WOULD YOU LET YOUR DAUGHTER DATE AN OLDER MAN?

Elizabeth Noble wouldn't like it, even though she married an older man herself

- ELIZABETH NOBLE

My husband David and I had a wonderful week away with our two adult daughters in April of f this year the first since before lockdown. Tallulah is living in London, studying hard for law school exams, and Ottilie has thrown herself headlong back into student life, working for a teaching qualification. Relaxing together in the warm sunshine, we talked endlessly, ate and drank voraciously, and laughed a lot, as we always have done.

Perhaps the biggest laugh of the week came when Tallulah realised that, approaching her 25th birthday, she is exactly the same age that I had been when I met her father, who was and still is, funnily enough) 18 years older than me.

DATING THE BOSS

When she asked him how he would react if she brought a 42-year-old nome, his reaction was immediate and negative. Mine too, if I'm honest. I'd be suspicious of his motives, and anxious that they would face too many hurdles. It wouldn't be what we've pictured for her or her sister.

Which makes us, I know, terrible hypocrites. I was just 24 when we met at work. I'd been in one of those tortured on-off relationships for several years. (Why do we do that? The 53-year-old me screams at the younger version.) David was my boss, a divorcee, with a pre-teen son and a fine head of salt-and-pepper hair. In short, nothing that had been on my wish list. And yet, it turned out, everything I wanted.