What became of us

just go back to London?’ he asked.
    The journey would only take half an hour with him driving, she thought, and then she would have to face the rest of the day alone.
    ‘No, let’s have tea. Really. It was a lovely idea. Especially since I’ve got to start this damn diet tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and I hear that the lemon tart is to... second to none.’
    They opened their doors and got out, then smiled at each other across the roof of the car.
    ‘What is the difference between armagnac and cognac anyway?’ he asked her.

    The waiter clearly recognized Annie, but she thought that he must have seen her show because he behaved with impeccable servility They decided to sit on the terrace, drinking Earl Grey tea and eating deliciously eggy lemon tart with tiny silver pastry forks.
    ‘The herb garden is through there,’ Annie told him, pointing at a gap in the hedge. ‘They grow most of their own vegetables.’
    ‘Are you a cook?’ he asked.
    ‘What do you think?’ she asked, trying to do a Delia Smith sort of smile.
    ‘I think not,’ he said.
    ‘Why?’ she asked, miffed.
    ‘Well, partly because you said so in your speech last night.’
    ‘Oh, right. Are you?’
    ‘Given a pound of mince and a jar of pasta sauce I can whip up a passable spaghetti bolognese.’
    ‘Does anyone eat spaghetti bolognese any more?’ she asked. ‘I thought that was what students made because they were poor and it went a long way.’
    ‘Kids eat it,’ he explained.
    ‘Oh, right. Of course.’ She suddenly looked downcast.
    ‘What?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t want children,’ she said. ‘I only realized that today. They drive me completely crazy. I’m just too selfish. But it’s an odd thing to learn about yourself, isn’t it?’
    ‘They are a huge responsibility,’ Ian said. ‘My two are almost grown up now but still when the receptionist at the surgery tells me that Chloe’s on the phone, my heart stops for a moment thinking she’s going to tell me that something’s happened to one of them.’
    ‘It’s not totally selfish of me, I suppose,’ Annie continued, ‘because I don’t want to be a burden to anyone when I’m old.’
    ‘I’ve got to ask you something,’ Ian said, pressing the last buttery crumbs onto the pad of his thumb and putting it into his mouth.
    ‘Go ahead,’ she said.
    ‘I was wondering if there’s a man in your life?’ He tried to make it sound like a purely academic question.
    Annie looked at the side of his face as he pretended to be very interested in the antics of a family of ducks on the lawn. He was a lovely, funny, kind man, she thought. The kind of man who could be your friend, or your husband, but he couldn’t be your lover, even if you wanted a lover, which you did not. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do that flirting stuff, because actually he was quite good at it. Instead of telling you how marvellous he was, his technique was to listen to you and surprise you by remembering what you’d said. It wasn’t even that he didn’t look the part, because his smiling eyes and comfortable body were really very sexy. The trouble was, she could already feel herself becoming fond of him, and it was disaster to be fond of a lover. Affairs really only worked when you knew you would chuck him immediately if you sensed the remotest possibility of him leaving his wife.
    ‘The short answer is no,’ she told him, ‘but it’s about to change.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Apparently it’s all a matter of the birth rate,’ Annie said, ‘I read an article recently. You see, women tend to get together with men a bit older than they are so if the birth rate’s rising then you’re fucked. Or more accurately, you’re not...’
    ‘Just a minute, you’re going too fast...’
    ‘Well, if there were 500,000 babies born in the year you were born and 400,000 three years before then there are approximately 50,000 fewer men to go around, but if the birth rate’s rising then there are more. And the best thing about it is that men won’t be able to be bastards, because they’ll be at the mercy of women’s whims because there’ll be more of us! Ha, ha!’
    ‘But surely you’ll have to go for younger men if that’s the case?’ Ian asked, clearly struggling with the statistics.
    ‘And you see that as a problem?’ she asked, wiping the crumbs from her mouth with a pink napkin. Her lips left a red imprint on the ironed damask. She looked at it with satisfaction.
    ‘That’ll take them several