Losing Me

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SUE MARGOLIS

Best Supporting Role

“Delightfully funny, deliciously naughty, and compulsively readable.”

—Susie Essman, actress,
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, and author of
What Would Susie Say?

“This is an absolutely wonderful and engaging book. I fell in love with the characters and laughed my way through the entire novel.”

—Chicklit Club

“Funny.”

—Fresh Fiction

“[This] is a book filled with hopes, dreams, loss, renewal, and ultimately the satisfaction that comes with finding a place to call home, which doesn’t always mean a house. Highly recommended.”

—Open Book Society

“[This is] a perfect beach read.”

—Kritters Ramblings

“
Best Supporting Role
is the first book by Sue Margolis that I have read, but it won’t be the last! . . . Sarah Green is endearing and easy to relate to. . . . The book was an interesting reflection on risks. Margolis examines risk-taking from several different perspectives. . . . This book will make a great vacation read! It’s quick and light yet satisfying at the same time.”

—The Book Chick

“A wonderful and enjoyable read.”

—
RT Book Reviews

A Catered Affair

“Wickedly funny. . . . I laughed until I hurt while reading
A Catered Affair
. It’s a delightful romp with a theme lots of women can empathize with, but it’s got a lovely message too.”

—Popcorn Reads

“A guilty pleasure . . . bawdy and fun.”

—The Romance Reader

“British chick lit at its finest. Sharp-witted humor with warm, breathing characters . . . [a] unique love story.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“A romping-good English chick lit tale that will keep the readers in stitches.”

—
Booklist

Perfect Blend

“A fun story full of an eccentric cast of characters. . . . Amy is an endearing heroine.”

—
News and Sentinel
(Parkersburg, WV)

“Laugh-out-loud funny, passionate, sexy, mysterious, and truly unexpected, Sue Margolis has created the Perfect Blend of characters, romance, and mystery. Read it!”

—Romance Junkies

“A fun, sassy read. . . . The romance blooms and the sex sizzles. This is a hilarious and engaging tale. Sue Margolis has whipped up a winner.”

—Romance Reviews Today

PRAISE FOR THE OTHER NOVELS OF SUE MARGOLIS

“[A] sexy British romp. . . . Margolis’s characters have a candor and self – deprecation that lead to furiously funny moments . . . a riotous, ribald escapade sure to leave readers chuckling to the very end of this saucy adventure.”

—
USA Today

“[Margolis’s] language . . . is fresh and original. . . . [This] is a fast, fun read.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Another laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally clever, and perfectly polished charmer.”

—
Contra Costa Times

“Has something for everyone—humor, good dialogue, hot love scenes, and lots of dilemmas.”

—
Rendezvous

“A perfect lunchtime book or, better yet, a book for those days at the beach.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Margolis has produced yet another jazzy cousin to Bridget Jones.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A comic, breezy winner from popular and sexy Margolis.”

—
Booklist

“Quick in pace and often very funny.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“[An] irreverent, sharp-witted look at love and dating.”

—
Houston Chronicle

“A funny, sexy British romp. . . . Margolis is able to keep the witty one-liners spraying like bullets.”

—
Library Journal

“[A] cheeky comic novel—a kind of
Bridget Jones’s Diary
for the matrimonial set . . . wickedly funny.”

—
People
(beach book of the week)

“[A] splashy romp . . . giggles guaranteed.”

—
New York Daily News

“A good book to take to the beach . . . fast-paced and, at times, hilarious.”

—
Boston’s Weekly Digest Magazine

“Scenes that literally will make your chin drop with shock before you erupt with laughter . . . a fast and furiously funny read.”

—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

ALSO BY SUE MARGOLIS

Neurotica

Spin Cycle

Apocalipstick

Breakfast at Stephanie’s

Original Cyn

Gucci Gucci Coo

Forget Me Knot

Perfect Blend

A Catered Affair

Coming Clean

Best Supporting Role

New American Library

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Copyright © Sue Margolis, 2015

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Margolis, Sue.

Losing me / Sue Margolis.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-17562-4

1. Older women—Fiction. 2. Life-change events—Fiction.

3. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction.

I. Title.

PR6063.A635L67 2015

823’.914—dc23 2015004655

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Mrs. Lipschitz falls on hard times. She goes to the synagogue and prays: “Lord, my husband lost his job. We’re six months behind with the rent. The triplets are about to start college. Please, just let me win the lottery.”

God doesn’t reply. Mrs. Lipschitz doesn’t win the lottery. Three more weeks, she asks God the same thing. No response.

The fourth week, she begs: “God, why are you ignoring me? We’re going bankrupt. I’m on my knees. Please, please let me win the lottery.”

Finally, she hears a big voice. “Mrs. Lipschitz, it’s God. Do me a favor. Meet me halfway. Buy a lottery ticket.”

—traditional Jewish joke

Prologue

“B
arbara, before you go, could I have a word?”

“Actually, now’s not great. Could it possibly wait until lunchtime?” After everything that had happened that morning, Barbara was feeling the strain. Plus she was due to teach a class in a few minutes. What she needed was a quick breather to clear her head. What she suspected she was about to get—since these days Sandra banged on about little else—was another sermon on the unacceptable levels of swearing in year four. In Barbara’s view, it had improved—sort of—and she’d told Sandra so. “At least now when kids call me a cunt, they say, ‘You’re a cunt,
miss
.’” Sandra flinched. Then she went all head teachery and looked at Barbara over her spectacles. “Barbara, we’re talking about ten-year-olds. This is no laughing matter.”

She wasn’t really laughing. Swearing was an issue. But Jubilee was a school in an impoverished neighborhood. Everybody swore. Kids only copied what they heard. Barbara—along with most of the staff—believed there were more important problems to be tackled, like the four – and five-year-olds starting school not toilet trained.

“I’d rather do it now,” Sandra was saying. “If you don’t mind.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“Maybe you should sit down.” Sandra gestured to the chair on the other side of her desk.

“OK, now you’re making me nervous.” Barbara remained standing. She wasn’t the leg-buckling type.

“I thought I should tell you before you received the official letter.”

“Official letter? I don’t understand. Have I don’t something wrong? Am I about to get a telling off?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. The thing is, earlier this morning I got an e-mail from the Education Department. I want you to know that I’ve been fighting this for months.”

“Fighting what?”

“I do wish you’d sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down. Sandra, what’s going on?”

“At the beginning of last term, the Education Department wrote to me. I was informed that because of budget cuts, I needed to lose a teacher.”

It took her a moment to work out what Sandra was saying. “What?. . . And you’re saying that teacher is me? You’re sack – ing me?”

“Of course not. You’re being made redundant.”

“Oh, and you think semantics sweetens the pill? You think that being told I’m of no use—surplus to requirements—is an improvement on ‘you’re sacked’?”

“Barbara, I know you’re angry, but please don’t take it out on me. This isn’t my fault. I sang your praises to the department, told them what a huge asset you are to the school. But a post had to go, and they insisted it should be the person closest to retirement. They thought it seemed fairer that way.”

“Retirement? I wasn’t remotely thinking about retirement. I’ve got years left. You know as well as I do that this job is everything to me. It’s my life. It’s who I am.”

“I’m so sorry, Barbara. But there was nothing I could do. In the end, my hands were tied.”

Chapter 1

A
s she sipped her coffee in the early-morning calm, there were no augurs or omens to suggest that before lunchtime, her life would be in the toilet. Her breakfast egg was boiling on the stove. Through the kitchen window the sky was streaked optimistic orange. The elderly heating boiler was roaring away. In a moment the pipes would start their reassuring ticking and knocking. She relished this time to herself—before the day kicked off, before everybody began demanding bits of her. She would have relished it even more if it hadn’t been for Mark Zuckerberg.

Barbara had issues with Mark Zuckerberg. Granted, she was fifty-eight, going on fifty-nine, and walking in the valley of the shadow of her seventh decade. But did the boy mogul with practically his whole life ahead of him have to ram the point home quite so often? This morning—as usual—Barbara’s Facebook sidebar contained another “fifty-nine next birthday?” ad for a “cheap, no-fuss” funeral plan. Underneath was an invitation to take part in a medical trial aimed at detecting early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then there were the plus-size clothing outlets pushing New Year’s discounts. Zuckerberg knew she was a size fourteen because he had elves—thousands of invisible Web stalkers—who were forever peering over her shoulder as she shopped. She imagined them sniggering and nudging one another each time she clicked on a pair of big knickers or an XL “leisure pant.”

But the advertisement that really got to her was the one for a Norwegian river cruise. In Barbara’s book, a cruise ship was God’s waiting room. A touring hotel that practically did the sightseeing for you. Effortless—like Velcro, Crocs, or elasticized waistbands—cruises were catnip to people her age. Of course, some of Barbara’s friends took cruises not so much to take it easy, but to show off. When couples of a certain age treated themselves to around-the-world cruises, it was a chance for them to bask on the sun loungers of their success. Good luck to them. But it disturbed her that so many people her age had stopped striving and seemed to be happy to talk of their successes in the past tense.

Cruises, no matter why they were taken, were the first sign of the dying of the light and to be fought at all costs. (Elasticized waistbands, on the other hand, had, since the arrival of her ample postmenopausal belly, become her secret pleasure.)

Barbara topped up her
Queen of Fucking Everything
coffee mug that her best friend, Jean, had given her for Christmas and checked the time on the kitchen clock. Just past six. She always got up early on school days. After thirty-odd years as a teacher, she still panicked about being late and even more so on the first day of a new term, which it was today. Her anxiety stemmed from her miserable childhood.

She spooled down the page of status updates. Her sister-in-law, Pam, had posted another selection of kitten pictures. She and her husband, Si, had recently moved to the Costa del Sol—somewhere near Málaga. For months she had posted nothing but beach snaps: “Me on the beach,” “Si on the beach,” “Me and Si on the beach.”

If they weren’t lazing on the sand, they were to be seen basking by the pool knocking back sangria. “This is the life,” Pam would proclaim with a line of exclamation marks. For the first few weeks she got twenty or thirty “likes” every time she posted a picture. But the thumbs-ups and “lucky old you” comments gradually waned as people got fed up with hearing about Pam and Si’s sun-and-sangria life. Pam appeared to take the hint—which was unusual for her. From then on the beach and poolside photographs stopped and she went back to her pre-Spain habit of posting syrupy animal snaps.

Today there were kittens poking their doe-eyed faces out of saucepans and toilet bowls. There were kittens cuddling puppies, kittens lapping from dinky bone-china teacups. Farther down, she had added one of her bumper-sticker affirmations. The fancy lettering wafted out of a sun-dappled bluebell wood:
Life isn’t measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away.
 “So true,” Pam’s old school friend Heather Babcock had commented, adding a line of hearts and smiley faces.

Barbara couldn’t understand why, the moment they hit fifty, so many previously cool, fun women turned into syrupy sentimentalists. Take Heather Babcock for example. In 1983, at Pam’s hen night at a pub in Camden Town, Heather had stood on a tabletop and sung a “feminist” song she’d penned. The chorus went:
Oh . . . don’t go jogging in a white tracksuit when you’ve got a heavy flow
. Even the blokes had joined in.

Now Heather, Pam and their ilk were cooing over infant animals on Facebook and buying tapestry cushions and bookmarks embroidered “To my dearest hubby.” Their living room shelves were rammed with snow globes, faux Fabergé eggs and porcelain babies dressed as angels. It seemed to Barbara that as soon as women ran out of estrogen and could no longer reproduce, they became driven by a new biological imperative—to fill their houses with kitsch crap. Old Mrs. Brownstein from down the road called them her
tchotchkes
. Barbara had once made the mistake of agreeing to a cup of tea with Mrs. B. What had followed was an hour-long guided tour of all her china ballerinas and harlequins. It upset the old lady no end to think of her children disposing of them after she’d gone.

If she was honest, Barbara had felt twinges of the condition herself. These had resulted in her dispatching more than one birthday e-card depicting penguins cutting a rug to the
“
Minute Waltz.” And although she had watched
Breaking
Bad
and appreciated its genius, another of her secret pleasures, along with the elasticized waistbands, was an evening in with reruns of
Roseanne
or
The Golden Girls
.

Pam, on the other hand, combined her syrupyitis with a fervent desire to bring back hanging. What was more, she had no qualms about expressing this on Facebook. Her posts on the subject—invariably accompanied by a picture of a giant noose—appeared every time a black person was convicted of killing a white one. Barbara had thought about unfriending Pam—but in the end she decided against it. Pam would find out. There would be an argument, which would result in a family rift. Best to leave well alone.

Out of politeness, Barbara “liked” both the kittens and the affirmation. Pam almost never returned the compliment. She steadfastly refused to “like” or comment on Barbara’s links to newspaper articles on child hunger or first-world poverty. Maybe she thought the way to deal with it was to hang the poor—or give them a kitten.

She dunked Marmite soldiers into her boiled egg. The yolk wasn’t as runny as she liked it, but it was her own fault. She’d got so wound up about Facebook that she’d left it on the stove for too long. She wondered if it was possible to e-mail Mark Zuckerberg—not to complain about Pam et al., but about his ageist advertisements. She knew she’d never get around to it, but she hoped others might. He should be taken to task—left in no doubt that people of a certain age didn’t care to be reminded of their mortality over their morning boiled egg. They were perfectly capable of doing that for themselves, thank you very much. Maybe he was like the Apple chap. People had been able to e-mail him and apparently he even replied to a few. What was his name? Always wore black polo-necks. The one who died. For crying out loud, he’d been one of the most famous people on the planet. But his name escaped her. These days Barbara had a real problem remembering names—and not just people’s names. It was the same with objects.

Last week it had been “colander.” She’d been simmering chicken joints and vegetables on the stove to make stock and needed to drain off the liquid. She’d taken the saucepan to the sink and asked her husband, Frank, if he would go to the cupboard and fetch her “the whatsit . . . you know . . . the strainy thing.”

“That would be the colander,” Frank had said, getting up from behind his newspaper. He duly located it, handed it to his wife and went back to his newspaper. Meanwhile, Barbara poured the golden chicken stock into the colander. Then, for what must have been a full five seconds she stared into the sink, convinced that some kind of magic was about to reverse the calamity. But it didn’t. The last drops of stock flowed into the plughole. All she had left was a colander full of overcooked meat, bones and veg. Frank thought it was hilarious, but Barbara was close to tears. “I never forget to put a bowl under the colander. Never.”

“Well, this time you did.”

“Yes, because I’m going bloody senile.”

“Oh, stop it. We’re all going bloody senile. The other day I found myself on the landing and I couldn’t remember if I’d just come upstairs or was heading down.”

After the chicken stock debacle, they’d gotten changed for Jean’s party. It was her sixtieth birthday, and she’d got caterers in to do posh bangers and mustard mash, along with a trio of puddings. Frank put on his navy Paul Smith suit that they’d bought at an outlet mall last year. Barbara could never get over the effects good tailoring could have on the chunky male figure. He’d teamed the suit with a white button-down collared shirt, open at the neck, and trendy black suede brogues. When he sat down there was a glimpse of bright pink sock.

“You know,” he said, looking at himself in the full-length mirror, “for a paunchy middle-aged git, I still scrub up OK.”

She had to admit that he did. When he was at home he shuffled around the house in the baggy old jeans and jumpers with elbow holes that she threw out when he wasn’t looking, but when he went out he liked to look a bit sharp.

“So, what about me? How do I look?” She was wearing a knee-length black tunic with a dramatic asymmetrical hem, over leggings and high-heeled boots.

“Great. But you always do. Have I seen that top thing before?”

“Only about a dozen times.”

“Really? Well, I like it. Suits you.”

As soon as they arrived at Jean’s, Frank disappeared to the loo. His prostate didn’t care for the cold weather.

Barbara helped herself to a glass of seasonal mulled wine and went in search of the birthday girl. She spotted Jean’s sister, Val, on the other side of the packed room. They shouted “hi” and exchanged waves but couldn’t get close enough for a proper hello. From what Barbara could tell, the only other family members in attendance were Jean and Ken’s boys, Oliver and Adam—along with Adam’s fiancée, Emma. Mostly the gathering was made up of the usual crowd—Ken’s colleagues from the gastroenterology department at King George’s.

Years ago, when Barbara and Frank were first introduced to them, they were skinny junior doctors in flares and mullets who told drunken stories about digital rectal exams and—famously—the guy who came into the ER insisting that his penis was dead. Now they were tubby senior consultants with ear hair and unruly eyebrows.

“I don’t get it,” Frank had said on the way over. “Ken’s still a good laugh. But his mates seem to have become so bloody dull as they’ve got older. Not one of them has got any real conversation. If they’re not talking shop, they bore on about wine and all the posh restaurants they’ve been to. Then they get on to hitting things with sticks.” Frank referred to any sport that wasn’t football as “hitting things with sticks.” It was partly a class thing. He loved the grassrootsness of football. Everything else was for posh boys or just plain pointless—although he did make a notable exception for cricket. He thought golf was especially preposterous and had no qualms about offending golfers he met.

“Ah, Jeff, I hear you play golf. So, do you own your own bag of bats?”

•   •   •

Eventually Barbara spied Jean, who was wearing a pair of big sparkly antlers, handing out nibbles on the other side of the room. “Suburban snacks, anybody?”

Try as she might to reach her, Barbara kept getting waylaid by doctors’ wives—whose names she couldn’t bring to mind—eager for a natter and a catch-up.

“Barbara! Long time no see. Come over here and say hello to my new knee.”

But before she could reach the knee and its owner, another familiar face she couldn’t put a name to was smiling a greeting.

“Barbara, how are you? Frank still working?”

“Actually, we both are.”

“Good Lord. You’re real suckers for punishment. Graham took retirement a couple of years ago. Couldn’t wait. It’s bliss. I cannot tell you. He’s busy working on his autobiography, which he’s planning to bring out as an e-book later in the year. I walk the dogs, potter in the garden. My asters did awfully well last year. Oh, and I’ve just started this brilliant antique-collecting course.”

Barbara couldn’t imagine a life being reduced to asters and antiques. She knew she was being snotty and contemptuous, not characteristics that she admired in herself, but she couldn’t see the point of carrying on if you didn’t have a proper, people-are-depending-on-you reason to get up in the morning. On the other hand, she was envious. These people could afford to give up work. She and Frank couldn’t, even if they wanted to.

Barbara finally caught up with Jean at the bar. This was actually Jean’s dining room table covered in a white cloth and bottles of supermarket fizz.

“Hey, birthday girl,” Barbara said, giving her friend a hug. “You’re looking gorgeous . . . and I’m lovin’ the antlers.”

“Ken thought I should wear a tiara, but since it’s still Christmas, I thought these were more seasonal.”

“Quite right. So have you had a good day?”

“Fabulous—and thanks again for the pressie. You really shouldn’t have. Issey Miyake perfume
and
body lotion. You must have spent a fortune. That said, it is my fave.”

Barbara had been worried about sending a parcel full of glass in the post, but she’d wanted to make sure it arrived that morning. Jean was a big kid when it came to her birthday. Every year she opened her presents in bed with Ken while they ate warm buttered croissants and drank champagne with floating strawberries.

“Oh, who cares about money?” Barbara said. “You’re only sixty once.” Since her credit cards were maxed out, she’d put the Issey Miyake on the charge card she’d used to pay for all the family Christmas presents. She dreaded to think how much she’d spent. Since Boxing Day, she’d been fretting about the bill landing on the mat.