Easier said than done.

I looked across the table, where Serena and Martin were doing a pretty good impression of two strangers at a Tube station, shoulders a safe twelve inches apart, profiles carefully averted. God forbid any spontaneous eye contact might occur. From there it was just a slippery slope to conversation. And heaven only knew what that might lead to. Nothing less than the fall of the British Empire, I was sure. Oh, wait, that had already happened.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Colin’s friend Martin was another of your common garden-variety emotional disaster areas. Just this past November, he had been dumped by the girlfriend he had met during his first week at University lo these many years ago. Martin was a broken man. From what Colin had said, I gathered that he was brilliant at accountancy, but after seven years of cohabitation, things like picking his own socks sent him into a full-blown panic attack.

Serena would choose lovely socks for him. After all, she worked in a gallery. After dealing with Degas and Renoir, the question of argyle or solid would be like a walk in the park. And it might, I had thought, be rather pleasant for each to have someone else to look after for a change. Serena could fuss over Martin and Colin wouldn’t have to keep fussing over her. It would be perfect.

Ha. It could have been perfect. I had forgotten that I was setting up two finalists in Britain’s Most Reserved Person contest. I bet they didn’t even talk to themselves in the mirror at home, much less to other people. At the moment, each was doing a fairly good job of pretending the other didn’t exist. My brilliant idea was tanking faster than the Hindenburg.

I didn’t even need to look over at Colin to read the I-told-you-so there. When I had broached the plan, his reply had been, manlike, “If anything were to happen between them, wouldn’t it just happen?”