by Lucy Diamond
Hugh had once suggested that you couldn’t miss someone you’d never known, but Alicia couldn’t have disagreed more. She still ached for the idea of her sister, her lost other half. She couldn’t help worrying that there was something missing in her, which only her twin could have completed.
In her bleakest moments she blamed herself for having lived when her sister hadn’t made it. Survivor guilt, they called it, the long nights of torturous self-questioning, the recurring ‘Why me?’ In the dark, pulsing space of their mother’s womb, had she somehow consumed more of the nutrition they both needed to thrive and develop? Had Alicia’s greed inadvertently caused Christine’s death? Such agony was the jump-start that galvanized her to work doubly hard at everything. No girl could have crammed more for her GCSEs, or practised harder for her violin lessons. Alicia was determined to live life for the two of them, her and Christine, so that nobody could ever think she was a disappointment or a let-down. Nobody would be allowed to say the wrong twin had survived.
Only now … had it been enough? If Christine had lived, would she have made better choices, led a more interesting life?
Don’t torture yourself. You’ll never know. Agonizing over what might have been can only lead to madness.
Oh, Christine. If only they could go into the next decade hand-in-hand, laughing together at whatever adventures their forties might bring. The thought just made Alicia feel lonelier than ever.
Enough hand-wringing, she decided one night. It was Thursday evening and the house was quiet; the children in bed, and Hugh at the gym. Alicia poured herself a glass of wine while she waited for their ageing PC to crank up, then opened a brand-new document. Now then. How could she shake up her life a bit, drip some excitement into the mix before it was too late?
THE TURNING-40 ACTION PLAN, she typed at the top, then leaned back in her chair, considering. If she could have her time again, start from scratch, what would she like to have achieved by now? She shut her eyes, imagining different versions of herself: a brave, intrepid Alicia, who strode through jungles and dived in warm oceans with frolicking dolphins. An Alicia who taught abroad or volunteered in decrepit orphanages in Third World countries, lavishing hollow-eyed babies and children with love and compassion. Another Alicia might have continued her studies, perhaps even conducted a scientific breakthrough, written important papers to be studied by generations to come.
She pictured a theatrical Alicia too, one who’d followed her heart and taken A-level drama, rather than allowing her parents to steer her into straight science and maths. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for acting later on,’ they’d said, but it hadn’t really worked out like that. Once at Oxford, she’d been too scared to join the Footlights gang, even though she longed to take part; they all seemed so much louder and more confident than her. But there was an am-dram society in Lyme, wasn’t there? It was never too late to try.
Explore a new country, she typed. Volunteer for something. Undertake a research project. Act!
Simply seeing the words on the screen made her feel excited, as if new possibilities were opening up before her eyes. So what else?
She curled a tendril of hair around her finger while she thought, and a more trivial option occurred to her. Her hair! She’d worn her hair in the same style for the last twenty years or so: long and layered, falling either side of her forehead in a centre parting. She barely thought about it most days, shoving it up in a hasty ponytail for school, and only really bothering to condition or blow-dry it during the holidays. How boring was that? And why hadn’t it crossed her mind to experiment before now? Over the years she’d seen friends crimp, curl and crop their hair; she’d complimented new fringes, glossy extensions and daring colour schemes, while she’d trudged along throughout, with the same drab brown curtains framing her face. Sometimes, if she was particularly hard up for time, she’d even taken the scissors to her locks herself.
Hair, she typed, imagining walking into the staffroom with an attractive new style to a chorus of compliments. Maybe she could overhaul her entire look while she was at it. She thought of Sandra, who always appeared groomed, with silk scarves and look-at-me jewellery choices, who wore perfume and lipstick even when putting wilful Jack Russells through their paces. She thought of her sister-in-law Emma, who wore daring bright colours and clashing patterns with pretty clips or flowers in her hair. Alicia, by contrast, always lumbered about in scruffy jeans and an old fleece.
Hell, her list couldn’t entirely consist of massive challenges – there had to be a few frivolous ones too. And sometimes it was the tiny things that made the biggest difference. Wear lipstick! she typed, draining the last of her wine.
The phone rang, jerking her out of her daydream of self-improvement. It was Sandra. ‘I was just thinking about you,’ Alicia said cheerfully.
‘Oh yeah?’ Her sister immediately sounded suspicious.
‘In a nice way,’ Alicia assured her. ‘Just how good you always look – how you make an effort with your appearance. I’m going to start doing the same.’
There was a pause. ‘Are you drunk?’ Sandra asked.
Alicia giggled. ‘No – well, a bit tipsy, maybe,’ she replied. ‘I was having a flap about turning forty, that’s all. I’m trying to think of some exciting things I should do while I’m still a thirty-something.’
She could hear Sandra puffing on a cigarette. ‘And making an effort with your appearance counts as an “exciting thing”?’ she asked dubiously.
‘Well, no, that was more of a general—’
‘Go on then, what’s your most exciting one? How are you planning to live it up before you’re officially over-the-hill?’
Alicia pulled a face at the telephone. There was a phrase she’d heard on television recently: ‘harshing my mellow’. Sandra was definitely harshing her mellow, spoiling things like she always did. ‘Well …’ She scrolled back through her list. ‘Travel to a new country,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Join an acting group. Volunteer for something.’
So there, Sandra. Put that lot in your pipe and smoke it.
‘Hmmm.’ Annoyingly, her sister didn’t sound impressed. ‘What about the fun stuff? What about an adventure?’
Alicia’s shoulders slumped. She wished she hadn’t picked up the phone now. ‘That is fun stuff to me,’ she protested. ‘And I was feeling really good about it until I spoke to you. What are you phoning about anyway?’
If Sandra noticed the irritation in Alicia’s voice, she didn’t offer any kind of apology. She didn’t even answer the question. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a few challenges to get your teeth into, Al,’ she said. ‘Things every woman should do before she hits forty.’
‘Like what?’ Alicia rolled her eyes. When would Sandra get it into her head that she was actually the younger sister in the family? She’d always been patronizing to Alicia, but now she seemed to be casting herself as some kind of woman-of-the-world role model. Even more annoying was the way Sandra insisted on calling her ‘Al’. It made Alicia think of Paul Simon, which was not how she liked to see herself.
‘I’ll email you a list,’ Sandra said, and chuckled to herself.
A weariness descended on Alicia. ‘Thanks,’ she managed to say through gritted teeth. I won’t bother even reading it, she vowed as she put down the phone.
The following morning was taken up by a double lesson on homeostasis with the Year Tens, but as soon as it was breaktime Alicia leapt into action and called up the nicest hairdresser’s in town, as opposed to her usual perms-and-pensioners salon, largely staffed by girls who’d dropped out of school early and still called her ‘Miss’. As luck would have it, they had a cancellation for eleven o’clock on Saturday, so she gratefully booked herself in, completely forgetting until she’d put the phone down that this would clash with her daughter Matilda’s ballet lesson.
Any chance u can take M to/from ballet tomorrow? she texted Hugh from the staffroom. Have got hair appt at 11.
He replied just before the bell ran
g to signal the end of break. Sorry, no can do. Boys’ cricket match in Blandford.
She sighed. Typical, she thought dismally. Fallen at the first hurdle. She was just about to resign herself to cancelling her amazing new haircut – it was probably for the best; people like Sandra would only mock her for it anyway – when her phone buzzed with another text. Will see if Charlie’s free to do it. Love Hugh x.
It felt like a sign. Alicia, you shall go to the ball. Well, she’d go to Waves for a cut and blow-dry anyway. Every long journey started with a single step, after all.
Sandra’s list arrived via email that afternoon.
Challenge Alicia!, the subject line read jauntily, and Alicia felt her nerve falter. She clicked open the message, wishing for the twentieth time that she hadn’t let slip her turning-forty plans in the first place. If she was going to tell anyone about it, she should have told Hugh, rather than her sneering sister. For some reason, after her conversation with Sandra, she hadn’t been able to confide in him when he returned from the gym that evening, red-faced and dishevelled. What if he laughed at her too? She’d end up feeling like the biggest thirty-nine-year-old joke ever.
Oh, what the hell. Looking at Sandra’s suggestions did not mean she actually had to do them, she reassured herself, glancing around the empty classroom where she was sitting with a pile of marking. She began to read.
Hey Al,
So here goes: Twenty Things a Woman Should Experience Before Forty. And yes, I have done most of them, if you were wondering. Let me know how you get on – we can compare notes!
S x
1. Ride a motorbike
2. See the Pyramids
3. Bungee jump
4. Do something your friends (and sister!!!) wouldn’t approve of
5. Have an affair
6. Buy expensive lingerie. Like, really expensive. Marks & Sparks pants do not qualify
7. Have dirty sex in Paris
8. Go shopping in New York
9. Skinny-dip in the ocean. Preferably a warm ocean. Coogee Beach in Australia was good for me (the English Channel doesn’t count, by the way. Nor does the North Sea)
10. Buy a sex toy (and USE IT!!!)
11. Break the speed limit, just for fun
12. Travel alone. This doesn’t mean popping to Tesco for the weekly shop
13. Buy expensive face cream
14. Try anal sex …
Alicia closed down the browser the instant she saw the word ‘anal’, her hand shaking. For goodness’ sake! Why did her sister have to be so … disgusting? Why was she so obsessed with sex and buying things? It was the most tawdry collection of ideas Alicia had ever seen; she felt tarnished just reading them.
Well, if Sandra thought she was warped enough to abandon her morals and lower herself to that sort of depraved, sleazy behaviour, then she jolly well had another think coming. Dirty sex in Paris, indeed. Sex toys and lingerie. Honestly! As for number fourteen … she couldn’t even bring herself to repeat the words in her head. No, never, not in a million years.
Still, there was at least one positive to take from her sister’s list: it made her own ideas for self-improvement appear a lot less daunting. Who cared what Sandra had to say about the whole thing anyway?
Within the next twenty-four hours two miracles had occurred. Small ones, admittedly, but miracles all the same. For one, Hugh’s brother Charlie had willingly taken Matilda to her ballet class, actually picking her up on time and everything. Even more astonishingly, he’d offered to do the same again the following Saturday when he brought her home. ‘Nice to spend a bit of time with my niece,’ he said.
Alicia wasn’t usually that keen on Charlie – he’d proved to be shockingly unreliable in the past, the complete opposite of solid, steady Hugh – but on this occasion he’d come up trumps. ‘Thank you, and yes please,’ she said in delight.
‘Nice hair, by the way,’ he added with a grin, and wolf-whistled her there and then in her kitchen, sending a blush sweeping right up to her newly conditioned roots.
That was the other miracle. Not the wolf-whistle (although it was pretty much a first in Alicia’s life, admittedly), not the compliment either (again quite rare, if she was honest), but the haircut itself. The best haircut ever, in fact. Alicia couldn’t stop admiring herself in the mirror, turning from side to side, examining the beauty of its shape, the way the longer front strands fell so prettily around her face, framing it perfectly in a swingy, chin-length bob. The back was shorter and layered to reveal the nape of her neck, and she kept stroking it absent-mindedly, thinking how much lighter her head felt with so much hair lopped off.
Alicia had left a massive tip for the hairdresser – she’d wanted to hug her, actually, and only just managed to restrain herself – and walked out of the salon on air. So this was what people called a ‘good hair day’. It felt amazing. So amazing, in fact, that she found herself picking up a string of purple glass beads and a new bag too, in Wishes, her favourite boutique. Forget shopping in New York, forget filth in Paris. Right now, this felt like the high life to Alicia.
Charlie wasn’t the only one to appreciate her new look. ‘Ooh, Mummy!’ Matilda squealed. ‘You actually look really pretty now.’
It wasn’t the exact phrasing Alicia would have wished for – she’d have left out the ‘actually’ and the ‘now’, for starters – but there was no disguising the genuine enthusiasm in her daughter’s voice. ‘Thanks, darling,’ she said, hugging her. ‘How was ballet?’
‘Oh, it was fine,’ she replied. ‘Well, apart from when Uncle Charlie—’
Charlie coughed quickly. ‘I’d better get going, ladies,’ he said, retreating towards the door.
‘Are you sure?’ Alicia asked. ‘You’re welcome to stay for a coffee, or lunch. Hugh will be back with the boys in half an hour or so.’
‘Sorry, better run,’ he said. ‘People to see, things to do, all that malarkey.’
So he’d gone, and Matilda never got to finish her sentence, distracted as she was by spotting Alicia’s new necklace in the next moment. ‘Ooh! That’s nice! Can I borrow it for Florence’s party tomorrow?’
‘Thank you, and definitely not,’ Alicia said, patting the beads as they lay gleaming in the hollow of her throat. Humming to herself, she made a cafetiere of steaming coffee just for her, a luxury she’d never usually bother to indulge in. Perhaps this self-improvement thing was going to be fun after all.
Chapter Three
Izzy Allerton had been living in Lyme Regis for precisely four weeks, and still couldn’t believe her luck. Manchester seemed a million miles away already. She was not going to look back.
Funny how things left their mark on you, wasn’t it? She’d come down here just once before, for a precious holiday when she was seven, and had clung to the memory ever since, clutched it close like a talisman, a reminder that life didn’t always have to be shit. Because, frankly, the rest of her childhood had been far from idyllic. As a baby she was put in foster care because her mum was a schizophrenic and couldn’t look after her, then she went to live with her granny from the age of four. Those years had been happier at least: she’d felt safe and wanted and looked-after, with a vest under her school uniform, clean shoes on her feet and a hot bath every other night.
But one winter, when Izzy was twelve and her mind was filled with such pressing concerns as pimples, whether or not she’d ever grow breasts, and what it would feel like to kiss a boy, her granny developed pleurisy and died before either of them realized quite how ill she was. A tired-faced social worker came to meet Izzy at school later that week, and said she couldn’t stay alone in the flat any more. It was as if the door was slammed shut on her childhood, never to open again.
The teenage years saw an unhappy succession of foster placements, care homes and running away, before, at the age of sixteen, Izzy was deemed capable of standing on her own two feet and left to get on with things herself. ‘Have a nice life,’ the care worker said, without any apparent irony, as she ha
nded Izzy a bin liner to pack her stuff in, and twenty quid. By then, her mum was dead too, of an overdose. As for her dad … Izzy didn’t even know who he was.
The one holiday she’d had in Lyme remained in her mind throughout all of this, like a beacon of light, a golden spell of happiness shining out from the surrounding turbulence. It had been the first time she’d seen the sea, the first time she’d been on a beach. She’d loved the light, floaty feeling of freedom, which had fizzed inside her for the whole week. Sandcastles with paper flags. Paddling in her knickers and sun hat. Fish and chips for tea. Granny snoring in the small room they’d shared at the B&B. When I’m a grown-up, she vowed, I’m going to come back and live here.
Twenty-one years later, she had actually done it: she’d escaped from her crap life, past and present, and made a break for a brighter future with her two daughters in tow. The light, floaty feeling had returned the moment she drove onto the southbound M6, the boot crammed with their belongings, both girls wide-eyed on the back seat. ‘Where are we going, Mum?’
We’re going to live better lives, love. We’re going somewhere Gary won’t find us. We’re going to be free.
‘We’re going to the nicest place in the whole world,’ she replied, hoping her memory hadn’t let her down.
Freedom had been quite scary at first. Rocking up on the south coast with only the number of a women’s refuge in her pocket, and the half-promise of a job … Yeah, it had been a risk. A massive risk. But when you were desperate, sometimes you had to gamble, didn’t you? You had to throw the dice and hope your number came up. Four weeks later, although she daren’t count any chickens, she had a faint, excited feeling that she might just have rolled a double six.
