It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m in my home office, doing some particularly boring work.
My friend B. rings and I gladly pick up.
‘Hi P.!’ she says. She actually calls me ‘P.’ I’m not trying to hide my own identity.
‘Can you talk?’ B. asks.
‘I’m doing some particularly boring work,’ I reply. ‘So, definitely!’
B. starts talking about a party we’re both meant to be going to, which she’s unsure about. As it happens, it’s Lizzie’s party. Or, rather, the party she’s planning to hold with three of her female university friends in a bar off the Strand in a week or so.
B. is concerned. She doesn’t really know Lizzie’s university friends (or their friends) that well. What if no one talks to her, at the party?
‘Do you think Lizzie would be offended if I only go for a little bit?’ asks B. ‘It’s not like… her birthday party is it?’
Lizzie in fact had a ‘significant’ birthday in the middle of lockdown (I won’t say what age), as did her three female university friends. And this will be their first party, of any kind, since then.
‘It’s a bit of a grey area,’ I reply. ‘It’s not actually Lizzie and her friends’ birthday party, but it sort of is.’
‘Hmmm,’ replies B., obviously sensing the possibility of her going ‘for a little bit’ is shrinking rapidly.
‘Actually,’ I say, smirking as I embark on telling an obvious whopper, ‘this is Lizzie’s getting better from cancer party! Didn’t you know? So you have to come for the whole thing! Until the small hours!’
‘What?!’ groans B. ‘That is so unfair, you’re totally making it up!’
‘Oh… but aaaam I?’ I ask in a declamatory voice, as if wallowing in the certainty of my moral victory.
Of course I’m making it up – and I admit it seconds later. But, fortunately, B. decides to come to the party – the whole of the party – anyway.
P. D. Clifton 
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