Polly James - Would Like to Meet

“Because they may have friends you like a lot,” says Pearl. “Ones they can introduce you to – oh, hello!”

She’s addressing one of the men who attended her poker night, the nice one who looks like Pope Francis, not the vile Fiddling Fred. He’s approaching us from the direction of the lake, dressed in a fisherman’s jumper and a very natty cap. The sort that a ship’s captain would wear, if he was the sort of captain who didn’t abandon women and children on the deck of a sinking ship. (I know Joel’s twenty-two, but to me he’ll always be a child.)

The man says hello to Pearl and then he smiles at me, and says, “Beautiful view, isn’t it?”

Pearl steps in before I can tell the truth about how I feel about the sight of large expanses of water at the moment.

“Hannah, you remember Albert, don’t you?” she says. “He’s one of my lovely fellow residents.”

I’d forgotten Albert’s name, but Pearl’s obviously taking her own advice by referring to him as “lovely”. She definitely told me she’d ruled him out as a potential new husband after the poker game, because he was “too quiet” for her taste.

The conversation between them isn’t exactly flowing now, which is a bit awkward, so I escape and walk to the very edge of the hill where I sit down on the grass, and start to draw the other view – the one which does contain the lake. Face the fear, and all that self-help stuff.

“I row my boat across that lake every morning,” says a voice behind me, and I turn round to see Albert looking down at my drawing. “It’s become one of my favourite places in the world.”

I don’t know what gets into me, but – all of a sudden – my mouth opens and I say,

“Albert, would you teach me to row?”

It might be purely symbolic, but imagine how much better I’d feel if I was rowing, not drowning.

It’s all very well for Pearl to tell me to take up more sociable activities, but after my first rowing lesson, Albert says I’m going to need a lot more, with the emphasis heavily on “a lot”. He claims he doesn’t mind how long it takes because I’ll get the hang of it eventually, and enjoy it once I have, but I doubt I’ll ever enjoy my other new outdoor activity: this ridiculous singles’ walking club.

There’s mud everywhere, and I’m freezing cold and soaking wet. Turns out that Joel’s super-cool “waterproof” jacket (the one I sneakily borrowed while he was still asleep this morning) is not only miles too big for me, which isn’t a surprise, but isn’t rainproof either, which certainly is. And the bloke running this stupid group is bossier than the Fembot, which I didn’t think was even possible.

The rest of the walkers are a motley crew as well, especially the men. There are quite a few young, fit ones dressed in lycra, which is a sartorial faux pas I might consider overlooking if they weren’t also so far ahead of me along the ridge that I couldn’t interact with them if I tried – and the ones staggering along behind me don’t look as if they’ll make it to the next stopping place alive. I hope they don’t, seeing as they’ve talked about nothing other than football and steam trains all the way so far. God knows why I ever thought this was a good idea.

“Too right,” says a voice from somewhere nearby, though I can’t see who it belongs to. And did I really just say what I was thinking out loud? (That’s a very worrying development, especially if I do the same thing whilst at work.)

“Over to your left,” comes the voice again. “Behind the tree. You can join me if you like – I’m going to make a run for it.”

That idea sounds so appealing that I don’t even stop to think before I make a sharp left-hand turn, and nearly send a trainspotter flying off the edge of the ridge. Then I peer around the only tree for miles that’s managed to retain its foliage in the face of the high winds that are presumably the norm up here in the wilderness. (Joel’s useless jacket isn’t windproof, either.)

“Hi,” says a blonde woman who’s standing with her back pressed flat against the tree. “Finally, someone else with common sense. I spotted a pub not far from that dip we passed a little while ago – d’you fancy joining me? I need a stiff drink after this.”

I need a hot drink, rather than a stiff one, but hopefully the pub will have a coffee machine as well as alcohol. I decide to take the risk, and follow carefully in the woman’s footsteps as she steps off the path and heads towards open ground. I hope she’s got a good sense of direction, though I have no idea how she’s walking at all, seeing as her trainers have wedge heels.

“Iz-urgh Mu-unt,” she says, when she sees me looking at her feet, but the howling of the wind obliterates most of each word, so I’m still none the wiser until we eventually reach the pub. I’m not that much wiser then, to be honest.

“I said, ‘Isabel Marant’,” says the woman, as we stand together at the bar.

“Nice to meet you, Isabel,” I say, which proves to be an error on a par with joining this ludicrous walking group, at least as far as my companion is concerned.

“Not me ,” she says, looking appalled. “Isabel Marant’s a designer, though I’m not sure these trainers are her most practical creation.”

“Ah,” I say.

Maybe Joel will have heard of this Ms Marant. I certainly feel I should have done.

“I’m Hannah,” I say, for want of a more sophisticated topic of conversation. “Hannah Pinkman.”

“Eva Fraser,” says the woman, as she puts out her hand.

She pulls it back in again when she realises it’s covered in mud, which she wipes off on the bar towel in front of us. The barman notices but doesn’t object, which I can only put down to how glamorous Eva looks in her fur-trimmed parka, immaculately cut jeans and fancy Isabel Whatsit trainers. Even her hair looks good – as if it was intended to look windswept – while I resemble an ageing Afghan hound that’s spent the last hour in a wind tunnel experiment.

I do my best to smooth my hair down while Eva establishes that the bar doesn’t serve coffee, and orders double gins for both of us. We dispose of these with indecent haste, re-order and take our refilled glasses over to a table by the window, where we make ourselves comfortable. I may feel a bit of an idiot for not knowing much about designer footwear, but this is miles better than being outside on that bloody ridge. The weather’s got a whole lot worse over the last twenty minutes, too.

“So, Hannah,” says Eva. “Tell me about yourself.”

Oh, I hate that question. What on earth am I supposed to say? I have a job I hate, an adult son who’s never going to leave home, but a husband who already has? The whole thing makes me sound like a walking disaster. Talking of which, I’ve just spotted one of the trainspotters outside the entrance to the pub, shaking himself off like a dripping dog. He’s purple in the face, and looks even less attractive than he did earlier, when I almost knocked him off the ridge.

“Shit!” says Eva. “It’s the bore to end all bores. Duck – quick – before he sees us!”

We crash heads as we both dive under the table, and by the time we’ve stopped apologising to each other, the trainspotter has chosen the lounge bar, leaving us safe in the snug.

Eva clinks her glass against mine in celebration, then takes a large swig of gin before she begins telling me about herself. Apparently, she’s in the process of moving back to the UK, having spent years working in the USA as the editor of a glossy magazine! It’s a good job I didn’t tell her what I do for a living. Designing icons for a question-and-answer site isn’t going to sound too impressive to the newly appointed editor of the British edition of Viva Vintage , though after a few more drinks I don’t care. Eva’s much easier to get along with than she looks, and not quite as confident either, which is good news as far as I’m concerned. Over-confident people have a tendency to suck all the confidence out of me – the Fembot does it every day.