“Don’t forget
my
delightful sister,” Jack continued.
“As if I could,” I replied glumly, adding Anita to the list. Anita, who hates me, and her husband, Rupert, who hates everybody,
so at least I don’t have to take it personally. Next up my cousin Mike, who loves me, and his new boyfriend, a ruggedly handsome
Slav named Stanko whom I’m prepared to love, but only once Mike tells me he is definitely The One.
Then Best Friends, mine, Jack’s, and Olly’s (I’m already resigned to the fact that Olly and his pals will exit the party at
the first opportunity), with marvelous, maddening, unpredictable Maddy—Dr. M. to her adoring patients—right at the top of
the BF list; then the aforementioned BFs abroad. There are about ten of them in various parts of the globe, and they book
flights as casually as they make restaurant reservations.
After that came the second tier. Colleagues and bosses, school mums and dads (Olly would have gone ballistic if he’d seen
this category on the list), old school friends whom I see once a year, neighbors so they won’t complain about the noise, plus
one set of neighbors who have been promoted to New Best Friend status. (Original BFs, like Pringles Original or original Branston
pickles, need to have been around for at least twenty years to qualify; NBFs can be made in a week, although you’ll never
love them as much as your BFs.) What is it with me? I may be pushing fifty, but I still think like a small child. Fifty going
on four. That’s part of the problem, I suppose. When the numbers reached eighty-five, Jack declared a halt.
The guest list sorted, next came the question of food. If there’s anything that marks me out as Jewish—apart from hair that
frizzes at the mere mention of the word “moisture”—it’s my attitude about food. It’s one of the many reasons Jack’s sister,
Anita, hates me. I do food all the time, and in copious quantities. My fridge is so full it keeps springing back open the
second I shut it. Once a frozen chicken fell out and landed on Anita’s toe, and it broke—the toe, not the chicken. Some people
have second homes on the Costa del Sol; mine’s on the Finchley Road at Waitrose. Quite a hike from there to the coast.
In the almost twenty years Jack and I have been together, we have been to Anita and Rupert’s place for dinner maybe five times.
Anita has been to our place more like five hundred times. She thinks I invite her to spite her. It’s me who does Christmas,
too. Jack’s a Christian (lapsed), and Olly is whatever suits him on any given day. It’s not that I particularly like cooking,
but for me, friends around a table groaning with food (even if the food has come straight from the deli) is one of life’s
great pleasures.
So the food was going to have to be fantastic.
I rang Pam. “Pam? Fancy doing a New Year’s Eve party for eighty-five?”
A former junior editor on my magazine who left journalism only six months ago to become a caterer, Pam was perhaps a bit of
a risk. But she deserved a boost, and if all went well, she’d make lots of new contacts.
“Food stations, darling,” she insisted, “so right for you and so right for now.” I could swear Pam never called anyone “darling”
before she went into the party-planning business. And I didn’t have a clue what food stations were.
“What exactly—”
“Grazing areas. Food stations are strategically placed so you can pick up delicious morsels of sustenance—some hot, some cold—as
you go along.”
“Aah, I see, grazing areas. Like for cows. Or sheep. Now I get it. A kind of farmyard theme, although I’d been thinking more
Moroccan myself.”
Pam gushed on regardless. “You’re so lucky to have the open plan with that
divine
conservatory” (more like a lean-to, but never mind), “which is just perfect for parties.”
I hoped I hadn’t made a big mistake. Pam always was too creative to spend her days correcting punctuation, but maybe this
was all getting a bit out of hand. “Delicious morsels of sustenance,” for heaven’s sake.
“I think we’ll have a shellfish station, a cocktail bar, and several hot-food stations with a choice of dishes. All served
on these dinky little dessert plates I have at the back of my van. It’s going to be quite
divine
.”
Pam never used to use the word “divine,” either. I was mystified but impressed. I learned that the correct nomenclature for
this new style of serving was “miniature mains.” Our miniature mains were going to be lamb with mash and mint sauce, Thai
fish curry with jasmine rice, and roasted vegetables with pesto dressing for the food-combining bores.
“And a chocolate fountain, of course. With strawberries for dipping.”
At least I’d heard of chocolate fountains. I’d even seen a picture in the paper of George Clooney dipping his strawberry at
a premiere after-party. And I liked a bit of pretension every now and then. It was all beginning to shape up.
I actually bumped into Ravi’s mum, Nomi, in Waitrose. I couldn’t resist asking her the fabric question, and I swear she immediately
volunteered for the job of accompanying me to Southall. “Sari Central,” she called it. Olly’s right, in a way, about me and
the other mums. I do like getting together with them, and we do talk mostly about our boys, but why shouldn’t we? It’s comforting
to be told “Ravi’s so rude to me these days” or “James was found drunk in a gutter in Leicester Square.” Less comforting to
hear that a boy from Olly’s year has been expelled for selling skunk to ninth-graders. Why on earth didn’t Olly tell me? What
has he got to hide?
A Saturday morning spent in Sari Central was a great success. Thanks to Nomi’s brilliance at bargaining, for fifty quid I
bought enough material to drape the entire inside of the tent as well as having some left over to cover four tall bar-style
round tables we’d hired to lend an air of louche nightclub glamour to the place.
All this displacement activity was definitely doing the trick. I had no time at all to get morbid about what was about to
hit. Christmas came and went with me playing the role of whirling dervish. Friends arriving from abroad. Food, drink, talk,
more food, more drink, more talk. No chance for real intimacies, just exchanges of information. More catch up than cozy up.
Busy, busy, busy. Going to work is a lot less exhausting.
My mother says I bring it on myself. Not one to hold back, she’s convinced I’m heading for a breakdown. She has been predicting
it for the last twenty-five years. Anita hopes I’m heading for a breakdown. I overheard her saying to Rupert after I’d served
Christmas lunch for fifteen: “Hope always has to be one better than the rest of us, but I can see it’s beginning to take its
toll.” Jack hasn’t mentioned breakdowns, but he has this new method of dealing with my more manic outbursts: “Whoa, girl,”
he says, as though reining in an overexcited horse. The only time he doesn’t have to rein me in is in bed. In the meantime,
my sister, Sarah, is a pillar of support. Claire, who’s come all the way from Australia, would be a pillar of support if only
we could manage twenty minutes alone together.
• • •
At 7:45 p.m. on the night of the party, I’m standing in front of the full-length mirror inside my wardrobe. I should be pleased
with what I see. For a woman who’s about four hours away from being fifty, two hundred and fifty-five minutes under half a
century old, I’m really not that bad. I’m really not that real, either. Tonight my hair is a dark, sleek bob. Left to its
own devices, it would be 85 percent gray and 100 percent frizz. I’m wearing a little black knee-length silk jersey dress.
It has a halter neck, to show off my best feature—my shoulders. Doesn’t everyone deserve a best feature? My breasts are not
contenders (34A, almost); my nose is more Nefertiti than Nicole Kidman; my bottom I’d rather not talk about. Can I be the
only woman in Britain who has VPL even when she isn’t wearing knickers?
But the overall package isn’t bad. And tonight, with the help of the most extraordinary underwear ever engineered—I wouldn’t
be surprised if it had been designed and built by Norman Foster—I have a pancake stomach, a bum that would put Jennifer Lopez
out of business, and most miraculous of all, cleavage. People have often complimented me on my boyish figure. Tonight, at
borderline fifty, I look like a woman. But hang on there, I’m not wearing my glasses, so I’m missing some of the important
details—the stuff you can see only close up. I’ve failed to mention the deep furrows on my forehead and the angry vein that
shoots from my eyebrows to my hairline, and not just when I’m angry. Then there’s the Rift Valley that runs from the outside
edge of each nostril to the corners of my mouth. And finally, the neck. The neck that until two months ago was only a neck.
A neck to which one never gave a second’s thought. Then boom: Overnight it collapsed into a heap, along with the chin, like
a building hit by an earthquake, reduced to rubble.
There comes a point in your life when you may still fit into a Topshop size 10, but that doesn’t stop your new neck from dictating
the contents of your wardrobe. For example, it’s a complete myth that a polo-neck sweater can disguise a neck that’s lost
the will to live. You can wear your neck flesh tucked in (but I guarantee you it will pop out), or you can let it all hang
loose above the rim of the polo and hope small children on the street don’t mistake you for a free-range chicken. Either way
you lose: Polo necks, along with miniskirts and flesh-bearing midriffs, are not to be entertained by a woman fast approaching
fifty.
I need a drink.
“Wow!” I say as I enter the tent. It’s totally transformed. While I’ve been off to have a bath and get ready, Jack and Olly
have been lighting the candles. At six o’clock it had looked the nadir of naffness, tacky even for a footballer’s wife, with
its clumsy cacophony of styles. What had I been thinking, mixing Eastern exotica with American ’50s glamour? Who would ever
put a cocktail lounge in the kasbah? Mark, the editor of
Exquisite Interiors
, one of the magazines at Global, where I work, would have had me tried for treason for less. Fortunately, he’s not invited.
And now, in the glow of a hundred tiny flickering flames, the atmosphere has become magical. The fabrics shimmer. Mounds of
plums, figs, pomegranates, and red grapes, dusted with icing sugar, sit in big glass bowls on tables, lending a Bacchanalian
air. A Rod Stewart CD—Volume I of
The Great American Songbook
—plays mellow in the background.
Jack’s already in the tent, dressed in a tux and clutching a martini. He snakes over with a big self-mocking grin on his face
and hands me a glass of pink champagne. “ ‘It had to be you, it had to be you,’ ” he croons along with Rod.
Some others I’ve seen, might never be mean,
Might never be cross, or try to be boss,
But they wouldn’t do . . .
It had to be you . . .
“Gorgeous, Hope. Really gorgeous. The tent, the music, the mood, everything. Even you. Gorgeous.”
Jack’s a better person than I could ever be. For a start, he does something useful. He’s a physiotherapist. And he doesn’t
think his work is the be-all and end-all. He doesn’t come home and bang on about Mrs. Chadwick’s sciatica or Johnny Philpot’s
latest sports injury. Whereas I go on endlessly about my job, my staff, the sales figures, and the interfering suits on the
top floor. He comes home and he relaxes. I come home and worry. He’s strict, though: no smoking in the house—no ashtrays,
even—organic food, that sort of thing. And he’s a bit anal when it comes to precision and making lists. But he also listens.
I’m too busy talking or thinking to listen. The only thing in my favor is that at least I’m aware of some of my faults.
I smile. “You’re gorgeous, too.” And I mean it. He’s in great shape for fifty-two. Not a lot of hair left on top, but shaved
closely to his head, it’s not noticeable. In theory, I still fancy him a lot. In practice—maybe I’ve lost the knack. Maybe
. . .
The bell rings, and Jack races off to answer it.
• • •
Cocktails and laughter, but what comes after? Just for once, Hope, I tell myself, go with the flow. And I do. I start with
the pink champagne, then move on to the mojitos. I snack on giant prawns with creamy mayonnaise and lamb chump with mash.
I flirt with Rupert to annoy Anita, and because Rupert won’t even notice I’m doing it; and with Mario of Mario’s Greek down
the road because he’s sixty-two and still sexy and because he gives good kleftiko. Mario’s forever harassed wife, Sofia, is
building up a business empire based entirely on her secret recipe for hummus. She started making it for the restaurant, and
now she’s supplying Sainsbury’s. “My very own Shirley Valentine,” Mario says, laughing, as we attempt Greek dancing to “The
Israelites” by Desmond Dekker & the Aces. “Come with me to Skyros, and I will introduce you to my favorite feta-producing
goat. If she gives her blessing, I will divorce Sofia, carry you all the way to Thessalonika, and wed you at the top of Mount
Olympus.”
“I accept.” I giggle, skittering off toward more mojitos.
I see that Tony, the rat-catcher who comes and gets rid of our annual ant infestation—and whose accounts of exterminating
giant rodents utterly transfix—is doing some kind of chicken dance with Sharon, who waxes my legs and wanted to give me a
Brazilian as a birthday treat. I said my husband would never forgive me, although in truth I never even asked.
I glance at my watch: 11:45 p.m. and Olly’s still here. He’s being chatted up by local vamp Vanessa the Undresser, as she’s
known to the Neighborhood Watch committee on which she and I both serve. I don’t think half the men on the committee are even
a teeny bit interested in traffic calming or the rise in muggings in the area; they turn up for the sole purpose of seeing
how little Vanessa will be wearing on any given evening. If Vanessa were to resign from the committee, attendance would plummet
and the whole thing would fall apart.
In her early thirties and divorced with two kids, Vanessa sports a small tattoo on the swell of her substantial bosom, a bosom
she’s currently thrusting in Olly’s direction. Olly’s not even looking embarrassed. Something altogether new has come over
him. Instead of examining the floor, as usual, he’s looking straight into Vanessa’s eyes. And now, glancing confidently down
toward her breasts, he’s casually sliding an arm around her waist and leading her to the dance floor. My throat catches. My
beloved boy, my precious one and only son, the only person in the world for whom my love has never wavered, is becoming a
man. When Jack’s lovely, wise old mum was alive, she said to me, “A husband? Pah! He’s just some man you met. But a child,
no contest. A child is your flesh and blood.” No offense to Jack, but it’s exactly how I feel. He’s mine, not yours, I want
to scream at Vanessa as jealousy slashes at me like a scythe.