Everything’s Grand (The Fabulous Forties Club #3)

Chapter 1

ROY CROPPER AND THE BISCUITS OF DOOM

Becca

It’s like the first day of secondary school all over again. Except scarier. As nervous as I was on that first day, I still held that innocent belief that making friends was relatively easy and everyone else walking through those doors would be feeling just as nervous as I was.

Tonight I don’t think anyone is feeling as nervous as I am. It turns out that putting your money where your mouth is is absolutely terrifying.

Having become convinced there is a secret need for women of a certain age to have a place where we can gather together, celebrate our lives, have a bit if craic and occasionally hex those who have done us wrong, my very best friends, Niamh and Laura, and I had decided to proactively face our forties-related fears head-on.

As such we have formed the Fabulous Forties Club.

The name of which I will tweak in time, especially as my forties are starting to nudge towards my fifties and I don’t want to age out of my own creation.

But I was under pressure when I wrote my first article for Northern People magazine about this fresh and funky approach to living your very best life while giving two fingers to the menopause and all who sail in her.

The Fabulous Forties Club slipped out before I could really think about it and my twin sons have told me, categorically, that anyone who uses the words fabulous or funky is guaranteed to be anything but.

What would they know though – with their gobbledegook lingo and their noise instead of music.

As soon as the thought enters my mind I realise they are very right.

I am very, very neither fabulous nor funky.

But I am trying. I have been since I discovered a letter I wrote to myself when I was just sixteen years old, in which I laid out my vision for where I would be by this age, and I realised it was time to chase my dreams instead of descending into old age as if I am already living there.

And tonight, sitting at the back of a café, in an area I had very optimistically reserved for the anticipated throngs of wannabe members, I am starting to think I might have been overly optimistic.

The bowl of badges I had made, because women in their forties have always loved a good badge, are mocking me.

I can’t believe I’ve been worried I might run out.

It’s now just five minutes before our inaugural coffee and chat event and I am surrounded by empty seats.

It won’t be totally empty, of course. Niamh is on her way.

As is Laura. And Deirdre, who we met on an ‘Free Your Inner Goddess’ weekend retreat, is driving up from the wilds of Donegal.

Grace, the editor of Northern Women, where I first launched this idea, has promised to try and pop her head in at some stage but quite honestly, I’m hoping she doesn’t.

I do not want her to see me metaphorically fall flat on my face as this all goes wrong.

‘Don’t stress,’ Niamh says as she walks into the café and spots my panicked face.

‘There’s no one here!’ I say.

‘I’m here,’ she says, walking up to me and pulling me into a hug. ‘And Laura is just behind me parking the car. Deirdre phoned, too, to say she was caught in traffic but was definitely coming and she has a friend with her.’

I glance down at the bowl of badges. I’d ordered fifty of the things. At this rate, we’ll all be going home with ten each. No point in hanging on to them if the whole evening is a disaster. I’m not putting myself through this twice.

It’s even more stressful than when I was a teenager and invited the entire class to my birthday party and then worried so much that no one was going to attend that I made myself so sick my mother called the whole thing off.

Instead of partying it up with the rest of class 3F, I spent my birthday spewing into a basin with Niamh and Laura keeping vigil at my bedside and doing their best not to join in.

‘Becks, honestly. Don’t worry! You know what people are like.

You know what women in their forties are like!

You are one, for goodness’ sake! They’ll be running between work and family, and maybe their parents, and maybe battling the mother and father of all hormonal migraines, or sweating buckets in the car stuck in traffic.

But they’ll be here. You’ve had a great response to the articles in Northern People. Have faith, little one!’

Niamh always has been very good at giving motivational speeches, but still I’m not convinced.

People commenting on social media about the articles is very different to people getting up off their arses on cold and wet October evenings and coming out of the house to meet new people.

By the time most of us reach this age, we are often too tired for new people.

Seven in the evening no longer feels like early evening but more like wind-down time.

If I was home I’d be in my loungewear – which of course is just the socially acceptable way of saying pyjamas.

God, I really, really wish I was in my pyjamas right now, curled up on the sofa in front of the fire with Daniel – the most loyal but eejit-y of all dogs – curled at my feet. Or maybe with my beautiful grandbaby Clara in my arms reminding me that the world is not all bad.

But I am not at home and there is no sight of Daniel or Clara for that matter. Only a windswept and interesting-looking Laura pushing her way in the door and announcing, ‘Ta-da! I’m here!’

‘See!’ Niamh says. ‘There are people here!’

I glance at the clock and see it is now three minutes to seven. Overall it’s starting to look like I’ve just forked out on a room hire fee to hang out with my besties, who I’d normally be able to hang out with for free. At home. In my pyjamas.

‘You and Laura, with all the love in my heart, don’t count,’ I tell her.

‘Cheers,’ Laura says. ‘What is it we don’t count about?’

‘As people, apparently,’ Niamh says with a mock sniff. ‘The very cheek of her! And here we are with our faces washed and everything, like good and loyal friends.’

The other thing that Niamh is very good at, along with motivational speeches, is taking the absolute piss out of people. I pull a face back at her. ‘You know I love you both very—’

We are interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of a person none of us know.

The only problem is that this person is very definitely not a woman in her forties, or the surrounding area.

The man, who gives off distinct Roy Cropper from Coronation Street vibes, only older – much older – looks around the room and nods.

It seems he likes the look of this quiet spot on a Wednesday night in mid-October.

I try not to worry. After all, it’s likely he will take a seat at any of the non-reserved tables at the front of the coffee shop.

That’s what we strangers tend to do, isn’t it?

Sit as far apart from each other as we can for fear anyone might think we’re a weirdo.

But it seems Roy Cropper has no such qualms as he walks directly up to the table I am standing beside and examines my now kind-of-embarrassing bowl of badges.

‘What’s this about?’ he barks.

‘It’s… it’s a private meeting for a group,’ I say. ‘This part of the café has been reserved for our use, but look, there are lots of empty tables just over there.’ I gesture to the front of the café and smile sweetly, hopeful that he will get the hint.

‘What’s the group?’ he asks, and I’m starting to think that something is completely off with this man. I’m not sure he has blinked in the entire time he has been here. My face starts to heat up and I’m not sure if it is with embarrassment or just another hot flush.

‘It’s for women,’ Niamh interjects. ‘In their forties. You know, lots of talk about menopause, and periods and vulval atrophy.’ It’s a bold move – one that relies on most men preferring to be anywhere else than near a discussion about periods.

Of course, non-blinking Roy Cropper might just be the kind of man who gets off on talk of atrophied vulvas.

He might be Derry’s own answer to Ed Gein for all I know…

‘Tea and biscuits,’ he says, and it’s more of a statement than a question. He looks around the room with his unblinking eyes until he spots the table by the wall, laid out with coffee cups and plates of freshly baked shortbread.

‘For the group,’ Niamh says, her tone now just hovering on the line between businesslike and scary science teacher.

He nods, turns on his heel and walks to the table, where he helps himself to two shortbread biscuits, which he carries not to the wide-open public space but to the edge of our reserved area.

I am sure he would have taken a cup of tea or coffee had it been available, but the café has not yet brought them out.

Niamh moves to confront him, but I grab her hand. ‘I’d nearly be afraid to rattle his cage too much. Let him have his biscuits. Hopefully he’ll clear off after that.’

She doesn’t look impressed. ‘Well, he better, because if he doesn’t then I’ll have to remove him myself.’

‘Hang on there, Phil Mitchell,’ Laura says and laughs. ‘Hopefully we don’t have to go that far.’

‘Maybe we won’t want to,’ I say with a grimace. ‘The way things stand, he might be our only taker.’

At that, the door swings open again and Deirdre walks in and seems to have brought a couple of friends with her.

I should’ve known I could rely on her. We’d all known she was a good sort from the first time we met in the bustling dining room of our Goddess retreat.

She’d been incredibly brave, coming to the retreat on her own but was clearly in need of a friend, or three.

We’d all agreed she was, as we say in Derry, ‘dead on’ and had quickly invited her to join us for the rest of the retreat sessions.

This club has been set up thanks to her encouragement and so I am delighted to see her happy and welcoming smile across the room.

‘The cavalry’s arrived!’ she chirps with a smile, immediately crossing the room to first pull Laura, then Niamh, then me into a hug. ‘This is really exciting. I’ve been buzzing about it all day. Fair play to you, Becca, for getting it off the ground. You’re some woman for one woman and all that.’

I do my best to brush off the compliment, the Irish person in me finding it exceptionally difficult to accept words of praise or encouragement.

‘Stop it!’ Deirdre chides. ‘You’re allowed the odd moment of pride in yourself, you know!’

I’m not sure that’s true, I think, remembering when my cranky Primary 5 teacher told the whole class that pride was a sin and we should never express our delight at our own achievements for fear of spending an eternity burning in hell.

Is it any wonder we are all a bit touched in the head in this country?

The two women who followed her in are standing, looking a little nervous, behind her. ‘Oh,’ Deirdre says. ‘This is my friend, Paula. She’s fifty-one but I didn’t think that would be a problem.’

‘Hey!’ says Paula, a very smiley woman with rosy cheeks and a mop of curly red hair. ‘No need to tell the world all my secrets!’

‘You’re very welcome here, Paula,’ I say, determined that she is made to feel as comfortable as possible. ‘It’s not all that far away for me – you can give me the heads-up on what horrors await.’

‘And spoil the surprise? Not a bit!’ She laughs.

‘I’m… I’m Nuala,’ the petite whisp of a woman who stands behind her says, stepping sideways and out of Paula’s shadow. ‘I saw your article in Northern People. Is it okay if I join in?’

I think for a second of the man currently munching his way through the shortbread biscuits, scattering crumbs everywhere with abandon, and how he just marched in, took a seat and isn’t one bit bothered that this might not be the right place for him.

And then these women – these lovely, friendly women – are almost apologetic for attending a meeting designed for them.

If you ever want to know the difference between the sexes – it is thus.

Suitably qualified women apologise for their existence in a space.

Men who, frankly, don’t even know how to blink, take a seat as if they own the place.

‘Of course you’re very welcome,’ I say, with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. She’s the only one here who didn’t already know me, or wasn’t dragged along by a person who does. Apart from Roy Cropper, of course, but I’m pretty sure for the purposes of this story he does not count.

‘We have badges,’ Laura says brightly, pointing towards the bowl on the table. ‘It’s going to be a great night!’