Chapter 33 Layla
‘What do you think – too short? Not short enough?’ Maya asked as she emerged from the fitting room in a sequin dress with a fur trim.
Instinctively, Joanna laughed, but Layla’s response was a little more direct.
‘Too “I dropped out of theatre school and stole this before I left”,’ she replied.
Turning to face her reflection, Maya burst out laughing. ‘Now you’ve said it, I can’t unsee it. I look like a pantomime dame.’ Giggling, she headed back into the fitting room.
‘Why’s she picking such wild clothes, anyway?’ Layla asked Joanna.
‘Jayden told her she dresses like the other mums at school. Maya thinks it wasn’t a compliment. So, she wanted to make this visit to London a shopping trip.’
‘I thought you came to see me?’
‘That’s why I’m here, but for Maya, the bigger draw might have been Oxford Street.’
Laughing, Layla watched Joanna’s eyes drift to the rail of items others had tried on and declined purchasing. While Maya was picking the more outrageous pieces in the store, there were undoubtedly some beautiful items available. The shine in Joanna’s eyes told Layla that she thought the same too.
‘Why don’t you try something on?’ Layla encouraged, but Joanna laughed at the suggestion.
‘Don’t be silly, love. No one wants to see me in a dress like that. Not with my legs.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your legs,’ Layla protested, but Joanna silenced her with a shake of the head. There was something about Joanna’s defeated stance that tugged at Layla, but Maya interrupted the moment by exiting the fitting room.
‘Come on,’ she instructed. ‘Time for more identity-crisis shopping.’
Following Maya back onto the shop floor, a terrible cover of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ filtered through the speakers to greet them.
Although it wasn’t December just yet, retail stores were acting as though Christmas was tomorrow.
Memories of her family’s penny pinching in the lead up to past Christmases flooded Layla’s mind, but as the chorus kicked in, she gave in to the enjoyment of the song.
However poor the cover was, the tune was still too catchy to resist humming along.
When Maya sighed in frustration that a dress she liked wasn’t available in her size, Layla moved closer. ‘If it makes you feel better, I’d swap clothes with you any day.’
‘That’s because you dress like a sex-starved librarian,’ Maya replied.
‘Charming,’ Layla muttered, but she wasn’t angry. She knew Maya had a point.
Maybe you should invest in new clothes , Layla thought as she inspected a slinky black dress. No sooner had the idea sparked than it died. It was hard to get excited about a shopping spree when in a few short years, Layla would no longer be around to wear the clothes.
‘I can’t believe Angus fancies you in that outfit,’ Maya teased. ‘The sex must be great.’
‘Maya!’ Layla hissed, glancing around the store self-consciously. ‘We’re not having sex!’
‘Doesn’t mean you don’t want to, though,’ Maya replied with a wink.
Layla knew there was no point in arguing. Mostly because, lawyer or not, she never won against Maya, but also because Maya was right. Lately, whenever Layla’s mind wandered, it went to one thing: the thought of Angus’s lips on hers. The thrill she would feel as his hands roamed her body…
‘Oh my God, you’re imagining having sex with him right now!’ Maya cried, pointing at Layla.
‘I am not,’ Layla protested, but as Maya waggled her eyebrows, she realised resistance was futile. ‘Fine, maybe I am. A little, anyway.’
‘I knew it! Layla’s in love!’
Layla opened her mouth to respond, but the burn in her cheeks and Maya’s unfiltered joy made her fold.
‘For what it’s worth, I’m sure he feels the same,’ Maya said when she registered her sister’s blush. ‘No one hangs out with someone this much if they don’t want things to develop.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
Maya shot Layla a dead-eyed glare. ‘Layls, please. Save the humble attitude for someone it suits. Why don’t you invite Angus round tonight and tell him how you feel?’
As her death date flashed before her eyes, Layla winced. ‘I can’t, Maya.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t,’ she snapped. Moving her attention away from her irritation, Layla focused on her mother. Joanna stood a few feet away, touching a pair of printed trousers with a longing look in her eye. ‘Is Mum okay?’
‘Mum? She’s fine,’ Maya replied. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘She seems sad, that’s all. When we were in the fitting room, she was being negative about her legs.’
‘Layla, we’ve been over this. Mum’s always harsh about her body,’ Maya dismissed, but Layla was tired of accepting that. Most of all, she was tired of seeing her mother act as though she was someone to be ashamed of.
In the next few stores, Layla watched Joanna interact with her surroundings.
She observed her being drawn towards colour and print and beautiful fabrics, only to retreat and find the plainest, baggiest, darkest thing in the store.
Even then, Joanna didn’t touch the item.
It was almost as if she didn’t think she deserved it.
At first, Layla wondered if money was the problem. While her parents weren’t experiencing the same financial difficulties they’d had when David wasn’t working, they still had debt. Filling her lungs with air, Layla decided that if her mother picked up an item and loved it, she would buy it for her.
The problem was, everything Joanna’s eyes wandered to, she didn’t reach for.
Eventually, Layla snapped. ‘Come on,’ she said, plucking a dress Joanna had been looking at off the rack. ‘You’re trying this on.’
Joanna’s expression looked like Layla had asked her to undress in the middle of the shop floor. ‘Layla, I can’t!’
‘Yes, you can. Maya, grab that purple dress over there and that floral jumpsuit. Mum was looking at them earlier.’
‘Layla,’ Joanna cried, but Layla didn’t give her mother another second to argue. Instead, she dragged her to the fitting room.
‘This is so exciting,’ Maya cheered as the two sisters sat opposite the fitting room curtain. ‘I haven’t seen Mum get dressed up in ages!’
‘That’s because there’s no point dressing this body up,’ came a muffled response from the other side of the curtain. ‘It looks terrible no matter what.’
As Layla’s eyebrows dipped, Maya shrugged and checked her phone. ‘Dad says he’s having a great time with Jayden. Their boys’ weekend is going well.’
‘I bet Dad’s exhausted. Jayden will have him playing game after game.’
‘Too right. Dad never tells him no, though. The other day, Dad took Jayden to the park while I was at work and it started raining. Jayden was upset because his feet got wet so Dad carried him all the way home.’
No matter how sweet the story was, anxiety still gnawed Layla’s stomach. ‘He shouldn’t be doing that, Maya.’
‘I know, but he’d walk through fire for Jayden. For any of us. You can’t stop Dad being himself. You’ve just got to love him for it.’
‘I guess,’ Layla replied, trying to silence the nagging feeling in her gut. The thing that distracted her, though, was a snort of disgust coming from inside her mother’s fitting room.
‘Yep, as hideous as I imagined,’ Joanna called out.
‘Show us,’ Layla replied.
‘Trust me, you don’t want to see this.’
‘Mum, come on.’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Joanna quipped before throwing open the curtain. ‘Ta-da!’ she sang, waving her hands to announce herself as the punchline to a joke.
Maya looked up from her phone and frowned. ‘What’s hideous about that?’
‘My hips are too wide for a dress like this, to start with.’ Joanna turned back to the mirror, lingering on the way the fabric embraced her. ‘And look at my arms!’
‘What’s wrong with your arms?’ Layla asked.
‘They’re hardly toned, are they? No, I can’t wear this,’ Joanna replied, slipping into the fitting room once more. Layla and Maya exchanged a look, but neither said anything.
A few minutes later, Joanna emerged again to show her daughters the next outfit they had selected. This dress was prettily patterned and more structured, with a hemline that stopped above Joanna’s knees.
‘Another no,’ she said with a grimace.
‘What’s wrong this time?’ Maya asked.
‘A dress like this needs to be worn by someone who doesn’t have chubby legs. That’s definitely not me and my thunder thighs.’
It was the so-called joke that did it.
It made Layla recall every time her mother had put herself down because she was afraid that if she didn’t, others would get there first. Layla remembered it all so vividly: the diets, the starvation, the detoxes.
The times Joanna skipped ice creams on hot days or said she was too busy to eat dinner, even though she had spent the last hour making it.
The way Layla would catch her mother eying her reflection as if it was something she couldn’t stand.
Sometimes, Layla caught herself staring at her own reflection like that.
Before Joanna could return to her fitting room, Layla spoke. ‘We have the same legs, you know.’
‘What?’ Joanna asked, frozen midway through closing herself into the box of bad lighting and criticism.
‘We have the same legs,’ Layla repeated, louder this time.
‘Layla, we do not! My legs are three times the size of yours,’ Joanna dismissed, but before she could close the curtain on the conversation, Layla stood and opened it wider.
Joining her mother in the fitting room, Layla hitched up her own trouser leg until it reached her mid-thigh. ‘See how your knees stick out? Mine do the same. Our thighs are pretty much the same size too, and our calves.’
Joanna looked at her legs, then at Layla’s. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘Come on, Mum,’ Layla urged. ‘Look. They’re the same!’
‘I… I suppose now you’ve pointed it out, our knees do look a little similar. Only your skin’s much less rippled with cellulite than mine.’
‘Cellulite’s your issue?’ Maya said, bursting into the fitting room to join them. Pulling up her skirt, she showed her thighs, paved in dimples from her knees upwards. ‘Doesn’t stop me wearing a skirt, though.’
‘That’s because you dress well. Besides, your legs are lovely. They aren’t things to hide!’ Joanna cried.
‘Neither are yours,’ Layla said. ‘You always say you hate your legs, but that mine and Maya’s are lovely. How can you think ours are lovely when they’re the same as the ones you hate?’
The question struck Joanna across the chest. ‘What?’
‘It’s a genuine question, Mum,’ Layla replied.
‘You tell me I’m perfect and beautiful, but you don’t talk about yourself like that.
In fact, you say the opposite, but we look the same.
We have the same nose, see?’ Layla moved closer, pointing to Joanna’s nose.
The same nose Layla had spent years wishing was smaller because she’d heard her mother say that about her own all her life.
‘My hair is thin like yours too. When I gain weight, it goes to my stomach, the same as it does with you.’
‘I… I guess we have similar traits,’ Joanna stammered, flustered.
‘We have more than that, Mum. We look alike. Everyone says so. I’m proud of that, but I don’t know if you are. I mean, all the things you hate about yourself are things I’ve inherited from you.’
‘Layla,’ Joanna breathed. ‘You’re beautiful, you know that, don’t you? You and Maya both are.’
Layla shook her head. ‘We’re not asking for compliments, Mum. We know you think we’re perfect, but we also know we look like you. Every time you say something bad about yourself, you might as well be saying it to one of us.’
Joanna opened her mouth to argue, but what could she say to that? As her chin dimpled, Maya reached for her.
‘We’re not saying this to upset you, Mum,’ she soothed.
‘I know, I just… It’s so hard. No one tells you how fast your body changes or how quickly you age.
One minute you’re twenty-one and dancing with friends in bars, the next you’re caring for a husband who nearly died and worrying how you’ll care for two children if he does.
’ Closing her eyes, Joanna breathed the memory away.
‘For so long I was fighting to keep our family afloat, then one day I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise the person staring back at me. ’
‘Mum,’ Layla whispered as she watched the first of many tears slide from Joanna’s eyes. ‘Mum, you’re so beautiful.’
‘But I don’t feel it, Layla. I don’t feel it in here.
’ Joanna tapped her chest to prove her point.
‘I hate how I look, then I hate myself for feeling like this. I should be thinking of more important things than my appearance but I’m not.
It’s always, always on my mind. Everywhere I look, I’m told I’m not good enough. Not thin enough. Not pretty enough.’
‘You’re more than enough,’ Maya cut in, grabbing Joanna’s hand. ‘In every way, you’re more than enough.’
‘Maya’s right,’ Layla added. ‘There’s so much about you to love, Mum. Don’t waste your life acting like there’s not.’
A waterfall of tears threatened to pour from Joanna at her daughters’ words. She turned back to the mirror to hide them, but instead found herself facing her reflection with new eyes.
‘You are a woman who has lived an incredible fifty-four years on this earth,’ Layla said. ‘You have worked, laughed, cried and loved. You single-handedly held this family together when everything fell apart, when it felt like the world would never be the same again.’
‘Exactly,’ Maya said. ‘You’re our hero, Mum.
That stomach you say is too big? It grew me and Layla, gave us life, and a bloody good one at that.
The arms you think are too wobbly carried us to bed a million times.
The lips you think are too thin have given us so many kisses, we have enough love in us to last a lifetime.
If that’s not the perfect body, then what is? ’
‘Oh, girls,’ Joanna sobbed, leaning her head on Layla’s shoulder.
Together, the Cannon women looked at their collective appearance in the mirror. They saw all the ways they were different and all the ways they were the same. They saw the long line of women who had gone before them, and imagined the ones who were to come, and realised it was time for change.
It started with an apology. Nothing loud, nothing flashy, just a moment to maintain eye contact and apologise to the tired, insecure, afraid little girls that lived inside their chests.
They said sorry for hiding. Sorry for becoming so small and quiet that they weren’t sure they existed anymore.
Sorry for softening bits of themselves because they were too much for some, only to be told they weren’t enough for others.
Shape-shifting, morphing, changing… losing parts of themselves every time.
‘This is it,’ Layla said, pressing a kiss to Joanna’s forehead. ‘We are kind to ourselves from here on out.’
‘Always,’ Maya agreed.
‘Always,’ Joanna whispered.
Always , Layla thought.