Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Linda Kelsey

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  5 Spot

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

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  5 Spot is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.

  The 5 Spot name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: March 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54512-9

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Birthday Blues

  Office Politics

  Neighborhood Watch

  The Best-laid Plans

  Body Issues

  An American in Paris

  PART TWO

  Midsummer Madness

  Dog-Day Afternoons

  An American in London

  Pleasure and Pain

  Home and Away

  Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

  Christmas Already

  Paradise Mislaid

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Praise for

  FIFTY IS NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD

  “Funny, wise, and proof that the perfect heroine doesn’t have to be a chardonnay-swilling thirtysomething, this made me laugh and weep from start to finish. Linda Kelsey has the knack of making you care about her characters and she deals with huge issues with the lightest touch. I wish I’d written this!”

  —Cathy Kelly, author of Past Secrets

  “Bridget Jones for grown-ups! … Women ‘of a certain age’ will relate to Hope as she struggles to make sense of her life. An enjoyable holiday read.”

  —My Weekly

  “The novel is fun and frothy and very good.”

  —Evening Standard (London)

  “A witty, involving novel.”

  —Easy Living

  “Funny, perceptive—I absolutely loved it.”

  —Penny Vincenzi, author of An Absolute Scandal

  “Compulsive and poignant with well-drawn characters.”

  —Catherine Alliott, author of A Crowded Marriage

  “This is a coming-of-age novel with a difference. The age in question is fifty, which these days is arguably more difficult to handle than those awkward teenage years. Wise, witty, and wonderful.

  —Sue Peart, You magazine

  For Christian

  Prologue

  MAY 2003

  Just as I was about to get it right, at the very moment I knew we were on the road to recovery, Jack walked out. I’d just gotten home from three days in Paris, three days that had changed me in ways I couldn’t possibly have predicted. Olly had gone upstairs to do some last-minute revision for his A levels. Or so he said. His sudden studiousness, even at this eleventh hour, was suspicious. More likely, he’d gone upstairs to get away from me. Or to download songs onto his iPod. Or to surf for porn. Or to do whatever eighteen-year-olds do behind the closed door of their bedroom. I’m being unkind. But then we had just had a major row. I’m not sure who started it.

  I’d planned the seduction of my husband of twenty years all the way from Gare du Nord to Waterloo. As soon as I’d cleared away the dishes, my femme-fatale act would begin. I was already tingling.

  Jack was hovering.

  “What is it, Jack?” I asked, looking up over my shoulder from the saucepan I was scrubbing. “You look like a kid in nursery school, trying to catch the teacher’s attention. Too timid to speak, are we?” I grinned and chucked him mockingly under the chin with my rubber glove, depositing soap suds on his stubble.

  I knew instantly it was the wrong thing to have done. I had been planning to seduce him, not eat him alive.

  “Well spotted, Hope, that’s exactly how you make me feel.”

  “But I was joking, Jack.”

  “Maybe you were, but I’m not.” Jack brushed away the suds with the back of his hand and breathed in deeply, as though bracing himself for a blow.

  And then he let me have it. “I can’t take it anymore, Hope. I can’t take you anymore. Not your cynicism. Not your selfishness. Not your belief that you’re the only woman in the universe who has had to endure the humiliation of turning fifty. Or your self-pity. Or your sniping at me. Or the way you sabotage yourself with Olly. Or how you think you can challenge your mother to explain fifty years of bad parenting in a single afternoon, just because you’re in the mood for an answer. And the fact that you freeze whenever I come near you. For the first time in our lives together, you’ve had six full months of opportunity to make it right between us. But it was all too much effort for you. Well, now it’s all too much effort for me. I’ve had enough. It was never any secret that all these years I’ve supported you more than you’ve supported me. But I didn’t mind any of that. Because despite your success, you needed boosting far more than I ever did. But I’ve had it. That’s it. Finished. I’m moving out.”

  “Jack—”

  “No, Hope, not now, I’m too weary to allow this to escalate into another row.”

  He looked weary. So weary. Weary, ashen and old. For the first time, Jack, my rock, fifty-two and as fit as a man of thirty, looked old.

  “There’s a small flat above the clinic, and it’s available, and that’s where I’m going,” he went on.

  “Please, Jack, please, just one thing. Does Olly know?”

  “Yes, Hope, he does know.”

  “And?”

  “And he doesn’t like it, but he understands.”

  “But that’s unforgivable. How could you tell him before you’ve spoken to me about it? Before we’ve had a chance to discuss it?”

  “That’s typical, Hope. I tell you I’m leaving, and you’re concerned only about who comes first in the pecking order. It’s irrelevant. If I could actually speak to you about anything at all without it turning into a row or a monologue about how sorry you feel for yourself, then we’d never have gotten to this point.”

  I turned away for a moment and stared into the sink, as though the grease floating on the surface of the water between the suds might provide an explanation.

  “Jack, is there someone else?”

  But Jack had already left the room.

  What use now for the Sabbia Rosa lingerie I’d bought on the Rue des Saints-Pères? I tried to give the saucepan my full attention, scrubbing at it with steel wool. With slow deliberation, I lifted the sopping scourer from the sink, squeezed it free of water and soap, and began to drag it along the inside of my left arm, bare except for the rubber glove. Again and again, back and forth, I scraped it along the soft skin of my inner arm, watched the scratches and the teeny pinpricks of blood appear. Then I leaned back over the sink and retched, vomiting chicken and ratatouille into the already unctuous water. My head was too heavy to lift. I don’t know how long I stayed in that position, watching one tiny and forlorn tear after another plop into the debris, plop, plop, a drop at a time, like a tap in need of a new washer.

  Did I deserve this? Looking back over the past six months, I think perhaps I did …

  PART ONE

  Birthday Blues

  FIVE MONTHS EARLIER, NEW YEAR’S DAY 2003, LATE AT NIGHT

  He’
s on me and in me. If a Peeping Tom up a ladder were to shine a torch through the window of our bedroom, he would think he’d struck gold. Hope LyndhurstSteele and Jack Steele, unmistakably mid-coitus. But he’d be wrong. Appearances can be deceptive. I’m not mid-anything. Only Jack is laboring away. Well, I suppose I’m doing something. I’m thinking, after all. But my mind—as so often these days—is elsewhere. My body has been embalmed, while my brain is turbo-charged. A question keeps forming and re-forming in my head. IS … THIS … IT? IS … THIS … REALLY … IT?

  And I don’t mean just the sex, although that matters. It matters a lot. I mean my whole life. Why does it feel so—over? So far, so very good. And now, suddenly, so over. I have no right to feel this jaded.

  I really must try to concentrate. Even after almost twenty years, Jack’s a sensitive lover, and he can always spot when I’m not paying attention. But with any luck, he won’t notice the fractional shifting of my head that allows me to see the LED on my alarm clock, illuminating the time at 11:53. It’s a matter of honor—Jack’s honor, that is—that we make love on my birthday, which happens to be today, January 1. With only seven minutes to go until it’s over, he has a deadline to meet. Sex on special occasions is one of Jack’s quirks. My birthday. His birthday. The anniversary of the day we met. The anniversary of the day our son was conceived (Jack is very precise with dates). Our wedding anniversary. Christmas, Jewish New Year, Chinese New Year, and Divali. Well, the Jewish New Year, anyway. And quite a few times in between. But who’s counting?

  I’ve been dreading this birthday for months. Now that it’s almost over, instead of feeling the relief that should come from realizing that any given birthday is simply another day, I feel increasingly agitated, with little knots of nervousness gnawing at my solar plexus. As though something dreadful is about to happen. Something in addition to the one dreadful thing that’s already happened.

  I forgot to mention the F-word. The F-word. Not that F-word. How about F is for fuming? F is for flabbergasted. F is for effing fifty! And now, bitch that I am, F is for flaccid. Jack clocked what was going on, as I knew he would. Making love to an embalmed woman is few men’s idea of fun. And necrophilia definitely doesn’t feature in Jack’s erotic repertoire.

  He’s withdrawing. I’ve long since withdrawn. Jack looks at me, more quizzical than cross. “And where do you go to, my lovely, when you’re alone in your bed?” Peter Sarstedt. Jack’s a sucker for a good lyric.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” I reply. “The party. A new year. Being fifty. Wondering where on earth we go from here. I guess it’s all been a bit much. But you’ve been brilliant.”

  “Never mind, old girl, you’ll soon get used to it.” He kisses me gently on the cheek and squeezes my hand briefly as he rolls over to his side of the bed. “Sleep tight.”

  I turn onto my side, too. We’re back to back, with a couple of feet between us. Or maybe the Atlantic Ocean. But it’s not Jack, it’s me. It’s my fault, this growing gulf. I am so tired. I fall into an uneasy sleep.

  THE PREVIOUS MONTH, DECEMBER 2002

  The party had been Jack’s idea. “What’s to celebrate?” I’d countered curtly when he suggested it. Honestly, I didn’t used to be this grumpy.

  “Come on, Hope, don’t be such a misery. Just think of it as a New Year’s Eve party, which it will be, a not–birthday party that happens to begin the night before your birthday. By the time it gets to midnight, everyone will be too drunk to remember that half-a-century Hope has become eligible for HRT.”

  “It’s a blessing you never planned a career as a salesman. You wouldn’t earn a penny in commission.”

  “Okay, look at it this way. If we have a really big bash, Claire will come from Australia and Saskia from Rome. And so will the rest of the clan. I could take you on a cruise, if you’d prefer.”

  “A cruise! Very funny. I’d rather slit my throat. In fact, I’d rather slit your throat.”

  Jack was grinning, so I knew he didn’t really mean it about the cruise. What clinched it as far as the party was concerned was the thought of all my émigré best friends turning up at the same time. I’m only moderately political, but there are two things that could get me signed up for an anti-globalization campaign. One: the fact that Starbucks cappuccino sucks; the other: that so many of my friends have abandoned England for a better life elsewhere. Thank God for e-mail.

  But I think it went deeper than that, this agreeing to a party that I didn’t really want. I’m hardly the doormat type, so usually, when I say no, I mean it. The weird thing is, I’m not sure what I want anymore. Over these past few months, I’ve been suffering from a kind of mental vertigo. A sense of spinning, of disequilibrium, but entirely in the mind.

  Take the business of confidence, for example. I spent the first thirty years of my life trying to acquire some confidence. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Taking courses to learn how to be assertive. Forcing myself to walk into crowded rooms alone without running straight out again. I spent the next almost twenty years enjoying that hard-won self-assurance. And now? Gone. Kaput. Like I’m the victim of a smash-and-grab attack. How on earth did this happen? If I’m being truthful, I can’t even decide in the morning what to wear for work or what to cook for dinner. As for my job, my precious career, I keep wondering if I’m good enough. And if I even care that much anymore. Can I blame it all on the big 5-0?

  “Officer,” I want to shout at every passing policeman. “I’ve been robbed.”

  “Sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I imagine the reply. “What did they take?”

  “Just my confidence, Officer. Probably not very valuable, as far as you’re concerned. But it meant a lot to me.”

  At least I still had the wherewithal to insist on conditions. I refused to allow any mention of the birthday on the invites, knowing all along it was a hopeless cause and Jack was bound to be briefing everyone behind the scenes. But I did make him promise no speeches, no cake, no male strippergrams. And he’s a man of his word.

  “Jack, why are you so keen to have a party?”

  “I think it will do you good. Remind you that life’s for living. You haven’t been yourself for months.”

  Exactly. Jack got it in one. I’ve forgotten who myself is.

  “You’re right, my love. If we’re going to do it, let’s pull out all the stops and make it the best party ever,” I said. “After all, it’s the only … the only”—I was going to say the only fiftieth birthday I would ever have, but the words wouldn’t come out—“the only New Year’s Eve party we’re likely to have for some time,” I finished feebly.

  “Champagne,” said Jack, saving me.

  “Laurent-Perrier pink champagne,” I countered, perking up a bit.

  “Martinis,” Jack added. “With olives.”

  “Cosmopolitans for the girls,” I suggested, practicing a pout but sounding more like Peggy Mitchell from the Square than Samantha on Sex and the City. Still, I was getting into the swing of it.

  “Mojitos,” interjected a gravelly voice entering the kitchen. “I’ll do the cocktails. And if it means free booze, James and Ravi will probably help, too. Just so long as when things get really gross—like by the time the hall is clogged up with walkers—you don’t mind us saying good night to the corpses and moving on.”

  Olly loped over and around me, wrapping me from behind in his skinny arms and planting a big smacker of a kiss on the side of my neck. My darling boy. Seventeen years old and six feet to my five feet seven (unless I’ve shrunk a bit lately, which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility). He’s still capable of unsolicited hugs and affection when I’m not annoying the hell out of him, which, according to Olly, is most of the time.

  “Mmm, talking of Ravi,” I mused, “I feel a theme coming on. There’s certainly not enough room in the house, so we’ll need a tent. A tent with heaters. Otherwise we’ll all freeze to death. Although, come to think of it, preserving our increasingly ancient friends in a cryology experiment might not be such a ba
d idea.”

  “Yeah, absolutely fascinating, but what’s cryology, and what’s all this got to do with Ravi?”

  “Well, what I really fancy is a cross between a Moroccan souk and Monsoon Wedding. I can picture it. The whole tent lined with beautiful jewel-toned fabrics, like something out of The Arabian Nights …”

  “Look, I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I’ve places to go, people to see. Do you think you could get to the point?”

  “I was only wondering if Ravi’s mum might know where to get cheap sari material.”

  “Muuum!” Olly changes moods as easily as flicking a light switch. “I do NOT, do you hear, NOT, want you ringing Ravi’s mum.”

  “But I thought I might invite her to the party.”

  “You hardly know her, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Olly, language check.” Jack speaking.

  “She swears all the time. What do you call it, Dad? Swearing like a trooper? You guys are such hypocrites. And don’t you have enough friends already without getting together with my mates’ mums all the time? It’s so creepy. I know you sit around yabbering about us, trying to gather information to use against us.”

  My eyes fixed on the impressive array of buffed and sharpened kitchen knives that dangle from the magnetic metal strip behind the cooker. Did Medea commit infanticide with a pointy knife? Or was it a blunt instrument?

  “Forget it, Olly.” I was trying desperately not to lose it. “I’ll sort it on my own. Forget I even mentioned it.”

  “Anything to eat?” asked the boy, flicking the switch again. “I’m starved … Shit, I’ve just realized something. You’re going to be fifty, aren’t you? Fifty! That’s what this party is really all about. We’re going to have to all club together and buy you a face-lift. Last night James and I were watching this hilarious program, Makeover Mayhem or something. Apparently, it’s what every fifty-year-old wants. A new face. How much do these things cost, anyway? Can you afford it? Will I still get to go on my gap year? You did promise you’d pay half. Will you look surprised all the time, like Anne Robinson?”