‘Can I wear my trainers though?’ I ask. ‘Because there’s no way I’m putting on my heels.’
‘I’m wearing my Crocs,’ Niamh says. ‘And I don’t give a damn what anyone says, because they’re comfy.’
‘Do you think I could wear my slippers?’ Laura asks, glancing down to her feet where she is already wearing her pink fluffy mules.
‘I think you can wear whatever you want. Whatever makes you comfortable. Peggy said she doesn’t care if we land in our pyjamas if that’s what floats our boats.’
Oooh… the thought of having a dance in my slippers and jammies does sound appealing. A quick boogie then back home and straight to bed. Perfect!
‘Grand so,’ Laura says. ‘I’ll wear my slippers and my joggers.’
‘Good woman!’ Niamh says, turning her gaze towards me. ‘And you? Becs? Come on! Say you will! Even for a couple of songs? We don’t have to go crazy but we’d be raging if we missed it altogether.’
She has a point. This is our last night here – and even though we have packed as much as possible into the day, it does feel as if we would be letting the side down to disappear.
‘Okay then,’ I tell Niamh, to a whoop of delight.
‘Comfy shoes to the ready! Write that in your column forNorthern People. Let’s normalise comfy footwear! Heels are gorgeous and all, but dear God, life is tough enough without feeling as if the balls of your feet are ablaze by the end of the night. Not to mention I’m pretty sure the heels I wore in my twenties are the reason my knee is absolutely fecked now.’
‘Noted,’ I say with a smile. ‘I’m on it! Comfy shoes and elasticated waists for the win!’
‘You get my vote,’ Laura says, as she hauls herself back to a sitting position and raises an imaginary glass to us both. ‘That and celebrating the beauty of a good cardigan.’
‘I do love a cardigan,’ I agree, as I start looking through my limited selection of clothes to decide what to wear.
29
‘DANCING QUEEN’
Niamh
It’s a bit like poking a bruise, Niamh thinks, as she tries to assess her emotional state without allowing herself to dig too deeply into her feelings. What she’s pretty sure of is that she is starting to truly, really, understand the power of mood swings.
Today has been interesting. Challenging. A lot. But cathartic too. She feels relieved to have told Becca the truth of what is happening with Paul. She’d been so afraid that giving her feelings a voice would make them seem real. Which was, she knows, ridiculous because they already were real and keeping them bottled up was simply driving her mad.
At the same time, she feels guilty for expressing her worries about her relationship and just how much Paul Cassidy’s very existence is winding her up at the moment. Has she been disloyal in some way? Or has talking about her stresses and worries stopped her from losing her mind completely with Paul and saying things to him that neither of them will forget in a hurry?
She feels good for expressing just how much this menopause business is messing with her body and her head. Since going onHRT, Becca has seemed to be doing really well. Niamh couldn’t help but think there was something inside her that was broken. One of the older teachers at school had launched into a diatribe on how ‘women these days think they deserve a medal for going through the menopause’.
‘What happened to just getting on with it? I didn’t go about complaining about hot flushes, or heavyperiods.’ She’d whispered the word periods, of course. Niamh had only just managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. ‘There are things best kept to ourselves. You can’t go anywhere now but you see books about it, magazine articles about it, support groups,TVprogrammes. I saw an ad on theTVthe other day and I will not tell you what it was but it was indecent. And it was during the daytime!’
Probably the ad that’s doing the rounds for ‘intimate moisturiser’, Niamh thought, making a mental note to pop into Boots on the way home to get some.
‘How generations of us got through it without all this fuss, I’ll never know. Now you young ones seem to have no qualms at all about talking about your private affairs. Even in polite company. It’s a madness, and next thing you know, the school will be appointing a Menopause Officer.’
Niamh has always struggled to understand the mentality of older generations who cling on to the belief that just as they had to struggle, so should everyone else. It doesn’t matter that research has moved on. That we know now just how debilitating menopause can be for some women. They suffered in silence and so should all future generations.
‘Well, maybe they should,’ Niamh had snapped. ‘The majority of teaching staff here are female. We will all go through menopause. Some of us will sail through it and some of us won’t. Some of us need support and treating it like some dirty little secret to be whispered about in corners doesn’t help anyone.’
The older teacher had looked most put out, but Niamh hadn’t cared. She just got up, taking her coffee cup with her, left the staffroom and went back to her classroom.
The conversation has stayed with her though. She’s asked herself a thousand times if she is just being overly dramatic. Is she using menopause as an excuse to be short tempered and tearful? If she can really be sure it’s menopause causing all her symptoms and not just a common-or-garden mental breakdown instead. Even though she had Becca and Laura, she still felt out on her own. But today… today has helped her. Simply by being in a space with other women who have been expressing their distress and offering solutions. It has made her feel less mad. It has given her hope that she can come through this and pull herself out the other side. She’s not quite sure what the other side will look like.
She needs to talk to Paul. Properly talk to him. And not just about Jodie, but about how she feels she has lost her connection with him. Surely he must feel it too? She has to tell him how stressful she is finding work and how that’s having a knock-on effect to almost every other aspect of her life. She needs to tell him she’s hanging on by a thread. But at least, after this weekend, she’s starting to feel as if that thread isn’t fraying after all.
That, she decides, is more than enough of a reason to slick on some lip gloss, backcomb her hair and get ready to dance her socks off. She can’t remember the last time she danced. When she was younger she would’ve been the first to the dance floor on almost every occasion. She lived for her Friday and Saturday nights out clubbing, hands in the air, letting the music pulse through her as if nothing else mattered.
For the first time in weeks, she feels a buzz of excitement building within her and she can’t wait to start dancing.
