Chapter Thirteen
The language of young people
It’s the eleventh day, and for a few seconds as I open my eyes, I have forgotten. It reminds me of the days after Father Pells died – there was always a blissful moment in the morning when he was still alive in my head. This is the opposite though. I wake up with the usual feeling of low-level despair, but then it hits me like a truck. A truck full of elation, and I scramble out of bed and race to the bathroom mirror.
I pick up a face cloth to wipe the glass, as it’s smeared and dirty with speckles of toothpaste. I’m not the greatest housekeeper. As an example, several years ago, I found a tray of roast potatoes in my top oven (the small, useless one nobody ever uses except to warm plates). I only cook roast potatoes at Christmas, and when I found them I hadn’t hosted anyone at Christmas for four years. That was the year everyone came here as Mother Pells didn’t want to cook and Simon and Alannah were getting their extension built. The potatoes weren’t mouldy, which was interesting – they looked more like something one might discover amongst the ruins of Pompeii.
The remains of some cleanser on the face cloth just smear the mirror even more so I grab a towel from the back of the door and rub at the glass. Gradually a clear patch forms, and I peer in, making it bigger until I can finally see my whole face. I’ve done this every morning for the last few days: staring, prodding, poking… Can it be real? No Gordon Brown jowls, no sagging, no nematode neck, no crepey lids. None of it. NONE. Only clear, bright skin – plump, glowing, and just so much moreattachedto my face. I look unrecognisable. And more to the point, I look inmy mid-twenties. The wait, the ten long days, are over now. The WULT® treatment has worked. It bloody worked.
Not for the first time this week, I sink to the floor, half laughing, half crying – then stand up again, looking in the mirror, switching on the lights that go around it (the ones I usually reserve for chin hair plucking). Now out comes my magnifying mirror. It’s incredible, even close up. Then I’m back on the floor, slumped against the wall. Imagine what Cassia will think. No ‘Mid Youth’ and ‘Over 40s Style’ for me. Ha! This is insane. And then the tears come again, and more laughter, and more looking in the mirror, peering down my top, feeling my bum, and laughing again and again and again.
A little later, Lucas the postman comes, and I pretend I’m my own niece again, which seems to work and is easier.
‘Is Ms Pells away then?’ he asks.
‘Yes, she’s working in London.’ Lucas doesn’t seem to really care, preferring, it seems, to converse with/look at my niece.
Later still, I have to go out, partly to buy toilet roll, and partly to collect my umbrella from Je Suis Belle. Not wishing to sound like my mother but judging by the forecast, I’m going to need it. I put on a woolly hat and sunglasses and fifteen minutes later I’m on the high street. Plan is to dive into Je Suis Belle, then grab a flat white and a cinnamon whirl from the new coffee shop, Brew & Beam, which Mother Pells says is far too ‘hip-hop’ (I think she means hipster).
I can see from across the road that it’s full of the town’s (very small) Gen Z contingent, probably pleased to have somewhere to congregate that isn’t called ‘Sue’s’ and doesn’t serve instant coffee from a giant urn with a side of lardy cake. This used tobe my destiny – to grow old in a town full of pensioners. Not anymore.
I pass FILLINGZ, which looks shut again, and head into Je Suis Belle, where one of the Huns who did my lash lift a few weeks ago is behind the reception desk. She is wearing a scalloped fabric hairband and foundation that is about three shades too light, giving her the appearance of an unsettlingly young Tudor princess being sent off to marry a member of European nobility.
‘I’m here to pick up an umbrella that was left… It’s yellow, with a wooden handle.’
The Hun eyes me. ‘Are you picking it up for your mum?’
‘For my mum?’
‘Yes – was it your mum who was in here?’
Holy crap. She thinks I’m my own daughter. This is wild. I mutter something about my mum really liking her new lashes and the Hun acquiesces and pulls the umbrella from a box under the desk. I hurriedly thank her and leave, crossing over the road to Brew & Beam.
The door to the coffee shop, in an attempt to be old-fashioned and no doubt also ‘hip-hop’, has an overly loud bell, so when I open it all the Gen Zs look round. One particular young man with a mullet stares very pointedly. I join the short queue behind a girl wearing platform trainers, teamed with a pair of patterned socks and a short purple dress, with an aviator jacket over the top. She smiles at me, and, momentarily forgetting what I look like, I wonder if she’s about to ask me for money.
I get my coffee and pastry and turn to leave. The girl, who’s by now moved away from the counter to talk to her friend, touches my arm as I pass her.
‘Check the drip,’ she says, showing a tongue piercing as she speaks.
Looking down at my cup to locate said drip, I grab a napkin from the counter, but can’t see the issue. Then I wonder if it’s my nose doing the dripping, accustomed as I am to snottiness when coming into somewhere warm from the cold. But no. I look at the girl with a questioning face.
She laughs. ‘I was talking about the ’fit, queen!’
‘Ah… right.’ I back out the door, slowly realising that she is talking to me in the language of young people. Because she thinks I am one. SHE THINKS I AM ONE.
I’m not sure what she means, but I’m pretty sure it’s a compliment about my clothes, which is firstly very nice of her, and secondly bizarre as I threw on an ancient pair of cargo trousers (the only thing that fitted my newly firmed up body) and an oversized checked shirt.
Remember that scene inPretty Womanwhen Julia Roberts walks down Rodeo Drive after her makeover, to the Roy Orbison song? Well, this is like that in no way, it being January in a small market town in Wiltshire, and the bag I’m swinging is a Sainsbury’s carrier containing an umbrella, some toilet roll and a bottle of wine. Also,Pretty Womanis not a film that has aged well for many reasons. But the point is, I feel like I need a soundtrack. Because I am walking on bloody air. NOT sunshine. Do NOT make that my soundtrack.
The afternoon is spent in a dressing gown and Turbo-Dry TressWrap turban (#gifted), lying on my sofa, watching YouTube videos called things likeZendaya Reveals The Concealer You Need Right Nowand admiring my own legs, which look pretty fantastic now they no longer have the texture – and appearance – of luncheon meat. Why did I always obsessabout how short they were? They were – are – gorgeous. It’s surely the biggest irony of youth that we don’t realise how beautiful we are until, well, we’re not. I also send messages and emails to create the illusion of normality before I decide how to break this to everyone, and in what order.
When I open my laptop, I see I already have one from Simon:
Hi Erica,
Our brief conversation at Christmas didn’t go terribly well. You appear to be under pressure at the moment, although I’m not entirely sure from what.
Anyway, I’d like to have a serious chat with you so let me know when works. I know we’re seeing you for Mum’s eightieth soon but that’s not really the time and the place as I’m sure you’ll agree.
