for a smoothie in the café of the new sports club.
Everyone is a member of the new sports club. For just as the women who are moving to Highfield are changing, so the town is having to change to accommodate them. The sleepy, country Connecticut town, just over an hour outside Manhattan, is having to expand, to cope with the daily teardowns of pretty, antique houses to make way for the 10,000-foot-plus new builds to take their place. It’s having to cope with the ubiquitous Starbucks, and not one but four opened in the past year, so now wherever you are in town you are able to hop out and grab a skinny grande latte.
Main Street was once filled with little boutiques, artisan shops, pretty cafés, but the chain stores have moved in, and now the women in town spend their days in Gap workout gear, much like women all over the rest of America.
Apart from the women in the League. They may occasionally wear Gap, but heaven forbid they shouldwear it to one of their monthly meetings, which are rapidly turning into unofficial fashion shows.
Amber, bless her, was completely unaware of this in the beginning. In fact, if she remembers correctly – which she tries very hard not to do given how mortified she still feels about it – she turned up to one of the early meetings in jeans, a black zip-up fleece (there was a chill in the air) and flat loafers.
Not that she would ever have been seen dead in clothes like that in Manhattan, but Amber has always been something of a chameleon, and so unsure of who the real Amber is that she’ll morph herself into whoever she thinks she needs to be at any given moment.
And she had taken her cues from the women at pre-school, who she quickly realized were not the same crowd who got involved with the League. Admittedly there was some crossover, but the women from school turned out to be doing this for purely charitable reasons – because they wanted to do some good in the world and not because they cared what they looked like, and thus they were relegated to the out crowd in the League, easily spotted by their everyday school uniforms of fleeces, clogs and shapeless jeans.
But Amber hadn’t known this then, had indeed heard about the League from one of the women at school, and had slowly moved her more glamorous Manhattan clothes to the back of her wardrobe as she had tried to fit in with the other mums by wearing what they wore.
At that first League meeting Amber had climbed out of her car and turned as she was halfway down thepath towards the front door of the house at which the meeting was being held, because she had heard footsteps behind her.
Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap. A short blonde woman in tight flared suede pants, super-high super-pointed boots, a fringed tweed jacket with a mink collar, and the Luella bag – the very one that Amber had been lusting after for a few months now – was walking up the path.
And Amber, Amber who had battled her way out of her blue-collar background, who had been a successful lawyer, who had had to fight more than any woman she had known, had been overcome with shame and inadequacy.
She had felt like a failure in her fleece and loafers, her understated make-up, and she’d wanted to turn around and go home but it was too late.
She had stood at the back of the kitchen allowing the other women – most of whom knew one another – to mingle, while she attempted to make herself invisible, all the while taking mental notes about what to wear next time.
It seemed that tight trousers with high-heels were the thing, little fitted jackets, lots of fur. Perfect hair, perfect make-up, and a great bag. Admittedly not all the women looked quite like that, but even the ones who didn’t looked like they were trying. Even at her first meeting, from her vantage point by the Sub-zero, Amber could sense the social game-playing and the hierarchies that existed in the room.
On the other side of the island stood a woman Amber had heard called Suzy. Suzy was clearly
Everyone is a member of the new sports club. For just as the women who are moving to Highfield are changing, so the town is having to change to accommodate them. The sleepy, country Connecticut town, just over an hour outside Manhattan, is having to expand, to cope with the daily teardowns of pretty, antique houses to make way for the 10,000-foot-plus new builds to take their place. It’s having to cope with the ubiquitous Starbucks, and not one but four opened in the past year, so now wherever you are in town you are able to hop out and grab a skinny grande latte.
Main Street was once filled with little boutiques, artisan shops, pretty cafés, but the chain stores have moved in, and now the women in town spend their days in Gap workout gear, much like women all over the rest of America.
Apart from the women in the League. They may occasionally wear Gap, but heaven forbid they shouldwear it to one of their monthly meetings, which are rapidly turning into unofficial fashion shows.
Amber, bless her, was completely unaware of this in the beginning. In fact, if she remembers correctly – which she tries very hard not to do given how mortified she still feels about it – she turned up to one of the early meetings in jeans, a black zip-up fleece (there was a chill in the air) and flat loafers.
Not that she would ever have been seen dead in clothes like that in Manhattan, but Amber has always been something of a chameleon, and so unsure of who the real Amber is that she’ll morph herself into whoever she thinks she needs to be at any given moment.
And she had taken her cues from the women at pre-school, who she quickly realized were not the same crowd who got involved with the League. Admittedly there was some crossover, but the women from school turned out to be doing this for purely charitable reasons – because they wanted to do some good in the world and not because they cared what they looked like, and thus they were relegated to the out crowd in the League, easily spotted by their everyday school uniforms of fleeces, clogs and shapeless jeans.
But Amber hadn’t known this then, had indeed heard about the League from one of the women at school, and had slowly moved her more glamorous Manhattan clothes to the back of her wardrobe as she had tried to fit in with the other mums by wearing what they wore.
At that first League meeting Amber had climbed out of her car and turned as she was halfway down thepath towards the front door of the house at which the meeting was being held, because she had heard footsteps behind her.
Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap. A short blonde woman in tight flared suede pants, super-high super-pointed boots, a fringed tweed jacket with a mink collar, and the Luella bag – the very one that Amber had been lusting after for a few months now – was walking up the path.
And Amber, Amber who had battled her way out of her blue-collar background, who had been a successful lawyer, who had had to fight more than any woman she had known, had been overcome with shame and inadequacy.
She had felt like a failure in her fleece and loafers, her understated make-up, and she’d wanted to turn around and go home but it was too late.
She had stood at the back of the kitchen allowing the other women – most of whom knew one another – to mingle, while she attempted to make herself invisible, all the while taking mental notes about what to wear next time.
It seemed that tight trousers with high-heels were the thing, little fitted jackets, lots of fur. Perfect hair, perfect make-up, and a great bag. Admittedly not all the women looked quite like that, but even the ones who didn’t looked like they were trying. Even at her first meeting, from her vantage point by the Sub-zero, Amber could sense the social game-playing and the hierarchies that existed in the room.
On the other side of the island stood a woman Amber had heard called Suzy. Suzy was clearly