I let my friend reactivate my Tinder account, unsure of what to expect

The return to the office of the staff of Bella Vista PR was short-lived. We all dragged ourselves into London for a Wednesday morning meeting – Sarah coming all the way from Edinburgh, having accidentally moved there during lockdown – only to discover that Bella, the boss, had Covid and thus would be self-isolating at home. The IRL (in real life) meeting had been diarised for 10am. Those of us who had made it in set up a Zoom call, linking up with Bella in her sick bed, to prove we were all present and correct. We were all back home again by midday. With the exception of Sarah, of course, who had a five-hour train ride ahead of her.

Bella is convinced that she caught Covid on a tube journey into Knightsbridge to see her personal shopper at Harvey Nichols. Somebody without a mask sneezed in her direction around Gloucester Road. Therefore, she was relatively understanding when George suggested, on that face-to-face meeting which ended up being conducted online, that we should continue to WFH until we see how the Covid figures unfold in the wake of the children going back to school and thousands of students heading off to university.

I helped George to convince Bella that we have suffered no loss of productivity while we’ve all been out of the office. Bella grudgingly agreed that the WFH regime could continue for at least another two weeks. Sarah cried happy tears at the thought of a two-week reprieve, during which she would either pluck up the courage to tell Bella she’d moved to Scotland or find herself another job.

George and I planned an evening at a pub near Clapham Common to celebrate and plot. I introduced him to gin and Irn-Bru (the G’n’B) which he agreed was the new Aperol Spritz. We had several. Then he insisted we reactivate at least one of the dating apps on my phone: “Just to see what’s out there.”

I let George reactivate Tinder and while I was at the bar, he made overtures to a half dozen contenders on my behalf. They were all George’s type rather than mine, I complained when he showed me who he’d been messaging, and it was unlikely that any of them – all being under thirty – would be interested in me. So I was shocked when one of them actually responded. George kept up the correspondence.

“Please write something sensible,” I pleaded. Of course he did the opposite.

“You need to sound playful to hook the young ones,” he said.

“You’ve made me sound like a slightly sinister female version of Joey from Friends.”

Having had one too many G’n’Bs, I was very relieved that the following morning I was still able to WFH. It also meant that I was in when the new postie came to deliver a document from my Young Conservative goddaughter Caroline, who is now studying for A-levels in politics, law and criminology at sixth form college. She was sending me her first politics essay, entitled “How do we fix Brexit Britain?” It had earned top marks, thus making her more qualified to lead the country than most of the cabinet. She’d sent copies to Patel, Williamson, Shapps and Raab, as a shot across their bows.

I’d read mixed reports about the new postie on our street WhatsApp group. Apparently, several of my neighbours were upset to discover that letters had been pushed only halfway through letterboxes, leaving them vulnerable to theft in general and identity theft in particular. Eric from the flat above the shop claimed that someone must have stolen a credit card from his letterbox to buy the blow-up doll which was wrongly delivered under his name to number 44. To make matters worse, the dog at number 44 tore open the packaging and the doll, rendering it ineligible for a refund.

It was always going to be hard for any new post person to fill Glenn’s boots, so I resolved to be open-minded and put some WD40 on the hinges of my letterbox to make it easier to open all the way.

“You look… familiar,” said the new postie when I opened the door. I was thinking the exact same thing. We went through that game of trying to work out where we might have seen each other before – “Glenn’s leaving party?” “I never met him. Started after he left.” – until we both happened upon the truth simultaneously.

“Tinder.” I nodded. “Last night?”

“Your profile picture is you on a boat, right?”

It was me in a punt, taken by my ex-husband Gideon when we spent a weekend in Oxford for a friend’s wedding.

“You look a bit different though,” the new postie continued.

Needless to say, Gideon and I have been divorced for a while.

“And your profile picture is of you…”

“At the gym, yeah.”

I remembered. Naked from the waist up. Just George’s type. We’d swapped three messages – well, he and George had swapped three messages – before I’d suggested we progress to a phone call and the topless postman disappeared.

“I wasn’t feeling it. No offence,” he said.

“None taken,” I said. I itched to tell him that it wasn’t me he had brushed off anyway, but my gay workmate acting as my very own low-rent Cyrano de Bergerac.

“Well,” he said. “Nice to meet you again…?”

I toyed with not telling him my name but seeing as it was written all over my post, that seemed fairly pointless.

“Trudy.”

“I’m Jason. I’ll see you around, I expect.”

After he’d gone, my neighbour Brenda bustled over.

“I saw you talking to the new postman. Details?”

I could have told her that his hobbies included working out, playing the acoustic guitar and surfing. That he was twenty-seven and was looking for an older woman to “broaden his horizons, if you know what I mean”, but I stuck with that day’s facts.

“He’s called Jason. He seems nice.”

As soon as I got back inside, I deactivated my Tinder profile again and hoped that the unfortunate messages George had exchanged with Jason would be deleted at the same time.

Then I checked my email. Bella had sent one to everyone in the office entitled “TW*TS”. Wondering whether this was my opportunity to file a lucrative harassment claim at last, I clicked to open.