The ex files

To look at the photos of Simon Cowell at Royal Ascot last week, sipping refreshments and laughing with Jackie St Clair and Sinitta, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was flirting with them both. In fact, he was catching up with not one but two old flames.

Far from feuding, Cowell regularly takes Sinitta on holiday and is godfather to her two children — an arrangement that most separated couples would find unthinkable and quite probably mad.

Whether their friendship will continue when Cowell marries his fiancée Mezhgan Hussainy remains to be seen but it did get me thinking about what for most couples is a very vexed question: Is it really possible to be friends with your ex?

Well, it certainly works for me. There are two in my life with whom I have a gentle, respectful and undemanding friendship and without whom my life would be very much the poorer.

A good time together

The other day I was out walking with Martin and our matching black Labradors. Martin has been happily married for 25 years and has two grown-up children. But before his wife, for a couple of years, there was us.

Martin was good-looking — he still is — and charming and creative and complex and difficult. He was too tempestuous for me by far and I guess I was too tame for him but for a while, it was a serious and loving relationship. It ended pretty much by mutual agreement and soon after, he met his wife.

One night, perhaps six months after they had met, he called and invited me for dinner. Over refreshments in Covent Garden, he announced his engagement.

I admit that tears sprang to my eyes for what might have been if we'd been more temperamentally suited but I was genuinely delighted for him too — and touched that he had the sensitivity to tell me to my face that he was going to marry, rather than leaving me to hear it through the less-kind grapevine.

I wanted Martin to be happy, though I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt just a bit to be replaced so quickly and emphatically.

Reason to smile

About three years ago, I was recovering from major surgery when he turned up, unannounced. I was a war zone of post-operative tubes and drips, my hair was matted and I could barely lift my head from the pillow.

"The last time I saw you in bed must have been about a quarter of a century ago," he smiled, clutching a big bunch of tulips.

Despite the pain that my reaction caused at the sight of the incision, I laughed properly for the first time since I'd come around from the anaesthetic. Why wouldn't I want an ex like Martin in my life?

Max is what I used to call my Elastoplast Man (though I never told Max that). He helped heal me after the break-up of my first marriage. He was kind, compassionate and clever and a good conversationalist. But he wanted commitment and it was way too soon for me to think of settling down once more.

He was pretty cut up at the time when I ended it but he quickly moved on to other relationships. He married late, had three children in quick succession and now, in his early sixties, is preoccupied with school runs and homework and finding a babysitter.

But I like hearing about his life as a dad and the MA he's studying for part-time.

We talk about books and movies and family — and life. When his wife's away, we sometimes play, meeting for a meal or an evening theatre date.

Sometimes, three months or more might pass without our meeting but we have an easy way with each other and catching up and falling into a comfortable rhythm of conversation always reminds me of why I love still having Max as my pal.

Uncommon practice

The last time I was singing the praises of my exes, including the husband who left me two years ago, my girlfriend Sue, who won't even allow her philandering ex's name to be mentioned in her presence, said: "For goodness' sake, what's wrong with you, woman? Why can't you be bitter and twisted like the rest of us? It's not normal at all."

The fact is that Martin and Max have, in their particular ways, played an important part in my life. They are all men I didn't just love but really liked as well. The exes with whom I'm not friendly are men who I may have been attracted to, or even been temporarily in love with, but once the relationship was over, I realised they were people I didn't much like.

Giving it time

It has been two years since my husband and I separated. We are cordial but it's all too recent and painful, at least as far as I'm concerned, to be able to describe ourselves as friends. But it doesn't make sense to me that after 25 years — the majority happy and loving — we should just disappear off one another's radar.

I miss him. No longer as a lover or as a husband but as a friend. Because there were many years when we were very good friends indeed. I don't want to consign a chunk of my life to the rubbish dump. In the meantime, I am waiting for feelings to cool sufficiently for us to be warm with one another again. I hope it's soon.