When I woke up, my wife had gone. Where my wife's head should have been on the pillow was a letter. I read it. Then I started to hiccup.

"!" I gulped.

I went out into the garden. A strange girl wandered into the garden.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"!" I hiccupped. "I'm John." My wife's name is Janet. I know what you're thinking. Janet and John. "And - ! - who are you?"

"I'm Susie," she said. "I'm just one of those strange characters that turn up from time to time in pretentious books for no apparent reasons. You won't see me again until the end."

I went indoors to get dressed. It wasn't hard as all my clothes are the same. Janet used to find that strange. I'm an indexer by profession, but a lot of people don't find it very interesting. I like to think I'm an idiot savant; really I'm just an idiot.

Janet and I live in a very expensive house in Putney. She was given it by her ex-lover, Gareth. My family are rather envious, especially my sister Sarah, who was about to get married.

"I'm Wasia," said the attractive Indian woman standing next to me at the reception.

"!" I replied. I didn't know her. She was a conceptual artist gatecrashing the wedding. I turned to Sarah. "Isn't it sad Franky isn't here?"

"You spoil everything."

It's Brenda, here. John's mother. I'd like to tell you how my eldest daughter was murdered. It doesn't add anything to the story, but it takes up lots of pages and gives an impression of pathos.

My phone rang. It was Janet. "I'm in India," she said. She was lying. Her note had said the reason she'd left me was because of my wardrobe. I searched it and found a phone number. It was bound to be Gareth's. She was back with him.

"Let me meet your family," said Wasia, after we'd been to a nightclub and I'd written an unconvincing chapter on cocaine and ecstasy.

"!" I replied, and she picked up her camera.

Later that week I appeared on Remember This, a radio programme about lost love. I told everyone Janet had gone back with Gareth. Gareth phoned in to say he was happily married, and that the number wasn't his. It turned out to be the local cinema.

"I hate you," said Wasia. "You take no interest in me." But she still invited me to her show of photographs of my family. People laughed.

Janet here. I didn't go to India. I stayed in Greece. I only married John because I had contempt for him and his clothes. Now I've told him I'm in Australia, and anywhere I go now can only bring me closer to him.

Susie turned up and tidied the house and then Janet reappeared."!" I said. "You're back." My hiccups vanished as she traced a four-letter word. But I only picked up the first L.

The digested read ... digested

It's a hiccup for John, but a migraine for everyone else