Chapter 5
‘How’s business, Chelle?’ Jo asked as she handed me a mug of steaming-hot coffee.
We’d met up in the garden that morning and when she said that I had a face like a wet weekend, I burst into tears on her.
She called an emergency meeting very quickly after that, although I was already feeling so much better and felt that I’d probably been a tad emotional earlier and worried her unnecessarily.
‘Really good to be honest. I think I’ve found my niche,’ I replied.
‘That’s brilliant news. Well done. All that hard work has paid off then?’ Emma held her mug up and we all joined in with a group chink.
‘Yeah, I really have tapped into a huge gap in the market. Did you know that around ninety per cent of all household purchases are made by women over the age of fifty?’
Jo’s eyes widened. ‘That many? That’s so high.’
Spurred on, I continued. ‘Exactly. So why are companies not marketing to these women?’
The scope of it baffled me, the more I investigated it. Pointing this out to potential customers had worked wonders and I’d recently managed to secure some big contracts. I just had to make sure that work didn’t take over my life again like it had before.
Emma moved forward on her seat. ‘It’s true.
We’re the age that has expendable cash too.
Either our kids have left home, or some women haven’t been able to have kids, or have chosen not to; a lot of people our age have paid off their mortgages and we have cash to flash.
Well, not in my case, I spend far more on clothes now than I ever did when I was twenty.
I’d pay anything to make my arse look better in a pair of jeans these days. ’
We all laughed and now she’d got me on a subject I was passionate about, I couldn’t seem to shut up.
What I loved about these two was that not only did they let me rant, but they usually mostly agreed with me.
I knew that I was speaking a lot, more than normal in fact, but once I got onto this topic it was difficult to get me to stop.
Also, I was absolutely putting off talking about Greece, which I knew that Jo and Emma would really be grilling me hard about once they knew.
I hoped that the Greece dilemma I had ahead of me wasn’t an exception when I eventually shared it with them.
‘Yet so many social media sites direct their ads at the youngsters, who prefer to spend their money in thrifting shops. They’re marketing to the wrong age group. They need to market to the Queenagers!’
‘I bloody love that expression,’ Jo said. ‘Is that a real thing?’
‘Yes, it’s what women of middle age are called apparently. I’m not sure who came up with the word but I heard it on a podcast recently. It’s perfect, isn’t it? They, or should I say we, are more of an age where we’re financially stable and don’t give a shit about what we spend our money on.’
‘Ha, this place is what I spend my money on.’ Jo waved her arm around her. ‘This money pit.’
‘Yes, but this is where and what you have chosen to spend your money on. That’s the whole point.
And where I come in is to help companies redirect their marketing spend to the right place to make them more money.
They need to get their ads in front of the Queenagers.
Honestly, I’ve got tons of work on. I’m snowed under. ’
‘I thought you were only doing three days a week now,’ Jo said.
‘Well, I was, but you know what it’s like when you’re starting a business.
You have to throw yourself into it lock, stock and barrel.
And if Demetri is working, then to be honest, I’m happy to do it.
I may even have to start looking for some help soon.
That’s quite scary. I can’t really afford to take anyone on, but I can’t afford to stand still either and taking someone on to do the grunt work will allow me to do more of the heavy lifting, so to speak. ’
‘Just be careful, lovely. Don’t overdo it,’ Emma warned. I knew that she was only saying it for my own good. I patted her hand. ‘Remember what happened last time.’
‘Thank you. I won’t. I promise. However, it is also quite different when you are working for yourself.’
‘Talking of the hot doctor, how is Lover Boy?’
I sighed and gave a tight-lipped smile. It was only recently that I’d started to let my guard down a little where he was concerned and admitted to myself how much I loved having him in my life.
Thinking about him since our recent discussion made me feel a huge mixture of emotions.
While immensely loved up when he was around, I was also feeling overwhelming melancholy at the thought of being without him.
He filled my every thought, now more than ever.
I knew that I was delaying talking about the big decision that I had to make. My head was all over the place. Maybe if I shared about how I felt about him with Jo and Emma, it would make the options ahead of me a little clearer in my head. It was always good to chat things through.
I sighed again, thinking of how wonderful he was.
‘He’s lovely.’
Emma and Jo shared a look.
‘What?’ I exclaimed.
‘You’ve got that dreamy look about you again.’ Emma wrinkled her nose in pleasure. ‘I love that you’re finally starting to admit that you like him.’
‘I do like him. A lot. It scares the shit out of me though. I must be honest, I’m trying very hard to be chilled about everything and not interrogate him about all the nurses at work.
I think I’ve watched too many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy where the doctors and nurses are all shagging in storerooms.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think it’s like that in the NHS. If I was a nurse and rushed off my feet and one of my doctors or nursing colleagues was off canoodling in a cupboard, I’d be bloody furious and would drag them out by the hair.’
We all laughed.
‘Don’t worry, love, it’s just for the TV,’ Emma explained.
‘To be honest, I think that’s the least of my worries,’ I replied, with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes.
‘Spill.’ Jo shifted closer to me.
‘Demetri has to go back to Greece. Indefinitely.’
‘Oh!’ Emma looked as shocked as I had been when he’d first told me. ‘What? When? Why? I have so many questions. And where does that leave you?’
‘Well, that’s where the issue lies. His mother has had a stroke and he needs to be there to look after her. But here’s the thing. He wants me to go with him.’
‘Wowsers,’ Jo said. ‘Nice though. And will you go?’
My shoulders slumped. ‘Fuck knows!’
Emma composed herself. ‘OK, let’s look at this rationally. Give me three good reasons you should stay here.’
I mentally referred to my journal where I’d written my list. I held up a finger, itemising the points that immediately sprung to mind.
‘One. You guys. I’ve never had friends like you two before.
’ Finger number two joined the first. ‘Two, I’ve just moved here and don’t want to go through that again.
It was exhausting. And three’ – another finger sprang up – ‘I’ve spent months working on my business and it’s really getting off the ground here and I’m loving it. ’
Emma jumped in. ‘Chelle, none of these things are strong enough to throw away the love of your life. He is the love of your life I presume?’
I smiled, but I knew it must have looked weak when my lips gave an unexpected wobble.
‘He is. But…’
‘No buts, lady.’ Jo could be incredibly firm when she wanted to be. ‘Love like this doesn’t come round very often and certainly not at our time of life. Maybe it’s time you took a risk.’
‘I just took a risk upping and moving to Cornwall and my life was settling down beautifully. Or I thought it was,’ I responded. ‘Anyway, there’s loads more reasons why I can’t go.’
Emma put her hand on her hips and tilted her head. ‘Such as?’
‘I’ve committed to Jo that I’ll do long-term leasing of her flat.’ I nodded in affirmation of my own words.
Jo piped up in response. ‘Hey, lady, don’t use me as an excuse.’ She laughed. ‘If you decide you want to go, I’ll just rent it out as a holiday let. We can put your stuff in storage and I’ll get some cheap furniture. That’s what I was going to do originally if you remember.’
‘But what if I want to come back and there’s someone in it?’ I asked. I could feel myself getting stressed at the thought of not having anything to come back to.
‘Then you can stay with me in one of my spare rooms until they leave. It’ll only be a fortnight at most, and I can refund any future bookings and apologise for a change of circumstances.
’ Jo smiled sweetly and Emma started laughing.
Jo had an answer for everything. I folded my arms, confident that my next reason was a brilliant one.
‘Anyway, I don’t speak the language.’
This time it was Emma’s turn to laugh and share a very smug expression.
‘Then you learn. Have you not heard of Duolingo? Other reputable apps are available too. I’m not an affiliate member.’ She laughed.
‘What about work?’ My defences were feeling a little weaker each time they answered back.
‘I’ve got this one, Em,’ Jo responded assertively.
‘You see it’s 2026 and there’s this amazing thing called’ – she made imaginary speech marks in the air – ‘the world wide web, otherwise known as the internet. It’s really rather clever and as the title suggests, it’s, well, you know, worldwide.
’ The glint in her eye was doing nothing to help my predicament.
‘What if I’m lonely?’ There was another good reason. I didn’t think they could argue with that. How wrong I was.
Emma came to sit as close as she could on one side of me, and Jo the other, and they each took a hand. Emma spoke first.
‘You were lonely in the Midlands, and you moved here only knowing us. And now look at all the friends you’ve got. What’s to say that you can’t set up a branch of The Lonely Hearts Club in Greece? You’ll be lonely without Demetri if he goes and you don’t. And if you do go, we’ll still be here.’
‘Yeah, right at the end of that internet thing. You can even do video calls around the world now too you know. It’s all very clever.’ Jo winked at me and my resolve softened.
I hesitated before I spoke again, my voice barely a whisper.
‘I’m scared.’
‘We know,’ they chorused at the same time.
Jo spoke up again. ‘But sometimes you have to take a chance. Look at this one’ – she nodded towards Emma – ‘and what happened with her last year.’
Emma was a widow, and to everyone’s surprise, including her own, was now in a relationship with her childhood sweetheart Tom, taking it slowly.
He had miraculously come back into her life at a time when he too was grieving the loss of his spouse and they were both helping each other to heal at their own gentle pace.
Emma took my hand.
‘If you don’t like it, you just jump on a plane and come home. What’s the worst that could happen?’
I knew she was right but was moving away from the home that I’d built for myself here, and the friendships that I had, really what I wanted?