Читать книгу The Big Five O - Jane Wenham-Jones - Страница 7

Facing Fifty

Fighting Fifty

Nifty at Fifty

Shifty at Fifty

Fat at Fifty

Fit and Fifty

Fed up and fifty

Fucking Fifty!

They were all laughing like drains when we were writing the invite. So I tried to laugh too. Come to our Joint 50^th Birthday …

Charlotte and Fay and Sherie and Roz. All four of us are hitting the half century this year, so it’s going to be a ball. We’ve been planning it for weeks. A big venue, lots of friends, banners, balloons, fizz and strictly no Oh-God-I’m-Fifty tears …

That’s what they tell me.

I am crying because that party is going to happen without me. I don’t know how this nightmare is going to unfold but I know in my heart it won’t end well.

I’m so afraid but I can’t bring myself to tell them. Sometimes I take a deep breath and my mouth opens but I always close it again. As if the very act of saying it out loud will make it real and I won’t be able to pretend any more that things might still be OK.

So each time we add to the arrangements, I have to keep smiling. I have to nod and look pleased and thrilled at the thought of every last bloom and fairy light.

I must be doing it well as they think I’m as excited as they are.

They have no idea at all what’s really going on …