The Trials of Tiffany Trott by Isabel Wolff Page B

romantically inclined. Take my ex-but-one Phil Anderer for example. He lived in Wimbledon! Not very convenient for me, but I didn’t like to complain.
    “Oh no, I don’t mind the journey over at all,” I used to say. “It only takes two days on the number 93 and there are so many interesting things to look at along the way.” And I didn’t resent the fact that he practically never came over to my place because I understood that he needed to be near the golf club and in any case, I quite agreed with him that the back end of Islington can be a very dangerous place. And as for Alex, well although he lived very centrally, in Fitzrovia, behind Tottenham Court Road, somehow I hardly ever went to his flat. Usually we met outside the theater, or the opera, or the ICA or the National Gallery, or St. John’s, Smith Square, or Sadler’s Wells, or the Jazz Café or the National Film Theatre or wherever. Anyway, I’ve given this issue quite a bit of thought, and I’ve decided that there’s no way romance is going to blossom if blokes do not possess at least one of the following postcodes: N1, N4, N5, N16, W1, W2, WC2, SW1 or—in exceptional circumstances—SW3. I do hope my Adventurous, Seriously Successful, Managing Director qualifies on that front. Actually, I haven’t heard a whisper. I don’t think he liked my reply to his ad. Lizzie didn’t like it either.
    “Why on earth did you tell him your age?” she barked, as we worked out in her local gym. “You must be out of your tiny mind .”
    “As he’s very likely to find out how old I am, I might as well be upfront about it,” I said calmly, as I lay back on the bench and lifted little weights with my feet. “Anyway, there’s nothing p. 47 wrong with being thirty-seven. Thirty-seven’s just fine. Greta Scacchi’s thirty-seven,” I pointed out.
    “But you’re not Greta Scacchi,” Lizzie replied, as she pounded away on the running machine. This was true.
    “Daryl Hannah’s thirty-seven too,” I said. “So is Kim Wilde. So is Kristin Scott Thomas.”
    “ Don’t talk to me about Kristin Scott Thomas,” panted Lizzie, as she increased the speed. Oh dear. I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that if it wasn’t for Kristin Scott Thomas, Lizzie would be a very famous actress by now. In fact she’d be as famous as, well, Kristin Scott Thomas. But in 1986 Kristin Scott Thomas beat Lizzie to the lead role in some B movie or other, blighting Lizzie’s career ever since.
    “Well, I like being thirty-seven,” I added. “I feel good about everything at thirty-seven, except my eggs, which are apparently going off according to a sadistic doctor I met last week. Apart from that, I’m in my prime.”
    “Tiffany, you are not in your prime, you’re getting on,” she said, stopping to light a cigarette. “And will you please stop telling these men that you’re short and fat. You’re not.”
    “I know,” I said. “But if I tell them that I am short and fat then, when they meet me, they’ll be so relieved, having had such low expectations of what I’m going to be like, that they’ll instantly fancy me to bits. You see I’ve worked it all out.”
    “If you tell them you’re short and fat,” she said slowly, “you won’t get to meet them at all. I mean why do you think this Seriously Successful hasn’t called? I rest my case.”
    When I got home, the phone rang. “Oh, hello, is that Tiffany?” said the “Adventurous, Seriously Successful Managing Director, 41,” whose voice I instantly recognized.
    “Yes, it is,” I said happily. “Hello!”
    “Thank you so much for replying to my ad,” he said. “It was lovely to hear from you. You’re number sixteen million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, by the way.”
    “Oh dear—a disappointing response, then.”
    p. 48 “And how many other Twin Souls ads have you replied to?”
    “Four hundred and fifty-six.”
    “I see. Well I think it’s very sensible of you not to overdo it. And what do