What Lies Between Us(13)

I push my goggles to the top of my head, leave the pool, shower and once I’ve retrieved my clothes from the locker, I find an empty cubicle. I peel off my black one-piece swimming costume and stand there, naked, staring at myself in the mirror. Someone has daubed the words ‘ugly bitch’ on to the reflective surface with a red marker pen. It comforts me to know they have lower self-esteem than I do.

The self-help books I’ve read advise you to take time each week to stare hard at your moles and wrinkles, cellulite, spots, lumps, bumps and stray hairs. Apparently, owning your imperfections is a valuable exercise in gradually accepting them as perfections. What a load of old crap. They’re all just ugly.

I grab my love handles then cup my breasts and hitch them back up to where they’re supposed to be. I’m not even forty and they’re like a spaniel’s ears. I dread to think what I’m going to look like in another decade if I don’t start firming up now.

Three months ago, when I plucked up the courage to stand on my first pair of scales for years, I peaked at just over fourteen stone. And at five feet four inches tall, I struggle to carry it off. I didn’t consciously pile on the pounds with greed. At twenty, when my body went through an exceptionally early menopause, the hormone replacement therapy that followed made my weight balloon. It’s only recently that I’ve decided to do something about it. And through healthy eating and exercise, I’m thrilled to have lost almost a stone.

I move my face closer to the cubicle mirror and use my thumb and forefinger to peel down my bottom lip and read what’s tattooed inside. Only I can see it; nobody else has ever noticed it, aside from perhaps my dentist and her assistant and they didn’t pass comment. It wasn’t professionally inked; the lines have bled over time and parts of it have faded.

I wish I could remember the name of the man who scarred me, but each time I try and put a face behind the needle, I draw a blank. The middle of my teens are like a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces to form a full picture. Sometimes it feels like I’m living a half-life, never knowing if what I’ve done today I’ve done before.

My weight loss has been coupled with a desire to update my appearance. It surprised Maggie almost as much as it surprised me when I turned up at her bedroom door asking if she could teach me how to apply make-up. I could have watched a YouTube tutorial or visited Boots and asked one of the overly made-up mannequins behind the counter to offer me a demonstration. But this felt like something she and I should have done back when I was a teenager.

‘I can show you how to do your nails as well if you like,’ she suggested, and I agreed. I returned to the room with a file and let her shape them and paint them baby pink. For a moment, it was as if we were an ordinary mother and daughter again. There were no lies or pussyfooting around one another, we were just two women enjoying a conversation about make-up.

It was only when I was leaving that I understood Maggie had palmed the nail file. She tried to pretend that she hadn’t, but it was easy to locate inside her pillowcase. I tutted at her, waved my finger in an exaggerated manner and took it back before she could do any damage with it. Then I stole her pillows as punishment.

Before I know it I’m changed and standing outside the Mounts building. I look at my watch. I’m too early for work so I take the long route in, passing the fire station, Campbell Square Police Station and the Roadmender venue. The latter is another place in this town that I know is tied to my youth but which I only vaguely recall. I think I spent a lot of time there watching music acts perform but I couldn’t give you any of their names. Well, with the exception of the one that changed my life. I often wonder if my best days might be the ones I can’t remember.

Soon after I arrive at the library, I assist a middle-aged, silver-haired man to compile his CV on one of the computers. While my client types with one finger and squints at the screen, a young woman with a pushchair and a child strapped inside it passes us. I leave him for a moment and gravitate towards them. I use the word ‘woman’ but the closer I get, the more I realise she can’t be much more than fifteen. Babies having babies. It might be her age or her fluctuating hormones that are causing a strip of acne to emerge and spread across her forehead. Her attempts to mask it have failed and her make-up resembles caster sugar sprinkled across the uneven surface of a cake.

The child is a little girl. She’s dressed in a green PAW Patrol sweatshirt and jeans, and she is clutching a bag of sweets. There’s a ring of white chocolate spread around her lips. She has a huge smile and just two teeth, one at the top and one at the bottom. When her big brown eyes lock on to mine, she bursts into a fit of giggles and I cannot help but pull a silly face and laugh with her. She seems clean, well nourished and happy, so her mum can’t be doing a bad job even at her age. It doesn’t stop me from resenting her for having this healthy, cheerful child and against all the odds, keeping it alive. It’s more than I ever managed.

I’m not ready to bring an end to this playfulness so I casually follow mother and daughter towards the magazine shelves. Mum leafs through the celebrity mags, stopping only to glance at the photos of people I’ve never heard of.

I like being around children but less so babies. I remember last summer when our area manager Suzanne paid us a visit during her maternity leave. She turned up with her infant son in a sling wrapped around her body. Had there been prior warning, I’d have booked the day off. I spied her just as she passed through the sliding doors, and I quickly slipped away and locked myself in the disabled toilets until mother and son left and it was safe to emerge.