As Good As It Gets?

Enclosed: 1 torn-up cheque. Perhaps you could use it as confetti, when Fraser marries a more suitable (preferably un-pregnant) girl?

*

February 28, 1997

Letter returned to sender. No further correspondence.

Chapter One (#u3aab5124-5747-516d-9177-0bd49ea0189c)

Present Day

‘Hey, beautiful!’ the blond boy yells, nudging his friend. They watch, admiring, as the shopping crowds mill around us. There are more glances as we walk: some fleeting, others more direct. All this attention isn’t for me; Christ no, that hasn’t happened since Madonna vogued in a gold conical bra. Even then, it pretty much amounted to a bloke up some scaffolding yelling, ‘Your arse looks like two footballs!’ I’d adoredmy stretch jeans until that sole cruel comment killed the love affair stone dead. Not that I’m the kind of woman to take any notice of construction workers’ remarks. I mean, I’ve only festered over it for twenty-three years …

Anyway, of course it’s not me who’s causing virtually every young male in this over-heated shopping mall to perform a quick double-take. I am thirty-eight years old with wavy, muddy brown hair that’s supposed to be shoulder-length but has outgrown its style, yet isn’t properly long – it’s just long-ish. That’s what my hair is: ish. I am also laden with copious bulging bags, like a yak. Judging by the odd glimpse in mirrored surfaces, I note that I have acquired a deathly pallor beneath the mall’s unforgiving lights. I also have what the magazines term ‘a shiny breakthrough’ on my nose and cheeks.

The cruel lighting, of course, is not detracting from my daughter Rosie’s beauty. Leggy and slender, with a cascade of chestnut hair which actually gleams, like polished wood, she’s marching several paces ahead, lest someone might assume we’re together. Faster and faster she goes, on the verge of breaking into a trot, while I scuttle behind, tasked with carrying the shopping. Incredibly, Rosie doesn’t seem to notice the glances she’s attracting from all these good-looking young males. Perhaps, when you’re so often admired, you simply become immune to it.

I stop, dumping the bags on the floor and checking my hands for lacerations while she courses ahead. ‘Rosie!’ I call after her. ‘Rosie – wait!’ While there are no open wounds, I have acquired a callus on my left palm from lugging Will’s birthday presents through the mall. Sure, I could have bought them online, but when we stumbled upon a closing down sale earlier, I couldn’t resist grabbing a quality turntable, headphones and speakers (yes, I am transporting speakers – i.e., virtually furniture) at bargain prices.

At first, I comforted myself with the thought that my husband will enjoy unearthing his vinyl collection from the loft, and be able to re-live those heady, music-filled evenings of his youth. Now, though, I’m concerned that Will, who’s been without gainful employment for six months, might view my purchases as ‘something to fill your copious spare time’-type gifts – i.e., faintly patronising, and not something I’d have thought of buying when he was busy being a senior person with an environmental charity. It’s his birthday tomorrow; he’ll be forty-one. I have already stashed away a blue cashmere sweater and the delicious figgy fragrance he likes. Maybe that was enough. I don’t want him to think I’m festooning him with presents because I feel sorry for him … oh, God. Things were so much simpler when he went off to work every day, either by Tube to his Hammersmith office or off in his car to some marshy bit of London, with his waders and big waxy jacket stashed in the boot. He doesn’t even have his own car anymore. He sold it, saying, ‘I don’t need it, do I? So what’s the point of keeping it?’

‘Better for the environment anyway,’ our son Ollie added, in an attempt to cheer him up.

Through the shopping crowds I glimpse Rosie in her baggy red top and skinny black jeans which make her legs even longer than they really are. They are limbs of a foal, or a sleek gazelle. She canters past Gap and Fat Face with her hair billowing behind her before performing a swift left turn into Forever 21.

Please, no – not Forever 21. The shop is vast, almost a city in itself, with its own transport system (about fifty escalators) and populated by millions of hot-cheeked teenagers snatching at skirts in sizes that didn’t even exist (six! four!!) when I was that age. Size ten was considered tiny then. I’m what’s commonly termed a ‘curvy’ fourteen: neatish waist nestling between ample hips and sizeable boobs, which aren’t quite the blessing one might imagine. In the wrong kind of outfit, they make me look as if I have one of those huge German sausages – a kochwurst, I believe they’re called – stuffed up my top. Or a bolster, like you find on posh hotel beds. Those weird cylindrical pillows you never know what to do with and end up throwing on the floor. Chest-wise, I have to be careful with necklines so as to avoid a stern matronly look. Yes, a big rack can be sexy in the right context. Too often, though, it gives off an ‘I am unfazed by bedpans’ sort of vibe.

I peer through the enormous glass frontage of Forever 21. It’s packed in there, virtually a scrum, as if these highly-charged girls are terrified that the supply of sequinned T-shirts and iridescent leggings is about to run dry. I can imagine the pained looks I’d attract if I dared to hobble in with my sacks of stereophonic equipment, never mind tried to enter the changing rooms and try anything on. They’d probably call security and wrestle me out of the building.

I hover at the doors with my bags clustered around my feet, like someone who has unexpectedly become homeless. I’ll never find Rosie in there. She might as well have gone to China. Another woman, presumably a mother, loiters nearby, pursing her lips and stabbing irritably at her phone. There’s also a scattering of boys and men, all waiting, presumably wondering what the heck their girlfriends and daughters have been doing in there for eighteen hours.

After what I regard as an acceptable browsing period, I call Rosie’s mobile. No answer. I actually don’t know why she has a phone – or at least, why I pay the contract for it. It’s supposed to enable us to stay in contact. When she was younger, she’d constantly call and message me while she was out. These days, she texts me about once a month. They usually say ‘ok’ or ‘yeah’, although she does still put a kiss, for which I’m grateful.

A woman strolls by with a little girl who looks about seven years old. ‘Shall we go for ice cream, darling?’ the woman asks.

‘Yeah,’ the girl enthuses. ‘Can we go to that place where they sprinkle Smarties on?’

‘Of course,’ the woman replies, causing a wave of nostalgia to crash over me. How excited she is, out shopping with her mum, like Rosie used to be with me. I’d only suggested coming here so we could spend some mum-and-daughter time together, because I know she prefers shopping malls with their weird, artificial atmosphere and piped music to actual streets with proper weather and pigeons and sky. But I’d imagined that we’d at least stroll around together, and stop off for hot chocolate and cake.

My phone rings, and I snatch it from my jeans pocket. ‘Mum, where are you?’

‘Outside Forever 21,’ I reply.

‘Come in!’ she commands.

‘It’s okay thanks, darling. I’ll wait here.’ I would rather spear my own eye than enter the Emporium of Cropped Tops.

‘Mum, please—’

‘I need at least a week’s warning to go in,’ I explain. ‘I have to rev myself up for it and get special breathing equipment. I’m sure the atmosphere’s thinner up at the top, the fifth floor or whatever it is, where the underwear is—’

‘Mum, something’s happened!’

‘What? Are you okay?’ I grab at my bags, realising it’ll be quite a feat to carry them all while clutching my phone.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Rosie says.

‘Where are you exactly? What’s happened?’

‘You’ll never believe this, Mum. I’ve been scouted!’ What pops into my mind is the actual Scouts, which Rosie chose over Guides because they did all the fun stuff like camping and cooking on fires. She was a tomboyish, outdoorsy kid who shunned pink. She never used to gallop ahead, or spend an entire morning choosing a nail polish. ‘What d’you mean, scouted? Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah, just hurry up. There’s someone here from a model agency and they want to do pictures …’

Ah, that kind of scouted. Nice try, I decide, finishing the call. So a random stranger’s trying to sweet-talk my daughter with that old ‘could be a model’ line? I can imagine how that goes. All she has to do is come along to his ‘studio’, which happens to be a dingy flat with filthy net curtains above a fried chicken shop …

The security man eyes me in the manner of a suspicious immigration officer as I barge my way into the store. I stride up the escalators, barely noticing the weight of my carrier bags now.

I arrive, panting, at the summit of Forever 21 and scan the floor for a man with paedo glasses, smiling too much and telling Rosie she has a great future ahead of her. I’m fine – well, sort of – when boys of her own age look at her. Of course they do: she’s a lovely girl. I’m aware that teenagers are supposed to find each other attractive and, while there’s been nothing serious yet, she’s never short of attention from boys. I’m okay with that – truly. Honestly. Well, mostly … What I’m not fine about is the idea of some fifty-year-old perv with nicotine fingers and winking gold jewellery thinking he can take advantage of my daughter …

No sign of her anywhere. My hair seems to crackle as I push it out of my face, probably due to the static electricity generated by millions of nylon knickers and bras.

‘Mum! Hey, Mum, over here!’

I turn and spot Rosie, who’s waving excitedly. Beside her stands a tall, slim and elegant woman – late-forties perhaps – in a cream linen jacket and faded skinny jeans, her ash-blonde hair scooped up artfully into a tousled bun. Not quite the chicken-shop perv I had in mind, but we’ll see …

‘Hi.’ I stride over and look expectantly at the stranger.

‘Hi,’ she says, fixing on a wide smile, ‘I’m Laurie and I work for a model agency called Face …’

‘I’m Charlotte.’ I dump the bags at my feet and shake her hand.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she goes on, ‘but I spotted your daughter a few minutes ago. We’ve been chatting.’ She casts Rosie a fond glance, in the manner of a glamorous aunt, before turning back to me. ‘I really think she has the potential to be a model.’

‘Really?’ I wipe a slick of sweat from my upper lip. ‘Well, you see, she’s still at school …’

‘Yes, she told me. That’s fine, lots of our girls are. I love her look, the stunning blue eyes and dark hair … it’s very dramatic.’ She turns back to Rosie. ‘You have fantastic bone structure, sweetheart. I can’t believe you’ve never been scouted before …’

‘I’m not really sure,’ I say firmly. ‘We’d need to think it over.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Laurie says, addressing Rosie again: ‘How tall are you, darling?’

Rosie frowns. ‘Er, what would you say, Mum? About five-foot-eight?’

‘Yes, around that,’ I reply, noticing Laurie looking her up and down. This is more unsettling than the admiring looks she was attracting in the mall. She is sizing up my precious firstborn as a commodity, a thing, tilting her head this way and that, as if my daughter were a bookshelf and she’s trying to imagine if she’d fit in that corner behind the sofa.

‘I’d say more like five-nine,’ she observes, ‘at the very least. And you said you’re sixteen, Rosie?’

‘Only just,’ I cut in.