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it every single time, she wondered? How did she make it almost impossible to say no?
    “What time does it start?” she asked resignedly.
    “Seven thirty P.M. or eight P.M. Oh, it’ll be so much fun.”
    Somehow I doubt it,
Jen thought as she put down the phone.

3
    Jen looked at herself disconcertedly in the mirror. It was a Friday night, and she should be going out dancing. But instead of hitting the town, she was being forced to put on a ridiculous dress and go to a dinner with her mother, Paul bloody Song, and a bunch of Green Futures cronies. She groaned. When she’d split up with Gavin and moved back to London, this wasn’t quite how she’d imagined her life turning out.
    Jen turned round to look at her back view. She was wearing a dress that she’d had for nearly eight years— she didn’t usually have much call for a cocktail dress, and there was no way she was going to spend her hard-earned cash on something she’d probably never wear again—and where it had previously flattered her curves, it now seemed to cling to them in all the wrong places. Had she got bigger, Jen wondered, or did the dry cleaner shrink it?
    Not wanting to face the more likely answer, Jen quickly dug out an old pashmina and wrapped it around herself, then put on the highest shoes she could find. It wasn’t great, but it would do. It wasn’t like this was really “going out” after all; this was a duty dinner. It didn’t really matter what she looked like.
    Grabbing her bag, she went out into the street and flagged down a taxi.
    “What a pretty dress!” Harriet smiled beatifically at Jen and immediately turned to Paul. “Isn’t it a pretty dress?”
    “You look enchanting,” Paul agreed, and Jen forced herself to smile. It was a horrible dress, but she was pretty much beyond caring. The dinner was being held at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner and half of well-heeled London seemed to be here—at least the ones with gray hair, Jen noticed. She could smell pressed powder and sweet perfume everywhere.
    Trying to forget the fact that right now she should be out somewhere in a proper bar with young people, she looked around the room. It was for a good cause, she told herself, even though she knew that Gavin would laugh his head off if he saw her now. “Yeah, dressing up in a little black dress is really going to help the planet,” he’d say sarcastically. “Bunch of old gits filling their faces? Pur-lease . . .”
    And he’d be right, Jen thought to herself with a sigh. Still, she was here now; she may as well make the most of it.
    She saw a waiter walking around with trays of champagne and took one gratefully.
    “Jen!”
    She grinned. It was Tim, the finance manager at Green Futures. “Hi, Tim, how’s things?”
    He smiled awkwardly. His trousers had obviously been bought a few years before too, and his stomach was straining over the top of them, matching his neck, which was spilling out of his dress shirt. It made Jen worry about her own tightly fitting dress and she pulled her pashmina around her.
    “Oh, you know, can’t complain,” he said affably. “Didn’t know you were coming tonight. Then again, I haven’t seen you around lately. You been off sick?”
    Jen shrugged awkwardly. Evidently Harriet hadn’t told anyone where Jen had been, which was good, but it also meant that she had to think up some other excuse for having disappeared. “No, just been, you know, doing stuff,” she said vaguely. “And I didn’t know I was coming here until Monday, but you know what Mum’s like.”
    Tim grinned. “Do I ever. Been trying to pin her down for two weeks now to talk about our accounts and she’s mad busy, can’t find the time. But mention a charity ball and suddenly she’s got all the time in the world . . .”
    They both looked over at Harriet, who was holding forth, captivating a group of people with stories. She caught Jen’s eye and motioned for her to come over, but Jen shook her head and waved