Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (15 page)

“I don’t smoke, and I’m on a diet. Life’s barely worth living, is it?” I reply.

Marlboro Man chuckles and turns in the direction of a small wooded area. “Once more into the beech,” he shouts over his shoulder.

“Beech, breach, get it?” says a rather bent old gent of at least seventy. “You get lots of bad tree jokes when you come walking
with us. Wait for it, she’ll be having us walking uphill backward in a minute, it’s our punishment for misbehaving.”

“And what exactly constitutes bad behavior?”

“Oh, the usual stuff,” says the plump woman who’s looking forward to her fry-up. “Talking too much, dawdling, not having the
exact money for the walk and demanding change.”

On cue, Henri announces, “See that hill over there? We’re going to walk up it backward.”

And we do. Muscles scream in agony, and those of us not blessed with eyes in the back of our head are constantly craning our
necks behind us to avoid collisions. Collisions occur anyway, with fellow walkers, stray dogs, and Hampstead Heath strollers
going the conventional route and walking down the hill in a forward direction.

“Bloody ramblers,” says a man to his beagle as we file past backward. “It shouldn’t be allowed.”

By the time we eventually arrive at Kenwood House, close to two hours after setting off, the sun is shining, and we plonk
ourselves down at three adjacent round tables in the walled garden behind the café.

“Still alive, are we?” Sarah asks me.

“Just,” I reply.

“Seeing as it’s your first time, I’ll stand you breakfast. What would you like?”

“Sausages, eggs, ba— On second thought, make that brown toast and marmalade and a cup of tea. And hold the butter. Thanks,
Sarah.”

“So when’s the next walk?” I ask Henri as Sarah trots off.

“Tomorrow, Sunday. You coming?”

“Well, actually . . . I just might.”

“Good on you, girl,” says a woman opposite me. She’s wearing a jade-green anorak and a baseball cap, her hair hidden inside
it except for a small blond ponytail that peeks out from behind her cap when she turns her head. “I’m Sally, and I know you’ve
been talking to my husband, Nick. It will be my pleasure to escort you around tomorrow.”

I feel like a fish who’s spotted some tasty bait. If I take it, I’m asking for trouble, but something tells me I’m going to
take it anyway. It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling. The funny thing is, this lot don’t look nearly as old as they did
at eight o’clock this morning.

On the way home, Sarah quizzes me, but I’m not giving anything away.

“See, they’re not such a bad bunch, are they?”

“Who, the Hampstead Over-the-Hillbillies?”

Sarah snorts. “Hey, that’s a pretty good name for us. I like it. Headlines always were your thing, weren’t they? I think the
rest of the guys will like it, too.”

I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes to avoid further questioning.

“Thanks for the lift, Sarah,” I say as she stops outside my house to drop me off. “How about if I pick you up tomorrow morning?
Ten to eight. And I’ll buy breakfast.”

Sarah leans over the gearstick and gives me a hug. “Hate you.”

“Hate you, too, you cow.”

“Mooooo.”

Jack and Olly are out. After a long, hot shower, I go and lie down on the bed. I fall into my first peaceful sleep since the
start of the year.

• • •

I take the Jubilee Line to Baker Street. I fail to concentrate on the newspaper, still full of stories about the Iraq war
and, on this particular day, the capture of former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz by the American forces. It’s impossible
to reconcile the fact of Britain at war with daily London life continuing business as usual. However current the news coverage,
however graphic the images on Sky News, it still has a kind of not-really-happening aura about it. I’m reading today’s headlines,
but at the same time I’m noticing my thumbnail is split.
Damn,
I think,
it will take weeks to grow out
. I examine my nail for a few seconds, then my eye wanders round the train car, barely focusing on a succession of random
images. Trainers with flashing lights, Walkmans clamped to heads, a young couple who can’t take their hands off each other
(his hands down the back of her jeans), a woman hanging on to the rail above her and one-handedly reading a Maeve Binchy novel,
a red-and-blue-nosed drunk swaying perilously, men in suits, women in suits, students with rucksacks, a fat middle-aged man
opposite, legs wide apart, his gray pin-striped trousers straining at his crotch as he tucks in to a giant baguette and a
small piece of tomato dribbles on his tie. He picks it up, unperturbed, and pops it straight into his mouth. As the train
pulls in to Baker Street Station, my tummy is telling me I am not looking forward to my appointment.

It’s just a few minutes from here, past Madame Tussauds, the queue of tourists already snaking round the block, across the
busy Marylebone Road with its bumper-to-bumper traffic and on to my Harley Street destination, where Dr. Olivetti and I are
due to meet. I’ve not told anyone about this appointment. Not Maddy. Not Sarah. Certainly not Jack. When I rang last November,
the brisk secretary told me there was a five-month waiting list for a consultation. “Lucky it’s not an emergency, then,” I
said breezily.

“Dr. Olivetti is very much in demand,” the secretary responded. “Of course, if you’d sooner look elsewhere . . .”

“Not a problem, I’ll take the date you offer.”

“We look forward to seeing you, then, on the twenty-fifth of April at ten o’clock. Thank you for calling.”

That particular day last November, I’d been in the fashion cupboard approving handbags for an accessories shoot. Bags had
become the hot new accessory ever since celebs had been spotted sporting Hermès Birkin bags and Fendi baguettes. Now practically
every designer bag worth its seven-hundred-pound-plus price tag has its own personal name attached to it. Like Croissant.
Or Alma. I was admiring a bag in buttery plaited leather by Bottega Veneta when I had something of an epiphany.
I don’t have to put up with it anymore
. For the price of two top-of-the-range designer bags, I could probably get rid of mine altogether. While fashion victims
across the UK were forking out fortunes for a bag that lasts a season, I could take five years off my looks. My bags—the kind
you carry under your eyes rather than over the shoulder—could be history. That was when I decided to give Dr. Olivetti a call
on a number I happened to have cut out and kept from last issue’s cut-out-and-keep guide to cosmetic surgery.

But now the moment of truth is here. And I’m scared. Very scared. At least last November I could have justified it on the
grounds that I might have to go on TV to talk about stress and the working mother. And it wouldn’t have done to look stressed
out myself. What excuse do I have now? Apart from vanity—and desperation. Supposing Dr. Olivetti thinks my face is beyond
repair. “It’s important for healing,” I imagine him saying, “to have a degree of elasticity left in your skin. Unfortunately,
you don’t seem to have any.” That would be too awful.

I’m giving myself the full interrogation now. Will fewer wrinkles really change my life? Get me a job offer I can’t refuse?
Get my sex life going again? Wasn’t there a time—back in the dark ages of the late 1980s—when I refused to carry ads for cosmetic
surgery in the magazine I edited before
Jasmine
because it so thoroughly went against my feminist principles? Because I thought it immoral to encourage women to undergo
dangerous surgery in order to conform to male standards of beauty? Well, sod that. Times have changed. Even so, I’m not at
all convinced. And what if it goes wrong and I end up looking like the Bride of Wildenstein?

As part of my new fitness regime, I decide to walk up the three flights of stairs to Dr. Olivetti’s consulting room. His name
is etched on a shiny brass plate on a well-polished wooden door. I know this man to be a highly respected plastic as well
as cosmetic surgeon. He’s renowned for the reconstruction work he does on burn and other accident victims. But maybe wrinkles
are what bring in the cash.

I knock tentatively. Almost immediately, the door opens.

“Good morning, Mrs.—Hope? My goodness, so it is you. What a surprise.”

Not as much of a surprise to her as it is to me. My luck really has run out.

“I only started working here last week,” she twitters, “and when I saw your name in the appointment book, I did think it unlikely
that two Hope Lyndhursts . . . On the other hand, you’re the last person I’d have expected to . . .” She trails off.

It’s some kind of curse. Or divine retribution.

“Don’t you worry now, Hope, your little secret is safe with me,” says Vanessa the Undresser, a look on her face so jubilant
that I could be forgiven for thinking she’d just won the lottery.

• • •

Dr. Olivetti is silver-haired, handsome, and patrician.

“How can I help you?”

“I, I . . .”

He waits patiently. He has a remarkably smooth forehead for a man who must be in his late fifties. Gordon Ramsay could do
with some of what he’s been having.

“I, I . . .”

“It can be hard to get started; take your time.”

“Well, when I booked this appointment back in November, I had been expecting to be doing some television work as part of my
job. But I’m not doing that job anymore, so I’m not sure . . .”

Dr. Olivetti’s left eyebrow rises a fraction, but his forehead remains static.

“The thing is, it’s my face. It’s, well, basically it’s collapsed. And I hate the way I look. I used to think I was okay.
Now I look in the mirror and wish I had cataracts so I didn’t have to see the truth.”

Another uplift of the eyebrow.

“Everything needs doing. My neck is like chicken skin. My upper eyelids are drooping, and my lower lids are disappearing.
The bags under my eyes are these hideous watery pouches. I’m a mess.”

The tears are welling up again.

“I don’t wish to contradict you, Mrs. Lyndhurst, but for a woman of your age—let’s see”—Dr. Olivetti refers to his notes—“you
were born in 1953, so that makes you fifty—you are holding up remarkably well. Everything you describe is part of the normal
aging process, but there is a great deal we can do to counteract the visual signs of aging, if that’s what you wish.”

“I’m a mess,” I repeat quietly, almost to myself.

“Would you mind coming over and sitting in this chair so I can take a quick digital photograph of your face?”

I go to the allocated chair and sit down. Although I want to cry, I immediately smile instead for the camera. It’s a Pavlovian
response. Camera. Smile. All those years of directing magazine photo shoots.

“No need to smile,” says Dr. Olivetti, looking not at all like Mario Testino, “this one’s not for the cover of
Vogue
.” At least he’s trying to make me feel comfortable. He takes a picture, walks back to his desk and starts fiddling with his
computer. “Come and sit back down over here and relax. This will only take a moment.”

The next thing that happens is my face suddenly appears vastly magnified on the wall. This seems to me both unnecessary and
unkind. Dr. Olivetti starts drawing with a kind of pen mouse on what looks like a light box on his desk, and the marks are
appearing as if by magic on the image of my face.

He’s showing me exactly what can be done to the bags under my eyes, to my drooping upper eyelids, to my disappearing jawline.
I obviously had “worst-case scenario” written all over me. But instead of seeing a fresh and smooth new me, all I can picture
is barbaric metal instruments of torture and Sylvester Stallone’s mother. I look down at my lap.

Dr. Olivetti has put down his pen and walked around to behind the chair where I’m sitting. He places a hand on my shoulder,
and I jump and swivel round. Why is he touching me?

“The thing is, Mrs. Lyndhurst,” he says, “we can make you feel a whole lot better about how you look, but we can’t make you
feel better about yourself as a person. Surgery will enhance your appearance but not your life. I don’t say this to all my
patients, but I think you may have more important issues to deal with at present. Am I right?”

I sniff miserably and nod.

“I’d put all this on hold if I were you. If you still feel the same about your face in a year, come back and we’ll arrange
for surgery. I won’t refuse you even now if you insist, but the advice I’m giving you is with your best interests at heart.”

Relief floods over me. I’m not going under the knife. I’m not. “Thank you, Doctor,” I say. “Thank you so much for putting
things in perspective. You must be a really good doctor if you turn people away rather than take their money.”

“I have patients queuing up for my services, Mrs. Lyndhurst, so one more or one less, and I can still pay the children’s school
fees and holiday at Christmas in the Caribbean. But it’s important to have realistic expectations about what surgery can and
can’t achieve. You’re an intelligent woman, I’m sure, and I want you to consider your options carefully.”

I love this man. If ever I do decide to have surgery, he’s the only one for me. We shake hands, and I thank him again before
I leave the room.

On my way past Vanessa’s desk, I say, “Nothing doing. He thinks I look fine the way I am.”

“That’s excellent news, Hope,” she says, smirking, “but there’s really no need for this. I said it before, and I’ll say it
again: Your secret is safe with me.”

I’m so grateful to have been let off the hook that I consider a little visit to Bond Street for some summer clothes. Instead,
I find myself heading north, toward Regents Park. It won’t take me much longer than an hour to walk home; it’s a beautiful
day, and it’s been an absolute age since I fed the ducks. Only an hour! This is surely progress. Only a month ago, an hour-long
walk would have seemed like a marathon.

The one place I know around here with a bakery is Marylebone High Street. In the posh patisseries of Marylebone High Street,
they’ve never heard of sliced white. But bearing in mind that I’ve just saved myself up to ten grand for the full face-lift,
I think those ducks deserve a treat. I’m not saying the ducks would know the difference between Sunblest and Poilâne in a
blind tasting, but whatever’s left I can have for lunch with my daily blast of cholesterol-lowering monounsaturates. In other
words, half an avocado. Poilâne for the ducks and Poilâne for me. This is the life. I’ve lost four pounds this month, and
I could swear that’s a muscle I can feel in my left upper arm. Things are looking up. Even my face feels less slack as I head
jauntily for the park, a nice loaf of Poilâne tucked under my arm.