ME: Yes.
MARK DARCY: Well, goodbye then.
ME: Yes. Goodbye, then.
—
We both turned to separate barmen.
“Glass of white wine, please,” I said.
“Vodka martini,” I heard Mark say.
“Big, big glass.”
“Actually make that a treble.”
“Very big.”
“With a whisky chaser.”
—
We stood, incredibly awkwardly with our backs to each other. Then, the drunken fathers started on Mark.
“Darcyyyyyyyyyy! How the devil are you, you old bastard. What you doing turning up late like that in a chopper?”
“Well, I was actually, um, in a fairly important Foreign Office meeting.”
The barman handed me the wine, I took a giant slurp and started to make my escape.
“How’s single life treating you then,
Darcy?” said Cosmo.
I froze. Single life?
“Dark horse, aren’t you? Got a new totty yet?”
“Well, I’m hardly…” Mark began.
“What’s the matter with you, you miserable old sod? Johnny Forrester was barely out of the divorce court before he was inundated with totties. Smothered in them. Out every night.”
Took another huge slurp of wine, just as Mark muttered, “Yes, I assume you have no idea of the reality of being single at my stage in life. Everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to push one at some deluded woman-of-a-certain-age, looking for a knight on a charger to solve all their problems: financial, physical and otherwise. Anyway, must be going. Yup. Must be off.”
—
Staggered off round a corner and leaned against the wall, mind reeling. Single? Had he split up from Natasha? “Woman-of-a-certain-age?” Was he talking about ME???? Did he think the christening was some sort of weird set-up? Was he LEAVING? I was bristling with confusion and indignation and on the point of texting Shazzer, when Magda appeared, looking pretty drunk herself now. “Bridget!” she said. “Mark is divorced. Divorced! He’s left the stick insect.”
“I just heard.”
“We have to go outside and discuss this immediately.”
As Magda and I squeezed past the bar, the drunken fathers were still on full autowitter.
“What about Bridget? Never understood why those two didn’t get sprogged up.”
“They were together long enough.”