Losing Me (2 page)

“So,” Barbara said, “what did Ken get you for your birthday?”

“A fancy-schmancy spa day, and he’s whisking me off to the South of France for a week in July.”

“Wow. Lucky old you. Your old man’s still nuts about you. You know that, don’t you?”

Jean laughed. “I do . . . and you’re right. I am a very lucky girl.”

Just then Ken appeared, glass in hand.

“So what do you think of the wife? Isn’t she gorgeous? I keep telling her she doesn’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“Idiot,” Jean said, bashing him on the arm.

“Right, I suppose I should go and mingle,” he said. “Barbara, where’s that husband of yours? Talking to him makes such a change from all these boring old farts. You know they’re all retiring, don’t you? Bloody idiots. Mark my words, they’ll be dead in ten years. It’s what boredom and lack of purpose do to you.”

“Ken fully intends to keel over at ninety, shoving a tube up some poor sod’s rectum—don’t you, Ken?”

“Too bloody right. . . . OK, I’m off to find Frank.”

As he turned, he started to sway. Barbara and Jean exchanged glances.

“Ken, just look at you. You know you can’t hold your booze like you used to. Now do as I say and switch to water.”

“You know I really love it when you’re bossy.” He squeezed Jean’s waist.

“Believe me, if you don’t do as you’re told, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

“I can’t wait.” He winked at his wife and left.

“I do envy you two,” Barbara said to Jean. “So loved up after all these years.”

•   •   •

It wasn’t long before everybody was merry on mulled wine and Tesco Finest bubbly and Jean was organizing party games. After “Gargle That Tune,” there was “Murder in the Dark” and “Pin the Lips on Mick Jagger.” This was followed by dancing. Funny, Barbara thought as she dragged a protesting Frank into the melee—how the middle-aged women could still get their groove on, whereas most of the men—Frank included—could manage only the kind of jerky-limbed abandon that would have had their children and grandchildren squirming and covering their eyes . . . before sharing the video on Facebook.

At midnight, Barbara, Jean and Jean’s sister, Val, who by now were all pretty worse for wear, found themselves sitting on the sofa, getting maudlin.

“So Ken thinks we should buy a futon,” Jean said, adjusting her antlers, which kept slipping down over her eyes. “He reckons it’ll be good for our backs, but I’ve told him there is no way that my deathbed is going to be a bloody futon.”

“Too right,” Val said as she flicked cigarette ash into her empty champagne glass. “You tell him. Oh, and talking of deathbeds, Steve and I have found
the
most incredible burial plots.”

Jean looked at her sister. “Bloody hell, Val. You’re not even fifty-five.”

“I know, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime offer. The plots are in this glorious little glade. It’s like this dinky fairy glen. . . .”

“But when the time comes,” Barbara said, “won’t you and Steve be too dead to notice?”

“That’s not the point. . . .”

“I wanna be stuffed,” Jean declared. “And have the boys and Ken bring me out every Christmas. They can sit me at the top of the table and stick these antlers on my head.”

“I’d like to die having an orgasm,” Val said.

Jean laughed. “Good for you, hon. I’ll drink to that.”

“OK, I think we should stop all this talk about death,” Barbara said. “It’s depressing. I don’t know about you two, but I’ve still got plenty of living left to do. Everybody says sixty is the new forty.”

“Then that would make thirty the new ten,” Jean said.

“Not necessarily.”

“Yes, necessarily,” Val came back. “It’s simple arithmetic.”

“I don’t care,” Jean said. “It’s legacy that counts. You need to leave a legacy. You know . . . like Einstein. Or Cher.”

•   •   •

“We really ought to do it,” Frank said to Barbara as they got into bed. “It’s been ages. I’m worrying that we’re getting out of the habit. And I really fancied you tonight.”

“Ditto. You looked incredibly handsome.”

“On the other hand, it’s one in the morning and it’s such a bloody rigmarole. It means I’ve got to get up and take a tablet. Then we have to wait for it to work.”

“I could put the kettle on.”

“Oh, very erotic . . . sitting in bed drinking a mug of Yorkshire Gold while I wait to get a hard-on.”

If she was honest, she wasn’t that bothered about sex these days. There had been a time when she liked Frank to tie her up. When had that waned? Around the time her hot flashes and vaginal dryness had waxed. HRT patches had helped improve her libido a bit, but it wasn’t what it was, and like Frank said, these days it was such a rigmarole.

“Let’s just have a cuddle?” she said.

Barbara snuggled into him. After a couple of minutes, Frank said his nostrils itched. He got out of bed to find his nose hair trimmer.

•   •   •

Back in the kitchen, Barbara fancied another slice of toast, but she was watching her carbs. Post-menopause fat cells—particularly the ones around her middle—seemed to swell up if they got even the faintest sniff of a scone or hot buttered crumpet. She’d just put the loaf back in the bread bin when her cell rang. She padded over to the kitchen table and picked it up. When she saw the number, she let out a groan. Even for her mother, this was early.

“Hi, Mum. How are you?”

Rose would have been up since five, had her up-and-down wash, eaten her muesli and banana, and now she was bored and looking for some action.

“I’m fine. I was just calling because I’ve forgotten what time you said you’d be over today.”

“I told you last night. I’ll be there straight after school. If the weather’s not too bad, maybe we could go for a walk in the park. It’ll do you good.”

“Lovely. I’ll make sure I’m in.”

Barbara found it both sad and amusing that her mother, who these days left her flat only to go shopping or to the hairdresser, always spoke as if her social calendar were packed with engagements. Right now she would be staring out of her living room window, waiting for it to get light and for the postman to arrive. Frank said she was becoming agoraphobic like Stan—Barbara’s late father. Barbara didn’t agree. Rose went out every day to shop and run errands. When necessary, she even took the bus. Barbara put her mother’s behavior down to nothing more than inertia. In the last few years so many of her friends had died. On the one hand, Rose was lonely. On the other, she couldn’t see the point of going out and making new friends who would only die on her.

“But you need to do something to keep yourself occupied,” Barbara had said repeatedly. “What about joining a seniors club?”

Rose could think of nothing worse. “What, and spend my days being patronized by idiots who assume that as soon as a person turns seventy, their brain seizes up and all they’re interested in is playing bingo and doing the ‘Hokey Pokey’? No. I’m better off on my own.”

So she spent her days standing at the window or sitting in front of the TV.

Barbara still wanted more toast. Instead of reaching for the bread, she forced herself in the direction of the fruit bowl and helped herself to a handful of blueberries. Above her the floorboards creaked. Frank was up. She would take him a cup of coffee.

She found him in his study, staring into his laptop. When he made no effort to relieve her of the mug, she made some space among his mess of papers and put it down.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Oh, right, cheers,” he said, eyes still fixed on his screen. Then: “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“The exec producer at Channel Four is saying they want an entire re-fucking-edit of the Bolivia film. That’s going to take forever.”

“Frank, calm down. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened. So you’ll negotiate more time, and it’ll work out like it always does. But getting het up isn’t going to help. Come on . . . drink some coffee.”

“I don’t think I can manage it.” He grimaced and let out a long belch. “Bloody stomach acid. And I can’t find my pills.”

Frank made TV documentaries—the kind that came with a warning: “The images you are about to see may cause distress.” Did they ever. Audiences wept watching them. Frank got acid reflux making them.

Informing the world about torture, human trafficking, war crimes—essentially any kind of human rights abuse—was Frank’s passion, if “passion” was the right word. Maybe “calling” was more apt. His work frequently involved him putting himself in danger. To make his award-winning film
Inside North Korea
, he’d got himself into Pyongyang on an official tourist trip. But each day he’d managed to give the tour guides the slip for a few hours and hook up with a group of activists who took him to wretched, impoverished neighborhoods full of starving families and street children. Barbara was Frank’s most ardent advocate and admirer—his enthusiasm and energy were the things that had drawn her to him all those years ago—but that didn’t stop her worrying herself sick that one day he would get captured by bad people on one of his escapades and be left to rot in some third-world jail. Or worse.

“They’re on the shelf in front of you,” Barbara said, regarding the pills. She stretched across, grabbed the box and handed it to him. “So you in for dinner?”

“Nah. Too much on. I’m going to be working late on this reedit.”

The story of her life.

Years ago—when their eldest, Jess, was a baby and Barbara was fat and lactating—it occurred to her that Frank wasn’t spending all those nights working late and that he was cheating on her. Once, around midnight, she’d shown up at his tiny office in Soho—Jess asleep in her buggy. All she found was her husband cursing into a TV screen as he alternately downed mouthfuls of meat samosa and Cobra. He was really hurt and angry that she’d felt the need to check up on him, but more than that, he was furious with her for dragging Jess from her cot. She was forced to agree that removing her sleeping infant from her bed and schlepping her to town on a freezing winter’s night, purely to indulge her own paranoia, wasn’t entirely sane.

“You have to start trusting me,” he’d said afterwards, when they were in bed. “I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in other women. It’s you and our little family that I want, but at the same time, my work means a huge amount to me. I never made a secret of it. You knew what you were getting into when you married me.” He was right. She had gone into the marriage with her eyes wide open. In the end she just accepted her lot as a married single mum and got on with it.

Jess and Ben, who had no idea what it was like to have a dad who worked nine to five and had never known anything different, didn’t seem to mind. In fact, their dad being away so much had definite advantages. When he returned, he always came laden with gifts. Ben still remembered being three or four and Frank arriving home from a trip to Tokyo and presenting them with a giant McDonald’s restaurant kit complete with paper hats and plastic burgers and pickles.

“So if you’re not in for dinner, what will you do?” Barbara said.

“I dunno. I’ll probably get a curry.”

“You eat too many curries. They’re full of fat, which is bad for your reflux. . . .”

Not to mention his weight. He must have put on forty pounds in the last couple of years. But she rarely raised the subject with him, and when she did, she was always tentative. Reason being: she knew from her own experience how hard it was to shed pounds in middle age. If she ate like a bird for a month she could drop a pound or two, but that was as good as it got. When she complained about her weight, Frank accused her of boring on. He said she was fine how she was and so what if she’d gained a few pounds. It happened at their age. She found it hard to nag him when he was so accepting of her.

Nevertheless, she wished Frank would make some effort. Yes, he looked great in a suit, but that only disguised the problem. She was in no doubt that it was the stress of his job that made him eat too much. He self-medicated with food.

The kids didn’t hold back though. Jess would pat her father’s paunch and say things like: “So, Dad, you opting for a natural birth or an epidural?”

“OK, I’ll get sushi,” Frank said to Barbara now. “So long as you give me a break.”

“I’m sorry, but I worry about you, that’s all. Maybe after you finish the edit, you should get a checkup.”

“I’ll do it when I’ve got time.”

That would be a no, then.

“Oh, by the way,” Frank said, popping one of his proton pump inhibitors out of the foil. “I got the go-ahead from BBC Two for the Mexico film.” This was going to be about human rights abuses in the Mexican mental-health system. “Not sure how long I’ll be away. Could be a while.”

Barbara was so used to these announcements—so used to him leaving her for weeks or months at a time—that they barely registered. But lately—over the past year or so—she’d started to feel sad and resentful when he told her he was going away. “So, when are you off?”

He downed the pill with some coffee. “Dunno. It’s all up in the air right now, what with this reedit. Plus we’ve still got to agree to the budget. But I’m hoping to get away in a couple of weeks.”

“But you’ve only just got back.” He’d spent the last month making a film about the use of child labor in Bolivian silver mines. While he was there, his car had been followed and he’d received death threats from mine owners.

“Bar, the day has hardly started and so far you’ve done nothing but give me a hard time. You’ve never nagged me about going away. Please don’t start now. What would you have me do?”

She resented him accusing her of nagging. He was right. Over the years she’d been positively stoic about him being away so much. It was only now that they were getting older that she thought they deserved some time together.

“Come on,” she said, trying to sound loving rather than combative. “You know I loathe the idea of retirement as much as you do and I’d never ask you to stop working. This job is your life, and for your sake I hope you carry on doing it until you’re ninety, but couldn’t you cut back just a bit? And maybe you could think about covering stories that don’t put your life in danger.” She looked at his belly, the way it strained against his T-shirt and hung over his boxers. “I don’t want to lose you.”