As Good As It Gets?

by Fiona Gibson

  I watch as the Morris Minor parks up and a family tumbles out, baggage-less and seeming excited, as they all stride towards the terminal; must be meeting someone from a flight. How much more joyous the arrivals area is to the goodbye zone. ‘… We’ll be part of one of the biggest food manufacturers in Britain,’ Rupert adds, his voice straining with the effort of making this sound like a great thing.

  ‘So what does this mean?’ I ask, as fine rain starts to spit at my windscreen. ‘For the staff, I mean? The, er, teamsters?’

  ‘Well, they’re keeping the Archie’s brand of course, which is fantastic. But …’ – and here it comes – ‘operations are being centralised so production is being relocated to their main plant in the East Midlands.’ All these un-Archie’s words: operations, production, plant … ‘… And I hate to tell you,’ Rupert adds, ‘but PR and marketing are all going to be centralised too …’

  I listen to my boss’s bumbling apologies and he goes on to stress how valued I am, and how he’ll ensure that I’m handsomely rewarded with a generous redundancy package, plus glowing references of course, that goes without saying … and all I can think is: Fielding Foods. They are as far from cuddly knitted crisp corsages as it’s possible to be. But it’s okay, I tell Rupert, it’s okay, really. I know these things happen. I do understand.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re seeing it this way,’ he says, sounding genuinely distressed.

  Well, what else am I supposed to do? In a few short hours my husband will be arriving at his B&B in that quaint little postcard village, and changing into his suit (secretly, I have always found him ultra-fanciable in a suit). And soon after that, he’ll be told he is now officially Director of Seals.

  While I am officially redundant.

  These things happen, I repeat silently in my head, on the drizzly journey home.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  In fact, I do have a job: Director-in-chief of Bunny Hunt. As the kids profess to have ‘run out of ideas’ of where Guinness might be, I re-check every hidey-hole I can think of. It’s keeping me busy, at least. But, as it involves rummaging about in the more unsavoury crannies of our house, it’s pretty thankless, grubby work. Lonely, too. Ollie seems to have given up the hunt, and Rosie is spending pretty much all of her time in her room, muttering to God knows who on her phone. Delph or Zach, probably, although I’d like to think it might be Nina. I know Rosie’s upset – about Guinness, certainly, who’s been missing for five days now, and possibly Will, despite her cheeriness when he broke the news – and I wish I could do something to lift her spirits. Aren’t parents supposed to be able to make everything better? My suggestion that she might like to ask Nina round, so they could hang out together, was met with a blank look. ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said, unconvincingly.

  Feeling cabin-feverish, I break off and change into my sole tracksuit and trainers for a speed-walk around the park. Decreased appetite, and now exercise – I’ll soon be fitting into what the fashion industry terms ‘sample sizes’ (see, I’m learning fast). Anyway, I reflect, as someone in the distance waves to attract my attention, that’s one upside of the Fielding Foods takeover. I will no longer have the perpetual temptation of premium crisps sitting under my nose. Rupert has called again to explain that I won’t be expected to go back in to work. I should just pop in in a few days’ time, ‘when the dust has settled’, to ‘go over my “package”’ with him. We even laughed at that.

  As the waving person approaches I realise it’s Helen, Nina’s mum, who’s all smiles. ‘Haven’t seen you for ages,’ she says. ‘How’s things?’

  Fine, is what I should say. ‘I’ve just been made redundant,’ I blurt out, which causes Helen, who has a proper job – she’s a social worker, it’s a job that matters – to put a hand on my arm and say, ‘Oh, God, how awful. Shall we grab a coffee? D’you have time?’ All the time in the world, as it happens. So we head to the café in the park, which always smells of bacon, even when there’s no indication of bacon being cooked.

  I fill her in on the swallowing up of cuddly Archie’s by an enormous conglomerate in the East Midlands. ‘What’ll you do?’ she says, all wide, sympathetic eyes.

  ‘I have no idea. Haven’t even had time to think. Anyway, I’m not holding you up, am I?’

  ‘No, no, I’ve got the week off. Thought I should spend a bit of time with Nina. She’s um …’ Helen’s cheeks flush beneath her mass of nut-brown curls.

  ‘Is she okay?’ I ask, frowning.

  ‘Um … she’s a bit down, actually, but I don’t want to load this on you, not when you’ve had that awful news …’ My heart seems to slip a bit lower than where it should be.

  ‘Any reason?’ I know, before she even replies, what it is.

  Helen takes a sip from her mug. ‘Look, I know how it is, Charlotte. The age the girls are – they grow apart, they’re all so fickle at this stage. I hear Rosie has a boyfriend now, and she’s modelling. That’s fantastic.’

  I muster a smile, almost wishing she wasn’t being so understanding. I mean, the girls have been best friends since they were five years old. What if Delph drops Rosie, and Zach loses interest and moves on elsewhere? ‘I’m sorry she’s not seeing much of Nina,’ I venture. ‘I’ve tried to encourage her. It’s just so hard to get through to her at the moment …’

  She smiles. ‘Oh, I know what it’s like. To be honest, I don’t think it’s really Rosie’s fault. It’s that Delph girl—’

  Oh, hell. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Well, er …’ Helen stirs her coffee unnecessarily. ‘She wasn’t very nice to Nina, actually.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The night you all went to that gig. It was just a few snidey comments, about her weight, mostly—’

  ‘Her weight?’ I gasp. ‘What on earth did she say?’

  Helen shrugs. ‘Just that, you know … she’d look better if she lost a bit …’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ I am horrified. Nina is lovely; a perfectly proportioned teenage girl.

  ‘Delph said she had fat arms,’ Helen adds. ‘She’s worn long sleeves ever since—’

  ‘That’s awful,’ I exclaim. ‘I’m mortified, Helen. I don’t know what to say. Rosie seems entranced by Delph. I wish she wasn’t, but that’s how it is at the moment …’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Helen says quickly. ‘I didn’t know whether to say anything and, anyway, it’s really not your fault, or Rosie’s—’

  I look at her, picturing our daughters together at age eight, when Will and I took them to Lego Land; and at eleven, when they set off for their first day at secondary school … weirdly, although I didn’t cry at the departure gate this morning – or even when Rupert told me I’d lost my job – I could cry now. ‘I feel terrible,’ I add.

  Helen slips her bag onto her shoulder. ‘Don’t, honestly.’ I drain my cup and, as we part company outside the café, I tell myself that it’s okay, these things happen. ‘Nina’s making some new friends at the Harvester,’ Helen adds, giving me a fleeting hug before striding away.

  *

  I arrive home to find Rosie messily gathering snacks together in the kitchen: biscuits, toast and jam, even bowls of crisps, which she wouldn’t entertain normally. Perhaps she senses that our supply of freebies will soon run dry …

  ‘Hungry?’ I ask lightly.

  ‘Yeah, starving. Delph’s upstairs. I’ll just take this lot up.’ Ah, the weight-assessor. The body confidence guru for teenage girls. Rosie piles everything – plus two glasses of chocolate milk – on a tray and carries it out of the kitchen. I purse my lips and hope I won’t be put in a position of having to feign friendliness with our guest. ‘Oh, Mum,’ Rosie calls back, ‘Dad called.’

  I charge through to the hallway and look up. ‘What did he say?’

  She is halfway up the stairs, balancing the tray precariously. ‘He said he’s fine.’

  ‘Oh. Great. Er, are you sure you can manage that tray?’

  ‘Yeah, ’s’fine.’

&
nbsp; I blink at her. ‘Did he say how the interview went?’

  ‘Yeah, really well, I think,’ she says casually, as if it’s of no real consequence.

  ‘I saw Nina’s mum in the park,’ I add as she starts to make her way up to the landing. ‘She said Nina’s feeling a bit down at the moment, maybe you should give her a call—’

  ‘Mum,’ Rosie says firmly, without turning around, ‘I don’t really want to get into all that right now, okay?’ She disappears to her room.

  I sit on the stairs, wondering what I’m supposed to do now. I mean, I can’t dissuade her from seeing Delph. One even faintly negative comment from me would cause her to adore the girl even more. A burst of raucous laughter comes from Rosie’s room. It’s cruel laughter I hear – the kind a poor, bewildered lady in the park might be subjected to, if her skirt was tucked into her big knickers. I try to beam up stern vibes to alert Rosie as to how disappointed I am, that she’s dropped loyal Nina for a vacuous girl who’s criticised her best friend – her real best friend I mean – when Delph herself is definitely verging on malnourished, in my opinion. Maybe Rosie’s concerned about her – hence all the biscuits and crisps and chocolate milk?

  With a sigh, I pull out my phone from my jeans pocket and call Will. His calm, mellow voice explains that I may leave a message. No thanks, I think bitterly.

  ‘D’you think I look, like, old or something?’ Rosie’s voice rings out from her room.

  ‘’Course not,’ Delph retorts. ‘You’re insane. How can you even think that?’

  ‘Well, the mitten shoot, and them telling Laurie I’m perfect for the knitting market …’

  ‘Don’t take any notice of that,’ Delph replies. ‘You look sixteen, seventeen or eighteen, tops. That’s just bread-and-butter work, my agent calls it. No one sees it and no one cares. It’s just money, Ro. God, you sound like my mum. She’s always going, “Do I look ancient to you? Am I too old for a bikini? Or a denim jacket?” Drives me mad!’ They both hoot with shrill laughter.

  ‘How old’s your mum?’ Rosie enquires.

  ‘Dunno. About forty-five, I think – goes on about the menopause anyway. I think it’s happening. She’s been dead moody. Crying over nothing and moaning that her hair’s drying out …’

  ‘Does that happen?’ Rosie asks, sounding alarmed.

  ‘God, yeah. And not just that. Your skin withers and you shrivel up down there …’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah. Sex gets, like, really painful …’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Rosie says. Christ, aren’t they aware of how loudly they talk?

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ Delph declares. ‘Mum told me. We have a really honest relationship. We’re more like sisters really … are you like that with your mum?’

  ‘Not really,’ Rosie replies, at which my heart sinks.

  ‘D’you think she’s having her menopause yet?’

  ‘Dunno. Probably.’ Bloody hell, I am only thirty-eight. I am in my prime! I could produce a couple more babies if I got a move on, although in view of my situation right now, this is highly unlikely. ‘So what else happens?’ Rosie asks as I gather myself up and creep back downstairs.

  ‘Oh, all kinds of shit. Your face gets hairy ’cause your oestrogen’s running out. Basically, you become more like a man.’

  In the kitchen now, with the door firmly shut, I peer at my reflection in our kettle. Can’t see any hairs sticking out of my chin, but then it is a bit smeary so I grab an Archie’s tea towel and give it a wipe, then lean in for a closer look. Now I see it: a lone hair jutting out, just below the left corner of my mouth. An actual menopause symptom. An old lady sprouting. Why hasn’t Will told me? He probably hasn’t noticed. I doubt he’d detect anything untoward if the lower half of my face was entirely smothered by matted fur. I pull at the hair ineffectually, which makes my eyes sting, then rummage in the drawer for scissors and snip it off.

  The girls are heading downstairs now, giggling away as if they don’t have a care in the world – which is, of course, how it should be. They are young. They are gorgeous. They have thirty-odd years before anything remotely menopausal starts happening to them. I have lost my job, just as my husband is planning to leave me and become a Director and, to top it all, I am growing a beard. When should I tell them about my redundancy, I wonder? Not now. Ollie is at Saul’s, and Rosie is too busy discussing my imminent shrivelling to be concerned with the trivial matter of us being able to pay the mortgage and, you know, live.

  The kitchen door flies open. ‘We’re going out for a coffee,’ Rosie announces.

  Coffee, which she has always dismissed as bitter and disgusting … ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Take your phone, would you?’

  ‘Sure,’ she says pleasantly, perhaps pitying me for my withering insides.

  Delph waggles her fingers at me by way of saying goodbye. ‘Don’t worry,’ she tells Rosie as they leave. ‘By the time it starts happening to us, they’ll have invented a cure for all that stuff.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Sabrina assures me later, as we’re installed on my sofa, tucking into the wine she’s brought. ‘Tommy was away loads when Zach was little, and to be honest, sometimes it was easier not to have him around. Life was simpler. You know how men just clutter up the place?’

  ‘S’pose so,’ I say with a smile, grateful now that she’s come round. Why can’t I breeze through life, seemingly unrattled by anything, the way Sabrina does?

  ‘Me and Zach would have picky little dinners,’ she goes on. ‘Just bits and bobs thrown on a plate. It was brilliant. I mean, Tommy’s great, but he’s hard work, you know? Loud. Messy. Like a big, boisterous adolescent …’

  I top up her glass. ‘And how was it when he came back?’

  ‘Great,’ she enthuses, her fine gold bracelets jangling, ‘’cause we’d had some space.’ Ah, the space issue again. ‘It’d, y’know, reignite things,’ she adds with a grin. ‘That might happen with you and Will. But you know what the best thing was?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘He always brought presents.’ Her eyes sparkle. ‘Bet Will comes back laden with stuff.’

  ‘I don’t really want presents,’ I say firmly. ‘This place is crammed with stuff, Sabrina …’

  ‘But you must want something. Everyone loves a treat. Come on, what would yours be?’

  I shrug. ‘Oh, nothing much. Just the ability to rewind our lives to where we were before Will lost his job. He loved Greenspace, you know. He was a different man then. I’d go back to the time before this Scotland job, before seals and porpoises …’

  In fact, I decide, I’d magically transport us even further back than that – to when Ollie was a baby, and Rosie was six, and we were all crammed into our two-bedroomed flat in Hackney. There was no garden or shed – no mysterious hormone powder then – just a tiny balcony with a wobbly clothes horse parked on it, draped with babygrows and sleepsuits with poppers up the front, and the only tool set we owned came out of a Christmas cracker. I don’t tell Sabrina that part, though, just as I haven’t mentioned my meet-up with Fraser: I can’t risk her telling Zach, and Rosie hearing about it that way.

  In fact, it’s not quite true that there’s nothing I want. A call, a text – that would do: just a sweet message from Will. In fact, what I’d really love is something to arrive through the old-fashioned post – like a card with two cuddling teddies on the front, and ‘I love you beary, beary much’ in swirly silver type beneath them. Of course, that’s not Will’s style at all, nor mine. What is happening to me?

  ‘So how d’you think things are going with Zach and Rosie?’ I ask, to change the subject.

  ‘Oh, she’s an adorable girl,’ Sabrina enthuses. ‘He really likes her, you know, but then …’ She pauses. ‘They’re young and he has a lot of friends …’

  Please let’s not have a heartbroken girl on top of all of this. ‘Rosie’s never had a proper boyfriend before,’ I remark.

  Sabrina nods. ‘Wel
l, I think it’s just casual between them.’

  ‘That’s probably for the best.’ I top up our glasses, adding, ‘You know, I can remember exactly how I was – at Rosie’s age, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, me too.’

  ‘They think we’re ancient, though, don’t they? And that we have no idea what their lives are like?’

  She nods vehemently.

  ‘I heard Rosie and Delph discussing the menopause today,’ I add, ‘about everything withering up: hair, internal organs, vagina …’

  ‘Christ no,’ she shrieks, dissolving into laughter.

  ‘Rosie reckons I’m menopausal.’ I smirk and sip my wine.

  ‘God,’ Sabrina exclaims, ‘you’d pass for thirty. Seriously. You’re so lucky, you know. You don’t need make-up, fake tan, all that.’ She glances down at her own bronzed limbs.

  ‘It would probably help,’ I say with a shrug. ‘I just never seem to get around to stuff like that.’

  ‘That’s the thing, though. Bet you’re one of those women who looks great even when they’ve just got out of bed …’ I protest that I don’t, that I’m quite the horror really, but she charges on: ‘It takes me an hour every morning to look like this, you know. That’s probably why it was always a relief when Tommy was away, ’cause I didn’t have to go through the rigmarole of getting up before him, to put my face on …’

  I stare at her. ‘You mean, you put on your make-up before Tommy wakes up?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sniggers. ‘Just a bit, you know: brows, lashes, touch of tinted moisturiser. He’s never actually seen me without it. He probably wouldn’t recognise me with a bare face.’ We laugh, and drink more wine, and out of the blue, she throws her arms around me, a little squiffily. ‘Better get back,’ she says finally, at around ten-thirty. ‘Got to sort through some orders for tomorrow … but listen, you and Will – this Scotland job could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.’