live with a lovely wealthy man I'd met on a family holiday who wanted to 'take care of me forever'. But, since I wasn't absolutely convinced that I wanted to be taken care of forever, even by a sexy Egyptian, I reluctantly turned him down and instead contemplated moving to a war zone to try my hand as a foreign correspondent. When it dawned on me that I was more au fait with the complete recordings of Take That than the events in the Gaza Strip, I reconsidered again.

***

Slurping down the remains of my early-morning refreshment, I realised that I was the only woman I knew in her mid-thirties - in fact, my 35th birthday was exactly one week away - who had neither a partner, nor mortgage nor even a cat. I was more commitment-phobic than most of my male friends. Like many women my age, I had wildly conflicting fears: of being trapped in a relationship with someone I wasn’t truly, madly, deeply in love with and of being alone. There was also the desire on the one hand to settle down and have children but, on the other, being afraid of giving up my beloved freedom and independence.

In the previous few weeks, several close friends and colleagues had gently suggested that I might want to think about 'seeing someone' (a shrink as opposed to a love interest). But my view of the whole therapy culture was not benevolent and fell somewhere between ridicule and revulsion. Why pay someone to tell me that I use humour, or at least try to, as a defence mechanism? Or to tell me why I don’t let anyone get too close? Or that I want my father’s approval? I already know all that. 'In therapy,' Louise once said, 'all that you thought you knew - about yourself and others - will be turned on its head.' Maybe that's what happens to other people, I thought, but not me. I know myself better than anyone else can ever know me.

That morning, however, I was no longer so convinced. I decided that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life never letting anyone in.

I thought again about my gran who, when she was in her thirties, was raising nine children single-handedly in a cramped tenement while her husband fought a war and worked in the dockyards. I compared my life to that of my own mum who, when she was my age, was working until dawn, doing the nightshift as a nurse on a geriatric ward and bringing up her two daughters while she coped with a husband who often worked away from home. I also remembered some of the remarkable people I'd been privileged to meet through my job as a journalist - individuals who had survived wars and genocide and who had suffered unimaginable losses in their lives, but had found incredible strength and resilience to carry on. The words of one man, who had lost a child in the most appalling circumstances, were indelible: ‘life cannot be postponed; it must be lived now; do not wait for something to happen, for some future illusory event to take place; do not wait until it's too late to learn how to live.'

When I thought about him I felt even more ashamed and guilty. What exactly was I waiting for? Is it one of the cruel ironies of being human that some terrible has to happen to you before you can really start to appreciate this one short life? I had a great job and great friends, perfect health, and yet I kept running away. From love. From commitment. My life was not tragic, but I was not happy and I was out of gear and I decided I was going to have to do something about it.

I opened a notebook I'd bought on my way to the bar. My intention had been to write to The Authorities about the country's transport problems. Instead I wrote Notes on a recovery on the first page and started to scribble. At the end of a twelve-page stream-of-consciousness ramble, I scrawled: 'I think I might need help.' It felt much easier to write than to say. But I knew I needed to do more than just commit my thoughts to paper. So, before the moment passed, I called Katy and asked for the number of the best therapist in town.