The curtain was being drawn back and, before the lights went down totally, Toni looked unsteadily down at her own hands. Enormous work went into keeping herself slim and young, but the hands never lied when it came to age. The veins on the back of her slender hands were raised up, blue and knotted.
Her nails had no youthful flash of neon pink. She hadn’t done much to her nails. She kept them simply manicured in a nude shade because she’d never wanted any commentary about her fingernails either. If she’d been all about her hair or her shoes or her manicures, then people would have boxed her into that compartment where women were ridiculed for certain things. Men with bad haircuts or ludicrous beer bellies never had these commented upon. But a woman in the public eye could not be so lucky. A woman in the public eye could not imagine the pain of her husband choosing a younger version, either.
Toni looked up at the stage and waited for her husband and Marissa. She would not rush to conclusions. Seventeen years of history could not be erased because of hero worship. But still, she felt unsettled. What if Oliver had finally succumbed to a younger woman? What then?
Toni felt the vodka settle into her body, calming her down in a way she knew was nothing but temporary. She’d settle for temporary at the moment; it would have to do until she could compute her way out of this.
As the alcohol did its thing, fake bravado flooded her: she was Toni Cooper. She had everything. What was she doing imagining crazy scenarios?
Oliver adored her. She was absolutely sure of that.
She would find out why he’d been distant. Face it head-on.
Not for Toni the head-in-the-sand approach to life.
She’d worked so hard to get to where she was now: a powerful, strong woman with a career, a loving husband, security and respect. She would not throw it all away because of Oliver flirting with another woman. Toni Cooper was stronger than that. She would fight for what was hers.
Chapter Five
Dawn was breaking, sending slow shoots of colour into the sky as if the Early Morning Goddess was racing around the east with a Zippo frantically lighting candles to spread light into the waking world. Lou sat curled up in the cushions on the wooden seat on the veranda that faced her small back garden, a fleece blanket wrapped around her, and a mug of lemon tea cradled in her hands. It would be warm later, the gentle warmth of late March, but now the morning was cool and, wrapped up and clutching her hot mug, Lou was able to enjoy her precious early moments of calm before she had to shower and race out the door.
She and Mim had begun the morning reset over ten years ago. They’d discussed a way to start their hectic days peacefully.
‘I read something about sitting outside, if possible, and spending five or six minutes just being still and setting your intention for the day,’ said Mim. ‘Not that I can repeat that phrase to anyone but you.’
They both laughed loudly at how some of their more prosaic friends would scoff at such a notion.
‘Martin would roar his head off at the notion ofsetting your intention.’
Mim’s husband worked in sports management and viewed the world through the prism of the sports calendar and complex travel arrangements for various events.
‘Ned would think I’d lost my marbles and he’d mention it to his mother, Ruth, by mistake and she’d be round like a flash with new rosary beads,’ said Lou, grinning. Ruth was an old-school religious lady who liked Mass on Sundays and was wildly disapproving of anything she hadn’t read in theWhitehaven News.
‘Like praying? Is that what the five minutes is about? Prayer is what you need,’ Ruth would declare. She was devoted to the church and was frustrated that none of her family were in the slightest bit devout.
‘How ’bout we keep this just for us?’ said Mim. ‘Five Minutes of Peace.’
For ten years, nearly every weekday morning, both naturally early risers had sat outside their homes for the requisite five minutes and let themselves be calm. Mim was instinctively good at it. Her ability to sit and let peace flow through her was breathtaking. It had been harder for Lou, who felt the rising frisson of anxiety if she was sitting without a to-do list at her side. Thoughts kept breaking into her calm ...
She had things to do.
Or ‘Things To Do: IMPORTANT’, as it said on her list.
Get the boiler serviced. Shop for food – buy stuff for the green soup diet. It worked, everyone said. Tasted disgusting, but it worked. Pounds dropped off when you lived on green soup. Call her friend Jackie, who was going through a tricky marriage break-up. Organise her mother’s taxes because Lillian ‘didn’t do government things’. The government was ‘an embezzling crowd of bastards!’ when they wanted tax and miraculously transformed into ‘those sweet politician boys’ when the local county councillors had given her freedom of Whitehaven.
‘Lou, it’s only five minutes,’ Mim had said. ‘Five minutes of not thinking about anyone but yourself. No worrying about Emily or work or Ned or money or what complex mission your mother is planning for you.’
Mim didn’t approve of Lillian.
‘Ah, you just don’t understand her,’ Lou would say. ‘She’s had a tricky life. Dad looked after her and she’s a bit lost since he’s gone.’
Somehow, Lou had learned how to sit. Five minutes had become ten.
The summer that their daughters – school friends since the age of four – had unaccountably fallen out over a boy, they’d sometimes finished the morning reset with a quick phone call to discuss the intricacies of the teenage brain.
‘Emily wants to dye her hair pink,’ sighed Lou one morning. ‘Kev likes pink ...’
‘What Kev likes most is setting girls against other girls,’ groaned Mim. ‘That boy is a menace to young women. I am waiting for the moment when Simone tells me she’s fed up with him and she must have been mad to let him come between her and Emily.’
