Part Three
Chapter Twenty-One
Zurich is also a European city
I know Héloïse is only a kid but I’d like to flag up here that she is wrong – Idowant to be young again. I mean, just look at me. Just bloody look at me. I’d pinch myself if my skin wasn’t just immediately going to bounce back. Standing in Devon’s gigantic navy-blue bathroom, blending some blush (sorry Simon, I mean ‘rouge’) onto my cheeks, I randomly burst out laughing just at the sheer amazingness of it all. Why didn’t I ever appreciate this when I was really in my twenties? I suppose back then, the only thing I had to compare it to was looking like a child, and when you’re a child, youwantto look older.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally gorgeous. Not like a model or an actress or anything like that. My face is too heart-shaped for one thing, and my chin is a bit pointy. My lips have never been that full either, and my eyebrows are quite bushy. But youth is like a filter – it takes all the things that look awful when you’re nearly fifty and blurs them with a soft-focus lens. I’ve wished so many times I could go back and appreciate it – and now look. My wishes have come true. I’m like Aladdin, but with two fewer wishes and no lamp.
I’ve got my Clean Girl make-up routine down to about twenty minutes now. In the Nineties I would spend all afternoon getting ready, blow-drying my hair to within an Atomic Kitten of its life, plucking my eyebrows into Sherilyn Fenn levels of arched submission and finishing the look with so much translucent powder I looked like a pastry chef. Nowadays, it’s definitely more ‘take me as I am’ – which is easier to get on board with when your face looks like it’s been reinflatedafter a slow puncture that lasted twenty years. And the time I save every morning not having to pluck my chin is quite incredible. Especially those really wiry hairs that used to appear from nowhere – usually in the rear-view mirror while driving somewhere important, with no access to a hot compress and my GripMaster Pro Tweezers (#gifted).
I pull on a yellow jacket that Devon left hanging in the hall and head out of the flat. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’m beginning to settle in. The place is warm, comfortable, spacious… it’s like getting squatters rights on an Airbnb I can’t really afford. But the thing that’s missing is some friends. Some fun. That is why I came here after all… to get away from the naysayers. Oh, and so I can stop skulking about in disguise. Woolly hats and scarves only really work in the winter, and finally, spring is here.
In the lift, I look at myself in the mirrored wall and can’t help but do yet another half-laugh, half-whoop, half-snort of disbelief. (And I don’t even mind that this adds up to one and a half.) I’m busy poking my face, admiring my jawline and pouting when the lift doors open and two young men and a woman get in. Out of habit, I immediately adopt my well-practised middle-aged stance: no eye contact and that weird tight-lipped face that acknowledges without smiling.
‘Hey girl,’ says the woman.
I continue to stare straight ahead, trying to figure out what came first, Schindler’s Lifts orSchindler’s List, and assuming the woman, who has blue hair in pigtails and AirPods in her ears, is talking to someone on her phone.
She looks at her friends, shrugs and laughs.
‘Oh… were you talking to me?’ I say. ‘I was on Planet Zog.’
The woman bursts out laughing, and the two men, one blonde, one with dreadlocks, join in.
‘Erm… okay girl!’ says the woman.
‘I mean I was… really spaced out, man.’ I hastily try to think of something more current to say, but by now the lift has reached the ground floor. The three friends walk out, leaving me cringing, but the girl looks over her shoulder and smiles. ‘You’re funny.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. At least that came out like a normal twenty-something.
Seems like my ‘vibing’ in the Hollister changing room was beginner’s luck. How am I going to make friends when I speak like bloody Austin Powers. I really need to work on this. And worse than that – okay, maybe not worse but still quite bad – there’s no M&S Food nearby, so I have to walk to Deptford and get the DLR to Greenwich, which is what I’m about to do now. It’s worth it though, it’s a much bigger store than the one at the garage back home in Wiltshire. They’ve got the full Gastropub range, and since the Yuvana payments are coming in, the sky’s the limit. Well, I need to be able to carry it all back on the train, but my arms can take it now I’m bingo-wing free. Today I might even get some of those seafoody things that come in a scallop shell. If only I was sponsored by M&S Food, not Yuvana Labs with their shiny faces and endless glasses of water. Mustn’t grumble though. JEEZ, even that sounds middle-aged…
Walking out of the building, I struggle to put up my umbrella. Across the road, I can see the blond boy – man – who was in the lift, looking over at me. What’s he staring at? Don’t Gen Z use umbrellas? This is all so much more complicated now I’m ‘out in the wild’. It feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that I was in my twenties – and in that lifetime the way young people talk and interact seems to have changed dramatically. Like a whole new language to learn, and if I’m not fluent, I will be shown up for the fraud I am. Or maybe not… looking like I do, how could anyone ever believe that Iwasn’tyoung? I just have to make sure nobody connects cool young Erica who livesin south-east London with WULT® Woman. Which surely won’t be a problem, because why would anyone in their twenties look at an Instagram account aimed at rich middle-aged women?
I head to the station. It’s only one stop to Greenwich but the train grinds to a halt halfway and an announcement says there’s a ‘technical fault’, so I use the opportunity to sit and think about my brilliant new life and how bloody exciting it all is, conscious of the fact that I am now one of those really annoying people that sit on their own smiling on public transport. I also decide I need to make some plans, so I get out my phone, open my Notes app and make a list.
Get more followers than Cassia
Make new cool/young friends
Sex (alone doesn’t count)
Go clubbing (wonder if the Velvet Rooms is still open?)
