your life. But how am I supposed to have a husband, kids, dogs, an Aga and a house in the country without a man?’
‘You could start with the Aga and the house in the country.’
‘I would, except I think I’d die of loneliness.’
‘God, there’s no winning with you, is there? You’re just too bloody clever by half.’
‘How do you think I got to be Features Director of Poise! ?’ Vicky grinned.
But she wasn’t feeling quite so good about it at night. Lately, when she’d taken her make-up off she had been shocked to notice that tiny lines had started appearing around her eyes, lines that she’d swear hadn’t been there a month ago.
And talking of her eyes, the skin underneath suddenly seemed very thin. Now, when she had late nights, no amount of Touche Eclat managed to conceal it, and her skin seemed to show every drink, every odd cigarette, every vice that had managed to go unnoticed in her twenties.
During her twenties her weight had gone up and down like a yo-yo. If ever she felt her jeans were becoming ever so slightly tight, she would cut back for a couple of days and lose five pounds in the process.
Now those five pounds seem to be permanently attached to her stomach. She’s been cutting back for a month, and she’s only lost a pound and a half. At exactly what point in her life did diets stop working and, more to the point, why?
Everyone seemed younger at work. Not, obviously, Janelle, who was truly ageless – the joke being she had a portrait of herself locked away on the top floor of the office that was ageing far more mercilessly than that of Dorian Gray’s – and not Stella or Leona, who were slightly older than Vicky, but every freelancer seemed to be getting younger and younger, and the fashionassistants who came and went with every season were practically still in kindergarten.
Vicky was forever getting phone calls from freelancers pitching ideas, and as soon as she heard their bright, young, eager voices, she wanted to tell them to go away and come back again in ten years, when they had a bit more life experience and actually understood the demographic of their readers.
Some of them even had good ideas, but it was all about execution, and the brightest twenty-four-year-old in the world couldn’t understand what buggy envy was really like – that feeling when you were pushing your second-hand Peg Perego down the high street thinking it was pretty damn hot all things considered, only to pass three Bug-a-Boos that you could swear were sneering at your instantly inferior Peg Perego.
Admittedly Vicky doesn’t quite understand that one either, but luckily Leona is around to take care of any commissions that Vicky can’t quite get her head around – age being less of an issue than children, or Vicky’s lack thereof.
She swore she would never say that even the policemen seemed like children, but she thought it all the time. Just the other day a policeman had stopped her and spoken to her sharply for driving the wrong way down a one-way street (she had been genuinely lost and hadn’t known it was one-way), and she had to physically stop herself from echoing her mother and saying something like, ‘Show a bit of respect, young man’, for he truly did look twelve years old. I’m old enough to behis mother, she thought, as she drove off fuming, and then with a start she realized she really was.
The problem is that Vicky doesn’t particularly feel any older. She may have the lines, the lack of energy, the dearth of decent men, but she still thinks of herself as twenty-five. She still listens to Kiss FM, still wears all the latest trends, still thinks of herself as looking just like the fashion assistants.
When they talk about clubbing in Soho, holidays in Ibiza, Vicky wants to join in, feels entitled to join in, even though she has become increasingly aware that they look at her strangely, that they do not see her as one of them, that they think of her in a similar vein to the way
‘You could start with the Aga and the house in the country.’
‘I would, except I think I’d die of loneliness.’
‘God, there’s no winning with you, is there? You’re just too bloody clever by half.’
‘How do you think I got to be Features Director of Poise! ?’ Vicky grinned.
But she wasn’t feeling quite so good about it at night. Lately, when she’d taken her make-up off she had been shocked to notice that tiny lines had started appearing around her eyes, lines that she’d swear hadn’t been there a month ago.
And talking of her eyes, the skin underneath suddenly seemed very thin. Now, when she had late nights, no amount of Touche Eclat managed to conceal it, and her skin seemed to show every drink, every odd cigarette, every vice that had managed to go unnoticed in her twenties.
During her twenties her weight had gone up and down like a yo-yo. If ever she felt her jeans were becoming ever so slightly tight, she would cut back for a couple of days and lose five pounds in the process.
Now those five pounds seem to be permanently attached to her stomach. She’s been cutting back for a month, and she’s only lost a pound and a half. At exactly what point in her life did diets stop working and, more to the point, why?
Everyone seemed younger at work. Not, obviously, Janelle, who was truly ageless – the joke being she had a portrait of herself locked away on the top floor of the office that was ageing far more mercilessly than that of Dorian Gray’s – and not Stella or Leona, who were slightly older than Vicky, but every freelancer seemed to be getting younger and younger, and the fashionassistants who came and went with every season were practically still in kindergarten.
Vicky was forever getting phone calls from freelancers pitching ideas, and as soon as she heard their bright, young, eager voices, she wanted to tell them to go away and come back again in ten years, when they had a bit more life experience and actually understood the demographic of their readers.
Some of them even had good ideas, but it was all about execution, and the brightest twenty-four-year-old in the world couldn’t understand what buggy envy was really like – that feeling when you were pushing your second-hand Peg Perego down the high street thinking it was pretty damn hot all things considered, only to pass three Bug-a-Boos that you could swear were sneering at your instantly inferior Peg Perego.
Admittedly Vicky doesn’t quite understand that one either, but luckily Leona is around to take care of any commissions that Vicky can’t quite get her head around – age being less of an issue than children, or Vicky’s lack thereof.
She swore she would never say that even the policemen seemed like children, but she thought it all the time. Just the other day a policeman had stopped her and spoken to her sharply for driving the wrong way down a one-way street (she had been genuinely lost and hadn’t known it was one-way), and she had to physically stop herself from echoing her mother and saying something like, ‘Show a bit of respect, young man’, for he truly did look twelve years old. I’m old enough to behis mother, she thought, as she drove off fuming, and then with a start she realized she really was.
The problem is that Vicky doesn’t particularly feel any older. She may have the lines, the lack of energy, the dearth of decent men, but she still thinks of herself as twenty-five. She still listens to Kiss FM, still wears all the latest trends, still thinks of herself as looking just like the fashion assistants.
When they talk about clubbing in Soho, holidays in Ibiza, Vicky wants to join in, feels entitled to join in, even though she has become increasingly aware that they look at her strangely, that they do not see her as one of them, that they think of her in a similar vein to the way
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