‘Excuse me, are you one of the lecturers on the Women’s Studies course?’ An ethereally pale, slim and clear-skinned young woman stares out from under a heavy dark fringe at her. She looks no older than Robyn, but then again, there’s every chance she is only a year or two older. The realisation that she, Laura, is old enough to be a mother to this delicate little fresher, and old enough to be reasonably confused for a lecturer, is sobering.
Shaking her head, she apologises then mentally chides herself for apologising in the first place. Apologising for her existence is something she is determined to do less of. She wants to unpick all the patriarchal bullshit that has kept women down since the dawn of time. That’s why she is here. To empower herself so she can empower others. With Kitty’s passing, she developed a thirst for research into how women are treated and considered in this world – both now and in the past. With Becca and Niamh’s help she started to examine who she really is and where she has come from.
She has embraced her inner goddess at a weekend retreat.She has tried yoga, and wild-water swimming. She has sung along to Chappell Roan at the top of her lungs and danced on the beach. She is helping Becks with the Fabulous Forties Club. She has done the things that she hopes would make Kitty proud. Things that Kitty herself would want to do. And a big part of that is not starting every second sentence with the word ‘sorry’.
Laura has nothing, in this moment, to be sorry for. She’s not doing anyone any harm by not being a lecturer and being a student instead. Her place here has been earned just like the beautiful waif’s in front of her and she has to own that. Even if she is wearing Boden and looking ‘mid’.
‘Actually,’ she says with a shaking voice as the girl turns to walk away, ‘I’ve registered for Women’s Studies too.’
The girl turns back around and smiles, her entire face changing as she does so. All fragility seems to evaporate and she blossoms in front of Laura’s eyes. ‘Ah, that’s so cool. I don’t know anyone on the course and was starting to get the fear. I was half considering running back home to my mum and dad.’ She laughs, but Laura is experienced enough to see the relief is genuine, as are her nerves.
‘I hear you,’ Laura says, stopping herself just before she overshares that she can’t of course run back to her parents because she has never really known her father, and her mother is dead. That, she has learned from bitter experience, is often too much information to share with someone within the first five minutes of meeting them. ‘I was starting to think this was all a big mistake.’
The girl smiles. ‘Will we make a deal? I’ll stay if you will?’
Laura marvels at the ease with which the girl reaches out to her. Laura is not sure she was ever like that. Not even in her late teens. She tended to be happy to slip into the background while Niamh or even Becca led the charge. Of course, she’d had toadapt over the years. She had no Niamh or Becca to speak for her when she started working while they continued their studies. And then, of course, there was a decade when they disappeared from her life altogether.
‘I’m Abby,’ the waif says, reaching out her hand. Shaking it, Laura introduces herself in return.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Abby. It’s easy to feel a bit of out your depth here, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely,’ Abby says, blowing her fringe from her face. ‘But I’m sure we can keep each other right. Will we go to the welcome meeting together?’
Laura smiles and nods. ‘That sounds absolutely perfect.’
Okay, so she may only be an hour or so into her university life but she’s coping – even if she is overdressed, and anyone who sees them will likely think she is Abby’s mammy dropping her off on the first day.
‘Grand. I think it’s down that way,’ Abby says with a nod to the right. ‘Although we have half an hour to kill first. Will we grab a coffee? I really could do with a caffeine hit.’
‘Sounds great.’
The pair head towards Jitters, an on-campus coffee shop, and of course Laura immediately tells Abby to sit down before asking what she would like and heading up to both order and pay for it.
Arriving back at their table with two cappuccinos, she is rewarded with an enthusiastic thank you and an ‘I’ll get them next time’ from her companion.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Laura says. ‘It’s only a couple of coffees. It’s not going to break the bank!’
‘Well, thank you again,’ Abby says. ‘But I still like to pay my way. We’re both students, after all.’ Her tone is light but Laura senses an undertone to it and blushes. Perhaps Abby does notlike being treated like the poor relative, even though it is only coffee and Laura is lucky enough not to be tied to amassing thousands in debt on student loans thanks to her inheritance from Kitty. She also has had the benefit of working for thirty years and building up some savings, not to mention she is part of a two-income family and Aidan earns a reasonably good salary. She wants to stress all those reasons, but reminds herself Abby will want to be seen as an equal in this equation. It’s not right for Laura to mammy her, or fuss over her. God knows, Robyn only barely tolerates it because she has to.
‘I hear you,’ Laura says as she tears the top off a sugar sachet and pours the contents into her coffee. ‘I’ll make sure we take turns.’
‘Cool,’ Abby says with a bright smile as she lifts her own cup. ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, what brings you back to school at your age? Not that I’m saying you’re old or anything.’ It was Abby’s turn to colour.
‘Iamold. It’s okay,’ Laura says. ‘A lot older than most of the students here. And the truth is, I just want to learn. I want to do what I can to work to help other women, if that doesn’t sound too cheesy. I didn’t go to uni when I was your age. I was so excited about getting out into the working world and earning money and to be honest, I didn’t really feel that I missed out on anything much. Until last year. My mum died.’ She pauses, determined she will not cry, which is painfully difficult given the impending anniversary. ‘That kind of made me re-evaluate everything. I started looking into different cultures, how they perceive women and how they treat them, and it was like for the first time in my life this spark was lit inside me and I just knew I had to explore it more.’ Talking about her decision makes her sadness subside a little and she can feel that spark in her even now. They say pride comes before a fall, but feck it, she feelsproud. Deeply proud that she is here and doing this – sitting in a coffee shop on campus having just registered and in half an hour she will be at a welcome meeting with the course director and her fellow classmates having earned her place there just the same as the rest of them. She can’t help but smile at her companion. ‘So what about you? Why did you choose this course?’
Abby shrugs. ‘I thought it sounded interesting and I’m interested in human rights. This seems a good jumping-off point – seeing as women’s rights are under attack across the world right now.’
Laura is impressed. She wishes she had been this together at eighteen – but she had been as far from it as could be. She was only interested in her full-time job in Etam and the freedom that gave her. She was able to help support her mum and their household, but she also had enough to buy new clothes, save for a car and take herself out every weekend and get blootered on Bacardi Breezers. That’s what mattered to her at eighteen – not fighting for human rights and examining what it is to be a woman.
‘Your parents must be really proud of you,’ Laura says.
Abby laughs. ‘God no. They are disgusted. They say I’ll never get a job with a degree in Women’s Studies and I might as well flush thirty grand down the toilet. They wanted me to do something a bit more vocational – like nursing, maybe. Even though the sight of blood makes me weak. I know it sounds a bit weird, but this course is my act of teenage rebellion.’
‘Well, hang on to that,’ Laura says. ‘My husband says this is my midlife crisis so I think we’ll make a good pair. Teenage rebellion and midlife crisis. What could possibly go wrong?’
7
STUCK IN THE MIDLIFE WITH YOU
