Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (37 page)

“Hope, there’s something I want to ask you before you lose me altogether.”

“Sure.”

“As I don’t have a mother anymore, I wondered if you might come with me to help choose the dress.”

“That’s one of the best offers I’ve ever had. Are you thinking meringues? I’m mad about meringues, although not necessarily
for weddings.”

“Meringues, cathedral-length veils, duchess satin, I want the whole fairy tale. And I did wonder if you might be able to help
me organize the wedding. But you have to say if it’s too much.”

“Sweet Tanya, when will I ever get another chance to play mother of the bride? I don’t suppose Olly’s going to be tripping
down the aisle in yards of tulle. I’m so happy for you—it puts the news about
Jasmine
quite in the shade.”

I mean what I’ve said. When I put down the phone, I find that I have no interest in gloating over the demise of
Jasmine
and of Mark. Helping to plan Tanya’s wedding seems to me an endeavor far more worthy of my attention.

• • •

While I’m dreaming wedding flowers and favors, I glance at my as yet unopened e-mails, and the phone rings again.

“Craig Anderson here. Is that you, Hope?”

“It is indeed.” Craig Anderson, the boss of Jackson International, the man I spoke to following my head-hunter debacle. This
must have something to do with the closure of
Jasmine
.

“You’ve not been responding to my e-mails, and I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last ten days.”

So it can’t be to do with
Jasmine
after all.

I glance at my in-box, and between the updates from Amazon and eBay and the cheap airlines and all the other companies I’ve
subscribed to in the past and who’ve been hounding me ever since, I can make out two or three e-mails with Craig’s name on
them.

“I’ve been climbing mountains, Craig, and only got back last night.”

“So you and I were right about
Jasmine
. Simon must be kicking himself.”

It’s funny, but a year ago I would have entered into this conversation with gusto, crowing about Mark’s come-uppance, cracking
jokes about Simon’s disastrous reading of the women’s magazine market. But now it seems like a waste of breath.

“Yes,” I reply. “It is a shame about
Jasmine
. It was such a strong magazine for so long, it never should have been allowed to just lie down and die.”

“You’re being very gracious. I’d love to see Simon’s face right now.”

I say nothing.

“But the real reason I’m ringing, Hope, and if you remember, I said I’d be in touch—things just took longer than I thought
they would—is that I’ve got a proposition to put to you. You must be aware that the market is absolutely crying out for a
magazine aimed at the feisty woman of forty-plus. Forties, fifties, and beyond, it’s where all the spending power is. It’s
not with the singles in their twenties, or the cash-strapped parents in their thirties that
Jasmine
was aimed at. And you can forget this baking business that Simon thought was going to wow the readers. Fifty-year-olds are
more interested in sex than sauces. What do you think?”

“I think you’re absolutely right, Craig,” I say, conjuring up Dan and me in Paris, Nick and me on a mountain, a surge of excitement,
the old adrenaline coursing through me.

I’m also thinking,
How come, if we fifty-year-olds are all so feisty and fabulous, Craig only last month dumped his feisty fifty-year-old wife
for a thirty-two-year-old art director on one of his magazines?
And what would this new magazine be other than an excuse to sell more stuff to women that they don’t actually need? Like
anti-wrinkle and cellulite creams and cosmetic-surgery holidays in South Africa and Spain?

“We should definitely talk,” I continue, trying to sound both casual and enthusiastic. My mind is racing over the pros and
cons. A chance to empower women of my own age would be pretty attractive. To prove George Bernard Shaw’s maxim that youth
is wasted on the young. An opportunity to celebrate real women leading exciting and fulfilling lives and taking on new challenges
and . . . and Tanya could come back and work for me. I could put together a brilliant team and become an award-winning editor
once again and show the world that I’m not a write-off. But why do I need to show the world I’m not a write-off? What I need
to do is show myself. My year of turning fifty has been one long nightmare. How could I launch and edit such a magazine if
I didn’t believe in it? And yet . . . Something Simone de Beauvoir once wrote has been haunting me all year. It was in a collection
of three stories on the theme of growing old. She described the future as lying beyond a door. A door that would open slowly
and unrelentingly. But for the first time, I think that by simply removing the word “unrelentingly,” you can see the future
in a whole new light. Maybe a word is all it takes.

“You still there, Hope?”

“Sorry, Craig. I just had about a million ideas all at once.”

All I’d planned to do today was some rather mundane chores. It was going to be an ordinary day. So far it’s been anything
but.

“Have you thought of a title?” I ask.

“Not yet. Thought I’d leave that to you.”

“How about
Spirit
? Or perhaps
New Spirit
?”

“I
love
the sound of
New Spirit
. What’s the thinking?”

“Oh, it’s a theme I picked up on in Morocco. It kind of fits my mood. But we can go into that later.”

“As you said, we need to talk. Let’s put something on the calendar as soon as possible. Will next Monday work for you?”

• • •

I wander out with Susanna to do some shopping. Passing a newsagent, I go in and scan the shelves. I’m already picturing
New Spirit
beaming out at me, nestled between, say,
Vogue
and
Good Housekeeping
. I start to gather together a whole pile of the latest glossies. If I’m going to talk to Craig, I need to know what the magazines
are up to, as I’ve barely been able to bring myself to read one all year. But something stops me—I’m not somehow in the right
frame of mind—and I find myself putting them back on the glossy piles. Instead, I scoop up three bridal titles and plan my
evening of going through them with a stash of Post-it notes to attach to anything I think Tanya might like the look of.

I’m going through my e-mails, deleting all the junk, when I come across one that reads “not good enough” in the subject box.
Then I note the sender. Dan Drake is the last person I was expecting to hear from. It’s been months since I ran out on him
in Covent Garden, and I never wrote to fully explain myself. I hesitate before opening it. But it’s goading me like a glinting
gold box of creamy truffles. What does “not good enough” mean? What’s the harm in opening it? Surely I can’t become contaminated—I
think I mean intoxicated—by a single e-mail.

Dear Hope,

It’s been bugging me since August. What on earth was that stuff about a canine emergency? I guess you realize it’s the second
time you’ve run out on me unexpectedly . . . and I’m hoping it’s not getting to be a habit.

A lot can happen in a few months—and has. For a start, my wife’s walked out on me. And I thought I was the one who had the
monopoly on bad behavior. Turns out our second child may not even be mine. She’s been having an affair with a coworker ever
since she went back to work after Monica, the elder of our two kids, was born. She’s not saying Molly’s the other guy’s child,
but she can’t be certain. I’ve been thinking of going the paternity-test route, but it seems a helluva thing for the kid to
have to live with, and it may just be better to keep quiet about it. On the other hand, if my wife’s setting up house with
this other guy and he is the father, then I guess he—and Molly—have a right to know. He also has a right to pay. It’s a pretty
big mess.

The other news is that I’m coming back to London on a visiting professorship to teach an American literature course. I feel
I hardly know you, Hope, and I’d like to get to know you better. You owe me one, don’t you think?

I arrive in the New Year. You’ll be the first person I call . . .

Dan

P.S. I can still picture you slipping out of that cute wrap dress you were wearing. I get horny every time I think of it.

Why does he have to do this to me? I thought I’d microfiched Dan and stored the film in my memory bank. I know full well he’s
a charismatic chancer, and presumptuous with it, but he’s so up front it that it’s thoroughly disarming. There must be hundreds
of women a man as attractive as him can screw. And I can’t believe he’s too lazy to go looking. So why me? Dan coming to London,
not only for a fleeting visit but to stay for months, possibly a year or more, is the last thing I need right now. But it’s
so bloody tempting. I’d been determined to expunge Dan from my system. I’d gotten the rationale all sorted in my head. First,
because I knew I wanted Jack back and didn’t want Dan to get in the way. Second, because I thought Dan wouldn’t be remotely
interested in me after my not exactly winning performance in the summer. And third, since the operation . . . well, if I can
hardly bear to look at my body, why on earth would anyone else want to?

Damn you, Dan Drake.
I suppose we could always have sex through a hole in a specially commissioned designer shroud. I need time to think about
how to reply. Dan alone and separated is a far more dangerous proposition than Dan semi-attached to his wife.

On the other hand, if my make-or-break holiday with Jack is more break than make, then dallying with Dan in the new year might
be justified. Can you still be callow at fifty? What’s gotten into me today?

• • •

So much is happening and so fast that an evening on the sofa curled up with a bunch of bridal magazines seems like the ideal
activity for lowering the temperature. I ring Tanya in case she wants to join me. She does.

“I’ll order in some Chinese if you like,” I suggest.

“Perfect. See you around seven.”

• • •

Tanya and I have tucked in to Peking duck and pancakes, scallops with ginger, noodles with three kinds of vegetables, barbecued
pork ribs, and a mound of special fried rice. We’ve been poring over
Brides
and
You and Your Wedding
while we’ve been eating, and the pages are smeared with grease and morsels of food. Tanya’s been persuaded out of frothy
meringues and is thinking streamlined and strapless. Her dad is extremely wealthy, so a Vera Wang or Monique Lhuillier at
three to four thousand quid a throw won’t pose any problems.

Now we’re seated on opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other, legs up and entangled, eating Minstrels. We’re talking venues
and camellias versus roses and bridesmaids and honeymoons and have opened a second bottle of wine when the doorbell rings.
I automatically look at my watch. “Who can that be? No one pops round unannounced at this time of night. And I think I’ve
had enough surprises for one day.”

“We could sit around debating it for an hour or two,” says Tanya, giggling, “and by the time we’ve finished, whoever it is
will be gone.”

“Maybe it’s one of those scary blokes selling dishcloths at ten quid each.”

The bell rings again, longer and more insistently. Reluctantly, I get up from the sofa, peering through the peephole before
I open the door.

“I don’t believe it” is all I can say. “I just don’t believe it.”

“Aren’t you going to let us in?” chirps a familiar voice.

Standing in my doorway are Maddy, with Emma curled fast asleep in a papoose on her front, and Ed and the twins. Ed is grinning
and clutching a bottle of champagne. Maddy is grinning and clutching a big bunch of white lilies.

• • •

I’m already drunk, so when I stand on a chair to reach for the champagne glasses on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet,
I sway alarmingly. As the chair rocks onto its back legs, I almost fall off.

“Careful there,” roars Ed, grabbing hold of the chair to steady it.

“There had better be a good explanation for all this,” I say, looking down from a great height at the unexpected gathering
in my kitchen. Although I already know by the looks on Maddy’s and Ed’s faces, and of course the bottle of champagne, that
I’m no longer in trouble.

The twins are flat out on the carpet with Susanna, who doesn’t at all mind being disturbed from her slumbers. Emma, though,
has woken up and is starting to whimper. Maddy’s breast puts in an instant and very prominent appearance, and Emma latches
on greedily. Tanya, for want of knowing what to say to anyone, has started rinsing out aluminum cartons instead of throwing
them straight into the bin.

The champagne glasses are filled. Ed raises his first. “I would like us all to raise a glass . . .” he begins. I raise my
glass. “Not you, Hope.” I lower it again. “I would like us all to raise a glass to Hope Lyndhurst-Steele, the woman who knew
the right thing to do and who brought Maddy and me together at last.”

“And I would like to raise my glass,” says Maddy from her position on the sofa, Emma sucking contentedly at her breast. “I
would like to raise my glass, if only I could maneuver it around these enormous bosoms of mine, to the very best friend a
woman could have.”

“And while we’re at it,” says Tanya, leaving the sink to come and stand at my side, “I would like to raise a glass to the
best boss I’ve ever worked for.”

Predictably, I cry. And I can’t stop. But I’m laughing, too. I’m hugging everything that moves, and I don’t need any explanations
of anything, I don’t even want any explanations. All I know is that Maddy has seen what’s right and what really matters, and
Ed must love her even though he loved Ruth, too, and they’re all going to be a family, and the twins will have a mother again,
and Emma will have a father, and I’ll have my friend back and can start being a proper godmother, and we can wheel Emma in
the park with our dogs by our sides, and fifty, fuck it, is no worse than forty-nine, and although it’s a helluva lot worse
than thirty and somewhat worse than forty, it may well be better than sixty, which is ages away, and what’s age got to do
with anything that’s important anyway?