'I remember with a rush of pure happiness: I've got a date!'

NEARLY THREE years ago, my 27-year-old marriage drew to its close quietly, at home, after a long illness. There was no storm of hostility, only a slow downpour of tears. And, if I'm honest, a guilty sense of relief on both sides that the pain and pretence were over. An everyday story, so common as to be hardly worthy of note.

For the best part of two years I battled my own K2 of recovery, through the stages that most newly single women know, until suddenly I found contentment. I began to enjoy my freedom, I had good friends, rewarding work, and a lively, if largely unchanging, social life. On the rare occasions when I considered the possibility of another relationship - usually when a woman friend raised the subject - I realised that it was the very last thing I wanted.

The thought of any disturbance to my cosy new existence was intolerable. Just as well, because prospective suitors were not exactly beating a path to my door. And then something happened. I'd met Patrick, a QC, some time before. We liked each other and got on well, but at the time we were both (we later discovered) bobbing uneasily in the wake of broken relationships. Over the ensuing months we had drinks on a couple of occasions, and exchanged the occasional note. We established that we were both single. You'll infer therefore, that this was no headlong rush into romance. Eventually, he asked me out. I remember thinking, with a rush of pure happiness: "I've got a date!" The anticipation caused me to lose several pounds in a week. The date was perfect, what with taking all afternoon to get ready, champagne at his flat, a wonderful show and dinner. We emerged into the streets and I accepted "coffee in the time-honoured manner" (as he put it) at his place. We all - and by "we" I mean women who find themselves alone in the, um, early afternoon of life - go through a period when we think we can do without sex, or when we fully intend to abjure it - but the moment we are enjoying it again, we realise what a poor thing life was without it. Romance is a word that makes my lip to curl but its reappearance has changed my life out of all recognition. And changed me too. At a recent party I lost count of the people, male and female, who told me how slim/happy/glamorous I looked. I'm a 52-year-old grandmother whose face has never been her fortune, but by the end of the evening I could have pulled the Pope. However, while the delights of love in the middle years are well documented - greater tolerance, relearning how to play - there are difficulties. Patrick and I need to be tolerant of all those attitudes. A bachelor in his forties, his clever, analytical mind is reinforced both by his job and his childfree metropolitan existence. My bull-at-the-gate emotional responses find their outlet in fiction, in an eventful family life conducted in a village where little remains private. Extant elderly parents may no longer wield influence, but grown offspring can, and are potentially far more tricky to please and likely to become disaffected. No matter how great the enthusiasm from my daughters ("you need a different bra with that top, want to borrow one?") and son ("nice one, go for it"), they are our family - mine and my husband's - and it would be understandable if they were resistant to change. The sight of one's mother revving up for a night out can obviously be dismaying. Many people look on; ready, if not to judge, at least to assess, and certainly discuss ... so that we're at our happiest when it's just the two of us, not required to dance as a couple to other people's tunes. I find myself prone to attacks of the blues, during which I torture myself with the idea that there's no future in it. But what does it matter? Long before this new real-life chapter began - I completed a novel in which the middle-aged heroine is in retreat from the messy complications of passion. By the end she summons the courage to launch herself into the uncertainties of a love affair. The last lines describe her fearful elation as she does so: "I took a step and reached the brink. Another and I took the plunge. Ah!" You know, I believe I got that right. * That Was Then by Sarah Harrison, Sceptre, at GBP 16.99.

Copyright 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.