A strategy that stems from her divorce

Marie-Astrid’s dinner party. She plans to hold six per year (I have the feeling that I’m going to be asked to all of them). It’s a strategy that stems from her divorce when I guess she lost most of her existing circle of friends and now has to build up new relationships (or, in my case, revive a friendship from her college years).

A long drive to the northern town where she lives. For once I was only a few minutes late, and also remembered where her house was (last time I had driven around for nearly an hour, trying to remember the name of the road). I got there at ten past eight, and parked in the drive – my car was the newest (and, in my opinion, smartest) one there.

The house, located in a quiet tree-lined road, was large and semi-detached. It was built in the 1970s, so was not very attractive (quite ugly really). Marie-Astrid got a generous settlement from her husband and decided to buy a modest house outright rather than go for something nicer that involved a mortgage. There was a large front garden, mostly lawn, with narrow borders of lavender around the edges. The front door was protected by a functional glass porch, doorbell not working so that I just opened the door and walked in.

All the other guests had arrived and Marie-Astrid introduced me – most of them I knew by sight from her birthday party. There were eight of us in all. I always feel a little uneasy meeting Marie-Astrid’s friends since they often seem to be better than me in some way (not richer or cleverer or even nicer, just better). My fellow guests at the dinner party were either regular church-goers (and not even Church of England, but a narrow American Baptist sect that seems very judgmental), or worked in the public sector (with that public sector aura of being morally superior to everyone else). All of them were vegetarians and non-drinkers.

The one person, I felt, who didn’t fit into this mould of moral rectitude was Marie-Astrid herself (I remember her at college when she had been very lively and daring and always the centre of attention).