Free The Armchair Bride by Mo Fanning Page B

the time to write to Helen and tell her I don’t want to come to her wedding and ask her not to stay in touch. It’s been two years since we last met. Can’t she take a hint?
    I click to open my inbox. A single new message is highlighted. From Ian Tyler.
    Where do I know that name from? I click to read more.

    From: Ian Tyler
    To: Lisa Doyle
    Subject: Ian Tyler

    Hello
    I don’t know if you remember me. I am Ian Tyler. We were friends at school.
    I found your details on-line and wondered if you’d like to keep in touch. Let me know and I’ll bring you up to date on my news.

    Ian

    Why has someone from so long ago decided to get in touch? I guess it’s something to do with the New Year and the fact we’re both fast approaching the big four-o. Men in particular, I’ve noticed, have problems dealing with landmark birthdays. They indulge in grand gestures and tell the world that age is something to celebrate, while secretly fretting their youth is over. Us women are usually too busy trying to drown out the sound of our biological clocks ticking away to worry about buying a Porsche or taking everyone we know clubbing in Ibiza. I listened to the people around me and turned forty into just a number .
    I somehow saw it as being a little less galling than thirty-nine. The horror lay in the waiting, the anticipation of being forty. Everyone I knew who’d crossed the line from late thirties to early forties assured me, it was nowhere near as bad as it looked from the other side.
    Ian and I were firm friends at an age when boys could be friends with girls - before hormones flared up and changed everything. I was nine, he was ten. I used to play round his house - he had a slide in his back garden and his Mam made us fish finger sandwiches. I suppose he was my first boyfriend, but only in the sense he was a boy and a friend. When we moved on to the big school, our friendship suffered. His new friends would have ripped it out of him if they’d found out his best mate was a girl. Ian joined the other twelve-year-old boys shouting insults at the girls and running a mile if any of us so much as looked at them.
    I can think of nothing to say to Ian. Unlike Helen, we’ve not kept in touch. I hit delete and switch off my computer.
    I need a friendly voice and my sister Sue with her two perfect kids and well- adjusted husband almost always fills that role.
    We talk for almost an hour while she fills me in on what’s happening with Amy and cross-dressing Glen. He’s refused to give up the twin sets and pearls and so they’ve agreed to give couples therapy a try. Their counselor suggested my sister tell Mam about what was going on. Amy apparently needed to be restrained and lead quietly from the office. I am, Sue assures me, well out of it.
    Sue was always the practical one. When we were growing up, she was the one who made sure we divided up our sweets and waded in to resolve any disputes about use of the communal Spacehopper. These days, she’s a mother of twins and tends to tut when Amy and I argue the merits of whatever designer dress we’ve seen paraded down a red carpet. In many ways, she reminds me of a taller, less flame-haired version of Mam. She allows me to ramble on about my fears of hitting forty. She’s been through it herself two years before.

    After a shower, I turn in for the night. Andy is still out, probably painting the town a tasteful shade of scarlet. Sleep hits unusually quickly, though within an hour I’m wide awake and staring into the darkness, watching the minutes flip by on my alarm clock.
    Brian is a good-looking man. I can easily believe him when he says he’s had offers from other women.
    Like Nina, I’ve flirted with him on occasion. Nothing heavy of course - nothing more than an off-colour joke when we’ve both had a skinful. If he wasn’t married to Audrey, I might have been tempted to up the stakes. He’s got lovely hands. Nice nails.
    I think about Ian Tyler and recall an envelope of