To celebrate Liz's birthday, another recently divorced friend is giving a dinner party at which, novelty of novelties, four of the five men there will be single.
I am instructed to attend.
I cannot but do my duty.
To protect the innocent names will be omitted but, lo, indeed there are single men, or at the very least, singleish. One fails to turn up because he has flu, whether Swine, Whine, or merely Man, I'm not sure but he was/is married to the pretty scientist we went to Guilty Pleasures with last year and claims have been made for his attractiveness. Now, we'll never know. Another is the rakish, silver fox type, I met before at one of Eva's openings as well as at Justin Marozzi's book launch - but he seems still to be seeing the statuesque ash blonde princess, so again - not as free as previously advertised and just about to drive off to Scotland in his Bentley so he can transport his guns. Yet another - tall, dark, handsome and curly headed is domiciled in France (with a man) and bats for the other team (but you had that at handsome, didn't you?), and of the remaining two, one is seeing the hostess and the other - HOLY GRAIL - does indeed seem to be unattached.
I'm almost afraid to say this in the public domain lest bands of women beat a path to our hostess's home in Shepherd's Bush and swarm around the door. Should I add that one of our merry band of men is childless and mad about babies, I would be trampled in the rush.
Having more than enough sauce in Worcester, I'm not looking (except in idle, and perfectly, natural curiosity) so I was firmly placed on the other side of the one eligible man and sandwiched between two of the taken. Candles were lit, Pims was drunk, champagne was opened, foie gras passed around on tiny pieces of girl-friendly bread, and sea bass on a bed of potatoes was served with saffron until, eventually, as you would expect from a room full of the almost unattached - one of whom the hostess met on Guardian Soulmates - the subject of the conversation turned to internet dating. We've nearly all done it - with varying degrees of success. Single man - a recent uptaker - has only been on two dates: one with a mystical Irish woman who believed in alien abduction and whose photograph he hadn't seen before meeting her (you can see he's new at this) and the second with a beautiful gamine Frenchwoman who had 'anger' issues. He doesn't think he'll be doing it again.
'You can tell immediately if you like someone,' he claims, but the hostess's friend and I both disagree. You know immediately if you like the look of someone and think they're attractive but if that initial spark isn't there that doesn't mean that there isn't a moment later, after you've spoken a while, that they do something or say something and you just think - wow.
He isn't convinced.
'Are you married?' he asks (bless him, he obviously hasn't been briefed as thoroughly as we have).
'Yes.' 'No.' Was.' 'I am.' 'Well, no.' 'No, I'm not.' 'Or, I'm married, but I'm not living with my husband. We're separated. Apart. Estranged. Well, not that estranged. Likely to stay that way. But get on so much better now than me did.'
'Though it was traumatic at the beginning,' volunteers Liz.
'Indeed. Very.'
He looks bemused as well he might.
'What went wrong then?' He bellows over the table.
'He left me.' I call back.
'He left you?' He cried, in a way that I like to think was incredulous but was probably just a spot of indigestion while he worked out what kind of a shrew I had to be to have driven away my former man.
'Yep.'
I wait for the why question but after a moment's hesitation he decides to save me the further humiliation of mentioning the words 'other woman' and asks how long ago he has been gone. There's no real easy answer to that question either. A year, a year and a half, three years, it depends when you're measuring from.
'What about you?'
'My wife left me,' he says. 'It does get easier,' he assures me.
'It's already easier...' I protest
'Yes, my wife left me too,' says the hostess's friend. 'It does get easier, eventually, though it's still hard.'
I think the hostess may have joined with her own pennyworth of gloom, but I can't be sure - we are all having rather large gulps of wine and looking vaguely haunted. Ah - the small talk at a single person's dinner party. Abandoned Spouses anonymous. My name is Marion and my husband left me... We could have our own group on Facebook. It could be a new way to meet people. My Humiliated Friend... She has lots of very nice coats.
'Do you have any plans for the weekend?' asks the hostess's nice singleish Guardian Soulmate's man. He's a designer turned illustrator. I studied graphic design, printmaking and illustration at Camberwell but he hasn't discovered this. Though I know all about his family, his parents, his nieces, his ambitions, his house sale, his personal circumstances and his career, the first question he has asked me is what I'm doing at the weekend. Men. How come they make such good criminal investigators?
'Yes, actually, I'm going to the country to see my lover.' I reply. In a very loud voice. Just so that everyone gets it.
Single man chooses this moment to go out to the garden for a fag after complaining none too gallantly that he can't get past my chair. I go home on the 220 from Shepherd's Bush and try not to fall asleep on the bus and end up in Harridan.
I mean Harlesden.
