All change

I was lunching with some friends the other day (I don’t lunch for every column, incidentally, but these happened to be friends from abroad whom I hadn’t seen for a while). I took them to a restaurant and we began catching up on our news over the gazpacho.

‘How’s so-and-so?’ I asked of a girl my age, who lives in America. This girl, let us call her Lucy and hope she doesn’t recognise that it’s her I’m talking about, is a good friend of mine (in a way we grew up together). Recently, though, we haven’t been in touch so much as she has been moving round the States.

Anyway, I was expecting the usual answers to my question — new flat, got married, having a baby, split up with boyfriend, etc. Instead, one of the people at lunch said, ‘She’s become a lesbian.’

‘What?’ I said stupidly.

‘She’s become a lesbian. She’s fallen in love with another woman and they’re living together.’