Q. I’m quite a good friend of a member of our royal family – going back to our shared school days. However, someone who has recently married into my family knows this and they are quite shamelessly pushing me for an introduction. At the moment I am playing for time but I definitely have no intention of fixing up a meeting. Please can you come up with a suggestion that will enable me to knock what would be an awkward scenario on the head? – Name and address withheld
A. Kill their ambition by a bit of overstatement: ‘The funny thing is, because we became friends when we were at school, he/she is rather insistent that we see each other on our own. I am never allowed to introduce them to any friends.’
Q. I love my husband but he does not respect the code of honour around secrets. Hence there is a lot of material I just can’t share with him. He is usually outside for most of the day – we have a smallholding – but often comes back into the house unannounced and has got into the habit of eavesdropping on my telephone conversations. He seems to be very clever about piecing together any gossip I am being told, just by listening to my responses. The other day he blurted out – at a lunch party – a highly sensitive confidence with which I had been entrusted. He says, in his defence, that he has to eavesdrop because otherwise I don’t tell him anything. If I am talking and call his name to check he’s not around, he now doesn’t answer.
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