I’m officially in recovery after an horrendous year. I’m seeing my new therapist once a week. I’ve booked a course of yoga classes at Middleton Lodge, my local country-house hotel. Nic wonders why I don’t do yoga at the village hall, but I tell her I need bucolic surroundings: ‘Do you want me more depressed?’ Middleton Lodge yoga, every Friday at 6.30am, takes place in the walled kitchen garden.
I can’t stand yoga, but I don’t want to lose strength or flexibility as I get older. To improve my self-esteem, I’ve ordered socks, a grey V-neck sweater and a sleeveless sweatshirt in the sale at Navygrey.
I’ve also gone a bit Meghan Markle. My friend Sue came to stay and I actually made her a guest basket: cream roses, three different types of tea, a packet of artisan shortbread I didn’t bother to re-package, two types of milk in her bedroom fridge and I even bought a mini pastel Smeg kettle, which she didn’t use but I’m sure she noticed. I was only slightly dismayed when she said, ‘You’re not getting rid of the bath in my bedroom, are you?’ Well, no, since I just had it and the en-suite sink and loo installed, at great expense, as it required planning permission and a new soil pipe.
Nic picked us up and drove us to Middleton Lodge for dinner, so that I could have a drink. ‘Can you believe,’ I said to Sue from the back seat, ‘that it is 48 years since we saw Star Wars, then Close Encounters, at the Odeon Leicester Square?’
‘We would see every new movie at the Odeon Leicester Square.’
I have photos of us at parties in the late 1970s, most often at my shared flat in the Barbican. She looks exactly the same. It was Sue I went skiing with to Montgenèvre, where I met a handsome French boy called Michel. We tried to have sex in my squalid chalet room (the chalet girls thought we were too lowly to clean up after), but I was so terrified, he couldn’t make it happen. It would take 14 years before I dared try sex again. Sue and I have never had a cross word in all those years. She still lives in the same London house she bought when I met her when we were both students. I was insane, even then. I would have my hair dyed at Molton Brown on South Molton Street, and I went to a facialist on Beauchamp Place who cauterised the thread veins on my face. Bear in mind I was on a student grant of £20 a week, unable to afford anything other than the free samples of peanut butter at Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden (me in the car: ‘They’ve redeveloped it! You can no longer buy bread or muesli!’).
Sue has a wonderful husband – they are coming up to their 30th anniversary – and a beautiful daughter. I think that’s the key: marrying the right person. I think my not having children meant I made crazy decisions on a whim, not having to think about schools, packed lunches and having food in the fridge. Sue is the only guest who came to my wedding with whom I’m still in touch. I admire the fact she still has her now long-dead terrier as the screen saver on her phone. I love her most out of any other human in the world.
After moving out of the Barbican, I rented the fateful house in Brixton, next door to David 1.0. It was 1982. Sue, who, coming from Mill Hill, said she ‘never goes south of the river’, was enticed by the exciting boys next door and soon became my spy. She would peek in David’s front window while ostensibly putting out my rubbish and report back. Me: ‘Is he with a woman? The Filipino flying waitress?’ Sue: ‘I don’t think so, but it’s awfully messy.’
I’m feeling so nostalgic, I unblock David on email and Messenger. He had been so jealous when I met the German, even though David and I were no longer together. He told me I had broken his heart. He said I should have stuck with him.
Was it Kylie who sang, ‘Better The Devil You Know’?
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- I pay about £70 a month for Sky Glass. The sport add-on doesn’t include the tennis in Paris, and to watch And Just Like That… on my laptop the robot said I need Whole Home at an extra £7.50 a month. Paid it. Still not working!
- Anyone who doesn’t own a smartphone. It’s a red flag.
