Love...Maybe: The Must-Have Eshort Collection

‘Completely fabulous! Turning forty is without doubt the single best thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. By far.’

She shoots me this wry, sideways-on look that she only keeps for when I’m really talking through my arse.

‘Never go on the witness protection programme, Kate. You are without doubt the worst liar alive.’

‘Right then,’ I sigh. ‘In that case, today is probably the single most depressing day of my whole life to date. And I’m including my father’s funeral in there too, by the way.’

‘Oh come on now, it’s just another year, another milestone, with a brand new decade ahead of you to look forward to. What’s so bad?’

‘Amanda, as you of all people know only too well,’ I say turning to face her in the back of the taxi, ‘over the years, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy worrying about a whole lot of stuff that never even happened. Things like … would I ever be able to afford a mortgage on a home of my own? Would work take off for me and would I actually be able to support myself as a journalist? But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d somehow end up forty years of age and alone. On shagging Valentine’s Day. And the worst part is, it’s far too late now for me to do the slightest thing about it. I mean, if love and happiness were meant for me, wouldn’t they have happened long before now?’

‘Total rubbish!’ Amanda says warmly. ‘You’ve got a fabulous job that you love and that you’re completely brilliant at. And the only reason you don’t have a fella is because your career is your first, real, true love. Look at you, you’re not only the youngest, but also the first female editor they’ve ever had at the Chronicle! Besides, isn’t it far better to be on your own and independent, than with some git who’ll only mess you around? Who needs that anyway?’

‘Hmmm,’ I say more out of politeness than anything else, but deeply unconvinced.

‘Besides,’ she goes on, warming to her theme now, ‘if you really want cheering up, just take a look at me and my pathetic life. Every single birthday, I look back on the year’s work I’ve done, and you know what? This year, apart from one detergent commercial that I ended up getting cut out of, and two days on a TV game show, I’ve basically been sitting at home watching daytime telly and living off my ever-dwindling savings. While actresses years younger than me, with perky bodies and unlined faces get all the jammy jobs. Look at me, Kate, I’m nothing more than a washed-up old has been.’

‘That’s absolutely untrue …’ I tell her gently, but she barrels over me.

‘No hear me out, because I’m seriously having to face up to the fact that if I ever want to play a part within my own age group again, than I’ll have to have a full facelift. Bloody Botox! It’s only gone and raised the bar for all of us, hasn’t it? So now of course, if an actress my age is lucky enough to be offered any part, you still have to look young enough to be ID’d in bars.’

Ageism, I should mention, is a particularly sore point with Amanda, even more so since her agent told her that the only job offers she’s likely to get this year are either panto or else third prostitute from the left type roles, in rubbishy old cop operas. If she’s incredibly lucky that is.

‘But on the plus side,’ I retaliate, ‘remember that you did at least make serious money on that soap you were in. You’ve got a stunning apartment to show for it and you have the gorgeous Dave on your arm tonight. You’ve actually got a long-term boyfriend whereas I’m forty years of age on Valentine’s Night and finally having to face up to the hard, cold fact that I’m a man repeller. On the one day of the year where every garish red love heart I see seems to scream to me, ‘look at you, forty and alone!’

‘Complete rubbish!’ Amanda fights back. ‘Ok, so maybe Mr. Right hasn’t actually shown up as of yet …’

‘Or maybe he did, years ago, and I was just too young and stupid to recognise him,’ I say, thoughtfully looking out the window at twinkly heart shaped helium balloons looking back at me from just about every shop window. Meanwhile countless couples weave through the traffic making their way to already overcrowded restaurants to take their place in queues stuffed with nothing but more couples. Not a single singleton in sight.

God Almighty, I should be shot, stuffed and displayed in the Smithsonian as a wonder of the world. In a glass box that says ‘This is what forty and single looks like. Take note thirty-something women everywhere … and beware!’

‘Well, at least you have a proper, decent career that’s going from strength,’ Amanda interrupts my train of thought, in the ‘whose life is worst’ contest that’s now developed between us. ‘May I remind you that at aged twenty-one, like the roaring eejit that I was, I actually turned down a perfectly good place at RADA so I could possibly appear in the worst soap ever committed to the small screen? And if I had gone to RADA then who knows? I could be well on my way to being the next Helen Mirren by now. Or Judi Dench. I could have been a respected actress instead of thinking myself lucky to get offered guest slots on any old quiz show that’ll have me.’

‘At least you have a boyfriend, who’ll be on your arm when your turn comes to face the medieval torture of your fortieth. You’ll have someone to take you home, and help you to nurse your hangover the next day. Do you know what I just realised as you arrived to pick me up?’

‘What’s that hon?’

‘That if I ever had my time over, I would do things so differently. Re-prioritise. Not focus on work so much and really, actively go looking for my life partner.’

‘I don’t suppose all this is about James Watson again, is it?’ she asks, looking at me keenly as our taxi weaves its way through a traffic jam. ‘You know, the way his name automatically seems to crop up every single Valentine’s Night?’

‘No of course not, it’s just that … ’

OK, I’m making a pig’s ear of trying to explain myself, but what I’m really trying to say is that … I have twenty-three year olds who work for me and when they were handing over the helium birthday balloons in work earlier today, (bright red and love heart-shaped for V-Day, naturally,) I could see them all looking at me with pity in their eyes. You could almost see them thinking, ‘Yes, OK so you may have a great career, but you’re also forty and alone on Valentine’s Day and that certainly doesn’t make you any kind of role model for us.’

‘I wish I was twenty-one again, I trail off lamely. ‘That’s my birthday wish right here and now, on Valentine’s Night. Because believe me, I would do things so differently. And it’s absolutely nothing to do with James Watson, honestly.’

Although if I’m being really honest, it kind of is.

OK, I should explain, given that it’s a night when all my past failed relationships seem to flash right in front of my eyes, like the drowning single gal that I am. Because James Watson was my first boyfriend. My first proper, real, true love and I broke up with him because when I was twenty-one, I was offered my first proper job as an intern over at The Times in London. Which of course meant relocating to the UK. Yes, I could probably have kept seeing James and somehow made a go of things, but I didn’t. I went for the clean break option. Like the misguided moron that I was, I figured there had to be someone better out there for me and guess what? Turns out there wasn’t.

‘And speaking of people who wish they could be twenty-one again …’ Amanda mutters as the taxi pulls up outside the tennis club where we’re having the party.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, but instantly shut up when I see.

It’s Sophie. Our oldest and bestest mate. Or as everyone seems to refer to her behind her back these days, ‘poor Sophie.’ She’s just pulled her car in ahead of us and shoved her feet out the driver’s door to whip off trainers and put on party shoes, looking even more frazzled and exhausted than she usually does, God love her.

OK, just a few things you need to know about poor Sophie. The Sophie standing in front of us now is about as different from the Sophie we knew as teenagers as it’s possible to get. In fact to see her now, it’s almost impossible to remember a time when she was wild and mad and up for anything, devilment never far from her flashing blue eyes. Always doing something utterly mental, then daring to me to do exactly the same.

She used to have long red hair down to her bum and smoked from the age of about thirteen without ever once getting caught, whereas all I’d have to do would be put a single foot out of line to end up with a month’s detention. Every fella I knew fancied Sophie, they couldn’t not; she was just such fun and so completely reckless; even sitting on top of a bus with her was an adventure. I still have the school yearbook where she was voted, ‘girl most likely to do absolutely anything.’

But ‘the girl most likely to do absolutely anything,’ became pregnant aged twenty-one and the following year, gave birth to my beautiful God-daughter Ella. By twenty-two, she’d married Ella’s dad, a sound engineer called Dave Edmond and by age thirty, she had a total of four kids, all under the age of ten. Now, Sophie’s a divorced single mum, who works part time in Tesco and really struggles to make ends meet. Meanwhile her ex-husband has just begun to live with a part-time student beauty therapist, with naturally blonde hair and legs up to her armpits.

‘A student beauty therapist? Sophie had snarled at me at the time. ‘For God’s sake, what is there to study? How to rub cream into people’s faces?’

Poor Sophie. Compared with her, Amanda and I are living in Euro Disney.

‘I’ve never needed a drink so badly in my life,’ Sophie sighs as Amanda and I both hug and air kiss her. ‘If you knew the jigs and reels I had to go through with babysitters just to get out the door tonight? Never, ever, ever have kids ladies. If you feel the need to reproduce, just borrow one of mine for the weekend and you’ll be cured. Pure, visual contraception, that’s what they are. Honestly, I should charge people.’

My party is being held in the same tennis club where we’ve been celebrating every significant birthday I’ve ever had on every single Valentine’s Day all courtesy of my mother, who’s been on the organising committee since the year dot. She’s just inside the door handing out vol-au-vents and looking flustered, but instantly switches to a frown when she sees me clatter in.

‘Ahh the birthday girl!’ she says in a tone of voice that might as well have ‘finally!’ tacked onto the end of it. ‘Half an hour late love, nearly all the crudités are gone. And is that really the only thing you had to wear? Oh well, never mind, at least you and your friends are here now and we can start serving the buffet. Look everyone, she’s here at last!’

‘Happy birthday Kate!’ everyone calls out and I have to remind myself to act happy and pretend turning forty is the answer to all my prayers.

Most people here are family, cousins mainly or else distant friends who I’m almost embarrassed to see it’s been so long since we were in touch, or else Mum’s tennis pals who couldn’t get a dinner reservation for Valentine’s night so they decided to pitch up here as a least-worst option instead. All married, all with kids and all with far more interesting things to do I’m certain, than sit round here drinking warm white wine and eating cold chicken salad. All while listening to an elderly neighbour of Mum’s who’s been roped into gigging as a part-time DJ for the night and whose idea of getting the party going is to play Now That’s What I Call Music 20,000 on a continual loop.

‘You do the rounds, and I’ll get you a very large gin and tonic,’ Amanda whispers in my ear, bless her. So off I trot, shaking hands of people I barely know, thanking all and sundry for coming and saying ‘Thank you for coming … and happy Valentine’s Day’ till I’m half hoarse. Hours must pass, because the next thing I know, a heart-shaped Valentine’s cake is being wheeled out, the DJ is playing ‘Happy Birthday’ and … oh my God, I do not believe this.

There are forty candles on the cake. Forty. What is my mother trying to do anyway, blow up the place?

‘I’ll need help with this,’ I hiss to Amanda and Sophie. ‘Well, either help, or a fire extinguisher.’

‘Make a birthday wish!’ someone yells out from the back of the bar.

‘Easy!’ I laugh, grabbing onto the girls who are supportively flanking me, one to the left and one to the right. ‘I wish I was twenty-one all over again.’

‘Well, I’ll certainly second that,’ says Amanda. ‘If I could miraculously be that age again, I’d choose to take up that place I was offered at RADA, maybe even be working on the West End by now. Or who knows, even Broadway.’

‘Oh God, what wouldn’t I give to be twenty-one again!’ Sophie interrupts, ‘and never to have heard the name of Dave bloody Edmond. I’m telling you ladies, I would have surprised you all and ended up being such a career girl, not stuck on a till in Tesco, saying ‘have you got a club card’ till I’m blue in the face.’

You should just see us. Honestly, we’re like the Holy Trinity of Coulda, Woulda and Shoulda.

Then, before I can barely register what’s happening, my two strapping, rugby-playing cousins have abandoned their wives and are over to me, yanking me onto the dance floor and telling everyone to stand well back so they can give me the birthday bumps.

I do not be-fecking-lieve this. Every major birthday of my life, this pair insist on doing this to me and I absolutely hate it. So I politely ask/beg them not to, but they’re having none of it. I’m screeching at the pair of them to stop over the Black Eyed Peas belting out ‘I Gotta Feeling,’ but it’s too late. Next thing, they’ve whooshed me up into the air and bumped me back onto the ground – not very gently, I might add – then a second later, I’m airborne again, screaming for all I’m worth and petrified for every second of this. From a weird, upside down perspective, I can see Amanda and Sophie looking mortified on my behalf and bravely trying to get the lads to stop this bloody torture … and then …

It all happens in a split second. Whichever one of them is holding me by the shoulders accidentally loses his grip, there’s an almightily cracking sound as I whack my head off a table and then I crash the ground head first with a huge walloping thud.