Prime Time

by Jane Wenham-Jones

‘Botox – three to six months maximum. Fillers? Depends on which filler you use, but about a year.’

  ‘God that adds up to –’ I did a rapid calculation. ‘A lot each year!’

  Dr Carling nodded unperturbed. ‘And my regular clients are more than happy to pay it.’ He leant back and locked his hands behind his head. ‘It’s all about confidence. Others may not notice what exactly has changed in you, they will only know you’re different. But you will know, and it will give you greater self-esteem. And that is the most attractive quality of all.’

  He waved a hand at a poster on the wall. ‘For some women that’s brought about by something dramatic like a facelift or a tummy tuck or breast enhancement. For others, it can be something as simple as a new hairstyle. They haven’t been changed physically but they look a million dollars because they are happier.’ He gave me a big, flashing smile that displayed every one of his dazzling teeth. ‘That is why I recommend that the best thing my clients can do is to find someone to fall in love with them.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Not when we have perfected you.’ An evangelical note crept into his voice. He leant forward again. ‘You will be amazed. I will make you irresistible …’

  Cal interrupted. ‘Can we get you looking fascinated, Laura – really hanging on every word?’

  I widened my eyes.

  ‘Does it hurt? I’m a bit of a wimp,’ I explained. ‘Low pain threshold. I take Nurofen when I have my legs waxed.’

  Russ laughed. ‘So does Cal!’

  Dr Carling frowned. ‘A slight pricking, that’s all – I use a very fine needle. You may get a bit of local swelling, a mild headache – but nothing that paracetamol won’t deal with.

  ‘What about all those toxins, though?’

  He shook his head. ‘Botox has actually been used medically for years. There is no evidence to suggest there are any harmful effects at all …’

  I was only half listening as he explained its function in treating excessive sweating and stroke victims.

  I was asking the questions about safety because I felt it was expected but, really, I was hooked already. I kept thinking about how different my mouth had looked with the corners pulled up, and imagining my newly smoothed brow. I looked sideways at Cal, hoping there was money in the budget for both.

  ‘Fillers can be used in the backs of hands too,’ Dr Carling was saying. ‘Hands can be very revealing as we get on in years. We carry out a programme of treatment to get rid of age spots and blemishes and then inject tiny bits of filler all over the back of the hand to plump up the surface – particularly between the fingers. We’re looking at introducing a foot lift to our treatment list too, probably early next year. ‘

  ‘A foot lift?’ I laughed. ‘Are you kidding? That’s a step too far, isn’t it?’ I giggled again.

  Dr Carling shook his head. ‘Not for some people, not at all. They’re becoming very popular in the States. The feeling there is that that wrinkly toes are a big give-away. Women want their feet plumped just as much as their hands.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Give me strength.’

  ‘OK, cut a minute!’ Cal was staring at me. ‘I am having this brilliant idea’, he said slowly. ‘I was thinking this would be a fairly straight piece with you. Just a sort of fly on the wall and extended interview about how you felt about the ageing process. But you’re really good – you’ve got so much screen presence, I’m just thinking how we can be a bit more creative.’

  ‘Oh Lordy,’ said Russ. ‘Not Cal being creative again.’

  Matt chuckled. ‘Been here before, haven’t we, mate?’

  Cal ignored them. ‘What we can do is maybe contrast different reactions. We’ll film your scepticism – that was great, Laura – and then would you be able to do it again as though you were seriously interested? A foot lift? ’

  He said it as though this was a fascinating medical breakthrough that would save the lives of millions. ‘Can you give it a go? I can see us showing both – leaving it up to the viewer to see which Laura they identify with. Can you try?’

  His face shining with enthusiasm was infectious. I saw Russ and Matt exchange amused glances while Tanya shook her head. Cal looked at me hopefully. I suddenly felt I had to support him.

  ‘A foot lift – that sounds interesting,’ I intoned obligingly.

  He shook his head. ‘You’re sounding a bit insincere.’

  I smiled at him kindly. ‘Because I am insincere – it’s a mad idea. Like therapists for dogs and beauty salons for five-year-olds.’

  Cal looked disappointed. ‘I know you’re not a trained actress or anything – maybe I’ll have to get someone in. It’s just, you know, you’ve got this presence – this sort of aura about you – I’d really like to use you .’ His big, brown eyes were fixed on mine. My stomach gave a strange little flip that I hoped was only indigestion. He put a hand on my arm. ‘Would you just try one more time?’

  I looked from the glossy brochure Dr Carling had put in front of me, to my seriously unmanicured toes. ‘A foot lift?’ I said wonderingly, trying to sound as though I’d been offered the key to eternal life. ‘Wow! How much does that cost?’

  Cal clapped his hands. ‘Perfect.’

  He signalled to Matt. ‘Now let’s do it one more time – just for luck.’

  Matt moved the camera in closer. Tanya tossed her hair about and yawned.

  ‘A foot lift!’ I shrieked in ecstasy.

  ‘A foot lift?’ I whispered in awe.

  ‘A foot lift,’ I murmured with wonder.

  Thirty-six elevated feet later, Cal put his arms around me and kissed me joyfully on both cheeks. ‘I knew you could do it – you are going to be a star …’

  Doctor Carling was looking thoroughly fed up. We’d filmed our conversation a dozen times and he was beginning to sound rather robotic. Cal was a man on a mission, wanting to get it absolutely right.

  ‘OK, can we just do that one last time? If you could just run through possible side-effects, and Laura – keep nodding but looking as though nothing is going to put you off. Excellent. And now the opposite?’

  I was now well into role. ‘Botox? Absolutely not! All those toxins going into my face. Who knows what they’ll do long term? I don’t want to look like a frozen rabbit!’

  Tanya sighed. ‘Can we lose the rabbit? What is it with you and bunnies?’

  Cal frowned at her and then smiled at me. ‘Try it again, babe. Shake your head, look concerned, but just stick to the toxins. Maybe say something about Botox being so unnatural.’

  I took a deep breath. He sat opposite, fixed his gaze on me from beneath his floppy curls and gave a slow smile.

  ‘How about Botox?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, no, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that at all. All those toxins … Who knows what damage they can do long term.’ I adopted a virtuous expression and looked thoughtfully back at Cal in the manner of a woman who (Judi Dench, eat your heart out) was happy to grow old gracefully. ‘I am happy for my face to look lived in,’ I said gravely.

  ‘I wouldn’t be,’ said Tanya sourly when we’d finished. ‘But thank God I’ve got years before I have to even think about it. All these old women with shiny faces freak me out.’

  ‘Shut up, Tan,’ said Cal good naturedly. ‘Go and have your PMT somewhere else.’

  Tanya glared.

  ‘Sorry,’ Cal mouthed at me.

  I smiled and hugged myself inside.

  He called me babe …

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ‘Botox!’ said Charlotte in disbelief. ‘You said you’d never dream of doing anything like that. I thought you hated the idea of poison in your body.’

  ‘That’s before it was free,’ I replied. ‘The doctor says it’s completely safe.’

  ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Charlotte. ‘At that price.’

  ‘And Cal says everybody does it these days,’ I went on. ‘He said it was completely up to me but I thought
about it and I thought why not? It only lasts three months or so anyway. He’s very considerate of my feelings,’ I finished dreamily.

  ‘Probably wants to shag you,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘I should be so lucky.’

  Charlotte looked at me with interest. ‘So you fancy him now, do you?’

  I laughed a bit too loudly. ‘No I’m only joking. I’m old enough to be his mother.’

  I looked at myself in her kitchen mirror. There was no doubt I didn’t look quite so old now the lines around my mouth had been filled out and while I still had to wait for the full effect of the Botox to take hold, my forehead was already looking smoother as well as feeling strangely stiff.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Charlotte.

  She was still a bit scratchy. I presumed it was about Roger but I didn’t want to ask. He was here now, but I’d had no chance to speak to him alone – in fact, he seemed to be avoiding me. Which made me think he was still seeing this Hannah and listening to her tales of woe.

  I was still wishing I could find a way to meet her myself but how on earth would I do that, short of waiting outside the office, where Roger would probably come out with her on the way to their evening sojourn?

  I didn’t know her other name and I couldn’t even be sure I would recognise her again. So how could I ever get to speak to her?

  In the end it was much easier than I thought.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Charlotte that weekend as she was tidying piles of paper on her kitchen table. She scanned the piece of card in her hand. ‘Another of Roger’s firm’s bloody ghastly social dos. God save us.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ I said, casually.

  Charlotte looked at the card again. ‘Senior partner’s retirement drinks. Yuck. Standing around for three hours, drinking mediocre wine, being forced to make polite chit-chat with people I’ve nothing in common with, while they count how many glasses I’ve had and exchange looks every time I go for a fag.’ She pulled a face. ‘And then tell Roger what a character I am.’

  ‘Could I come?’ I said.

  Charlotte looked at me in astonishment. ‘Er – why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just fancy it.’

  Charlotte gave a disbelieving snort. ‘You fancy spending an evening with Jeremy who thinks he’s God’s gift to women and will try to chat you up, or Gordon who only ever talks about his composting club while his droopy wife – wears white cardigans, say no more – sits there simpering? Or you can be bored to death by Alan the other senior partner – short, fat, bald, halitosis – or his wife who’s built like a tank and wears very tight satin dresses and too much blue eye shadow?’ She reached for her cigarettes.

  ‘Then there’s the secretary who always, always drinks too much and ends up in the ladies’, sobbing, from which I am usually the one to retrieve her and tell her to buck up, as all the other wives are completely useless and just flap round her making sympathetic noises.’ Charlotte shook her head witheringly and lit up.

  I wondered if this secretary could be Hannah. ‘Well, if I came, I could do that instead,’ I said helpfully.’

  ‘But why would you want to?’

  ‘Just sounds amusing. And,’ I said, inspiration hitting me at last, ‘because Mike wants me to put together a dummy in-house magazine for a big law firm in the city. It’s supposed to be something they can take home that will appeal to their families too. You know, a bit of corporate bonding – get the wife on side etc – and I need to know the sort of people I’m dealing with. This party could be really useful.’

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘Why didn’t you say so? Of course you can come. I’ll tell Roger when he comes back.

  ‘Will he mind?’

  ‘He’ll be thrilled.’

  Roger hid his feelings of delight well.

  ‘Really?’ he said, when he and Benson got back from their walk. He looked at me dubiously. ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘She’s got to write an outline for a magazine for some big law firm,’ said Charlotte. ‘Thinks meeting your lot and all their old trouts will be good research.’

  ‘I can’t see how,’ said Roger, giving me a look. ‘We’re only a small provincial set-up.’

  ‘Well, she can come,’ said Charlotte decisively. ‘It will give me someone decent to talk to at least.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Roger, with what was clearly a forced smile. ‘Yes, of course you can.’

  He sat at the end of the table, ostensibly reading the paper, but I could feel the tension radiating off him. Once I glanced down the table to find him looking up at me, a watchful expression on his face. Was he worried about me meeting Hannah?

  Charlotte seemed oblivious, chatting on about the rigours of having to have Roger’s mother for Sunday lunch the following day. ‘And I can’t do pork because crackling plays havoc with her teeth; she still goes on about mad cow disease if I give her beef – bit late for her to worry – and then she says, “Oh it’s chicken again – we had this last time, dear.”’

  She nodded down the table at Roger who was still reading. ‘And who goes down the pub the minute she arrives? Comes back just long enough to eat and then disappears in front of the television the moment we’ve finished? Ugh, Benson!’ Charlotte stepped backward as the Labrador shook himself vigorously, sending grains of sand in all directions.

  ‘And now the kids are bigger,’ she went on, ‘they’re as bad. I’m the one trapped here with her. Becky will talk to her for a little while but she soon gets fed up because of the way the old dragon argues about everything …’

  There was a thump overhead. As if on cue, Becky burst into the kitchen.

  ‘Mum, those boys are so annoying. Can you go and tell them to keep out of my bedroom?’

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. I stood up.

  ‘I’ll go and sort them out. Sorry Becky. I must take Stanley home now anyway – he’s got his friend Connor coming to stay.’

  I felt Roger’s eyes on me as I walked past him to the door.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Ten minutes at gradient five, ten minutes at gradient seven, moving up to ten minutes at …

  I hit the stop button. My God, I’d only done five minutes. I clung to the bars of the treadmill, heart pounding.

  I’d got up early, determined to really go for my new regime. Namely an hour in the gym every morning, working through my programme, leaving home as soon as Stanley had gone to school. Followed by a protein breakfast of poached eggs and maybe grilled tomatoes (absolutely no toast) and then a hard day’s work for Mike, to get well ahead of myself in preparation for the further filming we were doing in two weeks’ time.

  A time by which my new silhouette would be starting to emerge and the Botox would have worked its full magic. Fuelled by visions of myself leaner, firmer, and looking at least a decade younger, I strode through the doors of the gym at 8.15 a.m. with a resolute heart.

  Now I stared hopelessly at the sheet in front of me, feeling the sweat running down behind my ears, my fat bits aquiver.

  ‘Why do we do it, eh?’ A small, rotund man in his 60s grinned at me as he walked past. I shook my head in wordless empathy and took another swig from my water bottle.

  ‘He doesn’t,’ said a voice from behind me. ‘All I’ve ever seen him do is wander about with that towel over his arm.’

  I swung round to see a short, stocky girl in her early 30s, brown hair back in a pony tail, wearing a pink T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with a pair of headphones slung round her neck. She smiled.

  ‘It’s torture, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m absolutely bloody knackered and I’ve still got another 300 calories to go.’ She climbed onto a cross-trainer. ‘Christ, I can’t tell you how much I hate this …’

  Her name was Clara, and – I found out as I heaved myself onto a machine beside her – she had five weeks left to fit into a bridesmaid dress that was three sizes too small.

  ‘A bloody bridesmaid,’ she puffed, arms and legs pumping wildly beside me. ‘I’m too old to be
trailing down the aisle in cerise silk, not to mention much too fat.’

  ‘You’re not fat,’ I puffed back, every muscle in my legs already screaming. ‘Can’t you just get a bigger dress?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘It was the only one left. It’s by some up-and-coming Italian designer, hideously expensive. Vicky got them all as a package. She’s got about six of us – a couple of cute three-year-olds, two eight-year-olds, her nineteen-year-old sister – and me!’

  She turned to look at me, legs still going up and down. ‘Everyone else got the right size but the one they had for me was a size eight. Eight! Haven’t been that small since I was about seven. And all Vicky said was, “Well, you’ll want to lose weight for the big day anyway, won’t you …”’

  She came to a stop, breathing heavily. ‘I can’t talk at the same time as doing this.’

  I stopped too and looked at my card. ‘Oh blimey, I’m supposed to do 20 minutes.’ I looked back at the dial. ‘I’ve only done six.’

  ‘It’s a bit much,’ I said, slumping against the screen, waiting for my heart to slow to normal. ‘It’s her big day, not yours. How can she expect you to drop three dress sizes for her?’

  Clara shrugged. ‘Everything’s got to be totally perfect – she’s always been like that. She’s really tall and a size eight herself. We look like Little and Large,’ she said ruefully. ‘I’ve lost six pounds so far. When I first put the dress on, I couldn’t close the zip at all – now I can get it up about an inch. But that’s taken me weeks. The more I come to the gym, the more I want to eat!’

  I suddenly realised I was starving myself. ‘How much longer have you got to go today?’ I asked.

  I had lemon and ginger tea instead of coffee and one slice of brown toast with Marmite – this was an emergency, I didn’t think I could get home without fainting – and Clara had a smoothie and a cereal bar. Everyone on the tables around us seemed to be eating bacon.

  ‘I did read an article,’ said Clara glumly, ‘saying that research has shown people who go to the gym actually consume a third more calories after each session than they would usually.’ She sighed. ‘And the smell of cooked breakfast doesn’t help. Who’s going to have the low-fat fruit and muesli bowl when you can have two fried eggs and a sausage? Look at this,’ she said, breaking off the end of her oat and nut bar and glaring at it. ‘It’s like cardboard. I do want to lose weight obviously but I really can’t … Oh hi!’ She broke off as an enormous bloke in jogging bottoms and a rugby shirt came into the café area. ‘How you doing?’