From: Candy Stratton
To: Kate Reddy
Subject: A certain American
Objection, Your Honor. Not unhappy is not the same as Happy. Open the email. And book the lipo.
XXO C
Absolutely not. Must stay strong. I go to my Inbox, scroll down and down till I find Jack’s unopened email. I look at it for a while, lost in thought, my finger hovering over the Delete key.
8.09 pm: Managed entire day at work where I ate only three packets of Juicy Fruit gum and an apple. Hunger is making me hangry. Not helped by Richard deciding to cook a big wholemeal pasta dish for dinner.
‘Sure I can’t get you some, Kate? You need to keep up your strength, darling.’
Why do men never understand diets? Almost as if Rich is deliberately undermining my resolve to get into the green dress.
‘I’ve got treacle sponge and custard for pudding,’ he adds treacherously.
‘Yum,’ says Ben. ‘Why isn’t Mum eating anything?’
‘Mum’s on a diet for her college reunion,’ says Emily, reaching for the salad. ‘She needs to look hot because she’ll be seeing all these guys who fancied her when she was nineteen.’
‘Mum hot? Mum hot?’ repeats Ben, trying out this outlandish concept.
‘Your mother certainly was hot,’ says Richard. ‘Is hot,’ he adds quickly. ‘Sure you won’t have a spelt roll with your salad, Kate?’
‘How many times? I’m not eating carbs.’
(‘Roy, please remind me. Must book lunchtime lipo to fit into green dress. Assert control over own body and mind and feelings and Inbox.’)
Perhaps I could take a peek at Jack’s email. What harm could it do? NO, frailty thy name is woman! Do NOT open Jack’s email.
8.38 pm: Looking for my laptop to do some more Christmas shopping when I hear a familiar voice coming from the living room. It can’t be. Mum?
Emily and Ben are sitting on the sofa, Lenny wedged between them, Skyping my mother on my computer.
Emily smiles and beckons me over. ‘Mum, come and say hi to Grandma. Auntie Julie’s new boyfriend just showed her how to Skype.’
‘Oh, hi, Mum.’
‘Hello, Kath, love, CAN YOU HEAR ME?’
‘Yes, Mum, we can hear you fine. You don’t have to shout. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine love. I left some messages on your phone about Christmas. Think I’ll book Dickie into kennels. Fancy being able to see you like you’re on the television.’
‘Hey, Grandma, what’s the news on the street? What’s going down?’
This is Ben, of course, who ribs rather than reveres his adoring grandmother to an extent that I would never have dreamed of as a child. Annoyingly, he gets away with it. Even more annoyingly, she actively enjoys being teased.
‘My street is lovely, thank you, Ben. I’ve been out doing lots of weeding and planting in the garden, and I—’
‘Planting weed, Grandma? You can get two years for that. Might let you off if it’s your first offence.’
Ben and Emily now go through the motions of a polite elderly person smoking a joint – eyebrows up, lips pursed, thumb and forefinger describing a delicate ‘O’.
Emily is giggling like a two-year-old. Seizing the moment, she cries out, ‘How’s the Internet, Grandma?’
I glare at her, to absolutely no effect.
‘Oh, it’s marvellous. I could be on it all day if I’m not careful.’
‘Sick,’ says Ben.
‘Who’s sick? Are you poorly again, Emily? You know when you weren’t feeling well, love, I said you should go to the doc—’
‘We’re fine, Grandma, all of us,’ Emily replies, cutting my mother short before she can launch into what is, against stiff competition from Dickie, her favourite cause for concern. ‘What sort of thing have you been looking at online?’
‘I found an awful lot of sites about cats and who they look like. That was really good. But since I’ve got my grandchildren here now, and you’re both the computer experts, how do I get onto Bookface?’
Which is more than my children can stand. They clutch each other in uncontainable mirth and fall off the sofa. Lenny starts barking.
‘Um, Mum, it’s actually called Facebook.’ I decide to help.
‘That’s the one. Mavis, well, her nephew Howard says it’s wonderful, and now she’s on it too.’
I have never met Mavis, but over the past two years, for some reason, she has become an oracle whose lightest word is taken by my mother as a universal truth. If Mavis casually recommended space travel when they bumped into each other in Tesco, my mother would immediately send a stamped addressed envelope to NASA, requesting further information and departure dates.
‘I’m not sure about that, Mum.’
‘No, it’s ever so useful, love. It reminds you about birthdays, and I need reminding, at my age. But what I don’t know is whether you have to put your actual face on the computer.’
‘You can put any body part, Grandma,’ says Ben wickedly.
I take a swipe at him and he ducks. Emily hisses and, as her hands form involuntary claws, the sleeves of her T-shirt ride up and reveal her arms. What, has she got scratches on her arms now as well? Is that from the bike accident?
Ben looks triumphant, having managed to offend everyone. Then, as usual, he pushes his luck too far, adding, ‘Even your bottom—’
‘Mum, it’s not that,’ I say, cutting Ben off. ‘It’s just that, once you’re on it, you may, you know …’
‘May what, love?’
‘You may end up seeing things or learning things about people that aren’t very nice.’ I try a weak smile on Emily. She’s looking down at the floor.
‘Oh, I’m tougher than I look, love.’ Which is perfectly true. I wish I could say the same of myself.
‘Talking of which,’ my mother goes on, ‘I was looking up medical symptoms, there’s ever so many places that tell you …’
‘Don’t do that, Mum. Once people start that, they get themselves in a terrible state.’
‘Oh, I know. Mavis’s cousin Val, she had this rash, and she looked it up online and it said she might have contracted HGV.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘Unprotected sex with a lorry,’ says Ben out loud.
‘Ben! I’m warning you.’
‘What was that, cheeky boy?’ my mother laughs.
‘Just saying I hope you’re not ill, Grandma,’ he says, in a mime of dutiful sweetness. Emily sticks two fingers down her throat, right in front of him.
‘Are you all right, Emily love? You’re looking a bit peaky. Don’t you think she looks pale, Kath? Hope you’re not overdoing it at school, love.’
‘I’m fine, Grandma, don’t worry,’ says Em quickly.
‘She’s fine, Mum. The lighting’s not very good in here. We haven’t had the electrics done yet.’
‘Is it still that Polish Peter you’ve got doing the work?’
‘Yes, Piotr, that’s right. He’ll have it done by the time you’re here at Christmas.’
‘Lovely. I don’t know whether to bring Dickie, Kath. I’m worried he’ll spoil your carpets.’
Deep breath, Kate.
‘He won’t, Mum. Really, please don’t worry about that. Just come and enjoy yourself.’
‘I’ve got to go now, I’ve got a walnut cake in the oven; it’s for the coffee morning tomorrow. The last one raised sixty-four pounds. For Help the Aged.’ Says she, who is pushing seventy-six.
‘Sounds wonderful, Mum. Take care.’
‘And you, love. It’s lovely to see you all. Emily, Ben. Isn’t technology wonderful? Goodnight and God bless.’
For a moment, as their grandmother’s face disappears, Emily and Ben lie across me, one on each breast, as they did when they were little. They’re heavy now, too heavy really, but I don’t ask them to move. We stay there a bit, in the half-dark, holding each other close.
‘Grandma’s heart’s much better,’ says Ben, breaking the si
lence.
‘She’s really strong, isn’t she, Mum?’ says Emily.
‘Yes, of course she is,’ I say, fervently praying that’s the case. ‘She’s incredible, your grandmother.’
How very much they love her, as she loves them. The sweetest, most uncomplicated love of them all. Don’t want to think about how we nearly lost her, when she had the heart attack four years ago, or what it will mean for all of us when she’s gone.
9.36 pm: After hour-long online battle, successfully placed new order for Ben’s present. And it’s in stock! There is a God, if not a Father Christmas. Our Father Christmas is out at a visualisation seminar with Miss Batty Herbal Teas.
10.20 pm: Staring at self in bathroom mirror. After six or seven weeks of applying testosterone patches, side effects include:
(a) Rough, coarse patches on my face.
(b) Alarming growth and strengthening of existing hairs along chin-line and neck. New outcrop of fine black hairs around – oh, the horror! – nipples.
(c) Being very snappy & liable to lash out for the smallest thing.
(d) Swearing like a trooper.
(e) Ready to have sex with pretty much anything – furniture, household implements, Polish builder.
Do men feel like this all the time? If so, how is it sensible to let them run the world?
Midnight: As I’m turning out the light, email arrives from supplier of Ben’s Christmas present.
Good Evening Kate,
Apologies for the delay in dispatch, we have had a supply interruption. We expect new stock of your item to arrive 29 December. We will then dispatch your item ASAP. Merry Christmas!
Noooooooooooooooooooo.
Emily to Kate
Mum, soz I wz rude today. Thanks for bringing my history to school. Can I hve 70 to my Xmas party stead of 50? Love you xx
WHAT CHRISTMAS PARTY? (‘Roy, did we agree to a Christmas party?’)
13
THOSE STUBBORN AREAS
NOVEMBER
Hell hath no fury like a woman who is nine pounds overweight less than a week before her college reunion. Was simply not ready to face the boyfriends of my youth as a middle-aged frump. In flattering light I could once pass for Nicole Kidman. Now I look more like Mrs Doubtfire. Hadn’t I promised myself I would approach this landmark occasion like a mature adult, accepting of my body and of who I am at forty-nine, about to be fifty? In the prime of life, a proud survivor, knocked about by the flow and eddy of time, sure, and not to be mistaken for that fresh-faced girl staring so anxiously out of the Freshers’ photo. She was right to be anxious; she still had that awful pageboy cut that Denis at Fringe Benefits in the precinct gave her, loosely based on Lady Diana. Very loosely. It made me look like a medieval minstrel. Never trust a Northern hairdresser called Denis who pronounces his name D’knee. As in the Blondie song.
So, I thought I was ready for the reunion. For seeing people I hadn’t seen for a quarter of a century – my God, that’s more years than we had been alive when we first met. I was, in that hideous phrase, well-preserved. (Preserved like what? Like pickled onions? Like fish? Can youth, like berries, ripen and be kept from rotting?) I had a new job, an old house full of ‘potential’, two teenage kids not in jail, and I was happily married. (Well, married. I mean, who is happily married?) I was in a good place. Until I tried on the dress.
You know how you rely on a particular dress or outfit to get you through an occasion you are dreading? When I first worked in the City, I spent every penny I had on a designer suit in Fenwick’s; it was worth it. My Armani armour. I would pull that suit on in the morning, like a knight getting ready for a jousting tournament. The navy fabric, jersey I think, was yielding but cut just right, nipping me in at the waist, but affording plenty of protection both front and back. I felt invincible in that suit, which was just as well, given the flak that I took from the guys in the early days. I could never bear to throw the suit out. Then some charity, Dress for Success, asked female executives in the firm if they would donate clothes to be used by women who were trying to get back into employment. I gave my navy suit. I liked to think of it working its magic on some other scared girl who needed to look unafraid.
It never occurred to me back then that, one day, I too would be an anxious woman trying to get back into employment. The circle of life, eh?
Clothes can do that for you, which is why I’d chosen my outfit for the college reunion with such care. An emerald dress I’d splashed out on for Candy’s most recent wedding in the Hamptons. Richard refused point blank to attend. ‘I’ll come to the next one,’ he said. (Rich doesn’t care for Candy’s more-is-more attitude to life and husbands.)
At my age, you need some help lifting and separating, not to mention cantilevering. The emerald dress was the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of frocks, a miracle of structural engineering. It put my boobs and belly back to where they were twenty-five years ago.
At least two ex-boyfriends who were going to be at the reunion had seen me naked between 1983 and 1986. I wanted my breasts to be in the same general area where they last saw them.
I’d had the emerald frock specially dry-cleaned at Five Star in Islington, which does steaming and hand-finishing. It glinted a jealous jade in its polythene chrysalis, hanging on the wardrobe door. I was ready for the reunion, oh yes I was! And then I tried on the dress.
The zip gritted its teeth and went up an inch, but it refused to budge over the flob of flesh below my waist. That marsupial pouch which had never really shifted since I was pregnant for the second time. No amount of pinching fabric together and pulling and pleading would shift it. Nor would the Shaper Suit do the job.
‘You’ve got lots of other dresses, darling,’ said Richard, as though there were comfort in numbers.
‘I’m wearing that dress,’ I snapped, slamming the bathroom door and shedding hot, humiliated tears in front of the mirror. So much for maturely accepting my body at forty-nine and a half. I was going to get into that dress by Saturday if it killed me.
It nearly did.
Monday, 11.03 am: Damn, buggeration. Jay-B calls me into his office, just as I am planning to scoot out unobserved, jump into a cab and dash across town for my carefully scheduled ‘procedure’. He says my meeting this afternoon with Grant Hatch is crucial.
‘I know you appreciate that Hatch owns one of the biggest financial advisers, Kate. Self-made multi-millionaire, tricky customer, but he used to work here as a trader years ago. If we can get our fund onto his platform, y’know, if his guys are recommending us to their clients then, basically, it’s jam all the way.’
‘I get that,’ I say. ‘It would be great to get him onboard. Just wondering, why me? I mean, I’m flattered, but I’m new here and there are more experienced people.’ (Please, please can Jay-B give this one to someone else because I will still be recovering from lunchtime lipo?)
Jay-B’s cheek twitches. He’s not going to let me off the hook. ‘Well, it looks like you worked your charms on Velikovsky, Kate, and Grant, he’s a bit of a ladies’ man.’
Oh, dear God. Two of the most ominous words in the English language. Ladies’ Man.
‘Put it this way, I think you got what it takes to make Grant happy. Not gonna lie, though. He’s a rough diamond.’
There are two other worst words, right there. All we’re missing now is serial killer.
Thanking Jay-B profusely for this fantastic opportunity with the Rough Diamond Ladies’ Man, I walk backwards at speed out of his room, practically bowing like one of the King of Siam’s thirty-nine wives. Then, before he has a chance to call me back, I sprint out of the building to the cab rank.
11.33 am: On the way to Knightsbridge, I get an email from Debra. (Subject: Shoot Me!) Says she was on a break with the kids in Marrakesh when she texted a highly promising neurologist she’d met on some dating site with: ‘I’ve just had the most wonderful tagine.’
Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Deb, predictive text changed ‘tagine’ to ‘vagina’. Says
she was puzzled when the neurologist suddenly got very keen and responded with several horny texts about wanting to taste her tagine. Now she’s in a bind.
Kate, I really like this guy. He could be The One. He’s solvent, sane, single, well, divorced twice, no kids. You know how impossible it is to meet anyone without baggage. I want to tell Stephen I had a wonderful tagine, not vagina, but now he thinks I’m this hot bisexual and suddenly he’s really into me. What shall I do?
How the hell should I know? I feel a flash of irritation with Deb and her many disasters. I seem to have become the on-call agony aunt since she started ‘dating’ – a nerve-wracking American import that came into vogue after I was safely married. Suddenly, it’s like women of my age are all fifteen again and wearing hot pants and spraying Silvikrin on our feathery Farrah Fawcett cuts. ‘Should I text him?’ ‘What is the optimum amount of time to leave before texting him back?’ As if love were an algorithm.
‘Will he hate me if we don’t shag on the first date?’ Thirty years ago, the question was, ‘Will he think I’m a slut if I have sex with him too soon?’ Honestly, I’m struggling to see this as progress.
The pursuit of love is exhausting and mostly ridiculous. Debra has, once again, made a fool of herself. Meanwhile, my unread email from Jack lies in wait in my Inbox. I didn’t delete it as I intended to. But I don’t look at it, I’ve disciplined myself not to. Even though it calls to me when I’m falling asleep and the moment I wake up. And most of the minutes in between. I don’t know how much longer I can resist.
11.59 am: I may have abandoned any remaining feminist principles, and gone and done something I swore I would never do, but at least I now understand how all those models and actresses ‘bounce back’ into shape after pregnancy. It’s not superhuman willpower, it’s not 24/7 breastfeeding, it’s not spinach shakes or Pilates, it’s not even good genes or airbrushing. No, it’s a procedure. I panicked and put my name down for it at a bijou clinic in a leafy mews off Hyde Park. Candy said in her email that ‘lunchtime lipo’ was a cinch. And cinch is what I’m after: a cinched waist so that I can pour myself into the emerald green dress for the reunion.
How Hard Can It Be? Page 21