I shot off into loo. Unfortunately, in the dark of taxi, I had applied dark grey Mac eyeshadow to my cheeks instead of blusher: the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, obviously, as packaging identical. When came out of toilets, neatly scrubbed with coat handed in, stopped dead in tracks. Mark was talking to Rebecca.
She was wearing a coffee-coloured plunging, backless satin number that clung to her every fleshless bone with clearly no corset. Felt like my dad did when he put a cake into the Grafton Underwood fete and when he returned to it after the judging it had a note on saying, 'Not up to Competition Standard'.
"I mean it was just too funny," Rebecca was saying and laughing full in Mark's face affectionately. "Oh Bridget," Rebecca said, as I joined them. "How are you, lovely girl!" She kissed me at which could not stop self pulling face. "Feeling nervous?"
"Nervous?" said Mark. "Why would she be nervous? She's the embodiment of inner poise, aren't you, Bridge." For just a split second saw a look of annoyance cross
Rebecca's face before she composed it again and said, "Ahhh, isn't that sweet? I'm so happy for you!" Then she glided off with a coy little backwards look at Mark.
"She seems very nice," said Mark. "Always seems extremely nice and intelligent."
Always?? I was thinking. Always? I thought he'd only met her twice. He slid his arm dangerously close to my corset so had to jump away. A couple of huffer-puffers came up to us and started congratulating Mark about something he'd done with a Mexican. He chatted pleasantly for a minute or two then skilfully extracted us, and led us through to the dining room.
Was v. glamorous: dark wood, round tables, candlelight and shimmering crystal. Trouble was, kept having to jump away from Mark every time he put his hand on my waist.
Our table was already filling up with an array of brittly confident thirty-something lawyers, bellowing with laughter and trying to outdo each other with the sort of flippant conversational sallies that are obviously tips of huge icebergs of legal and Zeitgeisty knowledge:
"How do you know if you're addicted to the Internet?" "You realize you don't know the gender of your three best friends." Haaar Waagh. Harharhar.
"You can't write full stops any more without adding co.uk."BAAAAAAAAAAA!
"You do all your work assignments in HMTL Protocol." Blaaaaagh harhar. Braaaah. Hahah.
As the room started to settle into the meal, a woman called Louise Barton-Foster (incredibly opinionated lawyer and the sort of woman you can imagine forcing you to eat liver) started holding forth for what seemed like 3 months with complete bollocks.
"But in a sense," she was saying, staring ferociously at the menu, "one could argue the entire ER Emeuro Proto is a Gerbilisshew."
Was perfectly OK - just sat quietly and ate and drank things - until Mark suddenly said, "I think you're absolutely right, Louise. If I'm going to vote Tory again I want to know my views are being (a) researched and (b) represented."
I stared at him in horror. Felt like my friend Simon did once when he was playing with some children at a party when their grandfather turned up and he was Robert Maxwell - and suddenly Simon looked at toddlers and saw they were all mini-Robert Maxwells with beetling brows and huge chins.
Realize when start a relationship with a new person there will be differences between you, differences that have to be adapted to and smoothed down like rough corners, but had never, ever in a million years suspected I might have been sleeping with a man who voted Tory. Suddenly felt I didn't know Mark Darcy at all, and for all I knew, all the weeks we had been going out he had been secretly collecting limited edition miniature pottery animals wearing bonnets from the back pages of Sunday supplements, or slipping off to rugby matches on a coach and mooning at other motorists out of the back window.
Conversation was getting snootier and snootier and more and more showy-offy.
"Well, how do you know it's 4.5 to 7?" Louise was barking at a man who looked like Prince Andrew in a stripy shirt.
"Well, I did read economics at Cambridge."
"Who taught you"" snapped another girl, as if this were going to win the argument.
"Are you all right?" whispered Mark out of the corner of his mouth.
"Yes," I muttered, head down.
"You're ... quivering. Come on. What is it?" Eventually I had to tell him.
"So I vote Tory, what's wrong with that?" he said, staring at me incredulously.
"Shhhhhh," I whispered, looking nervously round the table.
"What's the problem?"
"It's just," I began, wishing Shazzer were here, "I mean, if I voted Tory I'd be a social outcast. It would be like turning up at Cafe Rouge on a horse with a pack of beagles in tow, or having dinner parties on shiny tables with side plates."
"Rather like this, you mean?" He laughed. "Well, yes," I muttered.
"So what do you vote, then?"
"Labour, of course," I hissed. "Everybody votes Labour." "Well, I think that's patently been proved not to be the case, so far," he said. "Why, as a matter of interest?" "What?"
"Why do you vote Labour?"
"Well," I paused thoughtfully, "because voting Labour stands for being left wing."
"Ah." He seemed to think this was somehow hugely amusing. Everyone was listening now.
"And socialist," I added.
"Socialist. I see. Socialist meaning ...."
"The workers standing together."
"Well, Blair isn't exactly going to shore up the powers of the unions, is he?" he said. "Look what he's saying about Clause Four."
"Well, the Tories are rubbish."
"Rubbish?" he said. "The economy's in better shape now than it's been in for seven years."
"No it's not," I said emphatically. "Anyway, they've probably just put it up because there's an election coming."
"Put what up?" he said. "Put the economy up?"
"How does Blair's stand on Europe compare to Major's?" Louise joined in.
"Yar. And why hasn't he matched the Tory promise to increase spending on health year by year in real terms?" said Prince Andrew.
Honestly. Off they went again all showing off to each other. Eventually could stand it no longer.
"The point is you are supposed to vote for the principle of the thing, not the itsy-bitsy detail about this per cent and that per cent. And it is perfectly obvious that Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela as opposed to braying bossy men having affairs with everyone shag-shag-shag left, right and centre and going to the Ritz in Paris then telling all the presenters off on the Today programme."
There was a cavernous silence round the table.
"Well, I think you've got it in a nutshell there," said Mark, laughing and rubbing my knee. "We can't argue with that."
Everyone was looking at us. But then, instead of someone taking the piss - such as would have happened in the normal world - they pretended nothing had happened and went back to the clinking and braying, completely ignoring me.
Could not gauge how bad or otherwise incident was. Was like being amongst a Papua New Guinea tribe, and treading on the chief's dog and not knowing whether the murmur of conversation meant it didn't matter or that they were discussing how to make your head into a frittata.
Someone rapped on the table for the speeches, which were just really, really, crashingly, fist-eatingly boring. As soon as they were over Mark whispered, "Let's get out, shall we?"