Jennifer broke off, half stumbling over an uneven bit of pavement. Wretched shoes. Then a bus whizzed past just as Karen was answering. It completely drowned out her response which forced Jennifer to say, ‘Come again Karen, I couldn’t hear you.’
‘I said where are you? Do you want to come round?’
‘Yes please,’ Jennifer wailed, putting one foot out onto the road.
‘Good,’ said Karen ‘Well just come straight away and I’ll open a…’
But Jennifer never got to hear what her friend was going to open (though forced to guess she would have gone with a textbook bottle of dry white wine), because at this point her phone was flying high up into the air and she was staring at it aghast, wondering why everything had suddenly gone into slow motion. At the same time, although she didn’t exactly feel it, she was also aware of the most enormous impact, of the most sickening crunching sound and of the metallic taste of fear, dread and regret coursing through her body which was now being flung skywards having been hit very hard by a car. For a brief moment, just as gravity was about to take command and begin Jennifer’s terrifying and brutal descent towards the hard ground and the bonnet of a Ford Fiesta, she was filled with an illogical, yet undeniable sense of embarrassment. For the thought entering her brain at that precise moment was that there was a strong chance that whoever was driving and/or an ambulance team were about to discover what she had on under her coat.
And that was the last conscious thought she was to have for a very long time to come…
Jennifer Wright hadn’t been entirely sure for a while now if she really liked her husband any more. As a result she’d been suffering from a sort of creeping, low-level anxiety for months. The thought of living out the remainder of her days in the suburbs with him terrified her, and she’d lost count of how many times she’d been struck by one solitary thought: Is this it?
To some degree, it was less a thought, more a feeling. She was only thirty-eight but felt like she was hurtling in slow motion towards middle age and decrepitude, while swept up in an unstoppable snowball of routine, malaise and domesticity. Lately, she could be in the middle of any number of mundane tasks, when from nowhere she’d be practically knocked over by a violent urge to run barefoot through long grass, dance till dawn (preferably on some form of narcotic), sleep in a yurt, or, failing that, to have the sort of passionate, filthy sex with a stranger that would leave her panting and covered in a film of sweat.
But Jennifer was a married mother of two, with a part-time job, and was fully aware, not only of how wildly inappropriate these yearnings were, but also how…impractical. There’d be consequences, ones she didn’t have the heart to deal with, and besides, these days, if she danced till dawn it would take her at least a week to recover and quite frankly they couldn’t afford the childcare.
‘Is this it?’ whispered her subconscious, again. The thought it might be freaked her out to say the least. However, at a loss to know what to do about any of it, she’d decided simply to wait things out, to try and remain positive, keep taking the Prozac and not to jump out of a window, for the time being.
Until one Friday evening in May that is, when Jennifer decided it was time to take matters into her own hands.
All relationships went through patches, she thought determinedly, clipping on her suspender belt and adjusting her newly bought black and red bra whilst manhandling her boobs into it. She owed it not just to herself but also to her children to try and make things better. Although she’d been hovering round the notion of what might happen were she and Max to split up, it was too terrifying a prospect to face head on as an actual possibility. And besides, after eleven years of togetherness she still loved Max. It was just a shame it was such a familiar, unexciting version of love, which occasionally had the tendency to veer off into violent hatred territory. The fact they hadn’t had sex for over four months wasn’t helping matters either.
Feeling surprisingly nervous Jennifer pulled open her wardrobe door so she could appraise herself in the full-length mirror that hung behind it.
Wow. She hadn’t looked this tarty in a long time. The evening sunlight poured through her bedroom window, bathing the entire room in a golden glow, highlighting her cellulite and the fact they desperately needed a new carpet.
At first Jennifer felt incredibly self-conscious, standing there, trussed up in broad daylight. Eventually however, she grudgingly admitted that she kind of got away with it. She’d always had an hourglass figure and these days it was probably covered by less flesh than it had been even pre-children. In her twenties she’d taken her figure for granted. Post-partum however, not only had she been hit with the realisation that actually she wasn’t immortal, she had also worked out that she was stood at a fairly major crossroads. One way led to elasticated waists, one-piece swimsuits and never being able to reveal her upper arms again, the other to still being able to look good in the odd bit from Top Shop, skinny jeans and the vaguely hateful yet better than frumpy ‘yummy mummy’ moniker. Terrified by the prospect of turning into her mother Jennifer had jogged determinedly in one direction, started doing boot camp at the park twice a week and stopped eating cake.
She peered at her face, wondering vaguely how old a complete stranger would guess she was. There was no denying she was in the midst of her fourth decade and yet it was hard to pinpoint exactly what it was that was different about her face now to how it had been in her twenties. Yet that difference was undeniable. She still had friendly, warm brown eyes but nowadays when she applied eye-shadow much of it disappeared into a crease she was pretty sure hadn’t been there before. Due to her weight loss she had good cheekbones and her thighs looked good, yet she had to make sure she didn’t lose too much weight or her face was in danger of starting to look gaunt. She had faint crow’s feet round her eyes and a bit of a frown line which had deepened visibly around the time her babies had become toddlers at which point there had suddenly been more to frown about. But, she had a pretty face and, on a good day, could still scrub up well. She still had sex appeal, could turn a head and be whistled at by a builder and her wide smile, good, orthodontically-treated teeth (thank you, Mum) and long, thick head of brown (dyed) hair counted for a lot. Only for how much longer was anyone’s guess.
Turning round so she could glance back over her shoulder and examine what her bottom looked like in her new very uncomfortable G-string, she decided that if she squinted she didn’t look that far off the girl she’d been when she’d first met Max. Screw it, she thought, fired up by a growing sense of confidence. She was old and wise enough to know that any normal red-blooded man wouldn’t care anyway. Rather than scrutinising her for imperfections, surely he’d only see the naughty underwear, the effort she was making, the invitation.
She drew the curtains. Better. Direct sunlight and partial nudity were best kept apart. Across the room her phone was vibrating. She tottered over to it in her heels. The display showed it was her best friend, Karen, phoning to check up on her.
‘I feel like a right old scrubber.’
‘Good,’ said Karen. ‘You’re supposed to. You’re about to seduce your husband.’
‘Oh god,’ groaned Jennifer, returning to the mirror to examine herself from all angles again. ‘I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I want to do it, truth be told. I’ve still got this week’s episode of The Apprentice to watch.’
‘You have to,’ Karen said frankly. ‘Not see The Apprentice, though at some point do, it’s hilarious,
