‘You’re too young to be an old, lonely woman,’ Savannah said with a shrug.
‘An old, lonely …’ Jenny let the sentence fade away as she stared at her daughter in shock. ‘I’mnotold!’
‘Well, you’re not getting any younger, either, Mum,’ Chloe pointed out.
‘Now hold on a minute—’
‘Jen, it’s all right to acknowledge that you’re not asfunas you once used to be,’ Beth soothed.
Okay, that one hurt. She was still fun, damn it! ‘I amnotready to be sat down in a rocking chair with my knitting just yet, thank you very much,’ she informed them bluntly, then narrowed her eyes as all four of them displayed sporting, smug smiles. Too late, she realised she’d walked into a trap. Maybe shewaslosing her edge a bit—once upon a time she’d have never fallen for something that obvious.
Brittany nodded. ‘So you agree, then, that you’re not ready to give up and you should be out there enjoying life.’
‘I don’t see why dating has to be the thing that’s going to save me from a life of dreary boredom,’ Jenny shot back.
‘Because you’re still young and attractive and you need to get back out there and find someone to have fun with again,’ Savannah said.
‘Among other things,’ Beth added with a wink.
‘Eww,’ Chloe said, with a dramatic shudder.
‘Well, what did you expect was going to happen if you set your mother up on a date with a man?’ Beth asked, seeming genuinely confused by the reaction.
‘I was trying tonotthink about it, that’s all,’ Chloe answered.
‘Would you two stop?’ Brittany cut in before turning back to Jenny. ‘Ignore them. Look, you don’t have to rush into anything—’
‘Good. So, I don’t have to go out tonight then,’ Jenny said.
‘You do. That bit’s already been arranged. But you don’t have to feelpressuredinto doing anything more than going out to dinner, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
Until that point, she hadn’t even thought about what more could be involved than going out for dinner and now shewasworried. Considerably. Surely this person wasn’t going to expectsex?Tonight?She hadn’t even shaved her legs, for goodness’ sake!
‘Uh-oh … I think we’re losing her,’ Beth murmured.
‘Nope. I’m not ready for all this.’ Jenny shook her head and backed away.
‘You are. At least, you will be,’ Brittany assured her. ‘You’re never going to feel ready unless you get out there and do it. Remember what you always told us? Whenever we were nervous about doing anything new, you used to tell us to just wing it. Get in there and just do it.’
Well, that seemed like stupid advice now.
‘Yeah,’ Chloe piped up, nodding encouragingly at her older sister. ‘When I had that meltdown about a class presentation I had to do in year seven, you made me go in and do it … Actually, you pretty much dragged me into school that day, when all I wanted to do was hide in bed.’
‘This isn’t the same thing … that was school and youhadto do it,’ Jenny said, sensing a touch of malicious revenge in her daughters’ pep talk.
‘Think of this as something just as important. You can’t hide in bed every time something scary happens and you don’t want to face it,’ Savannah replied.
This time, Jenny was positive her children were enjoying the opportunity to fling their mother’s advice back in her face. No one told you what to do when your great and wise parental advice came back to bite you on the arse years later. She’d brought this on herself by being such a brilliant mother. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she muttered.
‘Mum, if you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for us. Be the role model you’ve always been and show us what a brave, independent woman looks like,’ Brittany said, using a motivational tone that Tony Robbins would have been proud of.
Fuck.There was no getting out of this—not unless she wanted to admit that everything she’d used in the past to try and mould these kids into responsible, well-adjusted humans could be ignored once you were an adult.
‘Fine,’ she said tightly. ‘But this is the one and only time. You take me off that stupid dating app andneverdo this again.’
‘So, about that …’ Brittany winced—actually winced, as though in great pain. ‘You’ve kind of got a few more dates for the rest of the weekend.’
Jenny stared at her eldest daughter. She thought she’d already been shocked as deeply as a personcouldpossibly be shocked … but nope, now she was shocked into speechlessness.
