Chapter Five
Jameela Jamil is truly blessed
I’ve been researching Yuvana Labs ever since I got home from the Halloween party and for someone who has become quite the expert at googling over the years (must add that to my CV), I am disappointed by how little I’ve been able to uncover.
There seems to be a ‘Dr M’ involved, and also someone called Professor B, but Yuvana isn’t registered with Companies House, and I can’t find an address either.
I hope they’re not dodgy, but I’m sure if Merlyn is involved they won’t be.
I’ll ask her when I speak to her – she said she was going to give me a couple of days to think about it.
The person in front of me appears to have never used a self-serve checkout before, or indeed money. My phone ringing is a welcome distraction.
‘Yo, mofo.’
‘Hi Nandy…’
‘You okay? You sound a bit… weird?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’m whispering because I’m in Sainsbury’s. I also had a rough night. The baby next door. Oh, and crazy dreams. And peeing every hour. Getting older sucks.’
‘Doesn’t it just? You should get some bloody HRT and some of that vag cream I was telling you about.
At least if that warms up again you can stop peeing all the time and even get some action.
That’ll put a smile on your face. Even if it’s DIY action.
IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.’ Nandy cackles down the phone.
‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ I’m slightly self-conscious having this conversation in a supermarket.
Although I do spare a thought at this moment for my Goop Ultraplush Self-Heating G-Spot Vibrator (#gifted), which is living out its life somewhere at the back of my pants drawer.
Probably not what Gwyneth Paltrow had in mind for it.
‘Okay, well… I won’t keep you if you’re busy perimenopausing,’ says Nandy. ‘Just wanted to see what the latest was with Merl. Did she give you a commission?’
‘Yeah… kind of.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Well, it’s more like a treatment thing to trial for Luscious. A facial.’ I decide now might be as good a time as any to gently introduce the concept.
‘NOICE. Something super posh, I’m sure. It’s Merlyn after all. She’s got such a soft spot for you.’
‘She’s just kind.’
‘To you, more than anyone.’
‘Yeah, I suppose… I wonder why that is.’ I feel like we’re going off topic.
‘I think you remind her of her daughter, I’m sure she told me that once. Or someone did. You know, the daughter she doesn’t talk to who went to live in Canada or something. Anyway, so it’s posh, the treatment?’
‘Really posh. Could be a gamechanger.’
‘Hark at you. Well, as long as you get to write a punny headline for it I’m sure you’ll be fine. Right, better go, I’m on the Metro features desk this week. I just popped out for some Bonjela. Living the dream, my friend, living the fucking dream.’
‘Aren’t we all…’ I mutter as I watch the person in front of me try to find ‘Cheese Twist’ on the bakery menu, and stop short of shouting ‘IT’S NEXT TO THE CINNAMON WHIRL!’
I should have told Nandy about WULT?, I suppose.
It isn’t lying though, just withholding information…
Not that I’m keen on that either. The only people I don’t mind lying to are editors, about whether a feature I haven’t even started yet is ‘nearly finished!’.
Speaking to Nandy, it makes me realise I’m too embarrassed to tell the truth.
She has a way of being brutally honest about everything – not to be mean, but just because she is one of the most down-to-earth people you could ever meet.
When Nandy started at Beautique, I had already been there a few months.
I watched her from across the office on her first day, in her low rise bootcut jeans, chain belt, baker boy cap.
I didn’t just want to be friends with her because she was like a cool Asian Kate Moss with a Birmingham accent; I wanted to be friends with her because she looked like she didn’t care what anyone thought of her.
Being around Nandy made me feel like I cared a tiny bit less too – as though little particles of Nandy’s sparkling nonchalance settled on me, making me feel like a bolder version of myself.
She’s an only child, and her mother Anu died when she was eighteen.
As Nandy puts it, ‘a fucking inconvenient age to lose a parent’.
Her father was broken, and has never really mended.
So, Nandy just ploughs on, swearing, laughing, holding it all together – for her father, for the memory of Anu, for her husband, Ash, and the kids and, quite often, for me too.
She told me once that if she stopped for a second and thought about it all – really thought about it – she’d find she had thirty years of tears to catch up on, and ‘nobody has time for that bollocks’.
She’s the only London friend I have who comes over to Wiltshire to see me, and the only one who really cared when I left.
She loyally treks across the city from Leytonstone to get the train at Paddington, armed with a bag of weed and obscure ingredients like asafoetida to make curries in my kitchen using Anu’s old recipes.
We talk and talk and laugh and eat. Once, not long after Father Pells died, we got really stoned and were so immersed in a David Attenborough documentary about toucans we decided to take notes.
The next day we walked all the way through the fields to Lacock and read the ramblings out loud, snorting hysterically as we stomped along in our inappropriate shoes – Nandy: cowboy boots, me: FitFlops (#gifted).
Amongst other incomprehensible nonsense, I’d written that ‘toucans cannot chew’, as if this would be an important piece of knowledge to remember, and also that ‘they are NOT (underlined about five times) graceful in the sky’.
I’d also put ‘ungraceful’ in brackets after this as though to make it extra clear.
Then in Nandy’s handwriting it said, ‘THEY HAVE A DARK SIDE’, although neither of us could remember what that was.
Then last night’s mixed vegetable sambar (followed by a cheese board, obvs) came back to haunt Nandy and she had to go and shit behind a tree.
I was laughing so much my cheeks hurt for days – it was the first time I’d laughed since my father’s funeral five weeks before.
And now I feel like I’m not being honest, and Nandy isn’t here with that wonderful big sisterliness.
But I’ll tell her soon. I’m pretty sure she’s going to be delighted for me.
Later, at home, I’m eating cheese and watching a YouTube clip I found of Gabe playing ‘Shallow’ from the Lady Gaga film on the piano with one of his students.
He’s really good. I zoom in on his hands and wonder if YouTube tells you who is looking at your videos and/or how many times.
Paranoid, I switch to Instagram and there’s Cassia, posting pictures of her Margot Tenenbaum outfit: ‘It’s time for the Luscious Halloween party #GRWM (Get Ready With Me)!
’ She even posted some pictures from the party itself.
I scan them and can see one with me in the background, talking to Merlyn.
I look completely bizarre from the side with my mask on, all slouched next to Merlyn with her wonderful posture.
Thankfully, due to my costume, nobody would know it’s me.
I spread some Chaumes on a cracker. It’s quite a punchy one, with base notes of my mother’s cat Eartha’s litter tray…
It’s disappointing, as Say Cheese normally gets it so right.
It isn’t really helping my two-day hangover either.
I push the tray aside and put The Good Place on, wondering immediately how anyone can be that tall and slim but have such big tits. Jameela Jamil is truly blessed.
My phone pings. It’s Merlyn.
Erica my dear. Any thoughts on what we talked about at the party? M
I know I am getting Chaumes on my phone but I want to respond quickly.
Hi Merlyn. I’ve been thinking about it. Are Yuvana Labs legitimate? I couldn’t find much about them online…
I can see that Merlyn is typing… Hurry up Merlyn, I need to go and wash this cat litter off my hands. Then the message appears:
Absolutely! I’ve been consulting for them for a while, my dear.
OK. And what about the procedure itself, will I have to stay in overnight?
Heavens no. It’s non-invasive. Well, only mildly invasive. And just one tiny injection to help you relax. But hardly any down time!
Well, that’s better than a month in hiding, I suppose. I’m not Linda Evangelista; I have Sainsbury’s to get to.
How long will the effects last?
It’s a reset. You’ll just start getting older again from your new age. You’ll quite literally turn back time!
I stop typing just to take this in, and for long enough for Merlyn to message again.
I understand you might have reservations Erica, but I’d like to offer this to you rather than the next person on the list.
Oh wow. I’m top of a list? Nice. Wonder who else is on it… Holy crap. Bet it’s bloody Cassia.
Can I ask who else you have in mind?
Cassia Carver is next. You know her from Beautique, don’t you? And then Imani Diamond, and Lily from @LuxeLooksWithLily.
My Chaumy fingers are sliding about typing as fast as I can. I’m not losing out on anything to Cassia Carver again.
Merlyn – you know what? It’s such a great opportunity. I’m in. Thank you.
That’s wonderful news, Erica!
One thing: it’s reversible right?
It is, although as far as Yuvana Labs are concerned, who would want to turn the clock forward again once it’s been turned back?
I’m not sure if I’m meant to answer that, so I don’t. I can see Merlyn is typing again.
I’ll send you some details for the pre-treatment consultation in the next couple of weeks. How tremendous, Erica!
Later still, I lie in bed attempting to sleep, listening to the baby next door crying, and wondering if I need the loo enough to get up.
But of course, now that I’ve thought about it, I’ll have to get up.
This is middle age: thirty-three per cent planning the next pee, thirty-three per cent avoiding cameras, thirty-three per cent trying to work out what terminal illness is looming based on some random pain – and the one per cent is reserved for one’s own particular weirdness, because I think everyone gets a bit weird after forty-five.
I, for instance, talk to the pigeons on my patio and, firmly believing them to be the same pigeon, call them all Douglas.
Maybe I’m too middle-aged for anything, even a nanobot, to restore my ‘factory settings’.
Maybe it won’t work. But maybe it will – and frankly, what have I got to lose?
Nothing’s going to change. I’m going to spend my last, what have I got, twenty-five, thirty years (who knows, maybe less) slathering on neck creams that I didn’t pay for that don’t even work, and googling local music teachers who will run a mile when they see my saggy old, not remotely Jameela Jamil, tits.
So frankly, dodgy or not, Yuvana Labs – you’re my only bloody hope.