rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Chapter 20
Jane’s twenty things you find out when you’re over Fifty
For all those in their fabulous fifties. And beyond …
Facing Fifty
Fighting Fifty
Nifty at Fifty
Shifty at Fifty
Fat at Fifty
Fit and Fifty
Fed up and fifty
Fucking Fifty!
They were all laughing like drains when we were writing the invite. So I tried to laugh too. Come to our Joint 50th Birthday …
Charlotte and Fay and Sherie and Roz. All four of us are hitting the half century this year, so it’s going to be a ball. We’ve been planning it for weeks. A big venue, lots of friends, banners, balloons, fizz and strictly no Oh-God-I’m-Fifty tears …
That’s what they tell me.
I am crying because that party is going to happen without me. I don’t know how this nightmare is going to unfold but I know in my heart it won’t end well.
I’m so afraid but I can’t bring myself to tell them. Sometimes I take a deep breath and my mouth opens but I always close it again. As if the very act of saying it out loud will make it real and I won’t be able to pretend any more that things might still be OK.
So each time we add to the arrangements, I have to keep smiling. I have to nod and look pleased and thrilled at the thought of every last bloom and fairy light.
I must be doing it well as they think I’m as excited as they are.
They have no idea at all what’s really going on …
It was Charlotte’s idea, of course. Charlotte loved any excuse for a bash and she wasn’t going to let this one go.
‘Makes so much sense,’ she announced, tossing back her mass of fair curls. ‘We pool our resources, friends and legendary organisational skills and put on an extravaganza.’ She threw out her arms as if to include the multitudes. ‘I’m thinking the pavilion. Broadstairs won’t know what’s hit it.’
Wine had been taken so immediately a committee was formed. Charlotte would be Chair, because traditionally she threw the best parties. Fay would be treasurer as she ran her own business; Roz quickly offered to take the notes, grasping an excuse to say as little as possible, until she’d figured out how the hell she’d manage this, while Sherie had laughed and smoothed back her expensively-streaked blonde hair.
‘And I shall sit and look decorative.’
‘There’s a change,’ Fay had growled.
‘You can be Artistic Director,’ said Charlotte decisively. ‘Colour schemes?’
As they fell to discussing the various merits of silver and black against burgundy and grey, Roz had felt the familiar tightening in her stomach. Now, three weeks later, as she looked at the notepad on her lap where she’d rapidly listed the latest ideas tumbling from Charlotte’s mouth for a party she couldn’t begin to finance, her anxiety deepened. She could barely afford the coffee they were drinking and Fay had just waved her hand for more.
‘We need to fix this date,’ Charlotte was saying, lounging back comfortably on the squishy leather sofa in ‘Le Café’, the town’s latest coffee lounge. ‘The pav is knee-deep in weddings, of course, in June but they have got a Saturday in July–’
‘We could always do a Friday–’ said Sherie.
‘But people who are travelling a long way might be at work till six.’ Roz smiled tightly. ‘Some of us have fixed hours!’
‘The Saturday is the 28th,’ said Charlotte. ‘Shall I book it then?’
‘Depends who wants to wait and who wants to do it early,’ said Fay briskly.
Charlotte’s birthday was just four weeks away
