Читать книгу Motherwhelmed - Anniki Sommerville - Страница 9

THE THING ABOUT BEING ‘in your forties’ is that you feel like you haven’t much to look forward to. For a start, appearance-wise things go to hell in a hand-bucket. I was pretty much invisible to the opposite sex now. A couple of younger female colleagues had told me that it was rare to get chatted up these days so maybe it was society that was changing.

But there were simple truths that you couldn’t escape.

• I could never be an ‘enfant terrible’.

• I would never own my own swimming pool

• I wouldn’t be able to get beads plaited into my hair on holiday, without looking like one of those old women that gets beads plaited into their hair on holiday.

• I would always be referred to as ‘good for my age.’

• If I got a tattoo, it would be seen as symptomatic of a mid-life crisis.

• A hangover lasted a week

Age wasn’t just a number. We all wanted to be pumped up, youthful, dewy, glowing, energetic, sexy and dynamic. It was exhausting. My body wanted to age. My face wanted to be left alone to slide and sag. I sometimes thought ageing was easier when we just threw on a moth-eaten cardigan, collected stray cats and collected coupons from the back of Woman’s Own.

Okay maybe I was still attractive. Two months ago I’d been eyed up by a man in his sixties on the tube but this kind of event didn’t make me feel better. Old men were not ideal. I made a list in my head of exciting, dynamic and sexy older women who still got plenty of male attention.

There was Jennifer Aniston.

Kate Winslet.

Rachel Weisz.

These were all Hollywood actresses who were a different breed to ordinary middle-aged folk. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not feel quite so invisible, to still be able to arouse interest from the opposite sex, to actually make young men look at you with fresh eyes; for them to want to have rampant sex with you.

I concocted a fantasy letter in my mind to these ageless beauties.

Dear Jen, Kate and Rachel,

I love the way you’re so sassy and look like you’re in your twenties despite being well into your forties. I imagine you have good cosmetic surgeons and possibly have facials once a week and do yoga and HIIT training every morning. You may also be wearing heavy-duty support underwear but that’s cool. I just wish you could be more honest about how you look the way you do and cut the rest of us some slack.

I want men to get erections as I walk past in my red swimsuit. I want them to cross their legs as I walk past because their penises hurt. I want Bradley Cooper to be hopelessly in love with me. I want to water-ski, and not have people laugh as I fall off and plunge underwater. I want to be a ballet dancer. I want to play the drums like Dave Grohl. I want to have a hit comedy series. I want people to laugh at the prospect of my comedy series before they’ve even seen it.

I want to feel there is MORE coming my way rather than less.

Love Rebecca x

I dropped Bella at nursery. My chin felt painful, and I realized I’d been too eager that morning in plucking out my chin hairs, and now had a bad rash. Bella cried and clutched at my legs like she was a baby seal about to be clubbed. Both the nursery assistants ignored me, and I ended up walking like a zombie from side to side trying to shake her off.

‘Is there some way to turn off all the texts I keep getting each day?’ I asked one of them (the slightly less grumpy one).

‘Don’t you want to know how she’s doing each day?’

‘Yes but is there an option to shut it off if my day is particularly busy? It’s quite stress-inducing sometimes.’

They glared at me. This was the wrong thing to say. I was a bad parent.

‘You can choose to ignore the texts I suppose,’ one said.

‘No of course, forget it. I love the updates,’ I said.

I gave Bella a final squeeze and ran for my train.

As I left the building, Bella’s cries were still reverberating in my ears. The tug inside, the desire to turn back and get her was too strong. It was wrong to leave your kid with a bunch of strangers each day but work demanded it. I tried calling Mum, but she didn’t answer – she was probably at one of her classes. I needed some distraction and I also wanted to find out if Dad had improved any. I looked up at the trees and tried to remember the positive visualization from the night before.

Little moments of happiness. This was something to hold onto. Tiny fragments. This would stop my head leaving my body entirely.

I can imagine the life I want.

The office felt upbeat and people were chatting. There had just been a breakfast presentation by Darren on ‘How Meat Substitute Represents a Massive Opportunity in The Fast Food Sector.’ He was on a real high and was walking around clapping people on the back like he’d just won the lottery. His eyes looked haunted though, as if he’d put in another late night and had perhaps even slept in the office (there was a futon in one room and it was no secret that when the workload was heavy, you could sleep there for the night). I was happy to have missed this presentation, but also nervous that Darren would report back to Phoebe on my lack of initiative. Ever since the appraisal they’d kept me on the back foot.

Simon sat next to me and smiled. I asked him for some more ideas – innovative, new, fresh ideas for my fish finger proposal, and he talked to me about packaging, and how we should try and decode the packaging, and then look at the semiotic and cultural significance of fish in the wider world, and cod, how the notion of scarcity played out in society in general, and how this impacted on our perceptions of meat. I asked if he could type it all into my proposal (as I didn’t understand what he was talking about and had tuned out for most of the chat). He agreed.

There was something sweet about this chap, and I wondered again why he was bothering with an old fruit like me, but he seemed to think I was eccentric – perhaps he liked that kind of thing. Perhaps I was his ‘Helen Mirren.’ Besides, Mango-Lab was just a temporary holding pattern in his career until he spotted something more interesting. He had a myriad of options because he was young and healthy and full of beans. He was a shark, and I was a giant fish finger with my head stuck in a plastic bag.

‘Would you like to go out for a drink?’ he asked. ‘A few of us are going to the pub later and I thought maybe you’d like to come along.’

‘Hey?’ I said.

I was surprised. I couldn’t remember ever being asked to the ‘yoof’ drinks. I wasn’t in that demographic anymore. Besides on the rare occasion I was asked I usually turned it down. I needed to get back to Bella and see her for that precious hour for bed (which was usually the most fractious, stressful hour of her day, so not pleasant at all).

‘The pub is super nice and they serve this street food from Korea which is delicious so we could grab some of that perhaps?’

Korean street food? Drinks? I hadn’t been for a works drink for months – in fact the last time had been Christmas and now it was almost May. Yes, I usually raced out the door at five thirty (or a bit earlier if the coast looked clear). Then again, maybe this was exactly what I needed. Part of the reason I was no doubt failing at work, and not being strategic enough was because I didn’t hang out with these young people. I was feeling stuck in a routine – work, home, bed, work, home, bed and this would shake things up. I agreed I’d go along for a couple of drinks. I texted Pete. He said he was fine with it.

As I’ve already said, going out was extremely rare.

I spent the afternoon listening to a Spotify playlist of my favourite nineties hip-hop, and amending my fish finger proposal. I’m gonna take this itty bitty world by storm. And I’m just getting warm. I could feel the benefit of collaborating with Simon – he’d given me some fresh insights, and I was proposing a whole new digital platform whereby fish finger loyalists could upload footage of themselves and their families, and we could regularly check in and ask them questions. The head detaching from my body thing had passed and I felt better again. Things could be much worse