in astonishment and possible disgust as I seductively pull down the latest lacy almost-there pink number from Victoria’s Secret to reveal one of my own.
Really? I thought most men like something there.
Well, there is something there. An arrow. And it looks sexy. If I were a man, I’d sleep with you, Hazel. And men don’t like it messy. They’re lazy. They like a challenge only if they think it’s achievable. They don’t like to forage for anything too long, Hazel.
Some men like a challenge.
You just wait.
Angie winks at me, as though she knows I’m about to be pounced on, tigerlike, by a prospective date as soon as I leave the room. I’m not convinced but say, ‘Thank you, Angie. You’re sweet.’
‘So, what made you go all the way, love?’ Angie asks, gently rubbing cream into my crotch while I try desperately not to get turned on. I’m not gay, but at moments like this, I wish men could stroke women more like women stroke women, if you know what I mean.
Not realising what she’s referring to initially, I pause briefly and then realising she’s referring to my decision to have a Brazilian wax, I answer.
‘Oh, I wanted a tidy up. Something different. I’m the big Four-O this year, so I want to change a few things. Take a chance, I suppose, and I might as well start here,’ I say, pointing to my crotch.
I look down at myself. My almost forty-year-old crotch. Not bad. Doesn’t look its age considering what it’s been through, but I don’t know what an old woman’s crotch looks like. Not the sort of thing you stare at in the changing room. Not the women’s one anyway. I expect men compare size but women don’t have that. I’ve occasionally asked boyfriends if women are ‘different’ down there. They’ve all said, they are. Shape, size and taste. Some hair is soft and downy, others, you could cut your chin on. Some taste, er, strong, others like strawberries. Yeah right. They’ve reassured me mine is lovely and soft and I taste wonderful, bless them. Not that I would believe any of it, of course. They would say anything to get good head.
‘A fine place to start the new decade as any, I suppose. Must say, you don’t look forty. You’re in good nick. You don’t have many grey hairs.’
‘I have highlights.’
‘I’m not talking about those on your head, Hazel.’
Oh, right.
‘Plus, you don’t have lines on your face.’ (Looks more closely at my eyes) ‘Well, not many anyway. Helps I suppose, you not being married.’
I smile. ‘No, happily divorced. Must be five years now, Angie.’
‘Yep, must be about five. Watched you go down two dress sizes, giving me a running commentary as it were. Spontaneously bursting into tears halfway through the facials. Angry one minute, sad the next, in mourning one day, full of excitement the day after. But now look at you. You’re constant, well, as constant as I think you’re ever going to be, Hazel, and you’re happy. You’re a right SARAH. Single and Rich And Happy.’
‘I’m not rich. I’m comfortable. Happy? Yes, I’m happy and happily single. When I had the energy to make space for a man, they couldn’t handle a single mum with a young child. Now Sarah’s all grown up and off to university soon, I don’t know if I want someone else to care for.’
‘They could care for you, Hazel.’
‘No, it doesn’t work that way, Angie. You end up caring for the man. They’re all little boys—whatever their age. Frankly, I can only see the downsides to marriage these days. None of the upsides.’
Angie looks at me like a mother looking at her child whom she knows is fibbing. She knows me too well. She knows I’m a divorce lawyer and a very successful one at that. When it comes to talking to prospective clients about their relationships, I find a negative in every positive if I want to, and a positive in something negative. So perhaps I’ve started to believe my own bullshit over the years. She says my views are warped and harsh and cynical. I say they are realistic and based on observation and listening. A lot. But I have hope. And my colleagues tell me that hope I have, that single ingredient, makes me human. I think it just makes me weak.
‘No boyfriends then?’
‘No boyfriend, right. I don’t have boyfriends anymore. I think when you’re over thirty they become lovers. How can you call a forty-or fifty-something-year-old a boyfriend.’
Angie looks at me again, giving me a wry smile. She’s penetrated my façade of ambivalence. The one I’ve become so good at nurturing and practicing over the years. She knows, Angie knows, I would like to meet someone, but it sounds so pathetic. That phrase ‘Dear Agony Aunt, I want to meet someone.’ As though I don’t meet another human being in my daily life. Of course I meet men. I meet loads of eligible deeply unhappy men. They also happen to be deeply and overtly embittered and at that particular time of their life, usually openly misogynistic. And the wanting to meet people bit sounds strangely adolescent or alien or both. And it’s taken up so much of my thinking time in past years. A waste of thinking space when there is so much more to do and think about and care about in this world—bigger issues, like, well, like world peace and the cure for cancer, than ‘wanting to meet someone’. I’m thirty-nine, for Christ’s sake. Not nineteen. Yet I want that singular selfish rush to the brain—and be honest with yourself, Hazel—to other parts of my body as well. That buzz of electricity when you’re within three inches of the person’s arm that I always misguidedly diagnose as love, and is the more short-lived but no less potent virus known as chemistry.
Angie laughs. ‘Yep, men are boys, some behave like babies, like my first husband—I had to do absolutely everything for him. My second was more like a toddler, with his alternating tantrums and sulking when I didn’t wear black suspenders and thigh-high boots on Friday nights. Most men are happy with fish on Fridays.’
She stops and smiles, realising what she’s said.
‘And my last boyfriend was in an eternal state of adolescence, angry with life and himself. At the moment I think I’ve struck lucky because I’ve got one who’s about the emotional age of six—malleable, does as he’s told, cute as a button and happy with his lot. But you’re a youngster yourself, Hazel. Always think of you as a free spirit, I do.’
‘I try to be. I’ve found focus and financial freedom in work I find challenging and enjoy and a happiness I couldn’t have imagined in bringing up Sarah by myself.’
Sarah is my teenage daughter. She’s seventeen, has lived with me all her life and is leaving for university in September to study French and politics and life. I will miss her. Correction. I am weeping inside at the thought of her going. But it will pass eventually. She added to my life in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I felt I had one more person on this planet on my side when I gave birth to her. Whereas when I married I felt I dissolved as a person. I even lost my name. But perhaps it was just the man I chose. And what was true of him isn’t of all men. I hope. As for Sarah, we’ve been a good team; I love her more than anything in the known and yet to be discovered universe. My teenage daughter, with her bright blue eyes and long shiny brown hair, in her Gap jeans and Quiksilver sweat shirt is grinning at me in my mind’s eye. She’s gorgeous and smart, but I’m biased. Thankfully, the A level board agree with me and they gave her grades good enough to get her into Bristol, where she says all the talent is and she can still have fun and get a fine degree. I will miss
