Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (23 page)

“And the price?” asks Maddy.

“Three hundred quid. They’re pure pedigree, mind, and you’d have to pay a lot more from a breeder. Well, you know where to
find me if you want me. Good to see you looking so well, Dr. Maddy, and apologies for the wet T-shirt, Hope.”

“What did you think?” asks Maddy the minute we’re out of the house.

“Seem like a nice couple,” I say. “Considering what they’ve got to deal with, it’s practically an oasis of calm in there.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“And
you
know that the idea of me having a dog is quite preposterous. But cute they most certainly are. Thank the Lord you’re back
in my life, Dr. M,” I say, as we reach the corner and prepare to go our separate ways. “Just one more feel before I go.”

This time when I touch Maddy’s belly, the baby ignores me. Without thinking, I bend over and give Maddy’s tummy a kiss. Maddy
musses the top of my hair. My tear ducts, already on red alert, go into overdrive. If she notices, she doesn’t comment.

As Maddy goes off down the street, a hint of a waddle in her walk, I turn and watch her. Mad, maddening, marvelous Maddy.
I wonder if she knows how dramatically her life is about to change.

• • •

Just before Jack’s due to come round, I open a bottle of white wine and pour myself a glass. I’ve already applied some lipstick,
mascara, and eyeliner and put on a clean vest top and some earrings. I don’t want to look like I’m overdoing it, trying too
hard, but neither do I want to look as much of a wreck as I feel. By the time the doorbell rings, I’m on my second glass of
wine and have emptied a bowl of olives. On my way to open the door, I pass the hall mirror, wincing slightly when I catch
sight of my face, flicking at my hair to no particular effect, and leaving my glasses on the console table.

“Hi, Jack,” I say casually. “Come and have a quick drink if you’ve time—there’s a bottle already open.”

He pecks me on the cheek. “Olly in?”

“No.”

Jack actually takes a step backward, as if deciding whether or not to leg it while he has the chance.

“Didn’t he tell you? Now that he’s finished his exams, he’s got himself a job in that new bar on West End Lane.”

“Yes, of course he told me, we speak every day. It’s just that I wasn’t sure what hours he worked.”

The atmosphere is already prickly: Jack needing to let me know that he and Olly are constantly in touch, that he’s left
me,
not Olly. Olly’s presence this evening would have been Jack’s safety net.

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s all right, Jack. I’m not going to start howling or attack you with my best Sabatier knife.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Not much you didn’t. Come and have a drink.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“Got a hot date, have we?”

Jack ignores me.

I pour Jack a glass of wine, and we sit on two high stools against the kitchen breakfast bar.

“So what’s new, Hope?”

“Some headhunter rang, but I haven’t bothered to call back yet.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, it’s probably just to get a reference for someone. I’ll get round to it.”

“Hope . . .”

“You’ve no right, Jack. You’ve left me, remember?”

“Anything else?”

“I’m thinking of getting a dog.”

“You’re not. That’s hilarious.”

I think it’s hilarious, too, but I’m not telling Jack that. “Why hilarious? I’ve got the time. All I seem to do is walk, so
exercising it won’t be a problem.”

“What about the dog hair on your white sofa? What about the restrictions it will place on your going out? What if you get
a job? And what about the patience you’ll need to train it? I’m telling you, Hope, it’s like having a baby all over again.”

“If Maddy can be a single mother, why can’t I?”

Jack lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sigh, disbelief mingled with exasperation. “But you don’t even like dogs. Most
of them you’re terrified of.”

“I’m thinking it might be like aversion therapy. You know, that technique they call flooding. You expose yourself to your
greatest fear—snakes, walking across bridges, sitting for a day in a confined space, or whatever—and stay with it until your
fear dissolves. Boom, just like that, you’re cured.”

“You can’t be serious, Hope. You’ll be giving it back to the pound within the month.”

“You know something, Jack? I didn’t ask for your opinion. You asked me what was new, and I said I was thinking of getting
a dog. You don’t think much of me or my staying power, do you?”

“Why is it that we can’t have a simple, rational discussion?”

“Because unlike you, I’m not a rational person.”

“Let’s just change the subject, okay? I saw your mother. I think she suspects something’s up between us.”

“Let her suspect. I don’t want to involve her in this. I’m not protecting her, I’m protecting me.”

“Your dad is being his usual saintly self.”

“Yes, he is, but my impression is that it’s getting harder every day for him to cope. You know, Mummy wants to die at home
and Daddy is determined to look after her, but eventually, she may have to go to a hospice. In the meantime, I’ve been trying
to get things moving on the help front, like getting on to the district nurse, who’s promised to arrange some visits from
a Marie Curie cancer nurse.”

“Ironic, isn’t it, that after spending so many years avoiding her as much as possible, you’re round there all the time.”

“If I were working, I wouldn’t be able to be there. But she is my mother, and I’m doing it as much for Daddy as I am for her.
Sarah sits with her for hours. She has this infinite capacity for sweetness and sympathy. She holds Mummy’s hands and talks
endlessly about happy memories. I can’t think of anything to say, and none of my happy memories involve her. So I just make
phone calls and soup. Which is better than nothing, I suppose.”

We’re silent for a moment. Jack leans in toward me, as if he wants to get close, then he pulls back, shifting his bottom on
the bar stool and sitting up straight-backed.

“Things are better between Olly and me,” I say.

“I’m glad.”

“Much better. Oh yes, and I’ve changed my mind about Vanessa.”

“In what way changed your mind?”

“Vanessa’s all right, take my word for it. More than all right, actually.”

“You are so unpredictable, Hope.”

“I miss you, Jack.”

Jack looks down at his hands crossed on his lap. “Look, I’d better be getting my stuff.”

“Of course. Your hot date. I abhor her, whoever she is.”

When Jack stands up, I catch a familiar aroma, lemony and mossy at the same time. I’ve never tired of the smell of vetivert.
Jack was wearing it when we first met in Venice, and he wears it still today. But in Venice, it filled me with the sense of
possibilities; now it fills me with an all-over-achy longing, a sense of something precious lost. I close my eyes for a second
and say to myself,
Hug me, Jack, hug me
.

Jack walks toward the kitchen door. “I’ll be down in a minute, just need to pick up a couple of shirts and my linen suit.”

It could have gone worse, I suppose, but I wouldn’t exactly call it progress.

• • •

The next morning at ten o’clock, I’m standing outside the book shop, waiting for the door to open. At two minutes past, I’m
already beginning to get impatient. Through the glass, I can see a sleepy assistant coming toward me, imitating a particularly
languid snail. When she opens the door with a great sigh, as if having to deal with a customer so early in the morning is
the harbinger of a very bad day, I raise my elbow and look at my watch in the passive-aggressive way people do when they want
to make a point but not a scene.

“Do you have a pets section?”

“Down there on the left,” she says miserably, with an expression that suggests this is beyond the call of duty.

I’m amazed. The pets section is almost as big as the fiction department. There are hundreds of books on dogs and cats and
fish and hamsters. I come across something called the KISS guides, acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid, which is about my level.
I home in on
Living with a Dog
, by Dr. Bruce Fogle. I flick through it. It has lots of big pictures and short sentences. Perfect.

I take up my usual position at the Coffee Cup and spend the rest of the morning learning all sorts of fascinating information,
like the fact that there are more dogs in the UK than people. I read something flagged VIP, for Very Important Point:

The most common reason for the popularity of dogs is also the most basic: we humans have a unique need, different from perhaps
all other animals, to nurture, to care for other living things.

It goes on to tell me that dogs are almost perfect for nurturing because, in their own particular way, they are “children”
from puppyhood to old age, and that “although outwardly we look after dogs, in a hidden way, by allowing us to nurture them,
they also look after us.”

This makes me cry. Ridiculous, but it does, for a moment or two. Labradors, I discover, are active, amusing, and have a gentleness
of spirit. I could learn a thing or two from a dog like that.

• • •

“What have you been up to?” asks Maddy when she calls early evening, after work.

“Nothing much, reading, mostly.”

“My day was shite. Ninety-nine percent of my patients are depressed. I don’t have time to talk to them, so I prescribe antidepressants.
But they don’t really need antidepressants, they need someone to talk to.”

“Great. That’s really great. You have no time for your patients, so you give them pills you say they don’t need. And yet you
have all the time in the world for me. I get all the talk time your patients don’t, so how come I’m one of the few who actually
need
the pills? I don’t get it.”

“It’s not so difficult to understand, Hope. It’s because I reckon you’ve been in pretty much this state for over a year. Way
before Jack left. And that’s too long.”

This path is going nowhere.

“Do you think a crate is a good idea? Just in the early days.”

“A
crate
? A crate of what? I’d rather you took pills than drowned yourself in alcohol.”

“Not a crate of anything. Just a crate. For the dog.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t know why you don’t believe it, it was your idea. Jack thinks I’m barking.”

Maddy titters. “Well, someone will be.”

“He says it will be in Battersea within the month. I’m determined to prove him wrong.”

“Hope, this is a big commitment—you can’t get a dog just to prove a point to Jack.”

“I’m going to call her Susanna.”

“You’ve chosen a name already! You have been busy. But why Susanna? Isn’t that a bit of a silly name for a dog?”

“Huh. You accuse me of being emotionally illiterate. You, on the other hand, are ignorant.”

“I’m a doctor, remember.”

“A woman of your education should know this. Susanna is the maidservant in
The Marriage of Figaro,
the pivotal character of the whole opera. And since your dog and mine—once you’ve taught your dog some manners—are going
to be best friends, I thought it appropriate that my dog should be named after one of your dog’s creations.”

“Aah, I see. Like everyone’s going to get that.”

“What would you prefer? Fido?”

“On second thought, Susanna’s perfect. This is so exciting. Which one are you having?”

“Little Miss Sleeping Beauty, of course. Better go, I was right in the middle of a fascinating chapter on fleas. And thank
you. Thank you for being my friend.”

• • •

I ring the headhunter.

“Ah, yes,” he says when I get put through. “Very good of you to call back, Hope. Your name came up in a conversation about
potential candidates to head up a new launch. I wonder if you’d be interested in having a chat.”

“Well, yes. Can you give me some idea what it’s about?”

“It’s extremely hush-hush, so I can’t say too much at this point—we’d need to get you to sign a confidentiality agreement
first—but I can tell you it’s glossy and upmarket and monthly and will appeal mainly to women.”

“I don’t suppose it’s a celebrity magazine, is it?”

“Spot on,” says Harry Sharp, “but that really is all I can say for now.”

This is as bad as it gets. Not just a magazine featuring the odd celebrity—that I can cope with—but a
celebrity magazine
! I make a decision not to blow my chances before I’ve even met this Harry person.

“Would you be free at three o’clock on Wednesday to meet me and the publisher, Annelise Hopkins?”

I’m picking up Susanna at five, and I don’t want to be late. “As long as I’m away by four-thirty, that should be fine. I have
another appointment at five.”

“No problem. In the meantime, would you mind quickly e-mailing me your CV?”

In thirty years of working in magazines, I’ve never written a CV. I’ve gone from job to job via the grapevine, and no one
has ever asked to see my CV. And then it dawns on me. This Harry Sharp doesn’t have a clue who I am. I’m just the name on
some list, and he’s probably twelve years old.

“Sure, Harry. Just needs a bit of updating; you’ll have it first thing tomorrow. One more thing: You didn’t actually mention
the name of the publishing company.”

“Oh, it’s very prestigious. It’s Jackson International.”

“Aah, Craig’s outfit. I know Craig Anderson very well indeed. Did he put my name in the frame? And if he did, I’m wondering
why he didn’t ring me personally.”

“I really can’t comment further at this stage. Craig is leaving the first-round interviews to us.”

I’m not getting good vibes about this. Craig should have rung me direct. And shouldn’t I already be on the shortlist? What’s
the point of going to be interviewed by some know-nothing graduate with a 2.2 GPA in human resources? Craig knows me well
enough to decide on his own whether I’m the right person for the job. I’ll probably be expected to do one of those trendy
psychometric tests to suss out my leadership style. And when the preteen Harry asks me to describe my strengths and weaknesses,
I’ll have to act as if it’s the most probing and penetrating challenge I’ve ever been presented with. By the time he asks
me what kind of package I’m expecting, if I don’t watch myself, I’ll find myself, saying,
Oh, a Jiffy bag will do
. I hate the word “package,” I hate celebrities, and even though I haven’t met him yet, I hate the overgrown baby who is Harry
Sharp.