ageism has withered her

She's told him she dyes her hair - but she daren't tell him how old she is. For Sarah Blake's bloke is 31, and she is 4

I'm Not ageist. I'm not a liar. I'm not, I'm not. I am a woman of a certain age. Oh, come on, spill the beans. Courage. I'm 42 years old.

For much of my life, age - mine and other people's - has seemed irrelevant. Friends of both sexes have been younger, older or the same age. When I was 30 I had a hugely enjoyable and mutually fulfilling relationship with a man of 23. One of the sexiest men I know is in his mid-50s.

There was a brief hiccup a couple of years ago. Much to my surprise, my 40th birthday was a deeply traumatic event. But I have slowly regained my previous equilibrium about the passing of time. Or I had until recently.

I thought it was an advantage that I have never looked my age. Now I'm not so sure.

I met him playing sport. Well, all right, badminton - it may not have the sexy image of squash, but it's just as knackering and far more sociable. Things progressed as these things do. He's deeply impressed by my supposedly exotic lifestyle, with plenty of travelling and some writing - the obvious rejection of the mundane and safe. But he doesn't see the loneliness that is the flipside of this. The loneliness that has become more entrenched and worryingly comfortable over time.

I find him great fun, kind, amusing, massively sexy and equally exotic. We are from different races. His world-view and family background are wildly different from mine. Maybe it is true that we all look the same to people of a different race. He's 31 and to my eyes looks about 19. The difference is that I know he isn't. Whereas - it has gradually became clear - he has no idea how old I am.

All my life I have been distressingly honest. I return extra change to astonished shopkeepers, I've never travelled without a ticket in my life and job interviews invariably turn into a monologue by yours truly of reasons why I should not be employed. I've always told the truth, challenging the world to reject me because of it. And I've stuck two fingers up on the very rare occasions when it has.

Early on I told him the unadorned truth about my disastrous existence; my divorce, my financial ineptitude, the relationship that destroyed my faith in men. I even admitted that I dye my hair. The sky did not fall in, he didn't run screaming from the house. I did tell him I'm older than he is but something stopped me coming clean about my actual age.

And now I am in trouble. Serious trouble. Silence has magnified the issue, turning it into a monster of gigantic proportions. Either I tell him or I don't.

If I tell him now I fear it will colour everything, taking on an importance it doesn't deserve. And I risk being accused of lying by omission (true), seeking to deceive (I never intended to but now perhaps it's true) and being a scheming woman (false). The longer I remain silent the more likely he is to find out in any case, and the more likely he is to be hurt by all this. Which would be the last thing I want.

The truth is that for once in a very long time I've found affection. I've found someone who makes me happy. I don't want to lose that.

Yet if I don't tell him soon, the monster will grow and destroy what we have. It has already started destroying me. I'm evasive about jobs, years abroad, and education. He wonders how I have managed to fit so much living into my life. I conveniently can't recall the pop music of my teenage years. The other day I caught myself hiding my passport under a pile of papers. I'm worried about organising a Christmas booze-up with my chums in case one of them drops the little gem: "Isn't she looking good for her age?"

And I feel the bitterness growing inside me that if I was a man, 11 years would mean nothing at all. It wouldn't even be worth mentioning. But it's the other way round in my case, and the world judges older women harshly. I fear that he will do the same.

Only time will tell whether my fears are justified. But whatever the outcome nobody will judge me any more harshly than I do myself.

I have become an ageist and a liar. And I have no one but myself to blame.