Dear rahxe
I liwvyiuso much and I neverwabtotbewithoutou.
Imaprryforwveurjjnti have otyouthrugh and I wanttputpknowyhatiwollnevhuetypuragain.
Pleaseofforgbmw
Aavid cxx
He couldn’t read what he had written and squinted hard at it. Nope, it still didn’t make sense. He pressed save; he’d send it in the morning.
David took a photo of Rachel asleep so he could remember this special moment. He allowed his breathing to fall in with her rhythm and prayed to God he wasn’t too late to save their relationship.
Rachel
20
Rachel had left a whisky-laden David asleep on top of the covers fully dressed when she crept out of the house. The bedroom smelled of alcohol and garlic sauce. His shirt buttons were wonky. She didn’t want to hear any more of his lame excuses.
Although it was the beginning of summer, she was planning Christmas strategies for a number of independent gift shops. She loved that, for her and her team at least, Christmas wasn’t restricted to December. She had a playlist prepared for inspiration. Her mood was lifted superficially by the jingle of bells. Eva wasn’t a complete grouch but she had put a strict ban on playing Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home For Christmas’. Rachel added hazelnut syrup to her coffee, with a sprinkling of cinnamon to bring Christmas that little bit closer.
She put on her headphones and selected her new Christmas playlist. Starting with the traditional Bing Crosby and working through the decades with nods to Slade, Elton John, Wham and Mariah Carey, before ending with Jeff Buckley’s cover version of ‘Hallelujah’. Rachel found herself nodding in agreement to Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’.
At the beginning a young and inexperienced Rachel had been briefly reluctant to get involved with David. Jojo had often regaled her with stories about the wayward elder brother. He might as well have come with a ‘bad boy’ t-shirt and a ‘will break hearts’ warning. Not that it made any difference. Rachel developed a crush on David from the moment they met; the cliché, the best friend’s older brother. He was tall, handsome, amusing, and had the most amazing eyes, deep pools of blue she could drown in. But she was too young for him. Not only was she more than ten years his junior, she acted her age and stayed quiet so as to avoid saying stupid things in his company.
David always said that he too wanted to be with her from the moment they met, but like her was worried about the age gap. But he was certain, one hundred per cent sure, that he wanted to be with her. This was a dramatic distinction for him: he wanted to be with her. Not have sex with her, not have a fling, but be with her, by her side. He told her that he’d made a solemn vow to himself to not even look properly at his sister’s room mate, but became immediately besotted with her when he did. He thought she was perfect. She was gorgeous, and funny, and smart. And after that he tried to avoid Rachel whenever Jojo asked for his help – first it was to fix her shelves, then it was to take them both to B&Q, and then when he picked Jojo up at the end of the autumn term, she asked him to drop Rachel home as well.
Rachel said she should buy him a drink to say thank you.
Jojo finally agreed to give them her blessing when she discovered it was Rachel who’d asked David out. She’d been given a detailed rundown of why Jojo’s idiot brother was a highly unsuitable suitor and still wanted to go on a date with him.
‘Just for one drink!’ Rachel had laughed.
The office was empty. Rachel savoured the quiet, waiting for Eva to return from the printer’s. Lydia had the day off and Timothy wasn’t due in. It wasn’t long before procrastination took hold. Rachel was alone, which meant one thing: uninterrupted access to the Internet. She succumbed to the sidebar of shame clickbait and lost half an hour.
Guess what Charlie’s Angels look like now? She clicked the link and was surprised it wasn’t the 1970s actresses but the 2000 reiteration of the Angels: Liu, Diaz and Barrymore. Had it really been nearly twenty years?
50 facts about One Tree Hill. The video was eight minutes long. Eight minutes Rachel wasn’t ever getting back.
19 ways to know if your relationship is in trouble. Why nineteen? The odd number bothered her more than the substandard content. But still she read on.
Click.
Scroll.
Click.
Scroll.
What a waste of time. Not one site told you what to do when your partner was a cheating asswipe.
Rachel found herself starting to resent Facebook – or Faceboast as Eva called it. It was a valuable work tool and she liked to see what friends were up to. But lately she’d been feeling overwhelmed by those glimpses of other people’s lives, the greener grass and all that. She saw glamorous holidays and ambitious home décor projects. And the babies – all the bloody babies! Rachel understood the pictures. The ubiquitous set of cards that would identify that a newborn had reached a milestone – ‘I’m one month old today’ – with the appropriate card precariously balanced above the child’s head, or how an infant had walked its first steps, done its first shit in a potty. Not that it was comparable, but she had been known to dress up her cats as felines from history and post pictures. Oscar in particular was highly suited to this treatment – he was black and white and had a small dark patch under his nose, resembling a Charlie Chaplin/Adolf Hitler moustache. And more recently she had outfitted Neville in a scarlet cat coat and the caption ‘Simply Red’. The result: 23 likes. David had renamed them 23 lame likes.
She clicked on more article headings:
Women who have kids using IVF are more likely to develop breast cancer, study warns.
Air pollution may affect number of eggs ovaries can produce.
Rachel wondered if there was a test she could take to count her remaining eggs. How much time did she have?
She searched ‘How to tell how many ovary eggs left 34 years’. Google returned more than 3,800,000 results. The first ten confirmed that over 35, women are screwed.
Rachel was already 34 years and 7 months old. That meant she only had five months of optimum ovaries left! If she separated from David it might take her a year to find someone special. And even that could be a serious under-estimate, based on her friends’ dating escapades. But say she was lucky and found someone in a year, she’d be 35 years and 7 months. They’d have to date for … what? A year? A year before they could start the baby-making. So she’d be … what …? 36 years and 7 months, leaving her with nineteen months past their prime, mediocre, good-luck-with-those eggs, and that’s assuming she got pregnant on the first try. It wasn’t just a case of not taking the pill. And what if she wanted a second and third child?!
She was counting down the days until David left her. The plan, the ingenious plan to get her husband to love her again, was laughable. She’d never seen less of him. He’d come home with buttons done up wrong, stinking of booze, and was apparently hanging out with Barry the newly single man about town. She’d barely had an opportunity to woo David, and he had no time to spend with her. She imagined him busily planning his escape. She’d assumed he would leave her and immediately move in with the mistress, but now it crossed her mind that he was going to get a bachelor pad with Barry where they could relive their hedonistic twenties. She scribbled more calculations. Things did not look good for her ovaries whichever way they were presented.
Maybe she could go it alone and be a single parent? She’d talk to Jojo and Beth: they’d gone down the IVF route. How easy would it be to find a suitable sperm donor? Maybe she could use a surrogate – it was very en vogue for celebrities after all. All of a sudden, she saw the plight of the infertile everywhere.
Procrastination was all too tempting with easy online access.
Rachel searched for David’s Facebook page. He didn’t post often, and her heart swelled a little when she saw that most of his posts were of things he’d done with her, or else about her. But then again, there was no documentation of the arguments or the constant compromises between them. No tears,
no shouting. None of the never-marriedness nor his bloody cheating. His profile was an e-statement of the good times, the fun moments and the funny pictures. It was nothing but a one-sided lie. No wonder people were emotionally exhausted by social media.
Rachel tortured herself some more by looking up David’s ex-girlfriends. When she first met him, they’d shared everything including their respective back-stories. It was liberating for Rachel to be going out with an older man who was self-assured enough not to be jealous. Looking back, it might have been because he had nothing to worry about; she’d had few lovers in comparison with him.
Rachel opened a new page and searched for Adam McDonald. Her first kiss.
Adam: 34 years old. Lives in Basingstoke. Married with two children. Not many pictures of the wife. He had aged well; still played sports and was quite dishy.
Search: Craig Tennant. Her high-school boyfriend.
Craig: 34 years old. Lives in Chelmsford.
Also married, also with children. He looked ridiculously happy with his lot.
Search: Dan Pettigrew. Her college crush.
Dan: 35 years old. Lives in York.
He was a primary school teacher. FOUR(!) children but separated from Lindsey, his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Balding and his posts exuded toxic bitterness. He’d turned out to be a complete arsehole. But at the time she had loved him more than life itself. She clicked through the hundreds of gym selfies. His posts were on right-wing politics, busty women he’d ‘like to bang’, and low-carb beers. What a douche.
Search: Gavin Thompson. Her university boyfriend.
Gavin: 35 years old. Lives in London.
Rachel couldn’t really remember why they broke up. First term: met in the queue for her first lecture, six weeks of bliss and then a fade out. He was too nice. Being too nice at that age was considered a fatal flaw but it was the opposite later in life. His photos were lacking a significant other. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would cheat on his wife. He played cricket, he followed the snooker, and had a horde of gorgeous nieces and nephews. She clicked on a link to Gavin’s Instagram profile and accidentally followed him. Shit! She quickly cancelled the follow, wondering if he would get an email notification to say she’d followed him for all of nine seconds.
A pop-up message appeared on her screen:
Gavin:Hey stranger.
Rachel deliberated before replying. She flicked through his photos and was reminded of his puppy dog eyes, long lashes and honest face.
Rachel:Hi!
Gavin:Wot u up to?
Rachel:Not much, at work. You?
Gavin:U look exactly the same x
Rachel:You’ve aged pretty well yourself. What are you doing? Didn’t you want to be an astronaut?
Gavin:Ha! Good memory. NASA never called, so working for my old man, plumbing supplies. With some DJing at weekends. Wot about u?
Rachel:I have a small events company. Does your dad still look like Luigi from Mario Kart?
Gavin:Ha! He still has the eighties ’tache – but now grey. Gr8 4 u! Let me know if u ever need a DJ – I’ll send you some of my stuff! We should catch up, u know 4 old times x
A photo popped up showing Gavin’s dad with a wiry grey moustache. She laughed out loud.
Eva knocked on Rachel’s door and walked into her office.
‘Jeez, you scared the life out of me!’ Rachel slammed her laptop shut, hoping she didn’t look anywhere near as guilty as she felt.
‘Look at these!’ Eva presented the proof wedding invitations for Jojo and Beth. They were beautiful and perfect, due to the fact that Jojo had designed the artwork. There were two pencil drawings of her and Beth, encapsulated in a wiggly heart. Rachel was over the moon with the final finish.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Eva.
She looked at her watch and nodded. With Eva’s solid back-up, Rachel felt full of new resolve. She was ready to put the make-my-husband-fall-back-in-love-with-me-again-plan into effect. Eva locked the office door behind them and together they went shopping.
David was still annoying her but Rachel bought him a new face wash to replace the one she’d tainted with chilli powder. She also bought him replacement underwear and some socks.
She wanted a new lipstick, something bold. And she needed a tube of beauty flash balm. The beauty consultant on the counter complimented Rachel’s skin, saying that presumably she adhered to a strict skincare regime. Rachel agreed – a smug untruth. She had toners but rarely used them; she only exfoliated when she could remember.
‘And I even take my makeup off most evenings!’ Rachel added.
The consultant gasped in horror, lamenting piously that sleeping in one’s makeup was akin to smoking twenty cigarettes a day. Rachel was quick to lie and insisted she’d only been joking. In her head, she calculated how many nights since FuckingAwfulHusbandGate she had slept in her makeup. The total was shockingly high. The girl then asked which moisturiser Rachel used. She nodded towards her beauty purchase. The girl looked confused and repeated the question.
‘The flash balm,’ Rachel reiterated. ‘The beauty flash balm! The. Thirty. Pound. Tube. I’ve. Just. This. Second. Bought.’ She heard her voice rise to a frequency that maybe only dogs could hear.
‘A beauty flash balm has no significant moisturising qualities. It’s a radiance skin booster, a complexion-perfecting measure,’ the girl with the artificial complexion prescribed.
Rachel was unsure if she was going to implode or explode. Eva joined them, smelling like a brothel, having tried on a variety of perfumes with horrifying results.
‘Is there a problem, Rach?’
‘Yes, you could say that. It seems that the moisturiser I have been using religiously … the very expensive moisturiser, may I add … isn’t a moisturiser. “Apparently” it’s a mere balm. And I’ve been using it for …’ Rachel did the mental arithmetic. ‘Nine years! Right here on this counter, nine years ago, I first bought it. That’s nine years I haven’t applied adequate lubrication to my face or neck. NINE years! MORE THAN HALF MY ADULT LIFE! My neck, my poor neck …’ Rachel checked it in the counter-top mirror and pulled at the skin under her eyes. ‘At twenty-five years old, I allowed my skin to age prematurely. Thanks to …’ Rachel didn’t really know who to blame. But she had a sneaking suspicion it was herself.
‘Menopause,’ another customer was heard to state simply.
‘It’s not the menopause!’ Rachel shouted into the ether. ‘I’m thirty-bloody-four!’
The girl on the counter was mortified. This was not how customers usually acted in a high-end skincare concession. Shoppers and staff at neighbouring beauty stations were now avidly watching Rachel’s meltdown. The red-faced beauty consultant quickly added some tester-size samples of genuine moisturisers to Rachel’s purchase.
‘Some moisturisers I can try nine years too late?! Well, thank you. Thank you very much.’
Eva tried to calm the situation by guiding Rachel away from the counter, saying,
‘One day we’ll laugh at this.’
Rachel was already embarrassed by her outburst. Eva reminded her she had ten minutes until her appointment for a cut and a colour and they should get moving. Eva had booked an appointment with her own favourite hairdresser and suggested Rachel should try having her hair styled into a more modern cut instead of her normal boring bob.
‘Rach, you share a haircut with your mum. Hey! Don’t look at me like that – Mrs K looks great for her age, but you’ve got to have a change …’
The dour hairdresser picked up her scissors and in a Glaswegian accent introduced herself as Janice. She looked at Eva from slightly wonky eyes, which seemed to be saying: Not much to work with here. Eva let her own eyes reply: Do your best.
Rachel coloured her hair every twelve weeks; she liked the way the new thin grey strands that were appearing mingled with her highlights. She told Eva they made her feel distinguished.
‘That’s sweet. It’s also completely insane,’ her friend replied.
‘Like?’
Rachel didn’t trust herself not to upset Eva by replying honestly, so mentally filed away the word mutton. And she didn’t even mean Eva in particular. She was after all the exception to every rule. She always looked amazing. Her skirt was tailored and short but it didn’t look slutty. Her makeup was carefully applied but looked natural. Rachel, with her knowledge of cosmetics, knew it took time and precision for makeup to look that natural. Eva’s hair always looked like she lived in the hair salon. Or was at least bonking a hairdresser. Not Janice though. That woman had the emotional development and skin tone of Edward Scissorhands. Ironic, when Rachel thought about it.
‘Should I dye my hair blonde – platinum blonde?’ she asked.
‘How do I say this …’ Eva picked up a glossy magazine. ‘It’s a lot of upkeep, and I’m not sure you’d have enough commitment for the maintenance required. It’s not for everyone.’
Rachel knew Eva was right.
‘What if I promise to work at it?’ she pleaded with the hairdresser, who looked petrified at the prospect of trying to turn this nondescript client into Marilyn Monroe.
‘You’d need to come in every six weeks for me to do the roots.’
Rachel immediately backed down.
‘What about some more dramatic highlights then?’
Eva looked over the top of the magazine at her and shook her head. Rachel stuck out her bottom lip in protest. But she knew her friend was right.
Janice positioned the mirror to show Rachel the back of her head. She gave a polite nod. It was the obligatory glance at the back of her own head – she never made a comment about it, what was she supposed to say? It looked like the back of a head and the swish-swish of the mirror was performed too rapidly for her to register any register any detail. Janice suggested moisturising the back of her neck twice-daily, noting that her short hair-style exposed her neck line to the elements, and called attention to any – er – lines. Eva saw Rachel struggle to suppress the fire behind her eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was from fury or distress, but she knew her friend was still sore following the beauty counter fiasco. Eva quickly paid, shooing Rachel’s purse away.
How to Marry Your Husband Page 14
