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it’s “happening”. As far as I can see, it’s happening to someone else. We’ve been drinking in Greens for years, seen it through a variety of different owners, menus, and internal décor. Some things have never changed. I’ve stood at that oak bar with its rows of wine glasses overhead and its floor to ceiling wine racks and scrubbed wooden floorboards on and off since I was 18 and champing at the bit to get to London and begin my glittering career.
    In those days, I thought London was happening and didn’t realise I would one day crave to be back at the seaside where the water didn’t run grey when you washed your hair and the woman in the post office not only knew your name but remembered your mother had just had her varicose veins done.
    If I popped down for the weekend I always came in for a drink, even when it went through its grubby dive-like times or once, horrifically, its short-lived fruit machine, plastic stool, and karaoke phase. I’ve been in lots of pubs in Broadstairs at various stages of my life but it’s this bar that evokes the memories, that always makes me think of being young or happy or in love or up the duff …
    We finally moved back to Broadstairs when I was pregnant and thought it would be nice to be near my mother (you live and learn). Daniel was taken with the property prices and how much more we could get for our money if we lived down here and he transferred to a Kent office. I think that’s where the shock lies, really. He was supposed to be the boring, stable one, who thought about capital growth and pension yields, and I was the bohemian wild child. Now look at us.
    I’m walking around in big knickers and a pair of old slippers, nagging Stanley to death and he’s buying trendy new trainers (they are quite cool, reported Stanley in surprise) and finding all sorts of uses for a mashed avocado (they apparently have a huge, pear-filled bowl on their granite worktop and I can’t imagine her eating them – too many calories).
    Now I am thoroughly over Daniel, I would quite like to have a bit of a fling involving a few vegetables myself but where do I find the men? Once I would have come here to Greens. Now, if there are any fanciable blokes in here, I’m old enough to be their mother. And if I’m not, and they’re even vaguely good-looking, then they’re gay. This does not deter Charlotte.
    â€˜Ooh, look! Clive!’ She shot off across the bar the moment we got in there. In a town where “man falls from bicycle” is front page news, Clive enjoys near-celebrity status. He has a TV production company, a weekend cottage in Broadstairs, and a Bollinger habit that keeps him pretty popular with the girls who own Greens.
    He was sitting at a round table in the window, wearing Armani and a delicious aftershave I could pick up at ten paces, champagne bucket before him. Charlotte wedged herself down on the window seat next to him. Even though she knows it’s Jack behind the bar who Clive hankers after, Charlotte enjoys what she sees as their flirtation.
    â€˜Darlings!’ Clive swept back his glossy brown hair with a toss of his head and kissed each of us on both cheeks. ‘How are we doing?’
    Charlotte viewed him through lowered lashes. ‘Laura’s got shocking PMT so we’re here for medicinal purposes.’
    â€˜Have you really?’ Clive looked concerned.
    â€˜Oh, it’s nothing.’ I shook my head, embarrassed, and glared at Charlotte.
    She laughed, unabashed. ‘Once we get a few drinks down her throat, her fangs will subside.’
    I glared some more. Clive leant out and took my hand. ‘You must come and sit down here. I’ll get two more glasses.’
    â€˜I’m quite interested in the whole female hormonal issue,’ he said when he had poured us each a glass of fizz and I had drunk most of mine in one gulp. ‘I’ve been working on a