The Trials of Tiffany Trott by Isabel Wolff Page A

started listening.
    “I’m fifty-three,” I quipped, to cover my annoyance at being asked.
    “Gosh, I’d never have thought it,” he said with a sly grin. “I thought you were only—ooh—forty.” And everyone laughed, except Catherine, who looked horrified. But all the others seemed to find it extremely funny, especially, it seemed to me, Abigail, who’s only twenty-nine. And while I sat there wondering if I have ever, ever in my life said anything so calculated to hurt, humiliate and demoralize another human being, he went on and on and on about the bloody biological clock.
    “I’m sick of seeing late thirty-something and early forty-something women come bleating to me for IVF because they’ve never got round to having babies before,” he said, adding, to me, “so I wouldn’t hang around, Tiffany.”
    “Oh, I’m working on it,” I said. “In fact I’m fairly confident of giving birth before I’m due to have my hips replaced.”
    “By the time women are over thirty-five it’s getting critical,” he said expansively, pouring himself another glass of Bulgarian Cabernet. “Perhaps you should have your eggs frozen, Tiffany.” And then he went into this really long, detailed spiel about how women are born with all their eggs—hundreds of them—but how they gradually start to go off as we age, and how by the time we’re thirty-seven plus we’re practically infertile and almost guaranteed to give birth to three-headed monsters—that is if we can get pregnant at all.
    “So I do advise you to get on with it,” he finished, “because even if you were actively trying to start a family you might find that, at your age, it takes you ages to get pregnant.”
    “What about Jane Seymour?” I said, taking a sliver of peach melba cheesecake. “Twins at forty-four.”
    p. 45 “And Annabel Goldsmith had a baby at forty-five,” interjected Catherine.
    “Yes,” I said, “and Jerry Hall had another when she was forty-one. They were all absolutely fine .”
    “That’s different,” he said. “They’re rich. And anyway, they’d had children before—it’s much harder having your first baby late.”
    “But Madonna was thirty-eight when she had her first child,” said Catherine, with an indignant little laugh.
    “And Koo Stark was forty,” I persisted, because, you see, I always pay close attention to stories like that in the newspapers. In fact Mum cuts them out and sends them to me—I’ve got quite a collection now in the “Late Motherhood” section of my index file.
    “And that other woman, Liz Buttle, she was sixty ,” added Catherine vehemently. “Which means Tiffany and I have got loads of time left.”
    But Sebastian didn’t seem impressed. “You know,” he said, cutting into the Danish blue, “all this talk about older motherhood being fashionable—it’s total baloney. This is what women like to say to make themselves feel good about it all. But the fact is that children don’t want geriatric parents. It’s embarrassing for them. But then the problem is ,” he added, “that if women don’t have babies, then they run an increased risk of getting breast cancer.”
    Sometimes. Just sometimes, taxi drivers can be really, really nice. Especially mini-cab drivers. On the way back from Angus and Alison’s—my God, a fifteen-pound fare and I hadn’t even had a nice time!—I saw the driver rummaging in the glove box. Then he passed back a thick wadge of tissues.
    “Thank you,” I said quietly.
    “Cheer up, darlin’,” he said, as we sped past the Angel. “It may never happen.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I know. That’s just the problem.”
     
    p. 46 Location. Location. Location. Where blokes live is critical, because the fact is—and I don’t know why this should be the case—that whenever I’m going out with someone I nearly always end up going over to their place. And that’s the big drawback about London, isn’t it? The trek across the capital when you’re