So the train shuffles in and Camilla, who is driving Mike's Jag, is waiting for me imperiously in the bus lane at Reading station. Before I left the house I had carefully washed my hair and with no time to dry it properly, twisted it into a style that - if left alone like a sleeping dog and not disturbed - will result in long gentle, glossy curls. After twenty minutes in an open topped Jag, however, the sleeping dog was howling at the moon. People watched us drive past but I know it was the car they were admiring not us. Camilla is, well, teapot shaped, while I was really working the Kim Bassinger look in 8 Mile by the time I unfolded myself from the very low seat - which, for those of you who think the comparison a tad conceited - is not something to emulate. As my daughter reminded me - far from crawling around on her knees in a blindfold a la 91/2 weeks, in 8 Mile she lived in a trailer and was an alcoholic. Over the hill, Kimmie, here I come...
Mike and Camilla, however, do not live in a trailer but in a converted manor house deep in the country in one of those places hyphenated with on-Thames, which is full of dogs and sepia portraits of dead relatives; one of which (the dogs, not the rellies), having been left in the house a bit too long by himself, had spectacularly decorated the otherwise spotless, gleaming tiles of their entrance hall. From this echoing, glittering and hurriedly air-freshened, hall there is a vast sitting room full of white sofas attentively placed to worship the wide screen television rather than the (non-working) Adam fireplace, and another equally huge dining room which holds only a grand piano. The master bedroom in an adjoining room boasts a Camilla and Mike sized Tudor replica four poster on the basis that if it was big enough for Henry VIII then it would easily accommodate their expansive frames with plenty of wriggle room, which faces double doors leading out to the rolling parkland that surrounds the manor house. Each room, including the kitchen, is big enough to fit the entire floorplan of my house. However, at least my kids don't shit on the floor.
Yet.
The couple have just moved there needing, as Camilla put it 'a smaller place now that the kids are gone' and it fairly makes my teeth ache with envy when I hear the words 'kids' and 'gone'in the same sentence and then compare how we are all crammed into our tiny, overcrowded, stuff-filled bedrooms and have so much space that their dogs can use the marble entry hall as a toilet. What must the last house have looked like? However their place is also poignantly empty with not a trace of human habitation. The kitchen, with an Aga and the obligatory scrubbed pine table holds only dog food in sacks and a pair of slouching hounds, one of which, for reasons that become apparent when I stroke the other, lives in a cage. I pet the loose doggy and the other beast snarls, bares its sharp teeth and flattens itself to the bars of the cage, rabidly angry. I decide the kitchen is not my favourite room, and am glad of the gin that is pressed into my hand, though it's only lunch time.
At six, we all pile into the Jag, me in the back this time like one of the pets (who thankfully are left behind and not on either side of me with their his and hers tongues hanging out the side window, or worse, their teeth in my face) and on our way to Henley and the drill hall where a makeshift theatre has been assembled with folding chairs laid out in uneven rows. Mike sits on one side of me, Camilla on the other, both of their bottoms spilling off their allotted space, close enough to make me feel, well, very, very cosy. The play is called LOL which, for those of you familiar with modern shorthand will know means either 'lots of love' or 'laugh out loud' - in this instance, since it was a comedy, possibly both. It is a one woman show which, on reading the flyer, I discover, is about internet dating.
Ironic?
No, deliberate.
'We thought you'd like it,' smiles Camilla confidently, whispering ginly into my ear.
'What with you doing all the internet dating now you're single,' trumpets Mike. 'We thought it might strike a chord!' He and Camilla nodded at each other with me sandwiched in the middle, suddenly feeling like a very big gooseberry, as well as publically outed in Henley as a serial internet dater.
'I am not actually on the internet.' I protest.
'But you wrote that very funny article in Woman and Home, dear, all about it.' says Camilla.
'I write about a lot of things I don't really do. You know, exaggeration, hyperbole. I did have a few dates last year..'
'A lot of dates, Camilla said.' Mike protested.
'No, not a lot, one or two, Camilla.' I say reproachfully. 'And I'm not doing it any more. I am afraid to look around me at my fellow members of the audience being as I now had 'sad' and 'desperate' flashing on and off over my head.
'I am seeing someone.' I say loudly, just so the people in the front row can hear.
'And didn't you meet your new young man on one of those dating things.'
'My new young man is 49. And no, I didn't. I met him through work.'
'My mistake, dear, my mistake. I thought you met him on the internet.' Camilla pats my hand, and Mike my thigh being so supportive they were leaving bruises. I want, frankly, to die. But luckily, just then the house lights go down and the actress appearrs fake ironing, while a litany of all-too familiar profiles are read out parroting the cliches of men selling themselves on dating sites where they're all looking for love, but unfortunately have to make do with you.
Camilla chortles. Mike hoots. My hand and thigh are gripped in a way that I'm not by the story which, like their handholds, are a bit near the bone for me just at this moment. All in all, it is not the most comfortable hour I've spent at the theatre and, believe me, I've cringed through my fair share of drama. It's not usually quite so pertinent, though.
Afterwards we have dinner where I discover that the curse of the single woman seems to have extended to Henley. I don't quite understand why it is that when I was married I was often invited to dinner with my husband even though he rarely managed to go since he was often travelling. This meant I usually turned up alone. This didn't seem to be a problem with most people because in any case my husband hated socialising, made Bisto look exciting and his idea of small talk was to say 'yes' or 'no' to any question he was asked. It's not like he was exactly scintillating company. However, now that he's gone, I don't merit an invitation to those same dinner parties. Perhaps divorce is catching - like Swine Flu - and nobody want to risk being infected? Or perhaps the wives think I'm going to run off with their husbands who have been flirting with me and groping me for the past twenty years but whose advances, somehow, I've managed to resist - though interestingly, that's all stopped too now that the men are afraid I might take them up on it. Relax, chaps, I won't. In any case, apparently the divorced no longer eat, or at least can only eat at tables where there are no other couples they might contaminate. So of course it's just Camilla, Mike and me. I'm the third wheel. The only one in the restaurant.
'So tell me all about your young man.' Asks Camilla waving a large glass of red ominously in the direction of my pink frock which matches Mike's complexion.
'He's not that young, just a couple of years younger than me. I mean, I didn't get him at the Toy Boy Warehouse.'
'The what?'
'Toy Boy Warehouse - it's an internet site for men who like older women, or older women who like younger men, depending on how you look at it.'
'Oh dear.' Camilla looks a little shocked.
'So I'm told,' I add hurriedly. 'But why not? All men my age are looking for younger women. Why shouldn't we do the same?'
'Personally, I don't understand why a man would want a younger woman.' says Mike. 'I mean one would have nothing in common with them, would one?' He sips his own large glass of red, looks at me and muses. 'I mean, one might be able to get a gorgeous young thing instead of you, but one would be far better off with a nice ripe, mature woman like yourself.'
Gee, thanks, I think, Mike. I smile weakly, suddenly feeling like a hunk of Stilton.
'Darling, not all men want young things!' Camilla scolds. 'But it is a shame, isn't it? I mean you're not getting any younger, and in a couple of years you'll be...'
Stabbing myself with the fork, right into my neck...
'Well there's always Logan's Run...' says Mike, and laughs heartily.
Indeed.
Camilla and Mike, incidentally. Not my friends on Facebook.
