Dear Mary: How do I get my friends to leave after a dinner party?

Q. We have made available our mews cottage – 30 yards from our main house – to a woman with small children, who has had a tough time recently through no fault of her own. She will be staying pending her divorce. Our problem is that she keeps asking us to dinner. We like her and she is a good cook and we understand that she is trying to give something back since we are not charging rent. However, our lives are just too busy to see even our very best friends more than once a month. We can’t use any of the normal excuses, e.g. that we are away or have people ourselves, because she can see us from her window. What do you suggest, Mary?

– Name withheld, London W2

A. Decide to write a book. Why not actually write one? Explain that for this reason your evenings are now sacrosanct and you are only accepting invitations that you simply cannot get out of.

Q. I am among the few people I know of my age (24) with a house big enough for dinner parties. My parents own it but they never seem to come to London. I would love to have people round – but I have to be up at six and once my cohort get around the table, even if I have said ‘Look guys, come at seven and leave at ten’ and have cooked them a really good dinner, they just won’t leave then. The result is that I always have to meet them in restaurants. It’s such a waste of a London house. What should I do, Mary?

– Name withheld, London SE11

A. Ask your friends for drinks instead and provide large quantities of quails’ eggs for snacking. This ‘luxury’ food will give them the impression that they have been royally treated, but their core hunger will be unsatiated. Hence they will find themselves heading for a restaurant no later than 9 p.m., and you can explain that you won’t join them as you have to be up at six. Using this method, you may be able to quietly retrain them to obey your diktat if they get another chance.

Q. Having left London, I now do most of my socialising with people who come to stay. A number of my guests are fairly prominent, but I am a writer and have many journalist friends. The latter would be interested in leaking gossip about the first group – if I ever told them anything. I can see problems arising with my new visitors’ book. I cannot have the journalists riffling though to see who else has been; nor do I want to alarm the more illustrious guests by letting them see the names of notorious gossips. Yet it is important to me to keep a record. Any suggestions, Mary?

– Name and address withheld

A. You must keep two visitors’ books in tandem. One for nosy journalists and one for illustrious guests.