As Good As It Gets? (36 page)

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.’

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. ‘Well, 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.’

Maybe she’s right, I reflect, heading up to bed. Somehow, though, I can’t imagine things ‘reigniting’ if Will gets the job and only comes home for the odd weekend. Would we sleep in the same bed? I’d imagine we would – there’s nowhere else and, after all, we haven’t officially split up. We would just be ‘having a bit of space’. Maybe he’s planning to divide our bed in two with an electrified fence? In fact, it seems more likely that Rosie and Ollie will be flying up to see him in Scotland instead. What will I do during those empty weekends? Start yoga again? Or dig out our old board games and play Cluedo by myself, or Buckaroo?

Rosie’s light is on; rather than disturbing her I just call out goodnight through the door.

‘Night, Mum,’ she says sleepily.

I peer into Ollie’s room, where he is curled up fast asleep on his bed, fully dressed, his cheeks flushed from being outdoors all day. No point in waking him and telling him to put on PJs. No harm in sleeping in a T-shirt and shorts.

Maybe, I think, padding quietly to my bedroom, this is what Sabrina meant about life being simpler when your husband’s away. We, too, had a perfectly acceptable picky dinner – cold chicken and couscous discovered in the fridge. I found some only slightly wrinkly cooking apples in the veg rack and made a crumble. A small thing, which Will would do without thinking, but pleasant too. I enjoyed making it. I’d suggest that that makes me a proper grown-up, but I have no idea what that means anymore. Is it Dee, at twenty-four, pretending to love shopping for cushions and scented oil burners? Or Sabrina, who’s well into her forties, yet can’t bring herself to let her own husband see her bare-faced? Then there’s Rosie who, at sixteen years old, is right for the
knitting market.
It’s hugely confusing.

My mobile trills, and my heart leaps when I see Will’s number displayed. ‘Hi, how are you?’ It comes out more eagerly than I’d intended.

‘Good. Fine.’

‘How was the interview?’ I ask.

‘Um, yeah, I think it went pretty well …’

‘Any news yet?’ Christ, I sound like his mother.

‘No, not yet.’ Awkward pause.

‘I’ve been calling you,’ I add.

‘Yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s been a bit, uh, hectic …’

I lie back on our bed and stretch out, taking up all the space. To my right, on the floor, is a heap of Will’s old clothes, ready to be taken to charity. There are bobbly old sweaters, faded T-shirts and several pairs of jeans worn out from Will spending so much time on his knees in the garden, planting, weeding, thinning out.

‘Will,’ I say, ‘I’ve been made redundant. Rupert’s sold Archie’s. The company’s moving up to the Midlands and even if I wanted to go – which I don’t – there won’t be a marketing department anymore …’

‘Oh, God,’ he exclaims. ‘That’s awful. Surely he can’t just do that, with no warning—’

‘He can,’ I cut in, ‘and he has. And it’s okay. Well, it’s not great, of course, but I’ll manage. Maybe it was time to move on anyway. And at least I won’t be bringing home any more reject crisps …’

He laughs softly. ‘I’m really sorry, Charlotte. That’s a total fucker, it really is … what d’you think you’ll do?’