Page 78 of Always Alchemy

Now I sit right on it, my back straight and legs crossed, as we prepare for our segment to kick off after the transition back from regional news. I’m feeling good. My husband felt the need to fuck me pretty damn hard this morning, to—in his words—remind you to own that fucking show and remind everyone how damn hot women can be at fifty.

It worked.

I’m in a simple black Prada shift dress that works well against the tomato-red couch, with my favourite matching Chanel cuffs on my wrists. My lips are red. My hair isimmaculate. And my legs are tan and bare except for some light-reflecting leg makeup, a fact I’m sure will have a lot of viewers calling in to complain about. God forbid an almost-fifty-year-old-woman should bare her legs on national television. The indecency!

Verity and I grin conspiratorially at each other as Tom pats his hair. He’s a few years younger than me, but I can see the heavy contouring the makeup department has applied to strengthen his somewhat weak jawline.

Verity looks fantastic, as usual. She always presents this segment in athleisure wear as a signal of its wellness focus. Her makeup is glowy and her auburn hair bouncy. She’s an excellent advertisement for the lifestyle she espouses. Maddy hooked me up with her a couple years ago when I was feeling totally wiped, and we’ve been buddies ever since.

They count us down, and Verity and Tom turn to Camera Three.

‘Welcome to your weekly Vitality with Verity slot with Verity Weir-Chamberlain and Tom Daniels,’ she says with a wide smile at the camera.

Tom takes over with what a bunch of us at the Beeb call hishousewife smile,looking intently into the camera as he lowers his voice to a practiced level of velvet.‘Our special guest this Friday needs no introduction. Aida Russell is a veteran award-winning broadcast journalist for the BBC. She has spent the past three decades bringing us incisive political coverage. She’s best known for her hard-hitting interview style and?—’

‘For famously marrying an enlightened younger man with abs you could bounce a pound coin off,’ Verity cuts in. I can’t help it. I laugh out loud. Cal will fucking love that.

Tom gives her a disapproving look and clears his throat pointedly.

Verity smirks before continuing. ‘As Aida prepares to celebrate her fiftieth birthday next week, we’ll be chatting with her about everything it takes not only to survive at this age but to thrive.’

‘Let’s start with the question we ask all our guests,’ Tom cuts in. ‘Aida, what do you eat for breakfast?’

I smile sweetly at him.My husband’s huge dick—this morning, anyway.‘Politicians, mainly.’

Verity guffaws. Tom smiles politely. ‘No, but really.’

I sigh. Geez, he’s hard work. I explain, as briefly as I can, how I try to hold off on breakfast during the oestrogen-dominant first half of my cycle but make sure I incorporate eggs and pulses during the second half. ‘That gets harder to manage as perimenopause evolves and my cycle gets less regular,’ I add, partly because it’s an important point—I don’t want any women shaming themselves over any perceivedshoulds—but mainly to make Tom squirm.

Sure enough, he shifts on his seat. ‘Excellent, excellent,’ he croons, adjusting his hair.

‘I’m glad you mentioned perimenopause,’ Verity says. ‘We may as well jump right into it. It can be a bloody nightmare for a lot of women. Can I ask how you’ve found it?’

‘Of course.’ I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say here, because this is a huge platform for a fundamental message. ‘I personally found it horrific, especially the early part, oddly. I think that was because I didn’t actually know what was happening to me. I wasn’t armed, so I couldn’t advocate for myself, and I didn’t understand the causes of my symptoms. I honestly thought I was losing my mind. Once I got help, I was able to build a toolbox of treatments and coping mechanisms.’

I uncross and recross my legs. ‘I haven’t said this publicly before, but the real reason I came off of live news for a couple years was because the brain fog had gotten so bad that I would get awful anxiety whenever I went on air. I’d be interviewing someone and I’d forget the next question I had lined up by the time they’d finished their answer. It was terrifying.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Verity says. ‘That must have been horrific. Do you think you’ve got a handle on it now?’

‘Yeah,’ I nod slowly. ‘My HRT has helped a lot, as has improving my diet—it’s a lot more anti-inflammatory these days. My husband is super interested in nutrition, and he’s an awesome cook, so I’ve gotten healthier, too. I just figure at my age that I need to eliminate all the headwinds I can, you know? I can’t weigh myself down any more than these hormonal changes are already doing.’

‘I’m so glad you’ve found help,’ Verity says, ‘and I know many women listening will be grateful for your frankness, especially because, come on. To the majority of us, you’re an over-achieving, impossibly glamorous figure. It can help people to know that the great Aida Russell struggles, too.’

‘I can assure you, I absolutely do. Honestly, the entire ageing process feels like a constant game of Whack-a-Mole to me. It’s exhausting.’

‘Do you give yourself grace?’ Verity asks, cocking her head to one side as she surveys me thoughtfully. ‘Because I always say that’s such an important part of the puzzle. I feel like we should pat ourselves on the back as often for walking away from things as we do for getting things done.’

‘I love that,’ I tell her with a smile. ‘It’s so, so true. I’m a good girl, an overachiever, like you say. I have always validated myself based off of my achievements, and I can be super hard on myself, too.

‘One of the absolute hardest things I’ve had to learn to manage is the constant conflict between wanting to doallthe things and my body just not being able to handle that. It’s almost like a kind of grief, in a way.’

‘Can you expand on that?’ Tom asks, stroking his chin. ‘How do you think you got a handle on it?’

‘Sure. So, for people like me it can feel more stressfulnotdoing than doing, and it’s really hard to keep boundaries up. I listen to my brain, not my body, and my brain has historically always wantedmore. I remember my hormone doctor warned me that if I felt better on the HRT, that wasn’t a sign that I should double my workload until I felt awful again.

‘So there was this constant sense of frustration. I was being told in my late forties to slow down and become more mindful and listen to my body and all that crap. And honestly? It pissed me off.’ I’m vaguely aware of Tom shifting uncomfortably at my low-key swearing, while Verity looks rapt.

‘I interviewed Joe Biden a couple years ago and it really struck me. No one tells all these older male leaders to slow down. Why should I? Why should I have to say goodbye to all the ambition that I think makes me me, just because my body has gotten some ancient memo that I’m nearing the end of my fertility and therefore totally useless?’

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