by Voss, Louise
I turned away from her and dropped a pound coin into a locker, feeling my heart sink into my spa-issue white slippers. If the day was going to consist of Vicky bemoaning her lot, I thought miserably, I was going to wish I’d never bothered. I could have been in Gillingsbury, helping Max’s class make rice krispie cakes at their weekly cooking morning.
But she perked up, once we’d had our complimentary half-hour massage and were lying side by side in a room full of sun loungers, with a plastic cup of lemon-flavoured water to sip from, and cold wet cotton wool pads on our eyelids. A motherly white-uniformed lady had pulled tucked thick striped duvets over us, and left us with piles of Hello and OK! to read. Which was somewhat problematic, with the cotton wool pads in place.
‘Mmm. I could get used to this,’ said Vicky.
‘Weird, though, isn’t it—being tucked up in bed by woman in a white coat. When were you last tucked in by anyone?’
‘Shhhh,’ said the only other occupant of the room. Vicky and I removed an eyepad each and glared at her, an elderly lady with a perm so stiff that the curls didn’t appear to be flattened by her lying on her back. But she had her own pads on, and didn’t notice.
‘It’s not a bleedin’ library,’ said Vicky loudly.
I giggled, and the lady tutted. Fortunately the door opened and the attendant called, ‘Mrs. Turner? Time for your next treatment.’
‘Good thing too,’ said Mrs. Turner sniffily. ‘It’s not exactly relaxing in here with all this noise.’
She bustled out, like Margaret Thatcher in a bathrobe. Before the door had quite closed behind her Vicky called, ‘Yeah, bye then, Mrs. Turnip. Hope you’re next treatment’s a colonic irrigation, you old battle-axe.’
We collapsed into childish laughter, and I thought, no, this was a good idea after all. All Vicky needed was to get away from her life for a while; to have a chance to lighten up.
I supposed that was what I’d been doing too, with Adam and Max. Although I was getting so used to it, that it was beginning to feel as if my life in London with Ken was my non-routine life, and not the other way around…/p>
‘Vicky,’ I said, sitting up and discarding the cotton wool pads. They had lost their chill, and felt soft and compact, moulded to the curve of my eyelids. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
She sat up too, alarmed by my tone. Her pads fell off, scales from her eyes; although I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to have a Damascene level of revelation, at least not about my life.
‘What?’
But I wasn’t able to do it. I’d left it too long. The secret was stuck inside me, like a clogged-up pipe, or it could simply have been that I couldn’t face her outrage at not having been told sooner. I bottled out.
‘I’m…I’m…not very happy with Ken at the moment,’ I blurted. It was true, I thought; it must be true, otherwise I’d never have allowed myself to get into this situation with Adam.
‘Any particular reason?’
I lay back on the paper-draped pillow and stared at the fake ivy wreathed around the pillar in the centre of the octagonal-shaped room.
‘The usual. Him playing too much tennis, working too hard, never talking about anything other than work. Even our social life, such as it is, is work-related—you know, dinners with artists or managers, gigs, showcases.’
‘But it would be worse if he was unemployed. At least he earns a really good salary. And you always used to like all that socialising with bands and stuff.’
‘I know. I just…ell…hings change. I don’t want to spend my whole life being a useful executive wife.’
‘Why don’t you take up tennis?’
I snorted. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Vicky, that’s the sort of thing my mother would have said. It would take me years to get up to Ken’s standard. Besides, I hate it. I hate playing with Ken, because he looks bored after about two minutes, and then starts sighing whenever I hit the ball out of the court—which is all the time.’
‘Are you trying for another baby?’
Vicky hadn’t looked at me when she said that. She’d been flipping through the pages of Hello, pages turning in a blur of fake tans, bleached teeth and ostentatious interior design; too fast for her to take any of it in. Which was how I knew she was paying attention to my answer.
‘No. We aren’t even sleeping together.’
‘What—not at all?’
‘We haven’t done, for months. He leaves so early and gets in so late. Plays tennis all weekend. Even if we wanted to, we don’t get the chance. In fact, he’s not even -’
I was going to say “able to”, but then I thought how mortified Ken would have been if he knew I was discussing his sexual problems with my girlfriends. ‘…that bothered about it,’ I said instead.
‘But don’t you want to get pregnant?’
Vicky discarded the magazine and rolled on to her side. I turned onto mine, too, so we were facing one another, eye to eye, under our duvets like third formers at boarding school, whispering after lights out.
‘No. Yes. Yes. But it’s complicated. I’m…’m afraid to. And so’s Ken.’
Vicky reached out and took my hand. It felt so good to confide in her again. ‘Of course you’re scared, who wouldn’t be? Is there someone you could talk to about it; a counsellor, I mean? What about that woman you saw before?’
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, because there was no-one to whom I could tell the whole truth. I suddenly felt entirely alone.
‘At least talk to Ken,’ said Vicky. ‘He’d make time for you if you needed to, I’m sure he would. He adores you.’
Tears welled in my eyes. I thought of Max playing in the garden on his climbing frame, hanging upside down by his knees from the top bar, his manic laugh shrill in the air as he swayed back and forth. Beneath him, the lawn was patchy and scuffed from too much running around on, too many games of football. The grass in Ken’s and my back garden was thick and lush, threaded with weeds, untouched.
Then I thought of Adam the night before, making love to me with such tenderness that I could have just died with pleasure. His weight on top of me, the way he spread my legs with his knees, looking into my eyes the whole the time with his unwavering blue gaze. Adam adored me, too.
‘I think it might be too late for Ken and I,’ I said, vocalising for the first time the small thought which had been curled up, dormant, in my brain for some weeks.
The door opened, and our ‘nurse’ appeared. ‘Mrs. Sozi, it’s time for your next treatment.’
‘Don’t say things like that, please,’ Vicky whispered as I pulled back my duvet and stood up, dazed at what I’d just admitted. ‘You and Ken are made for each other. I’m sure you can sort it out…isten, we’ll talk more later, OK? Come and find me when you’ve finished your wrap.’
I smiled at her, taking comfort from our friendship; from the fact that the circle had turned and she was now trying to help me. Even if I wasn’t sure that she was right, it felt good to at least begin to unburden myself.
‘See you later then,’ I said, allowing myself to be guided out of the room, down a corridor, and into a smaller treatment room, where I was greeted by another pert employee. There was something vaguely akin to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest about this place, I thought: all the Nurse Ratched leading us about, as submissive as sheep in our woolly white gowns, stripping off—for that was what I’d just been told to do—lying down, getting up, resting, stretching… thought I might need a day’s rest to recover from the experience. Still, at least Vicky and I were talking.
Talking about the fact that Ken and I were falling apart.
‘Pop these on for me,’ said my latest tormentor, handing me a very small, very ugly pair of bunchy paper knickers. Her name tag read ‘Marie-Rose’, and she was far too young to be bossing me around. ‘I’m just going to measure you up, so we can see how many inches you’ve lost at the end of it.’
I hadn’t thought I needed to lose inches, but as I stood there fac
ing a full-length mirror, in extremely unattractive disposable underwear, with a twelve-year old beauty therapist drawing lines on me in black marker pen: biceps, waist, thighs, hips, knees; measuring me with a tape measure at the site of the black lines, then recording her ‘findings’ in a notepad - I did think, well, maybe I could do with tightening up. I’d never quite lost the saggy skin on my stomach. When I bent over, it concertinaed into fussy little creases which had never used to be there. I felt like a side of beef waiting to be carved.
It was easier to focus on my body than to think about the future. At that moment I wouldn’t have cared if my entire body had been creased up and as baggy as a Shi-tzu puppy, if only someone could have told me what to do; how it would all sort itself out without anyone getting hurt.
Marie-Rose walked over to a bucket in which several rolls of bandages floating in a brown scummy liquid.
‘Right, now I’m going to bandage you with these, which have been soaked in a special Dead Sea mud. It’s full of minerals and vitamins, which draw out the toxins and any excess fluid, although I’m afraid it doesn’t smell particularly nice, does it? We leave it on for an hour. It’ll make your skin lovely and soft, and when we measure you up again at the end, you’ll find that you have lost quite a few inches, once we add them all up.’
She hadn’t looked old enough to be able to add up. However, she managed to mummify me in the warm brown malodorous bandages, wrapping me up like a booby prize, tongue in corner of mouth, frowning, like a preschooler putting papier-mache on a balloon.
‘There!’ she said eventually, standing back to admire her efforts. She handed me some flimsy nylon garments and a pair of plastic sandals. ‘Pop these on for me, and go and relax. I’ll let you know when it’s time to get it all rinsed off.’
The nylon garments turned out to be some kind of gross approximation of a shell suit, which I pulled on over the rapidly-cooling bandages. I looked utterly disgusting.
‘What, you mean I’ve got to go out like this?’
She nodded, a hint of a smirk at the corners of her taut young mouth. ‘I’ll come and find you in an hour or so.’
I had an urge to ask her if she knew that she had the same name as prawn cocktail sauce, that cheap mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise; but I said nothing, and waddled back out to the main chilling-out area. Mud from the bandages was running down my legs and into the plastic sandals, making me squelch as I walked. Beautiful women in pristine bathrobes sniggered at me and wrinkled their noses as I passed them. I felt like some hideous creature fresh out of the swamp; and I smelt like one, too.
I found Vicky reclining glamourously on a lounger, reading the newspaper and sipping camomile tea, her fingers splayed outwards to protect her still-drying vermilion nails, and foam separators wedged between her toes. She roared with laughter when she saw me, muddy and glum, resembling Waynetta Slob’s less attractive sister.
‘Nice shell-suit,’ she commented.
‘Piss off,’ I said grumpily.
‘Beautifully accessorised by matching jelly sandals.’
‘Not funny.’
‘Oh it is, Anna, it really is. Specially since you only had that treatment in the first place to annoy me, didn’t you?’
I sat wetly down on the lounger next to her, a small brown puddle spreading at my feet. ‘Yes, well, that’s karma for you, isn’t it? I’m certainly regretting it now. I look like nothing on earth, and this mud is absolutely freezing. It had better be worth it. Not to mention the humiliation—I mean, I have one thing to say to you: paper knickers.’
‘Oh dear,’ Vicky said, her shoulders heaving. ‘I’m sorry, Anna.’ Her expression sobered, and she put down her newspaper. ‘And going back to what we were talking about before - I’m sorry you’re feeling so bad about Ken, too.’
Part of me had hoped we’d finished that conversation. But another part of me wanted it, too. Wanted to confide in someone, even if I couldn’t tell the whole truth.
‘I don’t know what to do about it, Vicky.’
‘You have to talk to him!’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…because…there’s no point.’
‘Of course there’s a point. If you aren’t happy, you have to let him know.’
‘He’d only get defensive and clam up.’
‘But surely it’s better to get it out in the open.’
I sighed. ‘Thing is, Vicky, I don’t even know what I’d tell him, if I did talk to him.’ I shivered involuntarily. ‘This is torture. I’m freezing here!’
Vicky passed me over her cup of tea. ‘Hold this, it’ll warm you up. Mind me nails, though.’
I cradled the delicate china between my palms, allowing its heat to penetrate my cold skin. It reminded me of Adam’s warm hands on my chilled body. I wanted to tell Vicky about Adam and Max, but I couldn’t.
‘When things aren’t going well between you and Peter,’ I said cautiously, ‘do you ever, you know, think about other men?’
Vicky looked as guarded as I did. ‘What do you mean? Old boyfriends?’
‘Well, whoever. I mean, do you think about fancying other men? About the fact that you can never kiss anybody else as long as you live?’
‘Yes. Doesn’t everybody? But then you just think about what you do have in a marriage: the security, the kids…um, I mean, sorry …’
‘That’s OK.’
‘…Not having to take your clothes off in front of a stranger.’
‘I just did that ten minutes ago.’ I’d been trying to make a joke, but it didn’t sound very funny.
‘Yes, but that was different, unless you’re planning to turn lesbian and have sex with your beauty therapist.’
I shuddered. ‘No thanks.’
‘So, have you met someone you fancy or something?’
‘No. No, of course not. It was just a general observation. I’m just feeling depressed that I don’t fancy Ken anymore, but he’s all I have in the way of options.’
‘I’m sure it’ll pass. Sometimes I can’t stand Peter touching me. Other times I can’t get enough of him.’
I persevered with my so-called hypothetical line of questioning. ‘But what if you did meet someone you were really attracted to? Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to sleep with someone else?’
‘Of course. But I wouldn’t.’
‘Not even if some gorgeous young stud declared his undying love for you?’
‘No way. I’d politely remind him that I’m married.’
‘After you’d had six cocktails, and Peter was away on a stag weekend, and your mother was looking after the kids?’
‘No! Why, would you?’
I looked at her sheepishly. ‘I’m worried that I might, yes.’
‘Oh, Anna, you wouldn’t. I know you too well. You’d be tempted, but at the end of the day you’d never betray Ken…’ I winced at her use of my least-favourite cliché, ‘… mean, he’s incredibly handsome, rich, successful, and he worships you—why would you want anybody else?’
I was both impressed and depressed with her misguided confidence in me.
‘People fall in love with people other than their partners. It happens all the time.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you’ve met someone else?’
‘No. Of course not. I’m just worried that I might.’ How lame did that sound? I braced myself for her disbelief, but none came. I had obviously become a very good liar.
‘You’re mad. That’s like worrying about the end of the world, or death, or some future event you can’t foresee. There’s no point.’
‘I suppose not.’
We lapsed into silence, lulled into a heavy soporific state by the trickle of water from various chi-chi little fountains and waterfalls, and the murmured voices around us, the chat of ladies of a certain age out for a day’s relaxation; conservatories, feckless husbands, Botox. Vicky fell asleep shortly afterwards, mouth open, head lolling against the lounger, fingers s
till splayed. I felt too cold and uncomfortable to drop off—I was just counting the minutes before Marie-Rose Ratched came back to hose me off so I could get warm again.
She eventually rescued me, and led me, still squelching, back to her torture chamber. I was shivering uncontrollably by the time she’d unwrapped the last bandage, and past caring that, in order to reach the ones down around my ankles, she practically had her face in my crotch. It was only after the last trace of mud had been showered off that I finally began to warm up again, although I was still required to stand, naked, while Marie-Rose had conducted the final measure, declaring with triumph that I’d lost four inches.
‘That’s better,’ I said to Vicky, back in the comfort of my fluffy bathrobe. ‘I can feel my extremities again. Can I just tell you - that was really, really unpleasant.’
‘Don’t you feel great now, though?’
‘My skin does feel nice and soft, I suppose. And apparently I lost four inches; although that’s much less impressive than it sounds, since it was half an inch off my waist, a quarter of an inch off each arm, and so on. Bit of a con, if you ask me.’
‘You’ll sleep well tonight, I bet.’
‘Did you have a nice snooze while I was gone?’
Vicky stretched, like a cat. ‘Mmm, it was divine. Just to be able to drop off without Crystal or Pat jumping on my head after five minutes. That alone was worth the cost of this place.’
‘We should do it more often.’
‘Couldn’t afford to do it that often, Anna. It’s not cheap, is it?’
I felt guilty, and thought about how we each had topics of conversation that we instantly regretted bringing up in front of the other: for her, it was anything to do with babies; for me, it was mentioning money, even indirectly. I was about to change the subject when she did it for me.
‘So, I’m dying to hear all about the job. You haven’t even mentioned it! Honestly, don’t worry about upsetting me. I’m really happy for you that you’re in work again, and I want to know every detail.’
‘Oh Vicky, it’s no biggie. Just a crappy cable soap. I couldn’t even find it in the regional listings when I looked.’
‘Don’t put yourself down! A job’s a job, and even those cable things pay quite well, don’t they?’