Rather than condolences for the grief-stricken, my forte is more a punny title to a beauty product round-up. I’m already mulling overTake The Rough With The Smoothas the headline for the body scrub feature I have to write today, although this isn’t really my finest work. How aboutYes Scrubs? Like ‘No Scrubs’, but the opposite? But then, I suppose if you have to explain it, it probably doesn’t work…
‘Ohhhhh,’ I say, aiming for sympathy-mixed-with-a-bit-of-surprise, plus a touch of inevitability, as Carol has been in a hospice for a few weeks and was definitely on the wrong side of eighty. But it comes out more like the sound someone might make when they discover a three for two on Zinfandel, which wasn’t quite what I was aiming for.
‘Is that the best you can do, Erica? I knew I should have called your brother…’
Why am I so bad at this sort of thing? I get up and move towards the mantelpiece to get a sniff of a criminally expensive reed diffuser I was recently gifted by a PR. It’s meant to ‘shift energy’ and has, according to the gold packaging, been ‘energetically imbued by an in-house alchemist’. As I attempt to appease my mother by saying nostalgic but thoughtful things about Carol, I wonder if it works down the phone.
But I’m stuck for what to say as I can’t remember much about her other than that, when I was a teenager, I was tasked with feeding her rabbit while she was on holiday. Or probably, thinking back, her children’s rabbit – that would make more sense. I wasn’t meant to get it out of the hutch, but I did, and it ran under Carol’s decking. They never found it. Maybe it made a new life for itself under there, and was happy. But Carol and her family certainly weren’t when they came back from Los Cristianos.
Thinking about this, I feel a wave of guilt. (Holy crap, is this the energy shift the reed diffuser promised? Remarkable.) I shake it off quickly though – best not to pick at the scab of feeling guilty about things that happened years ago. Anyway, rabbits are surprisingly muscular, not like gerbils or other smaller rodents one might keep as a pet, so maybe it wasn’t even my fault that it wriggled free.
‘So, you’ll come with me then?’
I snap out of my reminiscence and realise I’ve agreed to accompany my mother to Carol’s funeral, ‘when it happens, which probably won’t be for a while’. Why, I wonder… is there some kind of hideous dead body backlog I don’t know about? I decide not to ask, having probably done enough damage for one conversation.
‘Of course, Mum. And I’m sorry about Carol. She was a real…’
I go to say ‘treasure’ but feel this is a bit strong, so change it to ‘doll’ halfway through, because I was watchingMad Menlast night. It comes out as something akin to ‘troll’ though. Thankfully, Mother Pells is now focusing on the funeral logistics and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t hear.
‘You know how I’ve been getting so confused about directions lately.The Inevitable, I’m sure…’
My mother has always been a bit dozy, and there has been absolutely no change to this as she enters old age, other than the fact that she constantly talks aboutThe Inevitable, which I presume means dementia. It’s as though she has been waiting her whole life forgetting words, names, places, keys, artichokes (a long story) to finally be able to shout ‘HA! I told you. It’sThe Inevitable.’
The postman reappears at the window and squints in, waving a large envelope. My new-build home (well, new-ish) is in a ‘cottage’ style, but not the picture postcard cottages with paths lined with rose bushes and such like. It’s more of a worker’s cottage, with its front door right on the pavement, so every time somebody walks past, they look in, and apparently this is okay, because the house is on the street, so why shouldn’t they? I have toyed with the idea of net curtains and wondered if they are so out they are back in, like mullets. I tell Mother Pells I need to go.
‘It’s a special delivery,’ the postman announces when I open the front door again. ‘That’s why it didn’t come with the other stuff. It’sseparate.’ He seems somehow proud of this. I take theenvelope and shut the door, even though the postman seems to want me to open it in front of him.
Back down on the floor, I’m surrounded by pots, tubes and packaging, but I can’t be bothered going upstairs to my ‘office’. My office is in inverted commas because it’s really a small bedroom with a desk in it, as well as several large boxes overflowing with beauty products, and a Peloton (still being paid off), which currently has a duvet cover draped over it. It’s probably dry by now, seeing as I put it there a good three weeks ago.
The envelope contains not the usual PR missive, but an invitation, on thick, grainy paper that smells quite strongly of pumpkin spice.Oh My Gourd!it proclaims, in curly, Gothic writing.You’re Invited to a Halloween Party at Luscious Magazine!
I stare at the invitation. On the plus side, I haven’t been invited to a fancy dress party atLuscioussince ‘The Good Old Days’ when I wrote for them regularly, before my editor Merlyn moved to a non-executive editor role. And we all know what that means. Except we don’t really, but we guess it means you don’t do that much anymore but want to continue going to parties. If I’m getting an invitation, I might be in line for a feature, or even a column. Merlyn has always looked after me – defending my more niche pun headlines to the sub-editors, putting me on the guest list for PR events that were clearly just for the big-league editors, and sometimes even paying me upfront when I was short of money.
On the minus side, it means a trip to London, which I steer clear of these days. The magazine offices are full of twenty-five-year-olds into that Clean Girl look, which I don’t fully understand, whose biggest issue is how to shape their brows to look ‘this season’. I mean, COME ON. I’d shave off my brows completely for a problem like that. They probably look at me andthink, ‘Oh, well done that middle-aged woman for still making an effort,’ but they know deep down that my jaunty neckerchief is just to hide my double chin.
And then there’s the whole fancy dress thing, which I have avoided my entire life. Although… the right costume could make me look less, well, forty-seven. There’s a thought. And as Cassia Carver will undoubtedly be there, being all perfect, I will need to either look my best, or unrecognisable, like a zombie. The latter seems more appealing, because who would ever tilt their head and say, ‘How are you? You look KNACKERED!’ to one of the undead. They’remeantto look a bit worn out, surely?
Just as I have the beginnings of a vague plan, I remember.Lucas. Of course. Why was that so difficult? JEEZ. Unsure what to do with this new (or old, just forgotten) information, I jump up, fling open the front door and yell ‘THANKS LUCAS!’ in the direction of the red post trolley. By now it’s halfway down the street, past Mrs Belcher’s, near Josie’s house (one of the few people in the town that I like, apart from Keith, and smiley Gabe Dix from The Perch, of course). Lucas turns back briefly, like a schoolchild at drop-off, embarrassed by his over-affectionate mother.
I shut the door, flop down on the couch and open my laptop to start my body scrub article, despite the fact I haven’t tried any of them yet. I’m going to see how many puns I can squeeze in, just to amuse myself. They’ll probably get taken out by that mean sub-editor atGracemagazine, but who cares? Makes it more fun to write.
Scrub Me Up The Right Way
By Erica Pells
We get it: exfoliate can easily become exfoli-hate, because it’s one of the most boring parts of your bodycare routine. But if you really want to be a smooth operator, this extrastep can make all the difference, and that’s not just buff and nonsense.
So, which are the top products around at the moment for a really good glow job? The best ones use exfoliating particles (like sugar or jojoba beads) to get rid of dead skin cells. The result? Nobody will accuse you of looking rough.
Exfoliating treatments can also help your body moisturiser penetrate more deeply (just let that sink in). The bottom line: if you haven’t been using a body scrub regularly, maybe it’s time to get your grit together and pick one from our line-up of the best. Everything will be smooth sailing once you’ve tried these.
I’m pretty pleased with that so far. I close my laptop, grab an armful of body scrubs from the floor and head upstairs for a shower.
