Actually it's been a week of lunches.
A dear friend who we are also publishing suggested I meet her at her club where, in mid-Marion marriage rant, she interrupted and gushed about her new best friend AA Gill whose comments on the meal we were eating (apparently the salad was 'an abortion' ie okay up to 28 weeks and available on the NHS) she conveyed along with just how much she loved him. I think I may have been supposed to ask about the circumstance of their new best friends status but to be frank, I didn't care. I was too busy settling myself into the self-pity express of my own life. I wouldn't have cared if she had told me he had split up from his partner - oh no - that's would be me. And apparently passing this news on is the one thing that elicited an email response from her friend and my acquaintance, Harry.
You told him? I asked.
Yes, she said looking really, really worried. Well it isn't a secret is it? I mean, I met Sarah the other night and she knew.
This is true, but I told Sarah myself. Sarah (ex-Posh book club member) and I are friends and sporadic keeper-in-touchers and I see her regularly on an irregular basis. I haven't seen Harry since Louise (another ex-Posh book club member) had her 50th birthday and that was three years ago, and before that, well I simply can't remember. He's all married up and laden with children now - he hasn't called me in living memory. Hearing I had split from my husband might be a good place to rekindle the friendship but no, my email remains Harryless. I suppose bad news is like flu, you just want to pass it on as quickly as possible and you don't want to hang around the person who's suffering from it.
'He was very shocked,' I think she said, but I can't be sure as I wasn't really listening, I was sitting feeling cowed at my little crumbling life being just another item on the In Brief column at the back of the Home Gossip Network. It's inevitable, I suppose, and there's no malice in it, only sympathy, but it still smarts to be the one discussed rather than joining in the discussion. It still really hurts to be the subject of a Cautionary Tale.
'Can you come to dinner next Saturday?' She asked.
I told her that I couldn't because I'll be under canvas at the Lammer Tree Festival, being all peace and love, mud and wellies, chemical toilets and world music, like blissed-out man.
'Well, never mind, she said. When I told Louise, she suggested that the four of us go out for dinner soon.'
'You told Louise as well?' I asked, my voice obviously betraying some shock, given the expression on dear friend's face who now just look like she wanted to shoot herself before I put my head in my hands and wept.
'Well she got in touch with me - it wasn't like I rang her or anything. She wanted me to sponsor her for a fun run.'
To me the words fun and run just don't go together, but then that's why Louise looks like Louise and I look like pre-Diet Fern Brittan, without the ever present smile. Mind you, I don't really know what Louise looks like (glamorous and thin as ever I assume) as I haven't seen her since her for years either.
However, I really didn't feel that she needed to be included in the bulletin of My Life as a Kicked Dog.
Nevertheless, she got the memo.
So for those of you out there who may have missed the front page advert in this morning's Guardian:
Yes, as previously stated. I now have an ex where I previously had a husband.
And depending on your next question, please just choose the appropriate option below
Answer 1: In a flat in Shepherd's Bush.
Answer 2: Yes
Answer 3: 42
Answer 4: Just like me but a lot uglier.
Answer 5: No, she lives abroad
Answer 6: No, he says he can't live there.
Answer 7: Almost two years.
Answer 8: No
Answer 9: No
Answer 10: Devastated
So I hope that deals with any queries this may raise, but feel free to get in touch if there's anything else you want to know.
