Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those

'I could very definitely hear heavy breathing and snorting noises coming from behind the sofa'

Once again it is my turn to host the monthly book club supper. Knowing that I am in a state about the evening on several fronts, Matthew is doing his best to be helpful. The first front, needless to say, is Matthew himself, and the most problematic aspect of Matthew at the moment is the frontal one - even he has described himself as looking "demented". So overdue for a haircut and a shave is he that last weekend a friend who journeyed down to the office/shed returned half an hour later joking that he couldn't find Matthew at all, but had enjoyed a pleasant chat about the cricket with the tramp who has taken up residence at the bottom of our garden.

Eventually Matthew agreed to go to the hairdresser but, in order to prolong the torture, not until the very morning of the book club supper. He said: "I will go today because I wouldn't want to let you down in front of your ladies." (In the firm belief that it annoys me, Matthew always refers to the members of the book club in this way. In fact it doesn't annoy me that much any more and sometimes I find myself, for time-saving reasons, calling them ladies too.)

The ladies are due at 8pm this evening, and although both Matthew and Louis are keen to share in the Nigel Slater Thai chicken curry that I am providing, I have given them both a stern talking to, along the lines of: "You can stay up to say hello but then it's up to bed with both of you and I will bring you your food on a tray." I am not worried about Louis - it would be a pleasure to have him join in the literary discussions - but I am fretful that Matthew will linger. For some reason he is convinced that I haven't read this month's book, Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize-winner, and he is tremendously keen to be present when I am forced to own up.

There is no way I am going to own up, though, either to Matthew or the ladies. No one will ever know that my reading list for this month comprised, in no particular order, Heat, Now, the curry recipe, Anne of Green Gables and the blurb on the back of the Pamuk book. Thanks to the latter I believe I can bluff my way through the evening, leaving when the going gets tough with the excuse of fetching wine, food etc. This strategy will only work, however, if Matthew is not around.

I must say he is looking very good after his trip to Trumper's, his hairdresser in Mayfair. He is scented with essence of limes, buffed, burnished and glowing. I can see that the ladies are quite impressed. I would rather he wasn't ironically bowing to them and I would be much happier if he didn't keep saying, "Now ladies, what can I get you?" with his hand clasped camply to his breast. But as long as he clears off upstairs once the discussions begin, all will be well.

He still thinks I didn't read the book and earlier this evening suggested I employ a ruse he once saw in an episode of Bilko. It involves leaving a phone that is off the hook lying around. The phone is connected to an extension in another room from where someone listens in, looks up any needed information and whispers it down the line. So insistent was I that I didn't need such help, I think I finally managed to convince him that I had actually read this month's book.

"Well, Louis and I must take ourselves off now," he says, pirouetting obsequiously in the doorway, "up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire, leaving you in the more than capable hands of my extremely well-read lady wife, who is, I know, longing to share with you her thoughts on the clash of cultural identities in Post-Ottoman Constantinople, or, ha-ha, I should say, Istanbul. It is the melancholic soul of the city, the huzun, as I believe Orhan Pamuk calls it, that so captures her imagination. Enjoy your literary feasting, and a splendid goodnight to you all." With these awful words Matthew completed one final tippy-toe swirl and set off up the stairs.

The ladies settled down again and I offered them some crisps and olives. "Hmmm, these are good," said Yvonne.

"Yes," I said, "They're Tyrrells crisps."

"Tyrrells? Isn't that your name? Don't tell me you are related!" "Well, yes, actually I am. It was my father who started the business and, um, he handed the secret recipe on when he died and so...."

I don't know why I told this lie. I have done something like it before, only then it wasn't with cocktail snacks but Formula One racing cars. I do know, however, that I could very definitely hear heavy breathing and snorting noises coming from behind the sofa.

"So! Pamuk! Onward, onward to Istanbul!" I cried in a high-pitched, almost hysterical voice.

Laura opens the discussion by telling us, at times, quite tearfully, how she had been affected very deeply by the author's huzun. Raisa said that she and her family had read the book together and had been inspired to take a trip to Istanbul during the Easter holidays. As planned, I managed to absent myself at all the right moments and all went swimmingly until the moment when, as host, I was asked to choose the next author.

And it was then that Matthew appeared, in his dressing gown, saying: "Do excuse me ladies, I seem to have dropped my phone and my copy of Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar down the back of the sofa."