How Hard Can It Be?. Allison Pearson

who is now just my Gynae.

      ‘Kate, pan it’s burn.’

      ‘Sorry?’ Piotr makes me jump. He’s right beside me in the larder.

      ‘Cooker it’s fire,’ he says. ‘Careful please.’

      I run into the kitchen. The casserole is belching thick smoke. Damn, I forgot. Don’t know what I was thinking.

      ‘Roy, really, why didn’t you remind me I was heating the oil for the Spag Bol? ROY! We can’t keep forgetting things like this. Last week, it was the bath that overflowed.’

      I would douse the pan in the sink, but there is no sink any more because Piotr has taken it out to the skip. Besides, isn’t there something about not pouring water on boiling oil, or is it the other way around? Grab the casserole and run into the garden where a light drizzle tamps down the sizzle and spit. Before going back indoors to start again, and heat up more oil and butter, I spend a minute drinking in the view. The leaves are particularly lovely this year, shades of fierce apricot and shy primrose from Nature’s Autumn Collection that continue to astonish. (‘Roy, please remind me to plant those tulip and daffodil bulbs.’) Yes, I’m prepared to concede that it might have been better to do the sensible thing and downsize. Not only can we not afford the renovations, until I find a job, I have also used up any remaining capital I had in my marriage. In some ways, a relationship is like a savings account: during the good times, you both pay in, and in the lean times there’s enough to see you through. Right now, I’m heavily overdrawn.

      I should have listened to Richard. (Perhaps you should tell him that, Kate; climbing down never came easy, did it? Stupid pride again.) I can’t really explain why I made us buy the house except that something in me railed against the thought of life contracting, getting smaller instead of bigger. Before you know it, you’re in a wheelchair-access bungalow in sheltered accommodation wearing incontinence pants. I’m already doing a little wee every time I sneeze. Sorry, but I did not want to ‘go gentle into that good night’. I wanted to take on one more challenge, if only to prove that I’m still alive and capable of thinking big.

      In the kitchen, Piotr reunites me with my mended glasses, but not before breathing on them and wiping them with a proper, old-fashioned handkerchief, which he produces with a conjuror’s flourish from the pocket of his jeans. I haven’t seen a laundered handkerchief like that since my grandfather died. As he leans in to place the specs on my face, I get a pungent wash of cigarettes and sawn wood. I’m so happy when he’s here because it means we’re making progress. I’ll definitely have a kitchen in time for Christmas. And because he lends – ‘what was it again, Roy?’ – that’s it: a desirable sweetness.

       Kate to Emily

      Hi sweetheart. Hope you’re OK. Just been making you Spag Bol for dinner. So sorry about your accident and your poor leg. Let’s cuddle up tonight and watch some Parks and Rec?

      Love you, Mum

       Emily to Kate

      I’m good!!! Can Lizzy & some friends come over? Don’t worry bout me Love u xx

      1.11 pm: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman over thirty-five in search of a mate must never reveal her age in a dating profile. At least, that’s what Debra tells me over lunch.

      I’ve just confessed to my oldest friend that I’m lying about my age to try and get a job. Deb reports that she does the same if she wants to get a man.

      ‘Seriously, you never give your true age?’

      ‘Never, ever ever,’ says Deb. Stabbing miserably at the last rocket leaf on her plate, she picks it up and pops it in her mouth before licking the dressing from her finger. We both ordered salad and sparkling water, no bread, because our thirty-year college reunion, which for so long felt a safe distance away, is approaching fast. But now Deb starts doing urgent, smiley semaphore at the waiter, indicating she wants wine.

      ‘What if you look amazing for your age?’ I ask.

      She gives a bitter laugh – a harsh, cawing sound I can’t remember hearing before. ‘That’s even worse. If you look good for your age you’ll probably be vain enough to give it away. So you arrange to meet up, he takes you for dinner, you have a few glasses of wine, candles, it’s getting romantic and he says, “God, you’re gorgeous”, and you’re feeling relaxed and probably a bit drunk and you really like him and you think “this one’s sensitive, not shallow like some of the others”, so you get carried away and you say, “Pretty good for fifty, huh?”’

      ‘Well, it’s true you do look fabulous,’ I say. (She is terribly changed since the last time we met, on my birthday. She looks so red and puffy. It’s a drinker’s face, I realise for the first time. Oh, Deb.)

      ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Debra says, wagging a cautionary finger. ‘So the guy does a charming, funny double-take and he gives a wolf whistle and he agrees that you are, indeed, incredibly well-preserved for fifty. No one could possibly guess. I mean, Totally Amazing. Then you see it. The panic rising behind his eyes. And he’s thinking, “Omigod, how did I not notice that? The lines around her mouth, the scrawny neck. She definitely looks fifty. And I’m only forty-six, so she’s an older woman. Plus, she lied on her profile”. Oh, waiter, waiter, sorry, can I get a glass of wine here? Sauvignon Blanc. Join me, Kate, please?’

      ‘I can’t, I’ve got Women Returners later.’

      ‘Then you definitely need alcohol. Two glasses of white, please. Large? Yes, thanks.’

      ‘And then what happens?’

      ‘And then he throws you back in the sea and goes fishing for a younger one.’

      ‘Well, at least you know he’s not the man for you if he’s going to reject you just because of your age.’

      ‘Oh, Kate, Kate, my sweet deluded girl, they’re all like that.’ Another mirthless cackle. Deb reaches across the table and taps me affectionately on the nose, which hurts a bit. It’s the part of the bone where Ben bit me when he was taking his first steps. I knelt down to catch him in case he fell and he staggered towards me like a tiny drunk, tried to kiss my mouth and got my nose instead. A tiny, tooth-shaped scar marks the spot.

      ‘What you don’t understand, darling, in your married bliss with Ricardo, is that when guys get to our age they hold all the cards.’

      (It’s the perfect opening to tell her how bad things are between me and Richard, but I don’t, not yet. I can hardly bear to tell myself.)

      Deb knocks back her wine with a complaint about the small measures, then reaches out her hand and pours most of my untouched one into her own glass. ‘A man of forty-eight isn’t interested in a woman the same age. Why would he be when he can maybe pick up someone in the twenty-nine to thirty-six category? A fifty-year-old man can still tick, “May want children one day”. What can I tick? “May need a hysterectomy if I keep bleeding like a stuck pig”? Anyway, cheers, my dear!’ She clinks both glasses together, hands me my almost empty one and takes several gulps from her own.

      I’ve known Debra since our third week at college when we got chatting in the bar and found out that we shared the same boyfriend. We should have been sworn enemies, but we decided we liked each other much better than the boy, who was doubly dumped and would forever after be known as Two-Time Ted.

      I was bridesmaid when Deb married Jim. I was godmother to their first child and chief mourner at the divorce after Jim went off with a twenty-seven-year-old broker from Hong Kong when Felix was six and Ruby was three. Deb feels guilty because Felix suffers with anxiety and blames himself for the break-up of the marriage. He has a lot of trouble fitting in at school and Deb keeps moving him (three times in the last five years), probably because it’s easier to believe the school’s the problem than your child. Deb often refers to Felix’s ADHD diagnosis as if