Oh, goodness. If I thought Bee was intimidatingly glamorous in person, it was nothing on how she looks here. All her pictures look like they’re from a glossy magazine – ‘Oh, yeah, I did a bit of modelling work last year, just on the side,’ she tells me airily – and her description of herself could not be much more uninviting.

She shows me how to swipe left and right, and the page where she can message all the different men.

‘There are so many!’ I look closer. ‘Why haven’t you answered them? That one’s very handsome.’

‘Ah, that guy was one of those super successful CEO types,’ she says dismissively. ‘Not my scene.’

I frown. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like dating guys who earn more than me,’ she says, lifting one shoulder. ‘It’s one of my rules.’

‘What are the other rules?’ I ask, mulling this over.

She ticks them off on her fingers. ‘Must be sporty, can’t work in consulting or finance, got to be a good dancer, must be exceedingly hot, can’t have a weird surname, must like cats, can’t be posh or have rich parents, mustn’t have boring man hobbies like cars and playing darts, has to be feminist, and I mean properly feminist not just when it suits, must be open-minded about Jaime – my kid …’

‘Oh! Tell me about your daughter,’ I say, distracted despite myself.

‘Jaime,’ Bee says, flicking around on her phone so fast I lose track. ‘She’s with her dad tonight.’ She’s scrolling through photos now, and eventually settles on a picture of a young girl with dark-brown hair cropped short, beaming at the camera through a pair of wide-rimmed glasses. ‘Here she is,’ Bee says proudly.

‘What a lovely girl!’ My heart squeezes, not so much at the child – though she’s ever so sweet – but at the expression on Bee’s face. The woman has melted. She loves this child more than anything, you can see it in seconds.

‘She’s going to be a world tennis champion,’ Bee says. ‘She’s already top in her age category at the club.’

‘Gosh.’

‘She also likes dinosaurs and reading about brains,’ Bee adds. ‘And she’s vegan. Which is really annoying.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I say sympathetically, ‘my friend Kathleen has that.’

‘Has what, sorry?’

‘Veganism.’

Bee giggles. She has such a charming laugh – hearing that, and having seen her face when she looked at Jaime, I suddenly feel I know her an awful lot better, and like her much better too. That’s the trouble with dating on the Internet, I suppose. There’s no way for anybody to hear your laugh or see the way your eyes go dreamy when you talk about something you love.

I watch Bee as she flicks through more pictures of her daughter, and think to myself: I may not know anything about online dating, but I think I can do a better job of finding Bee a man than Bee can.

I reach for my new project diary. I picked one up at Smith’s yesterday – Leena has mine, in Hamleigh.

Communal area – spruce up is top of my list. I spoke to Martha about it this morning; she got quite excited and starting waving paint-colour charts at me on her way out of the door. I know things are different around here, but I can’t help thinking this building could do with some sense of community.

Below this note, I carefully write, Find Bee a man.

‘Ooh, your silver-haired thespian has replied!’ Bee says. She swivels the laptop towards me.

Todoffstage says: Hi, Eileen. Now I’m more intrigued than ever. What an exciting idea! How is your granddaughter finding life in the country? And how are you getting on in London? Is it a shock to the system?

I smile and start typing.

EileenCotton79 says: My granddaughter has gone very quiet on me, which either means it’s going very well, or she’s burned the house down! And I’m a little overwhelmed by London. It’s hard to know where to start!

‘Oh, Mrs Cotton,’ Bee says. ‘Now that is brilliant.’

Todoffstage says: Well, I’ve lived in London for sixty-five years … so if you’d like a little bit of advice from an old hand, I could show you a few places worth visiting? Starting with a coffee shop, perhaps?

I reach for the keyboard, but Bee waves my hand away. ‘Make him stew!’ she says.

I roll my eyes. ‘That sort of nonsense is for young people,’ I tell her.

EileenCotton79 says: That would be lovely. How about Friday?

11

Leena

Friday afternoon, in the quiet of the house, with Ant and Dec twining their way between my feet, I sit down at Grandma’s computer and log in to my Dropbox. It’s all there. B&L Boutique Consulting. Pricing strategy. Market research. Operations and logistics. I settle in, not touching anything yet, just reading it all through again. In the end I get so deep I lose track of time. It’s the Neighbourhood Watch meeting at five – I have to bomb it down on the bike I dug out of Grandma’s ivy-shed, and I nearly send myself flying when turning into Lower Lane.

It’s only when I’m walking through the door to the village hall that I realise I’m not entirely sure what the Neighbourhood Watch actually is. Are we … fighting crime? Is this a crime-fighting society?

I take one look around at the motley crowd gathered in the centre of the hall and decide that either these guys are in the best superhero disguises ever or this cannot possibly be a crime-fighting society. There’s Roland, the over eager search-party organiser; Betsy, wearing a bright pink scarf, matching lipstick, and a pair of culottes; and Dr Piotr, much portlier than I remember from my childhood, but still clearly the man who stitched up my knee when I was nine and once extricated a dried pea from Carla’s ear.

Then there’s a tiny bird of a woman who looks as if she’s built of matchsticks, a squinty moustached man I recognise as Basil the bigot, and one very harassed-looking young woman with what I think is baby vomit on her sleeve.

‘Oh, bother,’ this woman says, following my gaze to her arm. ‘I really meant to clean that.’

‘Leena,’ I say, holding my hand out for her to shake.

‘Kathleen,’ she tells me. Her hair is streaked with highlights that need re-doing, and there’s a flaking smear of toothpaste on her chin – she has exhausted mum written all over her. I can’t help wondering why on earth she’s bothered to come to this meeting instead of, I don’t know, having a nap?

‘I’m Penelope,’ says the little bird lady. She holds out her hand the way royalty might – top of the hand first, as though I’m meant to kiss it. Unsure what to do, I give it a shake.

Betsy stops short when she sees me. Her smile comes too late to be genuine. ‘Hello, Leena,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

‘Of course!’ I say. ‘I brought the sign, for the door.’

‘Room for one more?’ says a voice from the doorway.

‘Oh, what a treat!’ Betsy trills. ‘Jackson, I didn’t realise you’d be able to make it today!’

I look up and feel myself flush. Jackson lopes in wearing a rugby shirt and a worn-out old cap. I was such a mess when he last saw me; every time I remember myself sweaty and snotty on his doorstep it makes me want to crawl right back to London. I try to meet his eye, but he’s preoccupied: all the elderly ladies have gravitated Jackson’s way, and he’s now wearing a woman on each arm like Hugh Hefner, only with all the relevant people’s ages swapped over. Basil is urging a cup of tea on him. Nobody has offered me one yet, I notice with discomfort. That’s not a good sign, is it?