A FRIEND who had been planning to marry this spring recently wrote a group email telling us that the wedding was off and the hen party had been cancelled. The email didn't go in to why, but just said it was a time of sadness for both of them.

I was alarmed, I had seen her about a month before the email was sent and she seemed so certain of what she was doing. She had just been to a dress fitting and she was glowing.

What had happened? Had he had an affair and ungraciously dumped her near enough at the altar? I got my aggressively protective hat on, ready for man-hating talk and maximum female empathy for her.

When I had last met her, she'd spent the evening telling me how he had "won her over" after they went on a blind date. She hadn't been very impressed by him initially. He had arrived wearing white sweat socks and a Christmas jumper and it hadn't exactly inspired passion.

But he was bowled over by her and showed a dogged determination in winning her and, after some heavy hints about where to go shopping for new clothes, he became a better dresser - and the most considerate boyfriend she'd ever had. He paid off all her debts and supported her in a risky career change without complaint.

Anyway, I eventually heard from her after the email about the cancelled wedding. She sounded subdued and I imagined she was still coming to terms with finding herself single again. I needn't have presumed.

She had suggested we meet in a bar in North London and, when she arrived, she told me we couldn't meet where we used to as her boyfriend lived just down the road. What, I thought, could that mean? Had they patched things up?

No. Apparently, she had met someone at work and felt an instant chemistry that she had never experienced with Sweat-Socks and decided she couldn't go through with the wedding. Her latest lover was exactly what the fianc was not - old, crumbling, complicated, penniless and divorced. But, unlike her fianc, he hadn't tried to win her over because there had been no need.

I couldn't help feeling for the fianc even though I knew my loyalties should lie strictly with my friend. Winning her over had worked but keeping her was another matter, I thought.

Anyway, I felt kind of odd when she turned to me and said: "So enough of me? How is your love life going?" I panicked, then mumbled something about the time I nearly went out with someone last year. She looked at me, perplexed. Having had no "single" time in between two boyfriends, she obviously didn't understand what I was doing with all my spare time. Life is so unfair, I thought, or maybe it's like the case of waiting for buses. None come for years and then two appear at once.