Invisible Women Read online

  ‘Let’s eat first. Look, here it comes.’

  Justin was approaching with a large and sizzling platter which he placed with a flourish on their table.

  ‘Enjoy!’

  They stared at the mussels and langoustines, whelks and crab, bubbling in buttery sauce.

  Matt was frowning in disbelief.

  ‘But it’s . . . HOT.’

  Justin nodded.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, please be careful not to touch the plate! We used to serve a classic seafood platter, on a bed of ice, but people complained. As it’s a main course, they don’t expect it to be cold.’

  ‘It looks delicious,’ said Tessa quickly, anxious to avoid a scene.

  ‘Who complained?’ asked Matt, ‘I wouldn’t complain if it was presented on a bed of ice as it is supposed to be. As it is, I am complaining. If you’d put on the menu, “platter of seafood done to death beneath a blanket of sauce”, I would have chosen something else. Obviously.’

  The silent couple were both looking at them now and, beyond them, in the window seat, the short-legged blonde was giggling with her boyfriend, enjoying the spectacle. Tessa felt a stab of envy, remembering how insufferable the middle-aged were when you were young, with their boring concerns and fussing about things that weren’t important.

  Justin was doing his best to smooth things over.

  ‘I can bring you something else, sir, if you’d prefer.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Tessa, ‘it’s fine, really.’

  ‘Yes, please, I’d like to see the menu again,’ said Matt, then to Tessa: ‘What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s alright to complain, you know, you don’t have to sit back and take whatever’s dumped in front of you.’

  ‘I’ll stick with the seafood, thanks,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Don’t do that! This is supposed to be our anniversary dinner, let’s try and eat it together, not me watching you eat warm seafood, then you waiting for mine to arrive.’

  ‘Alright!’

  She turned to Justin, all appetite gone.

  ‘I’ll order something else as well. So sorry.’

  Justin went to fetch the menus and the other diners settled back into their couples.

  ‘Don’t say you’re sorry,’ said Matt. ‘Don’t tell the waiter you’re sorry because you’ve got to re-order because they put misleading information on their menu.’

  ‘Stop it, please! Please can we just not talk about it any more.’

  ‘Fine!’

  Matt put his hands up, as though making a huge concession.

  By the time their steaks arrived Tessa was beyond hunger, but she ate it anyway, good companion that she was. Companion was a word they once used to define each other, before they were married. They’d had a list of them, revelling in the clichés: Better Half, Significant Other, but Companion was their favourite, with its overtones of shabbiness and financial obligation: the drab spinster of limited means taking breakfast with a grande dame who couldn’t get anyone else to go on holiday with her; the single gent shuffling round the cruise ship ballroom with a wealthy widow.

  And here she was now, the official silver wife of this slick businessman in Prada specs who was tapping his index finger on his front teeth across the table at her.

  ‘Bit of parsley,’ he explained, ‘no, right a bit, yes, gone.’

  She wiped her finger on the napkin, ‘I always wondered why they bothered to put toothpicks on the table,’ she said, ‘but that was before we hit the reality of receding gums.’

  ‘Lovely conversation.’

  ‘It’s often what ends a marriage, apparently. You can’t bear to watch the other person eat. It happened to Kirsten; her husband suddenly turned round and said he couldn’t stand the noise she made when she chewed her food.’

  ‘It’s true, it’s the little things that get to you. Like Jerry, who ditched his wife because she always took her jeans and knickers off in one go, it drove him mad. And Anne, who divorced her husband because he couldn’t go to sleep at night unless her shoes were lined up straight in her wardrobe. He used to go over and inspect them before coming to bed.’

  ‘Lunatic.’

  ‘Bonkers.’

  They took comfort in these scenes from other people’s failed relationships which offered gratifying contrast to their own stability.

  ‘Not like us,’ said Matt, ‘still going strong.’

  ‘Don’t say what I know you’re going to say.’

  ‘The secret of our successful marriage?’

  He was fond of repeating it, usually at dinner parties to amuse their friends. She should have guessed he’d come out with it tonight.

  He raised his glass in a toast.

  ‘Don’t expect too much! Set the bar too high and you’re bound to run into trouble.’

  She agreed that people demanded too much of their relationships. But did he have to imply that the only reason they were still together was because they’d decided to settle for less?

  ‘You romantic fool,’ she said, clinking glasses with him. It would be nice to feel a bit more passion but they’d been together for decades, you had to be realistic. ‘Shall we have pudding?’

  *

  Upstairs, Tessa changed into her new pyjamas while Matt flicked through the sports channels.

  She slipped into bed beside him with a copy of the Daily Mail. Not her usual reading matter, but she’d treated herself at the service station and nobody would judge her here.

  Matt patted a companionable hand on the bulge of her tummy.

  ‘All paid for,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the screen, ‘Still, not bad for your age. Twenty-five years, eh? OOH, REF!!’

  She self-consciously pushed his hand away and flicked through the paper until a headline caught her eye: ‘Women feel “invisible” by the age of 51’. Beneath it was a photo of a sad-looking woman with a lined face. The article was the usual litany of laments: plummeting confidence, middle-aged women judged negatively, left on the shelf, blah blah blah.

  ‘Honestly, you’ve got to ask yourself where they get these figures from,’ she said. ‘It says here that two-thirds of women in their fifties feel completely unnoticed by men.’

  Matt ignored her and carried on staring at the match. She kicked him under the duvet.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  He looked round briefly and frowned at her choice of newspaper.

  ‘As if we need another bloody survey of women bleating on about what they feel,’ he said, turning back to the TV. ‘Too much time spent navel-gazing if you ask me.’

  ‘But what do you reckon? According to this, I’m well over the hill. Do you think I’ve become invisible?’

  Matt patted her tummy again.

  ‘Hardly! You look pretty visible to me. All eleven stone of you.’

  ‘Oi!’

  Tessa pinched him on the arm.

  ‘Ow! Only joking. I’ve already said you look good for your age, what more do you want?’

  Tessa sank back and thought about not being noticed. She remembered her indignation the first time she’d walked past builders and they’d stepped aside for her, instead of wolf whistling. The cheek! Then she’d rationalised it; here was a breakthrough for feminism, at last the sexual objectification of women was over. Who was she kidding? In one simple, middle-aged step, she had gone from possible sex object to invisible woman. She had joined the ranks of the great unseen.

  ‘Also,’ Matt added, ‘there are loads of good-looking older women. I caught Peter at work the other day looking at this website called Hot Women over 50 Years You Would Bang.’

  ‘You are so low.’

  ‘Wasn’t me, it was Peter! But then he made me have a look. Jane Seymour, Kim Basinger, Sharon Stone, loads of them in their sixties. And of course there’s always Helen Mirren. The ultimate GILF.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Helen Mirren. If only we could all look like her. Pity most of us aren’t stunning Hollywood actresses. Actually, when I think about it, I am always bei
ng ignored. Even at the deli queue at the supermarket, you can see the girl’s more interested in serving the yummy mummy behind me, while I’m dismissed along with the other apologetic middle-aged bags.’

  ‘Sorry, did you say something?’

  ‘Haha!’

  She snatched the remote from him and turned the TV off.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing, I was watching that!’

  ‘It’s our silver wedding anniversary, you’re supposed to be giving me attention.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  He snuggled up to her under the covers.

  ‘But only if you turn off the light and stop reading out depressing statistics.’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘And admit that actually you’re quite lucky to have me. Because, let’s face it, if we were both single again, I’d easily get somebody else. Whereas you would be just another invisible woman wringing your hands about the hell of midlife dating.’

  Tessa looked at him with distaste.

  ‘Who says I’d be dating? Maybe I’ve had my fill of men. Also, I’m not a hand-wringer. And don’t kid yourself, you’re not George Clooney.’

  ‘Just saying the odds are stacked against you,’ said Matt. ‘Apparently a woman over fifty has more chance of being hit by a bus than of finding a partner.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  Tessa turned her back on him and helped herself to her usual drug cocktail – cod liver oil and glucosamine with chondroitin, washed down with a sip of Evian. The menopause shelf in Boots was so irritating with its Wellwoman bullshit products flogging evening primrose with photos of laughing middle-aged women. What the hell had they got to laugh about? She reached to turn out the light and was pleased to see there was a text from Sandra, which always cheered her up.

  So did you give him one?

  She texted back.

  Yes. An invisible woman must hang on to what she’s got.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Don’t be surprised, if you have married for money, or position, or fame, that you get only money, or position, or fame; love cannot be bought.’

  Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

  Alone in her kitchen, Sandra swung open the door of her industrial-sized stainless-steel fridge. It looked like it belonged in a restaurant, but mostly fed just three careful eaters. She took out the skimmed milk and mixed it into a bowl of porridge, then into the microwave. She wasn’t bothered about breakfast, but everyone said you shouldn’t skip it, and porridge was supposed to give the right kind of slow-release energy to see you through your busy day. ‘Busy day my arse,’ Nigel had said when she had discussed this with him. ‘I wish I had your life.’

  Her daughter’s empty bowl was in the sink, traces of cereal already crisping up after her early departure to the ice rink. Sandra often wondered how she’d managed to produce a child of such efficiency that she laid her place for breakfast before going to bed. She’d watched her at it last night, lining up the box of Special K, putting the teabag in the mug, glass ready for the juice. ‘You’re marvellous, Poppy, you know that,’ she’d said, and Poppy had given her a patronising smile. ‘It’s just a question of being organised, Mum,’ she’d replied, tightening the belt of her dressing gown round her hard little body and twirling off upstairs to put the final touches to her history essay.

  As well as being a total babe, Poppy served the useful function of providing Sandra with an excuse for her life of idleness. Unlike her friends Tessa and Harriet, whose children had turned into adults, Sandra still had a reason to be home in the afternoon; she didn’t want her daughter to be a latch-key kid. Not much risk of that, she thought, stretching herself out on the daybed with her porridge, a copy of The Week and a couple of hours to kill before meeting the others for what they ironically termed a ‘catch-up coffee’.

  The Week was ideal because it saved you having to trawl through all the newspapers and offered the best bits in nugget form, ideal for her gnat-like concentration span. Sometimes it was hard to remember what a massive big-shot she had been. Her own PR company with thirty employees who all thought she was It. She was It, let’s face it; every big fashion house wanted to work with her and she was at the absolute top of her game when she sold the business. Nigel had begged her to give up work; she was pregnant with Poppy and didn’t take much persuading. It would be a life of luxury at his expense, she would reinvent matriarchy by becoming the glamorous head of a family of tousle-headed beauties. She wasn’t to know that her first child would also be her last. It should have been obvious she’d have an early menopause; she had passed every milestone ahead of her contemporaries and in a way it was a blessing. Bad enough clearing up the litter of plastic toys that one child scattered across her minimalist home, never mind the damage inflicted by a horde of them.

  So here she was. Sometimes she thought it might be amusing to have a job, but who would hire a woman who hadn’t darkened the doorstep of an office since the new millennium? And it would be too humiliating to start again from the bottom. If there were two words that depressed her, they were ‘entry level’. The world had moved on without her.

  Nevertheless, she was bang up-to-date with modern technology. Her home was awash with gadgets and when her phone rang, she could immediately silence the music flowing through the ceiling speakers with the lightest touch of one of the sleek silver controls lined up beside her.

  ‘Hello, Sandra, good morning!’

  ‘Mariusz! How are you?’

  Suddenly her morning had become more interesting. She swung her legs round and put her bowl down on the table, listening to his reply.

  ‘Physically I am in my house.’

  ‘That’s WHERE you are, I asked HOW you were.’

  ‘Sandra! I know my English is no good!’

  He sounded so down-hearted, she shouldn’t be hard on him.

  ‘No, no, Mariusz, you’ve made very good progress.’

  ‘Thank you!’ He was like a child, instantly brightening under her praise.

  ‘I’m leaving soon my house for big job in the letterhead.’

  ‘What letterhead?’

  ‘In the Surrey. And maybe I call by for small coffee.’

  ‘Aah, you mean Leatherhead.’

  ‘Yes. And if you like see my person, I call by?’

  ‘If you like.’ She hoped he did like. The thought of it gave her an unexpected fillip of pleasure. ‘In fact I need you to look at the bathroom tap so that would be good.’

  ‘Small problem with tap?’

  ‘It drips.’

  ‘No problem, I fix him.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And maybe, Sandra, it is possible you give me today one thousand pounds?’

  Of course, it all came down to the money. She shouldn’t flatter herself.

  ‘When you’ve finished the snagging list.’

  ‘Sandra, always you kill my person with this list!’

  ‘See you later, Mariusz. I’m going out at eleven so come before then.’

  She went through to the office to open the snagging list on the computer. Every couple of weeks Mariusz called by for small coffee, and to address the unfinished business of the building project they’d both rather lost interest in. She glanced through it on the screen, added the dripping tap, then printed it out and went upstairs to check her make-up. It wasn’t that she needed to seduce him – that was all in the past – but it was a matter of pride. She changed into a pair of tight jeans to accentuate her slim hips, and applied an extra coat of mascara and a touch of concealer to hide the shadows below her blue eyes. Not bad, she thought, fluffing up her hair in front of the mirror, that shade of blonde was definitely an improvement on her natural colour which had always been verging on mouse. Her heart-shaped face was nourished with expensive creams and did not yet require surgical intervention.

  Sandra didn’t regret her fling with the builder, though she knew her friends had been shocked. It was uncomplicated. And liberating, when the curtain poles were down in the bedroo
m and a dozen workers were prowling around outside on the scaffolding and Mariusz had asked her in a panicked whisper, ‘Sandra, quick, you have TOWELS?’ She smiled now at the memory of him jumping on to a chair and hammering her Conran Shop bath sheets up at the newly painted window to preserve their privacy, and then diving back into bed. It was fun, spontaneous, the complete opposite to everything else in her grown-up life.

  The bedroom was possibly her greatest decorating triumph. Here she had abandoned the prevailing off-white palette in favour of mauve walls and chartreuse-green silk curtains, interlined for luxurious bulk and combined with blackout blinds in a belt-and-braces solution to her husband’s insomnia. She ran her fingers down the fabric, recalling the market in Hong Kong where she had spent the morning choosing from a dazzling selection while Nigel was at his meeting. It was before they bought the house but she knew that wherever they moved to, she wanted this silk at her windows. Poppy was ten years old and it was her Easter holidays so they’d been able to fly out with Nigel on his business trip. Looking back, it was one of their happiest times as a family. She had taken Poppy to buy a Hello Kitty handbag, then they ate lunch overlooking the harbour where Poppy ordered a luridly coloured ice cream topped with a paper umbrella that she carried around for the rest of the day and arranged carefully on her pillow before going to sleep in the little bed that had been set up in the deluxe suite at the Peninsula.

  Through the window now she could see Mariusz arriving in his bashed-up van. He was always driving into other cars though he claimed it was the other way round, with a bravado that Sandra found attractive. She watched him jump out and run up to the front door, in a hurry as usual.

  When she opened the door he was in his favourite position, leaning with his arm raised against the wall, showing off a physique that you got from doing proper man work, as opposed to sitting on an office chair. He beamed at her from behind his incongruous wire-framed spectacles – somehow you didn’t expect builders to be short-sighted – and stepped inside, casting a proprietorial eye around the freshly painted interior.

  ‘Lime White, Sandra, very good choice,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder and sitting down on the window seat while she prepared his coffee. Thick and cloudy with grounds, she knew the Poles believed that filters were for pussies.