Watching my ultimate and seldom-seen boss – a portly fifty-year-old knight of the realm – doing ‘Bat Out of Hell’ with his tie pulled off and his shirt untucked was something I would never forget.
I ate crab with mint guacamole and it was delicious. I was looking forward to pistachio cheesecake afterwards.
‘I was reading about the Mediterranean diet, it’s supposed to be very healthy,’ Anna said, dunking a langoustine into some aioli. ‘All this fish and vegetables. And olive oil. It’s supposed to work wonders.’
‘I remember my mother’s ninetieth birthday party,’ Harriet said, ‘and of course everyone was being very patronising and asking her what the secret was. And she said clean living and glass of milk at bedtime, and everyone nodded and smiled and told her how wonderful she was. And it was all nonsense because she ate chocolate truffles every day – I had to buy them for her and they had to be Charbonnel et Walker or she would sulk – and she drank sherry like it was going out of fashion. A bottle of Dubonnet wasn’t safe in her company either. She liked to have it topped up with ice and a shot of gin, like the Queen Mother. That was her Sunday treat after church.’
‘Perhaps when we get to that age we should do the same?’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I shall claim I boil pinecones and drink the water twice a week.’
‘And then bury the pinecones at midnight under a waning moon,’ Anna added.
‘Great idea,’ I said.
‘I shall put my longevity down to having a fun-size Mars bar before every meal,’ Harriet said.
‘There’s nothing fun about them,’ I said. ‘A big one is much better.’
‘As in Mars bars, as in life,’ Anna said.
We rolled our eyes at her.
Her phone pinged with a text and she tutted.
‘It’s Rupert, sounding very tetchy. He’s back from visiting his friends in Great Yarmouth and he says they have just had their boiler serviced and he wants to know who does ours. Why? I mean, we have lived in that house for thirty-eight years and not once did servicing the boiler, sweeping the chimney or pressure-washing the patio cross his mind. I hope he isn’t feeling manly and looking for his toolbox. That’s always a recipe for disaster.’
‘Perhaps you should have hidden it before you left?’ I said.
‘Oh, I did,’ Anna replied, ‘I just put it on the other side of the shed. He’ll never see it. I once moved the pepper mill from one windowsill to another and it took him a week to find it. The trouble is, these days Rupert’s very good at taking things to pieces but not very good at reassembling them. The last time he messed about with the lawn mower it had to go back to the dealer for repair. There were three bolts and some washers left over when he’d finished. I found them in his pocket. It’s a good job he wasn’t like that when he was doing surgery, sewing someone up and then finding out he had some bits leftover.’
‘At least he has a go,’ I said. ‘My ex-husband had the DIY skills of Mr Blobby. I suspected that he deliberately did the decorating badly, so I wouldn’t ask him again.’
‘Bruce was like that,’ Harriet said. ‘He used to load the dishwasher with everything upside down, so nothing got clean. I’m sure he was thrilled when I banned him from doing it at all. I thought about it the other day, what I was looking for in a man, and all I really wanted was someone helpful and warm and supportive. And then I realised I was describing my orthopaedic pillow.’
‘But moaning about ex-husbands aside, do you two mind being on all your own?’ Anna asked. ‘Rupert is daft sometimes, but I wouldn’t be without him. Bless him, I don’t like to think of him ferreting around hitting things with a spanner. I’ll just send him a reassuring text about the boiler.’
‘I don’t like having to decide everything by myself,’ I admitted, ‘or having no one to agree with me about the ineptitude of the council or the government. But on the other hand, it’s a long time since I had to think about what to have for dinner, or in fact what time to have any meals. I can have breakfast when I feel like it and sometimes I skip lunch and have dinner at four o’clock. Like a sort of really late brunch. And no one sneers or looks at me as though I’ve lost my marbles.’
‘But instead, it’s a mixture of lunch and supper?’ Harriet said. ‘A lupper.’
Anna suggested, ‘Or tea mixed with supper, then you could call it a tupper.’
‘Trust you to make it sound faintly rude. I’m quite happy to have beans on toast or sometimes nothing. Fred expected what he called a proper meal every evening. I could quite happily never cook another pork chop in my life. And I can watch what I like on television, not just repeats ofTop GearorWheeler Dealers.’
Gosh, that did sound dull, but actually, it made me realise that I had already begun to make some tiny, positive changes in my life since Fred had swanned off with his blonde secretary who apparently ‘made him feel young’. And there was nothing to stop me making even more changes in future.
The other two nodded in agreement and Harriet and I exchanged tales of how early we liked to go to bed so we could watch television in comfort.
‘My neighbour called once, to give me some courgettes from her garden, and I was already in my dressing gown and it was only twenty past six and I was in bed watching the David Attenborough thing. I’d just put the recycling out too, so I was feeling ecologically aware. It was that new series, the one about whales. I had to pretend to my neighbour I’d been about to have a bath,’ Harriet said. ‘I don’t think she believed me. I almost told her I was in bed with David, a cheese sandwich and a box of peppermint creams for a joke, but if I had she would have spread it around Highfield Close in an instant.’
‘I’ll take your courgettes with pleasure, I’m in bed with David having a tupper,’ Anna said, making us laugh. ‘Now that does sound rude!’
We drank sparkling mineral water, chilled white wine out of green, frosted glasses and finished with liqueurs. I had cognac, and Anna and Harriet insisted on pastis, realising too late that they didn’t really like it and never had. So that was another myth dispelled.
‘It’s horrible,’ Harriet said, discreetly tipping hers into a flowerpot beside her. ‘Why on earth did I ask for that?’
‘What a great meal though,’ I said, ‘such a treat. And we have a lovely hotel waiting for us only a short walk away.’
‘So tomorrow,’ Harriet said, ‘can we not walk too far? My poor old feet need time to recover. And my knee is sore. I didn’t have to think about cruciate ligaments when I was eighteen.’
