Always and Forever (18 page)

‘Staffing problems. I’ve got to take this.’ She was gone for a moment, then returned and apologised again. ‘I don’t usual y carry my cel phone with me,’ she said. ‘It kind of ruins the atmosphere.’

‘No, it’s good,’ insisted Mary. ‘Otherwise it was al so perfect that we’d have been talking in hushed voices and would never have relaxed. Too much relaxing and whale music makes me nervous.’

Leah laughed. ‘No whales, but we do have dolphin music, if you’d like it,’ she said. ‘We tend to keep it for special occasions. We rotate the music. Eight solid hours of dolphin sounds would drive everyone nuts. So we have an hour of everything. Jazz, classical, easy listening, Tom Jones.’

‘No whale music?’ said Daisy, instantly liking this tal , beautiful woman. ‘I want my money back.’

‘We did have a whale sound CD,’ Leah said, ‘but whenever I put it on, people kept sneaking up to the stereo, turning on Tom Jones and hiding the whales at the back of the file cabinet. I guess they were trying to tel me something, so it’s stayed lost.’ Everyone laughed. Leah offered drinks and soon they were talking animatedly about everything from the shop to Paula’s pregnancy to how utterly fabulous ten minutes in the hot tub could make you feel.

‘And you get in every day?’ Daisy was envious. ‘Every day.

Helps the aches and pains,’ Leah revealed. ‘You can’t get to my age and not have a few aches.’

‘Your age! Oh yes, right,’ chortled Mary. ‘Now when you’re my age, you can talk about aching bones.’ ‘I’m pretty sure I’m older than you, Mary.’ Leah’s smile was broad.

‘No way!’ Mary retorted.

‘What age do you think I am?’

They al regarded Leah careful y.

Forty-ish. Maybe forty-six or -seven, thought Daisy, but didn’t say anything. What if she was horribly wrong and Leah was nearer forty than fifty?

‘I’m forty-eight and you look younger, perhaps forty-three,’

said Mary, eyes narrowed as she scrutinised Leah. ‘No, no, forty.’ She changed her mind.

‘Close,’ said Leah. ‘To paraphrase my grandmom, I’m twenty one with forty years’ experience.’

Mary and Paula stared at her in mild confusion, but Daisy got it instantly. ‘Sixty-one?’ she gasped. ‘Never.’ ‘Sixty-two in a few months,’ Leah admitted.

The three women were silent in astonishment.

Leah looked incredible, Daisy thought. Some beautiful women had faces like blank canvases waiting for someone else to paint the expression on. But not Leah. Her shining brown eyes were bright with life, her cheekbones looked as if they’d grown so smooth and high from the very act of smiling, and the lines on her face had developed simply because her face was so expressive. ‘You have to tel us your secret or we are leaving,’ joked Mary.

‘You were born beautiful and have young genes in your family,’ suggested Daisy, because it real y was the only suggestion she could come up with. How else could a person look so utterly fabulous and content?

‘I’l tel you if you join me in the hot tub later,’ Leah promised.

‘Mom-to-be, you’l have to sit on the side and dangle your hands in the water,’ she added to Paula.

A therapist dressed in white popped her head round the door to say hi and to check which treatments everyone was having. ‘We’l have whatever Leah’s had,’ said Mary. ‘And I want it al twice.’

They came together for lunch and then didn’t meet up again until late afternoon, when Daisy and Mary found themselves alone in the hot tub, staring out at Carrickwel spread beneath them.

‘This was an excel ent idea,’ Mary said with a contented sigh. ‘Wasn’t it? I feel so relaxed,’ said Daisy, eyes closed.

‘Good, I was a bit worried about you.’

Daisy sat up. ‘About me?’

‘You seemed stressed for a while …’

‘Alex’s been travel ing so much, you know.’

‘I thought you might be having problems,’ Mary added, ‘you know, since he said he didn’t want to get married.’ She was being uncharacteristical y sensitive, which made Daisy realise she’d said far too much that day when she’d complained about Alex.

‘We’re over it,’ said Daisy quickly. ‘I was definitely PMTish.’

‘Oh, OK.’

Daisy nodded. ‘Hormones are a nightmare,’ she said, hugging her hormone-related secret to herself. In two weeks - thirteen days to be exact - she and Alex would be at the fertility clinic. If that wasn’t the ultimate commitment, what was? She’d love to be able to tel Mary about it but she and Alex had agreed: this was their secret.

‘Leah’s nice, isn’t she?’ Mary moved on to another topic.

‘It’s odd, but I feel as if I’ve seen her somewhere before.’

‘Funny, I know what you mean.’

‘Perhaps she’s been on the cover of Forbes as a mil ionairess. She must have money if she’s renovated this place, although those mil ionaire types normal y don’t do the hard grind themselves.’ Daisy grinned. ‘I don’t know enough mil ionaires to know if they do or they don’t. She’s beautiful, though, isn’t she?’ ‘Great bone structure. I wonder would she come into the shop as a customer?’

‘I’m sure she would,’ Daisy said slowly, ‘but I don’t know if she’s the sort of person who’s into fashion. She doesn’t look like she needs great clothes - it’s as if she could dress in rags and nobody would notice the rags, they’d just notice her.’ ‘Style,’ agreed Mary. ‘She might put al her energies into decoration rather than clothes. This place is certainly stylish and there’s no doubt that Carrickwel needs a bit of glamour. The Wil ow’s fine but it’s not exactly four-star luxury.’ ‘Don’t say that; it’s lovely,’ argued Daisy, who’d found that the Christmas lunch at the Wil ow was about the only way to get through the day in the years she’d spent it with her mother.

The warmth and friendliness of the Malins had made it bearable. ‘Mr Malin is so kind and I think my mother rather fancies him, although she’d never say it.’

‘Harry? He’s a pet,’ admitted Mary. ‘His wife’s nice, although, poor dear, she never has a bean to spend on clothes. The daughter’s attractive too, very striking, tal girl.

She’d pay for dressing. Legs up to her armpits.’

‘Talking about me again,’ said Paula, arriving slowly. She was fol owed by Leah, who carried a tray laid with a jug of orange juice and four glasses.

While Paula sat in a lounger beside them, the other three relaxed in the tub and the Georgia’s Tiara girls compared notes on their treatments.

Paula’s mum-to-be massage had been heavenly because there was a special massage table with a cut-out bit made for pregnant women. ‘Lying on your stomach is something you take for granted until you’re pregnant,’ Paula sighed.

She’d had a manicure, pedicure and a gentle facial, and didn’t think Enrico would recognise her when she got home.

Mary had gone for the fabled hot stone massage and liked it so much, she was thinking of getting one instal ed in her own house. ‘Who’d have thought that boiled basalt could feel so good?’ she said happily.

‘Who’d have thought sitting in what’s real y a big bath could feel so good?’ asked Daisy, who was in a state of blissful relaxation after an aromatherapy scrub fol owed by an aromatherapy wrap, and a paraffin manicure that made her hands feel softer than silk. ‘I’d love to do al of this every day,’ she said. ‘Are you supposed to meditate or something, Leah, or just lie back in the water and relax?’

‘I’m sure you can meditate if you’re into that,’ Leah said. ‘I don’t. I just lie back and think about the good parts and the bad parts of the day, and say thanks for it al .’

‘So that’s your secret?’ asked Mary craftily. ‘No special beauty treatments but saying thanks?’

Leah smiled enigmatical y.

‘No, seriously,’ begged Paula. ‘How do you look so fabulous?’ Leah appeared to relent. ‘I was brought up in Los Angeles where how you look is of supreme importance. I’ve always looked after my skin and my figure.

My mother aged real y wel , so it’s in the genes as wel . But I got caught up in the whole ageing thing. In LA, it’s as if you don’t matter as soon as you hit thirty. You become invisible.’

‘You don’t have to go to LA for that,’ grumbled Mary. ‘It happens later in the rest of the world, I guess,’ Leah said.

‘Fifty might be the watershed in most places, but in LA, it real y is thirty. You have this vain hope that it wil be different for you because you feel young, and hey, a few lines don’t matter, baby, but one day you go out to the market and nobody looks at you. Nobody. You have become the invisible woman.’ ‘I can’t believe that,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re beautiful. You would be noticed anywhere.’

‘Thank you for that,’ smiled Leah. ‘I was never insecure about myself because I looked just like my mother and she was a head turner. But in a city where the most beautiful people in the world congregate, beauty is commonplace.

The guy who pumps gas for your car could be a model, the girl who serves you coffee could walk down the ramp for Victoria’s Secret. Everybody is stunning. So, you panic’

‘And?’ Mary asked breathlessly.

Leah laughed, a low husky laugh that wouldn’t have been out of place in a hot bar at midnight. ‘You go to the right cosmetic surgeon and you get him to freshen it al up a little.’ ‘I knew it!’ Mary said.

‘Only a little,’ Leah argued. She tapped her forehead. ‘Brow lift, lipo under the jawline and a bit of reshaping on the chin.

The rest is me. No face lift. If you have it done too early, you need too many of them and start to look like you come from a planet where their ears grow on the tops of their heads.’

‘You don’t need a face lift,’ Daisy said firmly. ‘Good, because I’m never having anything done again. This face is going with me to the end. In LA, people are shocked when I say this - particularly my surgeon, who makes most of his money on repeat business. But if I had my time over again, I wouldn’t have anything done.’

Everyone digested this information.

‘Why not?’ asked Daisy.

‘Because I spent so long worrying about how I looked on the outside, I forgot about the inside, and that needed a lot more work.’

‘Point taken,’ Mary agreed.

Under normal circumstances, Daisy would have said nothing and nodded, as if she too got the point. She was always laughing at punchlines she hadn’t heard, or jokes she didn’t understand. But today, she wanted to understand. How did a person become comfortable with the way they looked? If the outside was good, then you had time and energy to work on the inside, surely? ‘What do you mean exactly?’ she said.

‘I believed that everything I was, was what was on the surface,’ Leah said simply. ‘If my face was beautiful and men stil turned to look at me as I passed, then God was in his heaven and al was right with my world. That’s bogus, as my son might have said when he was going through his Bil and Ted days. Who you are is not about what you see in the mirror.’ ‘You’re so right,’ said Paula enthusiastical y. ‘She is,’ she protested as Mary grinned at her.

‘I know, but it’s hard living it,’ Mary shrugged. ‘It does take a major life event to make you wake up and smel the coffee,’

Leah admitted. ‘But I’m happy with the way I am now. I like my age, I don’t necessarily like creaking bones and waking in the night feeling as if my back has seized up, but I like the maturity.’

‘You do?’ said Daisy doubtful y. She’d identified what had made Leah happy: she was a mother, she had a child, was a member of the club. To Daisy, no amount of maturity could make up for not having that.

‘I do. I don’t want to go back to the person I was when I was twenty, even if it meant going back to looking and feeling as fit and beautiful as I did then.’

‘It must be nice to be so content,’ Daisy said wistful y.

Paula, Mary and Leah al looked her.

‘You have to work at it,’ Leah explained. ‘You have to think of what would make you happy and then stop tel ing yourself how it’s impossible, but instead tel yourself it is possible.

And go after it. Hopes and dreams aren’t as far off as you think. What do you want, Daisy?’ asked Leah. ‘Remember, this is the hot tub of truth. You cannot cheat here. Or, if you do,’ she amended, ‘you develop a nasty rash.’

The other three laughed.

‘Seriously. I got some stuff from that lady in the shop that sel s tarot and crystals. Sprinkled on the water, it makes you tel the truth.’

‘The shop’s cal ed Mystical Fires,’ said Daisy. ‘I didn’t know they stocked truthful water, but they have nice angel cards.

You get a pack and read one every day to see what messages the angels have for you. I think I might get some.’

She hoped her angel card would say ‘You shal have beautiful babies’ every time, although she wasn’t sure if there was a card for this. ‘What message would you like most in the world? What would make you happy?’ Leah asked.

Daisy bit her lip. Honesty was hard. She wasn’t comfortable with tel ing people deeply personal things. Saying she wanted a baby, a family, would sound sil y when Leah probably was asking if she’d like bigger lips or a flatter stomach or something. ‘To be happy, and to eat as much chocolate as I want.’ ‘Get pregnant,’ joked Paula, ‘then you do both!’ Daisy’s smile didn’t falter. ‘Great idea!’

‘What about you then?’ Leah turned to Paula.

‘To have a healthy baby,’ she said simply. ‘Boy, girl, big ears,’ she grinned at Mary and Daisy, ‘whatever. As long as the baby is healthy, that’s al Enrico and I want.’

‘And you?’ It was Mary’s turn.

Daisy half waited for Mary to laugh and give some breezy riposte, which was her usual response to a conversation that was getting too deep.

‘I don’t want to be alone,’ Mary said softly. ‘It’s not great passion I want, or someone buying me roses al the time and whisking me off to glamorous dinners. It’s the company, the love. A hug in the morning, a person to smile at when one of the kids says something funny, a warm body to snuggle up against in bed when it’s cold.’

Daisy was quiet.

‘Companionship,’ Leah suggested.

‘That’s the word.’ Mary slid deeper into the bubbling hot water. ‘I’m fed up with everyone talking about older women, sexy young men and being at it like knives morning, noon and night.’

‘So overrated.’ Leah nodded.

‘Exactly. So what if you found a young stud who could go al night? He couldn’t tickle you in that place at the base of your neck where your skin is sensitive, and make you remember the first time he did it years ago.’