I owe my mate an apology. A couple actually.

My mate is full of fun and bubbly (preferably pink and chilled). You all need one. She is fair, she is kind, she is generous and she throws fabulous parties. She suffers fools with a smile I couldn’t possibly muster and wants everyone to get on. She thinks of everything and her attention to detail ensures everyone has a terrific time in her company. Even people she’s just met.

Well mostly.

There are some people who no matter what you do will just be vile.

A few months ago my mate organised a day out and distributed an open invitation to bring as many friends along as we wished. It proved to be a bit too far for most people, the idea being to blag our way to complementary drinks and reserved VIP seating throughout town on the pretense that we were attending a same sex wedding. On the day only a few of us were prepared to don our finery complete with corsages and hats. We hit the town early with plans to meet the chickens later. Obviously we cancelled the free drinks and seating with there being a small number of us. But we kept the hats and the flowers.

For two of the women it was their first time in our company, but we knew them vaguely, the village is small and they weren’t exactly strangers. They were friends of each other and with someone who had planned to come along then bailed out at the last minute. Let’s call them Jemima (40s, married, kids) and Tallulah (30s, married, kids). And the day started off really well. Really well. The fact that Jemima paid more attention to the blokes at the table next to us after a couple of Woo-Woos probably should have been an indication of how things would go, but they were good company. To start with.

Forward wind a few hours to when we met up with the evening guests and the downhill nature of things was proving difficult to ignore. Jemima by now had her legs round and her tongue down one of Tallulah’s friend’s ex-husband and Tallulah was showing an unhealthy interest in my mates 19 year old son who’d popped in to cadge beer money off his Mum.

Here’s my first apology. I vouched for Tallulah. I’m really sorry about that. From the little I knew of her through the few times we’d spoken I assumed she was happy with her gorgeous husband, beautiful kids, lovely home… blah blah blah. Her words. I assured my mate, indeed everyone, several times that Tallulah was just a bit drunk and mucking about. Harmless fun.

Well what would you do? Here we had two beautiful women who we were beginning to suspect were rather unhappily married, both with some serious self esteem issues and both very drunk. What could we do? We excused their behaviour. We really didn’t know them all that well, who were we to judge them? But since my mate’s son was only 19, a bit full of beer, and still lives at home with his Mum and Dad only a 2 minute walk away from where Tallulah and her family live, everyone agreed it was inappropriate for Tallulah to be buying the boy cocktails, sitting on his knee, stroking him and telling Jemima in the toilets that she was “Going for it”. You don’t shit on your own doorstep. And you don’t let your kids shit on your doorstep either! So my mate punted her son some cash and sent him on his way to find his friends with a warning to steer clear of the married neighbour.

Which should have been the end of it.

We moved on to another pub, taking Jemima and Tallulah with us, making sure Jemima, who by now could hardly walk, was safe and sound whilst she continued to resist any suggestion that we put her in a taxi home.  Not altogether unexpectedly Jemima took umbrage at something or other and started a huge and nasty argument which eventually saw her led away home by a sober friend who’d just arrived.

Our party had swelled to include nieces and daughters, mates and colleagues and as the night wore on the young ones headed off to a night club, others set out for home and four of us went for a Chinese buffet. We failed to pick up on the fact that Tallulah hadn’t gone home, rather she’d tagged along with the 18 year olds heading for the club.

My clubbing days are well behind me so after the food I jumped in a taxi and was home in bed before midnight. My mate, however, being the bubbly party animal she is, headed off to the club along with her BFF. The first thing she did when she got there was take some photos of Tallulah on the dance floor wrapped around, through, all over and down the throat of her son. Then, whilst the daft laddie was dragged off for a drink, my mate took Tallulah aside for a quiet word, along the lines of… go home to your husband and kids, leave my boy alone, you’re drunk, he’s drunk, we’re neighbours, he’s 19, he’ll screw anything that offers him it on a stick and you will both regret it in the morning… go home, and by the way, don’t tell my son I said any of this… he’ll find someone else to spend tonight with and won’t even notice you’re gone. And what did Tallulah do? She ran straight back and told the boy. So the evening that started off so well ended up with this bloody woman screaming at my mate, in front of her child, that she would “shag” (her word) her son if she wanted to and there was nothing my mate could do to stop it.

Actually there was plenty she could do to stop it, like not letting Tallulah in her home for starters. To this day I don’t know what the silly bitch was thinking… was she planning on the two of them going back to his Mum and Dad’s house? Or perhaps she was going to sneak him back to her bed past her husband and sleeping kids? Stupid cow.

When Tallulah, clearly overestimating her allure, presented the boy with an ultimatum…. come with me now I am leaving. He stayed. Through the fug of alcohol I like to think that in the harsh glare of the halogen lighting he had a good look and realised this was no Barbie doll propositioning him, but an old, drunk, married woman with three kids. When he got home the next morning the first thing he did was thank his Mum for saving him from a horrible mistake.

And here’s my second apology. I persuaded my mate not to go round to Tallulah’s house the next day and confront her. Despite the fact that Tallulah had no problem whatsoever trying to drive a wedge between my mate and her son for the dubious thrill of a quickie up some alley, I didn’t think it would make her feel good to split this family up. We have no idea what Tallulah’s marriage is like, what is so awful that it drives her to throw herself at a teenager to make herself feel good.

I shouldn’t have stopped her and I’m sorry for that because Tallulah has since grabbed the only innocent looking photo of herself and the boy taken that night and posted it on her Facebook for all to see along with a lot of tripe about how it was “strangely one of the best” nights out she’s had. What.The.Fuck? She has also grabbed and uploaded a photo with us all in it and since none of us who met her that night have any wish to be associated with her we are not best pleased about it.

I have no idea why she thought it would be fine to carry on as if nothing happened and not apologise to my mate, or me for that matter. I vouched for her over and over again. Once she’d sobered up you’d think she’d be a bit ashamed yes? Well…. apparently not.

We haven’t kept the story of this night ultra-secret but neither have we spread it round like a wildfire vendetta. A few people we know have heard and reacted in various ways from “I always heard she was a slut” to “Oh you don’t want to cause trouble”.

I think everyone would agree that sitting back whilst your drunk teenage son swaps body fluids with a married mum who lives round the corner isn’t an option.

But in the aftermath I for one have found that taking the higher moral stance has been totally unsatisfying. If Tallulah had even pretended that she was sorry, rather than flaunting photos and proclaiming the evening a great night out, only then would ignoring her and forgetting her have been enough. To be honest if she’d groped away at any other teenager, or any other neighbour for that matter, we’d have left her to her fun and moved on, but not your neighbours kid… not in front of his Mum after she’s welcomed you into her company.

So I dunno now.

Carry on ignoring her no matter what she says or does?

Or fuck the higher moral stance, post the incriminating photos on Facebook and pull up a ringside seat?

What would you do?