Other People’s Marriages: A gripping and emotional family drama by Kerry Fisher

Author:Kerry Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800196421
Publisher: Bookouture

Steph

May 2008

A week after my fiftieth birthday, I found myself on a familiarisation trip to Finland. All the other travel product specialists were in their twenties and although I was used to being the oldest on most of the trips I went on, I just couldn’t engage with the stories of falling asleep on the train back from London and ending up in Brighton after a night on the cocktails. Or that women their age were doing online dating. I thought that was the preserve of divorcees in their forties. Why weren’t they meeting men in pubs and clubs? When I asked that question, they caught each other’s eyes as though I still believed in being a virgin on your wedding night and collecting embroidered tablecloths for your bottom drawer.

One of them laughed and said, ‘We do meet men in pubs and clubs but, you know, just checking out the ones we might otherwise never meet.’

I felt frumpy and ancient next to these women who seemed a world away from how responsible I’d been at their age. Though, of course, I’d been married for six years with a school-aged child by then.

I found them a bit vacuous, discussing who was going to buy an iPhone 3G when it was released and casting pitying looks at me whenever I fished out my BlackBerry. They never remembered their gloves and held us up every morning with a giggly ‘I need them on a bit of elastic like a schoolgirl!’ as though being disorganised was somehow endearing. Nevertheless, I was envious of their vitality, the way they laughed so easily, lost themselves in the joy of the moment rather than spoilt it by wondering how long an injury would take to heal if they stumbled while snowshoeing and twisted their knee.

The one saving grace was that our host, Ari, was about forty and also appeared to suffer from youth overload, shuffling in next to me at dinner and at the bar afterwards. And this evening, our last before the flight home the following afternoon, he’d been particularly attentive, all floppy dark hair and scruffy Nordic charm. He’d been catching my eye all through dinner. It felt good, astounding even, that he’d noticed me against the backdrop of these smooth-faced women with hair that didn’t have a wiry mind of its own. I experienced a pathetic twinge of gratitude for him being able to see beyond the magnolia of my middle age, for not being dazzled by these carefree beings who leapt on their snowmobiles with the recklessness reserved for those on whom no one depends.

I wasn’t sure when I’d changed from the woman who was always up for anything – paragliding, abseiling – to someone who started saying, ‘I’ll sit this one out.’ It wasn’t lack of courage exactly. More a concern about who would run my life if I couldn’t. Unlike me, Mal wasn’t going to trek down to be insulted by his mum in her nursing home on a regular basis.

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