Chapter Twenty-One
Zurich is also a European city
I know Hélo?se is only a kid but I’d like to flag up here that she is wrong – I do want to be young again.
I mean, just look at me. Just bloody look at me.
I’d pinch myself if my skin wasn’t just immediately going to bounce back.
Standing in Devon’s gigantic navy-blue bathroom, blending some blush (sorry Simon, I mean ‘rouge’) onto my cheeks, I randomly burst out laughing just at the sheer amazingness of it all.
Why didn’t I ever appreciate this when I was really in my twenties?
I suppose back then, the only thing I had to compare it to was looking like a child, and when you’re a child, you want to look older.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally gorgeous.
Not like a model or an actress or anything like that.
My face is too heart-shaped for one thing, and my chin is a bit pointy.
My lips have never been that full either, and my eyebrows are quite bushy.
But youth is like a filter – it takes all the things that look awful when you’re nearly fifty and blurs them with a soft-focus lens.
I’ve wished so many times I could go back and appreciate it – and now look.
My wishes have come true. I’m like Aladdin, but with two fewer wishes and no lamp.
I’ve got my Clean Girl make-up routine down to about twenty minutes now.
In the Nineties I would spend all afternoon getting ready, blow-drying my hair to within an Atomic Kitten of its life, plucking my eyebrows into Sherilyn Fenn levels of arched submission and finishing the look with so much translucent powder I looked like a pastry chef.
Nowadays, it’s definitely more ‘take me as I am’ – which is easier to get on board with when your face looks like it’s been reinflated after a slow puncture that lasted twenty years.
And the time I save every morning not having to pluck my chin is quite incredible.
Especially those really wiry hairs that used to appear from nowhere – usually in the rear-view mirror while driving somewhere important, with no access to a hot compress and my GripMaster Pro Tweezers (#gifted).
I pull on a yellow jacket that Devon left hanging in the hall and head out of the flat.
It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’m beginning to settle in.
The place is warm, comfortable, spacious…
it’s like getting squatters rights on an Airbnb I can’t really afford.
But the thing that’s missing is some friends.
Some fun. That is why I came here after all…
to get away from the naysayers. Oh, and so I can stop skulking about in disguise.
Woolly hats and scarves only really work in the winter, and finally, spring is here.
In the lift, I look at myself in the mirrored wall and can’t help but do yet another half-laugh, half-whoop, half-snort of disbelief.
(And I don’t even mind that this adds up to one and a half.) I’m busy poking my face, admiring my jawline and pouting when the lift doors open and two young men and a woman get in.
Out of habit, I immediately adopt my well-practised middle-aged stance: no eye contact and that weird tight-lipped face that acknowledges without smiling.
‘Hey girl,’ says the woman.
I continue to stare straight ahead, trying to figure out what came first, Schindler’s Lifts or Schindler’s List, and assuming the woman, who has blue hair in pigtails and AirPods in her ears, is talking to someone on her phone.
She looks at her friends, shrugs and laughs.
‘Oh… were you talking to me?’ I say. ‘I was on Planet Zog.’
The woman bursts out laughing, and the two men, one blonde, one with dreadlocks, join in.
‘Erm… okay girl!’ says the woman.
‘I mean I was… really spaced out, man.’ I hastily try to think of something more current to say, but by now the lift has reached the ground floor. The three friends walk out, leaving me cringing, but the girl looks over her shoulder and smiles. ‘You’re funny.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. At least that came out like a normal twenty-something.
Seems like my ‘vibing’ in the Hollister changing room was beginner’s luck.
How am I going to make friends when I speak like bloody Austin Powers.
I really need to work on this. And worse than that – okay, maybe not worse but still quite bad – there’s no M&S Food nearby, so I have to walk to Deptford and get the DLR to Greenwich, which is what I’m about to do now.
It’s worth it though, it’s a much bigger store than the one at the garage back home in Wiltshire.
They’ve got the full Gastropub range, and since the Yuvana payments are coming in, the sky’s the limit.
Well, I need to be able to carry it all back on the train, but my arms can take it now I’m bingo-wing free.
Today I might even get some of those seafoody things that come in a scallop shell.
If only I was sponsored by M&S Food, not Yuvana Labs with their shiny faces and endless glasses of water.
Mustn’t grumble though. JEEZ, even that sounds middle-aged…
Walking out of the building, I struggle to put up my umbrella.
Across the road, I can see the blond boy – man – who was in the lift, looking over at me.
What’s he staring at? Don’t Gen Z use umbrellas?
This is all so much more complicated now I’m ‘out in the wild’.
It feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that I was in my twenties – and in that lifetime the way young people talk and interact seems to have changed dramatically.
Like a whole new language to learn, and if I’m not fluent, I will be shown up for the fraud I am.
Or maybe not… looking like I do, how could anyone ever believe that I wasn’t young?
I just have to make sure nobody connects cool young Erica who lives in south-east London with WULT? Woman.
Which surely won’t be a problem, because why would anyone in their twenties look at an Instagram account aimed at rich middle-aged women?
I head to the station. It’s only one stop to Greenwich but the train grinds to a halt halfway and an announcement says there’s a ‘technical fault’, so I use the opportunity to sit and think about my brilliant new life and how bloody exciting it all is, conscious of the fact that I am now one of those really annoying people that sit on their own smiling on public transport.
I also decide I need to make some plans, so I get out my phone, open my Notes app and make a list.
Get more followers than Cassia
Make new cool/young friends
Sex (alone doesn’t count)
Go clubbing (wonder if the Velvet Rooms is still open?)
Get a job?
Deal with my family
I finish and read it back while the train makes grinding noises.
So, to point one – Cassia. This is going well so far – since the WULT? Woman Instagram account went live, timed with the Luscious magazine article, it already has 81.
5K followers. Still a fair few to go to beat Cassia, but at this rate it won’t be too long, and I can finally beat her at something for the first time since she stole the Beautique assistant editor role from me.
The followers themselves, who appear to have usernames like @Cotswold_Lady73 and @Cheshire_In_Stilettos or similar, seem really friendly, leaving comments like ‘Incredible! My hubby would love me to get this!’ accompanied by a fire emoji, or ‘I want this treatment – when is it available to the public???’ or ‘You look gorg – you’re very lucky, WULT? Woman!
!’. Guided by Channing, I’m now in the habit of replying to them with ‘Thank you so much!’ and ‘Link in bio to subscribe to WULT? updates!’ with copious amounts of heart and star emojis.
Lucky I may be, but the videos themselves are a steep learning curve and a far cry from the thirty second Before and After lash lift reels I used to do on my own account.
I was so nervous when I did my first live #popquiz.
Peach Jumpsuit came on as the immobile face of Yuvana Labs and played snippets from Eighties and Nineties pop songs, which I had to name in an attempt to prove I am nearly fifty and not an imposter.
I didn’t know how this was going to pan out given my track record for remembering the names of songs, and the fact that Gen Zs seem to be really into the Eighties anyway, so I’m not sure it proves anything.
But I didn’t do too badly, apart from when they played Vienna by Ultravox and I shouted out ‘ZURICH!’.
In my defence, they hadn’t got to the chorus yet and Zurich is also a European city.
And I erroneously called that Patrick Swayze song ‘She’s Got Wind’, but it didn’t seem to matter and Peach Jumpsuit hissed ‘Yessssssss’ every time I got one right.
The reel even got more likes than Cassia’s ‘Mango Jeans Try On’, which she posted on the same day.
Wonder what Cassia thought about that – if she’s even spotted the WULT? Woman account yet, that is.
Channing is happy, partly thanks to the new background for filming that I’ve created since I moved into Devon’s flat.
After the initial hassle of working out how to cart all the equipment up the M4 – Merlyn mercifully got this all sorted for me – my vibes were declared thoroughly ‘on point’ and apparently all the better for the lack of a fake Ikea plant.
Devon has a monstera the size of a small car in her living room, which I am slightly nervous about killing, and huge Banksy prints on the walls.
Channing said, ‘Can you even handle it?’, which it turns out (after I had said ‘Yes’, then ‘No’, then ‘I don’t know’) is a good thing, and not something that needs to be replied to.
He also said that the lighting is so much better than in my ‘dark little cottage’ – to the point where I don’t even need the ridiculous coastguard lamps.