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Suddenly found self missing Shazzer again and wishing she was here to say, ‘Will everyone fucking stop the fuck telling everyone else to shut the fuck up.’
‘Yes, shut up, Talitha,’ said Jude. ‘Not everyone wants to look like a freak show.’
‘Darling,’ said Talitha, putting her hand to her brow, ‘I am NOT a “freak show”. Grieving apart, Bridget has lost, or shall we say, mislaid, her sense of sexual self. And it’s our duty to help her relocate it.’
And with a toss of her lush, shining locks Talitha settled back into her chair while the three of us stared at her silently, sucking our cocktails through our straws like five-year-olds.
Talitha burst out again, ‘The thing about not looking your age is, it’s all about altering the “signposts”. The body must be forced to reject the fat-positioning of middle age, wrinkles are completely unnecessary and a fine head of swingy shiny healthy hair—’
‘Purchased for a pittance from impoverished Indian virgins,’ interjected Tom.
‘—however obtained and attached, is all one needs to turn back the clock.’
‘Talitha,’ said Jude, ‘did I actually just hear you articulate the words “Middle” and “Age”?’
‘Anyway, I can’t,’ I said.
‘Look. This really makes me very sad,’ said Talitha. ‘Women of our age—’
‘Your age,’ muttered Jude.
‘—have only got themselves to blame if they brand themselves as unviable by going on and on about how they haven’t had a date for four years. Germaine Greer’s “Disappearing Woman” must be brutally murdered and buried. One needs, for the sake of oneself and one’s peers, to create an air of mysterious confidence and allure, rebranding oneself—’
‘Like Gwyneth Paltrow,’ said Tom brightly.
‘Gwyneth Paltrow is not “our age” and she’s married,’ said Jude.
‘No, I mean I can’t shag anyone,’ I elucidated. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on the kids. There’s too much to do, and men are very high-maintenance matters.’
Talitha surveyed me sorrowfully, my customary black loose-waisted trousers and long top swa
thing the ruins of what was once my figure. I mean, Talitha does have some authority to speak, having been married three times and, ever since I first met her, never without some completely besotted man in tow.
‘A woman has her needs,’ Talitha growled dramatically. ‘What good is a mother to her poor children if she’s suffering from low self-esteem and sexual frustration? If you don’t get laid soon, you will literally close up. More importantly, you will shrivel. And you will become bitter.’
‘Anyway,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to Mark.’
There was silence for a moment. It was as if a huge wet fish had been thrown into the high-spirited mood of the evening.
Later, though, Tom drunkenly followed me into the Ladies’, leaning against the wall for support as I flapped my hands around the designer tap trying to get it to turn on.
‘Bridget,’ said Tom, as I started groping under the washbasin for pedals.
I looked up from under the sink. ‘What?’
Tom had gone into professional mode again.
‘Mark. He would want you to find someone. He wouldn’t want you to stop—’
‘I haven’t stopped,’ I said, straightening up with some difficulty.
‘You need to work,’ he said. ‘You need to get a life. And you need someone to be with you and love you.’
‘I do have a life,’ I said gruffly. ‘And I don’t need a man, I have the children.’
