Mad About the Boy Read online

  And to prove it, I just went to H&M again and I am a 10!

  I have written half of screenplay and at least ascertained that have neighbour with children the same age, I have 79 twitter followers and am part of hooked-in generation of social-media people, and I AM A SIZE 10. You see! Maybe am not completely rubbish.

  Monday 27 August 2012

  Acts of screenplay written 2.25, Twitter followers 87.

  Mabel is so funny. She was sitting staring ahead in an eerie manner.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Billy, brown eyes looking at her intently, slightly amused. Mark Darcy. Mark Darcy recreated in child form.

  ‘Havin’ a starin’ competition,’ said Mabel.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘De chair?’ said Mabel, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Billy and me started giggling, then suddenly he stopped and looked at me: ‘You’re laughing again, Mummy?’

  SMUG MARRIED HELL

  Saturday 1 September 2012

  135lb, positive thoughts 0, romantic prospects 0.

  10 p.m. Giant step backwards. Just back from Magda and Jeremy’s annual joint-birthday drinks. Was late because it had taken me twenty minutes to do up my zip, despite the time I had spent in yoga attempting to interlink my hands behind my shoulder blades and trying not to fart.

  On the doorstep the memories surged up again: the years when I would stand there with Mark, with his hand on my back; the year I’d just found out I was pregnant with Billy and we were going to tell them all; the year when we took Mabel all wrapped up in her little car seat. It was so lovely going to things with Mark. I never worried about what I was wearing because he’d watch me try everything on before we left and help me choose, and tell me I didn’t look fat and do all the zips. He always had something kind and funny to say if I did something stupid, was always batting off any jellyfishing remarks (the kind that suddenly zap you as if from nowhere in the middle of a conversational warm sea).

  I could hear the music and laughter inside. Fought the urge to run off. But then the door opened and Jeremy was there.

  I saw Jeremy feeling what I was feeling: the yawning gap beside me. Where was Mark, his old friend?

  ‘Ah, there you are! Excellent,’ said Jeremy, blustering over the pain, as he had consistently done since the moment it happened. That’s public school for you. ‘Come in, come in. Great! How are the children? Growing up?’

  ‘No,’ I said rebelliously. ‘They are stunted by grief and will be midgets for the rest of their lives.’

  Jeremy has clearly never read any Zen books and doesn’t know about just being there, and letting the other person be there, just as they are. But for a split second, he stopped the bluster and we just were there as we were, which was: extremely sad about the same thing. Then he coughed and started again as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Come on! Voddy and tonic? Let’s take your coat. You’re looking very trim!’

  He ushered me into the familiar sitting room and Magda waved cheerily from the drinks table. Magda, who I met at Bangor University, is actually my oldest friend. I looked around at all the faces I’d known since my early twenties, once the original Sloane Rangers, older now. All the couples who seemed to get married like a line of falling dominoes when they were thirty-one, still together: Cosmo and Woney, Pony and Hugo, Johnny and Mufti. And there was the same sense I’d had for all that time – of being a duck out of water, unable to join in what they were talking about because I was at a different stage of life, even though I was the same age. It was as though there had been a seismic timeshift and my life was happening years behind theirs, in the wrong way.

  ‘Oh, Bridget! Jolly good to see you. Goodness, you’ve lost weight. How are you?’

  Then there was the sudden flash in the eyes, the remembering of the whole widowhood thing: ‘How ARE the children? How are they doing?’

  Not so Cosmo, Woney’s husband, a successful, confident-though-egg-shaped fund manager, who came charging up like a blunderbuss.

  ‘So! Bridget! Still on your own? You’re looking very chipper. When are we going to get you married off again?’

  ‘Cosmo!’ said Magda indignantly. ‘Zip it.’

  One advantage of widowhood is that – unlike being single in your thirties, which, because it is ostensibly all your own fault, allows Smug Marrieds to say anything they like – it does usually introduce some element of tact. Unless, of course, you’re Cosmo.

  ‘Well, it’s been long enough now, hasn’t it?’ he crashed on. ‘Can’t carry on wearing widow’s weeds for ever.’

  ‘Yes, but the trouble is—’

  Woney joined in. ‘It’s very hard for middle-aged women who find themselves single.’

  ‘Please don’t say “middle-aged”,’ I purred, trying to imitate Talitha.

  ‘. . . I mean, look at Binko Carruthers. He’s no oil painting. But the second Rosemary left him he was inundated with women! Inundated! Throwing themselves at him.’

  ‘Hurling themselves,’ said Hugo enthusiastically. ‘Dinners, theatre tickets. Life of Riley.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re all “of a Certain Age”, aren’t they?’ said Johnny.

  Grrr. ‘Of a Certain Age’ is even worse than ‘middle-aged’ with its patronizing, only-ever-applied-to-women insinuations.

  ‘Meaning?’ said Woney.

  ‘Well, you know,’ Cosmo was bludgeoning on. ‘Chap gets a new lease of life, he’s going to go for something younger, isn’t he? Plump and fecund and—’

  Caught the quick flash of pain in Woney’s eyes. Woney, not an advocate of the Talitha school of branding, has allowed the fat-positioning of middle age freely to position itself all over her back and beneath her bra: her skin, falling exhausted into the folds of her experience, unpolished by facials, peels or light-reflecting make-up bases. She has let her once long and shiny dark hair go grey, and cut it short, which only serves to emphasize the disappearance of the jawline (which as Talitha says, can be quickly glossed over with some well-cut, face-framing layers), and has gone for a Zara version of the structured black frock and high ruffled collar favoured by Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

  I sense Woney has done this, or rather not done any ‘rebranding’, presumably not out of ‘feminism’ as such, but partly out of an old-fashioned British sense of personal honesty; partly because she can’t be arsed; partly out of self-belief and confidence; partly because she doesn’t define herself by how she looks or her sexuality; and, perhaps, mainly because she feels herself loved unconditionally for who she is: albeit by Cosmo who, in spite of his spherical physique, yellow teeth, hairless scalp and unbridled eyebrows, clearly feels he would be unconditionally loved by any woman lucky enough to have him.

  But for a second, at that flash of pain in Woney’s eyes, I felt a surge of sympathy, until she went on . . .

  ‘What I mean is that for a single man of Bridget’s age, it’s a total buyer’s market. No one’s knocking at Bridget’s door, are they? If she was a middle-aged man, with her own house and income and two helpless children, she’d be inundated by people wanting to take care of her. But look at her.’

  Cosmo looked me up and down. ‘Well, yes, we ought to get her fixed up,’ he said. ‘But I just don’t know who would, you know, at a certain age . . .’

  ‘Right,’ I burst out. ‘I’ve had enough of this! What do you mean, “middle-aged”? In Jane Austen’s day we’d all be dead by now. We’re going to live to be a hundred. It’s not the middle of our lives. Oh. Yes. Well, actually it is the middle. Come to think of it. But the point is, the whole expression “middle-aged” conjures up a certain look.’ I panicked, glancing at Woney, feeling myself plunging helplessly into a deepening hole. ‘. . . a certain, a certain, past-it-ness, non-viability. It doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, why are you assuming I don’t have a boyfriend, just because I don’t blab on about it? I mean, maybe I do have boyfriends!’

  They were all staring at me, slavering almost.

>   ‘Do you?’ said Cosmo.

  ‘Do you have boyfriends?’ said Woney, as if she were saying, ‘Do you sleep with a spaceman?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied smoothly, about the admittedly imaginary boyfriends.

  ‘Well, where are they, then?’ said Cosmo. ‘Why don’t we ever see them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to bring them here because they’d think you were all too old, set in your ways and rude,’ I was about to blurt out. But I didn’t because, ironically enough, as for the last twenty years or more, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

  So instead I used the immensely skilful social manoeuvre I’ve been employing for the last two decades and said, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’

  Sat down on the loo seat, saying, ‘OK. It’s OK.’ Put some more lip plumper on, and headed back down. Magda was on her way to the kitchen, holding – symbolically enough – an empty sausage plate.

  ‘Don’t listen to bloody Cosmo and Woney,’ she said. ‘They’re just in a frightful state because Max has gone off to university. Cosmo’s on the verge of retiring, so they’re going to be staring at each other across their Conran Shop 70s-style table for the next thirty years.’

  ‘Thanks, Mag.’

  ‘It’s always so nice when things go badly for other people. Especially when they’ve just been rude to you.’

  Magda has never stopped being kind.

  ‘Now, Bridget,’ she said. ‘Don’t listen to that lot. But you do have to start moving on, as a woman. You have to find someone. You can’t carry on feeling like this. I’ve known you for a long time. You can do it.’

  10.25 p.m. Can I? Can’t see any way out of feeling like this. Not at this moment. You see, things being good has nothing to do with how you feel outside, it is all to do with how you are inside. Oooh, goody! Telephone! Maybe . . . a suitor?

  10.30 p.m. ‘Oh, hello, darling’ – my mother. ‘I’m just ringing quickly to see what we’re doing about Christmas, because Una doesn’t want her cranio-facial at the spa because she’s had her hair done, and it’s in fifteen minutes – though why she had her hair bouffed when she’s got a cranio-facial and Aqua-Zumba in the morning I have no idea.’

  I blinked confusedly, trying to make sense of what she was talking about. Ever since Mum and Auntie Una moved into St Oswald’s House, the phone calls have been the same. St Oswald’s House is an upscale retirement community near Kettering, only we are not allowed to call it a ‘retirement community’.

  The not-a-retirement community is built around a grand Victorian mansion, almost a stately home. As described on the website, it has a lake, grounds which ‘boast a variety of rare wildlife’ (i.e. squirrels), ‘BRASSERIE 120’ (the bar/bistro), ‘CRAVINGS’ (the more formal restaurant) and ‘CHATS’ (the coffee bar), plus function rooms (for meetings: not toilets), ‘guest suites’ for visiting families, a collection of ‘superbly appointed’ houses and bungalows, and, crucially, ‘an Italianate garden designed by Russell Page in 1934’.

  On top of this lot there is ‘VIVA’, the fitness facility – with pool, spa, gym, beauty salon and hairdresser, and fitness classes – the source of most of the trouble.

  ‘Bridget? Are you still there? You’re not wallowing in it, are you?’

  ‘Yes! No!’ I said, attempting the bright, positive tones of someone who is not wallowing in anything.

  ‘Bridget. You’re wallowing. I can tell from your voice.’

  Grrr. I know Mum did go through a dark time after Dad died. The lung cancer took him in six months from diagnosis to funeral. The only positive thing was that Dad did get to hold newborn Billy in his arms, just before he died. It was really hard for Mum when Una still had Geoffrey. Una and Geoffrey had been Mum and Dad’s best friends for fifty-five years and, as they never tired of telling me, had known me since I was running round the lawn with no clothes on. But after Geoffrey’s heart attack there was no holding Mum and Una back. If they feel it now, Mum about Dad, or Una about Geoffrey, they rarely show it. There’s something about that wartime generation which gives them the capacity to just cheerfully soldier on. Maybe something to do with the powdered eggs and whale-meat fritters.

  ‘You don’t want to mope around when you’re widowed, darling. You want to have fun! Why don’t you come over and jump in the sauna with Una and me?’

  It was kindly meant, but what did she imagine I was going to do? Run out of the house, abandon the children, drive for an hour and a half, rip off my clothes, have my hair bouffed, then ‘jump in the sauna’?

  ‘So! Christmas! Una and I were wondering, are you going to come to us or . . .’

  (Have you noticed how when people are giving you two options, the second one is always the one they want you to do?)

  ‘. . . Well, the thing is, darling, there’s the St Oswald’s cruise this year! And we wondered if you might like to come? With the children of course! It’s to the Canaries, but it’s not all old people, you know. There are some very “with-it” places they visit.’

  ‘Right, right, a cruise, great,’ I said, suddenly thinking that if the Obesity Clinic had made me feel thin, maybe an over-seventies cruise might make me feel young.

  Mind, however, now also contained image of me chasing Mabel along a cruise-liner deck through a morass of bouffed hairdos and electric wheelchairs.

  ‘You’ll be perfectly at home, because it’s actually for over-fifties,’ Mum added, unknowingly putting the kibosh on the plan in a microsecond.

  ‘Well, actually, we think we might have plans here! You’re welcome to join us, of course, but it’ll be chaos, and if the other option is a cruise in hot weather, then—’

  ‘Oh, no, darling. We don’t want to leave you at Christmas. Una and I would love to come to you! It’d be super having Christmas with the little ones, it’s such a hard time for us both.’

  Gaaah! How could I possibly handle Mum, Una and the kids, with no help as Chloe was going on a t’ai chi retreat to Goa with Graham? Did not want it to end up like last year, with me trying to stop my heart from breaking into pieces at doing Santa without Mark and sobbing behind the kitchen counter, whilst Mum and Una squabbled over lumps in the gravy and commented on my parenting and housekeeping, as if, rather than inviting them for Christmas, I had called them in as Systems Analysts.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, the thing is, darling, we have to reserve the berths by tomorrow.’

  ‘Go ahead and book it for just you, Mum. Honestly, because I haven’t worked out—’

  ‘Well, you can cancel with fourteen days’ notice,’ she said.

  ‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  Great, an over-fifties cruise for Christmas. Everything looks so dark and gloomy.

  11 p.m. Was still wearing my prescription sunglasses. That’s better.

  Maybe I have just been like a wave building momentum and now I have crashed and another will come along soon! For as it says in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, women are like waves and men are like rubber bands which ping away to their caves and come back.

  Except mine didn’t come back.

  11.15 p.m. Look, stoppit. For, as it says on the Dalai Lama’s Twitter: <@DalaiLama We cannot avoid pain, we cannot avoid loss. Contentment comes from the ease and flexibility with which we move through change.>

  Maybe will go to yoga and become more flexible.

  Or maybe will go out with friends and get plastered.

  A PLAN

  Sunday 2 September 2012

  Alcohol units 5 (but hard to tell with mojitos – maybe 500?).

  ‘It’s time,’ said Tom, settling into his fourth mojito in Quo Vadis. ‘We’re taking her to the Stronghold.’

  The Stronghold has recently become a regular part of Tom’s micro-universe. Run by a client from his therapy practice, it is an illegal American-style speakeasy in Hoxton.

  ‘It’s like being in an incredibly well-directed music video,’ Tom enthused, eyes shining. ‘There’s every age group: young and ol
d, black and white, gay and straight. Gwyneth’s been seen there! And it’s a “pop-up”.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Talitha. ‘How many minutes till the edginess of “pop-up” anything has popped down?’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jude. ‘Who bothers to meet people in real life any more?’

  ‘But Jude, there are actual live people there. And Americana bands, and sofas – you can talk and dance, and make out with people.’

  ‘Why would you do all that before you’ve found out in one click whether they’re divorced or separated-with-kids, like bungee jumping more than going to the movies, know how to spell, know not to use the expression “lol” or “special lady” without irony, and whether they think the world would be a better place if people with low IQs were not allowed to reproduce?’

  ‘Well, at least you’ll know they’re not a photograph from fifteen years ago,’ said Tom.

  ‘We’re going,’ said Talitha.

  Upshot is, we are off to the Stronghold in Hoxton on Thursday.

  Wednesday 5 September 2012

  Acts of screenplay written 2.5, attempts to find babysitter 5, babysitters found 0.

  9.15 p.m. Disaster. Forgot to ask Chloe about babysitting tomorrow, and she is going to watch Graham compete in the South of England t’ai chi semi-final.

  ‘I’d love to help, Bridget, but t’ai chi means an enormous amount to Graham. I can definitely do the school run on Friday morning, though, so you can sleep in.’

  What am I going to do?

  Cannot ask Tom as he is coming to the Stronghold, ditto Jude and Talitha, plus Talitha does not do children since she says she has done that and only uses hers if she needs a walker for charity auctions.

  9.30 p.m. Just called Mum.

  ‘Oh, darling, I’d love to but it’s the Viva Supper tomorrow! We’re doing Ham in Coca-Cola. Everyone is doing things in Coca-Cola now!’

  Am slumped at kitchen table, trying not to think about everyone doing things in Coca-Cola in the Viva spa. It’s SO UNFAIR. Am trying my best to rediscover myself as a woman but now am up shit creek without a . . . Oh! What about Daniel?