If I am reading this correct.... none of your mates or their partners recognised that your ex-regular from the meal 10 years ago came to your 70th with a new partner?
Now that is a close call!!
Sorry, CT; I didn't explain myself very well. All the people at the earlier meal knew that the OH had pissed off 3 or 4 years before and I had a fairly feeble cover story; that I'd 'met this lass through mutual friends'. None of them knew her presence there was a business arrangement between me and her.
4 or 5 years later when the Escort from that evening had been retired for quite a while, I told my best friend from the earlier meal that I'd been invited to the 'Evening Do' for her wedding. He, of course, told everyone else.
So when she and her husband turned up at my 70th last year, everyone assumed we were still friends - as we are!
The lesson I learned from the first meal was to have a much more robust cover story worked out about how I'd managed to 'pull' another bonny lass who was obviously about 25 years younger than me. It did the trick because nobody's ever questioned it.
Both girls were accepted as friends of mine and are now known as such, even by the nosier of my cousins. That's why I'm sure that they'll fit in at the party after my cremation!