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winds and crying hysterically. ‘A lost cause.’
    ‘There, there,’ he soothes. ‘No such thing as a lost cause. We’ll get you to Armani if it kills me.’
    ‘Can I go now?’ I say, in my usual exasperated tone, wondering whether I should signal my secretary to come in and tell me in a loud voice that my three o’clock appointment is here. ‘Have you finished with me? I am busy, Si. Seriously.’
    ‘You’re no fun,’ he says. ‘I’ll come over to yours at seven thirty.’
    ‘Fine, see you la – ’ and I stop with a sigh because he’s already gone.
    I smile to myself for a few minutes after I put the phone down, because it is extraordinary that Si manages to do this. He’s supposed to be a film editor, although God knows exactly what that means. All I do know is that he works in Soho, which is, as he readily admits, completely perfect for him, because he can go out cruising every night, if he wants to.
    He did throughout his twenties, and when Soho became the new gay village and all the seedy hostess bars were replaced with minimalist gay bars, Si thought he’d died and gone to Heaven (which he did fairly often in those days), but he seems to have settled down now. He used to talk about beautiful boys, and six-pack stomachs, and buns of steel, whereas now he talks about finding someone to cook for, to make a home with, to share everything with. But he’s so desperate for commitment, a relationship, anyone who comes even vaguely close is frightened off within days.
    ‘It’s my chocolate mousse, isn’t it?’ he says to me, humour doing a pretty bad job of hiding the pain. ‘I knew I’d over-whisked those egg whites.’
    ‘Either that or the fact that you slid the onion ring on to the third finger of his left hand after half an hour,’ I say, and we both sigh with disappointment, because neither of us can understand why he can’t find someone.
    He’s not drop-dead gorgeous, but he’s certainly cute in a Matthew Broderick sort of way. He’s funny, sensitive, kind, thoughtful, has a vicious sense of humour when he feels really comfortable with you, but would never use it against his friends. Or so he tells me.
    And his body is – and I’m trying to be as objective as possible – really rather gorgeous. As he says, despite hating ‘the scene’, he appreciates that he’s unlikely to meet Mr Right at the local McDonald’s, and if you have to do the bars and, even more occasionally, the clubs, you have to look the part, and white T-shirts, apparently, require toned, tanned flesh underneath.
    Every New Year’s Eve Si and I make a deal. If neither of us is married by the age of thirty-five, we’ll marry each other. Actually, it used to be by the age of twenty-five. Then thirty. And doubtless by the time we hit thirty-five it will move to forty.
    I suppose I am slightly in love with him, if only in a platonic way, although there are plenty of times when I wish it could be different. Put it like this. I’m fairly genuine about our New Year’s Eve promises. Si is everything I’ve ever looked for in a man. Apart from the being gay bit, of course. And he’d make a wonderful husband and father. I’d never have to lift a finger at home – he’d do all the cleaning and cook me wonderful gourmet meals every night.
    We’d have a hell of a lot of fun, Si and I, if we were married. But I know Si would never marry me. I know he loves me more than anyone else in the world, but I also know that when Si goes to bed at night he closes his eyes and dreams of Brad Pitt, and he could never sacrifice that. Not even for me.
    The phone rings again. My private line. Which means it’s one of three people. My mother. Si. Or Josh. I’m always amazed that Josh manages to call me quite so regularly, but then again I’m not entirely sure I know exactly what he does, money and finance having always been something of an anathema to me.
    I do know that he works for one of the big banks in the City. That he is in