Chapter Two
Almost floral and quite intriguing
It’s hard for me to put my finger on what the smell reminds me of, but it’s deeply unpleasant. Like when someone has a terrible incident in the bathroom, and then tries unsuccessfully to disguise it with a substandard air freshener. In other words, top notes of Monterey Vanilla, base notes of faeces. According to my beauty therapist, the ‘odour’ is caused by ammonium thioglycolate – and it’s a ‘Completely Normal Part Of The Lash Lift Process’. She talks like every word has a capital letter, which is exhausting to listen to, so I tune it out and deal with the weird sensation you get after you’ve had your eyes closed for ages when you can’t work out if they’re still closed or not. This is accompanied by an urge to open them really wide, like a feeling of claustrophobia – which is ridiculous, as all I’m doing is lying in a chair with miniature rollers stuck to my eyelids; it’s not exactly comparable to being trapped in a lift.
The whole thing is less than enjoyable but it’s a) free, as I’m reviewing the treatment forGlowgetterand b) all part of my preparation for the Halloween party atLusciousmagazine. I’ve decided to go as one of the ‘Infected’ fromThe Last of Us. This is for several reasons – the first being that wearing a mask will hide my face in a room full of young and/or gorgeous people. Secondly, it will show how current I am (or that I watch a lot of TV). And thirdly, the aforementioned ‘Infected’ have the potential to look more attractive than a classic zombie, for example the ones fromShaun of the Dead(the only other zombie film I’ve seen). Obviously, they aren’t attractive in aconventional way, but some of the fungus bits on them are almost floral and quite intriguing.
What the outfit will be made of, I am not yet sure. If only I could open my eyes right now to google LAST OF US ZOMBIE COSTUME. Damn having to suffer for beauty all the time. But my therapist says I have ‘Unusually Stubby Lashes’ so needs must. Cassia’s are no doubt ‘Unusually Fluttery’. She’s probably done a reel to tell everyone how she doesn’t need lash lifts, accompanied by a lash-related song by someone like Dua Lipa. While doing a dance. Really, really well.
My therapist (or maybe another one, I can’t see) taps me on the arm.
‘You okay hun?’
So, people really do say that.
‘Yup.’ I’m beginning to wish I’d ventured into London for this treatment rather than coming here, to Je Suis Belle, which is next to the sandwich shop FILLINGZ on the high street in my local town. I always think FILLINGZ would be a better name for a dentist surgery. I sigh and hear one Hun giggling with another Hun nearby. Maybe they’re laughing at my stubby legs now, or my stubby hair. Stub off, everyone.
There must have been a point when it all just stopped being fun. I can’t put my finger on when that was exactly. Being a ‘Freelance Beauty Journalist’ was my dream for a long time – I remember proudly creating an email signature using those exact words when I left my staffer job atBeautiquemagazine in the early Noughties. Far fewer people were freelancing then – it all seemed quite daring and independent, as did my move out of London. Looking back, it was all a diversion after what happened with Kofi – oh and Simon getting married of course. He’s older than me but still, people started asking when I’d settle down too. They’ve stopped asking now.
I make a kind of harrumphing noise as though to punctuate this thought, prompting more tittering from the unseen Huns. This could possibly be the longest hour of my life.
Ricky Martin’s ‘She Bangs’ comes on the radio in the salon. Instead of lifting my lashes, are they trying to break down my resolve in order to extract information, Cold War style? What next, sleep deprivation and the sound of a baby crying? I get that at home anyway, what with the perimenopause and my next-door neighbour’s newborn. I’m so uncomfortable right now that if I didn’t have to film a reel about this, I’d ask the Hun to come over and finish me off. Not kill me, obviously, just finish the treatment – whether my lashes were sufficiently lifted or not. But I don’t want to rush to get home, just to sit looking at myself in my phone camera, holding my chin high in the hope of looking less like former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and more like Millie Bobby Brown.
Ahhh Millie Bobby Brown… She must still only be in her early twenties. Imagine being that young. I would have been at university in Birmingham. Happy, hazy days. Everyone I knew was young then (apart from Mother and Father Pells, of course) but we just took it for granted. All that beauty, energy, freedom… everything seemed to sparkle.
Back then, that Body Shop bean scrub that smelt weird but did a great job on blackheads was all I needed. Nowadays, it takes my face two hours to de-crumple in the morning, hence my excellent list of reasons for being ‘camera off’ on Zoom. I have so many I hardly ever have to repeat them. What will it be today: ‘I’m trialling a confidence app and today’s challenge is not to look at my own face !’ ‘My neighbour Mrs Belcher is doing her morning chair yoga and it’s really distracting!’ ‘I read an article that said they use web camera footage to create AI influencers!’ I’m so bloody chirpy nobody would ever know I’m sitting here wearing a hyaluronic sheet mask wondering ifI should get a face lift or just start a new life with one of those tribes who revere their elders.
But nobody notices, and frankly, nobody cares. It’s like I’m being reabsorbed into the ether, with no defined edges anymore – on my face, or anywhere else for that matter. Even my punny headlines aren’t that sharp of late, although that’s the part I like writing the most. It’s as thoughSix Degrees Of Curl Separationin 2018 was my finest hour, and it’s been downhill since then. Apart fromHow Now Brown Browlast year, but that was a blip, and I’m not sure everyone got it.
I can hear my phone ringing in my bag, then footsteps.
‘Want Me To Give You Your Phone, Hun?’
‘Yup. Sure. Thanks. Hold on… who is it?’
More scruffling and a faint giggle – possibly at something in my bag. There’s a lot to work with here. It could be the Settlers Wind-eze Plus (a combined symptom of perimenopause and too much cheese), the playing cards (not a middle-aged thing at all; Clock Patience is very mindful), or the coconut, which I bought on the way here, having read that ‘According to natural beauty Jessica Alba,the key ingredient to pristine skin is raw coconut.’
‘It’s Simon Pells,’ says the Hun.
‘Just leave it then, thanks,’ I say, deciding it will be something about our mother and the late Carol, and the only mournful thing I want to focus on right now is my own face when I do the lash lift Instagram reel.
I slip back into my thoughts… To have that life back, when I wasn’t familiar with Settlers, and my vagina worked and was generally a fun place for people to be – and not reminiscent of one of those overgrown dusty cellars in horror films that everyone is too scared to investigate. Everything felt easier, every night was full of promise, because when you are young you are gorgeous by default, and everything just falls into place, including your vagina.
As it no doubt does for Cassia Carver. She seems to have taken middle age and run with it. Imagine that: your heyday is when everyone else is starting to feel depleted. That’s quite the competitive advantage. Cassia and I worked together atBeautiquein the late Nineties and were friends, well, drinking partners, for a while. We would share a round or two of Flaming Sambucas at the odd PR party and tell each other over the music how we’d ‘NEVER FELT THIS CLOSE TO ANYONE BEFORE, WE JUST LIKE REALLY GET EACH OTHER, D’YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?’
Cassia’s star ascended and ascended. Mine, on the other hand, was fairly dim with an occasional flicker, like one of those energy-saving lightbulbs. We both went for the assistant beauty editor role atBeautique. I put so much into that interview, with a mock-up of a whole magazine issue (an anti-ageing special) with the headline ‘Young Ho!’. It took me bloody ages, long before the days of Canva. I even glued an eye serum sample onto the cover, because in those days you got a freebie with every magazine. In fact, I’ve still got a pair of sunglasses from an old issue ofRedsomewhere…
But Cassia got the job, not me, probably because her dad was friends with Egon on the board. We drifted apart after that, aside from the occasional ‘Hi sweetie mwah mwah’ at parties, and after I moved out of London our careers diverged rapidly with Cassia moving to the coveted editor spot – with her own beauty and lifestyle blogCassicalon the side, still usually ranking top five, just [email protected] video crept in, she took to it as much as I didn’t – investing in a selfie stick way before anyone else, while I just hoped the whole thing would pass. I hated – hate – talking to the camera. For some reason my eyes dart about as though there’s a fly in the room, and my voice sounds like I’m eating a banana. Seth Rogan has a banana voiceall the time, but it’s strangely appealing on him. Pretty sure it isn’t on me.
And then came Instagram, the place where I feel like I’m at a house party with a bunch of much cooler people, and I’m in the kitchen. No, not even the kitchen – the queue for the downstairs loo. Scrap that – I haven’t even been invited to the bloody party. Cassia, however, is dancing in the living room (this is still a metaphor, by the way). Even her profile on Instagram is cool. It just says ‘Creator’ with a cryptic emoji of some cherries and a quote fromStranger Thingsthat I don’t get as I’ve never seen it. Millie Bobby Brown would get it. They’re probably following each other.
Cassia posts daily – more than daily if you include the chatty updates from her car on Stories. No banana voice for Cassia, even when ACTUALLY EATING A BANANA, as she was the other day. And it doesn’t help that Cassia is the physical opposite of me: blonde, tall, with that posh physique that grew up skiing, playing tennis and being wholesome. The sort of person people describe as ‘coltish’. I look like I grew up in an underground bunker by comparison: wiry brown hair, pale skin and a decidedly unathletic body. What’s even more annoying is that we’re the same age, although Cassia uses hashtags like#wisewomenand#midyouth.
I roll my eyes at an imaginary Cassia, then wonder if that’s even possible when they’re sealed shut. How much longer is this going to take? Cassia would make light work of theBefore and Afterreel I have to do. Her videos are all dropping clothes on the floor, which then magically appear on her body. She makes vintage cocktails called things like gimlets every Friday – and only has one (#mindfuldrinking). She winks at the camera, but it isn’t creepy, which I feel it would be if I did it. And she has 134K followers, while I have 2892. A large proportion of mine are American servicemen and pictures of bums in thongs withhandles like@savannah_5638. I know you’re meant to report stuff like that, and I will, but only once I get to 3K.
A tap on my arm from the Hun and finally, it’s over – I’m ready to have the miniature rollers removed. The room is blurry and my leg has gone to sleep, which gives me an interesting gait when I head for the door, but at least my eyelashes are a modicum less stubby. Outside, it’s tipping down, and my too-long-for-short-legs jeans absorb the rain off the pavement and start flapping about like wet flannels. I linger in the doorway of FILLINGZ and check to see if anyone messaged during my ordeal. One person, it transpires: Nandy, or Nandita Choudhury to be precise, another of my former colleagues atBeautiquemagazine but unlike Cassia, a ‘kindred spirit’, as Anne of Green Gables would have said.
Hey mofo. Are you going to the Twat Fest at Luscious HQ? Let’s get BOLLOCKSED and tell them all we hate them. Thoughts?
