Page 4 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘You look thirty-five,’ says Lish automatically.

‘Youlooktwenty-five,’ says Janey quickly.

‘You look like you’restill at school,’ says Lish. ‘You could sneak in and re-sit your Highers.’

‘Oh, lord, no thanks,’ says Janey, who still occasionally has anxiety dreams about her exams, even though when she sat her school exams they all had perms.

‘Well, anyway,’ Lish continues kindly, ‘stop worrying about it. Being in your fifties is cool now. Everyone is at it. J.Lo is at it. Look at Aniston. Bullock.’

‘I don’t want to look at them. They make me feel bad.’

‘Gillian Anderson?’

‘Oh, God, stop it. I’m just saying, it’s fine; I feel fine about it. I just forget, that’s all.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I just don’t know why I feel exactly the same age I was twenty years ago. Do you think everybody does?’

‘Of course,’ Lish says, nodding wisely. Nodding wisely is also an exceptional midwife skill. ‘Evolution doesn’t need you to know how old you are. By the time you’re thirty-five you’ve either reproduced the species or not. It has no more use for you. You can basically die now.’

Janey makes a long fuffing noise. ‘Can Iidentifyas young?’

Lish glances round the cafeteria. ‘Come on. Before Milton gets here. You know he won’t approve.’

Milton the porter tries his best not to look shocked about divorces and ribald talk; however, it is more or less unavoidable where they work, in a hospital full of women, dealing with very much the pointier end of the human experience, particularly the female experience, day in, day out.

Janey really does not want a single person more to know what she’s doing, which is why they chose the special low-lit breastfeeding canteen corner the hospital built at great expense, whereupon everyone revolted about why they should have to cover up breastfeeding and started doing it in the middle of the foyer on purpose to set a good example, so hardly anyone ever goes there.

‘Okay,’ she says, pressing the button on her laptop. ‘Let’s have it.’

‘MATCHES FOR YOU’ flashes up on the screen.

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Come on,’ says Lish, squishing her over. ‘Maybe Pedro Pascal is passing through and has set his parameters to local.’

Janey nods. ‘Probably.’

‘Or for sure there’ll be a stray billionaire who has left the shallow confines of the city in secret for some real people who love him just for him. Who wants to chop wood and stuff.’

‘Of course most billionaires fancy women in their fifties,’ says Janey. ‘That’s why you see them out with their middle-aged wives so much.’

Lish holds up her water bottle. ‘To Pierce Brosnan,’ she says, not for the first time, and Janey raises hers and clinks back.

‘To Pierce. And Keanu.’

‘Practically a trend,’ says Lish.

Janey blinks at the screen. Then they both put their glasses on.

‘Oh, God,’ says Janey. ‘Oh, lord.’

‘Who?’

‘That guy used to be Essie’s modern studies teacher. Mr Harris. No way. Oh, my God. She hated him so much. She says he used to pick his nose at them while he was teaching.’

‘It doesn’t say that in his profile. It says he likes gardening.’

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