Dancing Over the Hill: The new feel good comedy from the author of The Kicking the Bucket List. Cathy Hopkins
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Would they say – you’re overqualified? You’re too old. Move on.
I could go back to teaching, but I don’t want to go back to a career. I just want some extra money coming in to support what we might make on the Airbnb and my writing, if that ever happens.
Added to the list: look to see if I could go back into teaching.
From: [email protected]
Help. Any chance you’re free to come over?
D X
I looked at my watch. It was Saturday and I was supposed to be going for my weekly walk with the group. Fitness is important, and a session with Debs usually involved a bottle of wine and I am trying to cut down my units. However, this might be the perfect time to have an honest chat with Debs about how things were with Matt and see if she had any advice about how to move forward.
I emailed back:
From: [email protected]
Be there around 2.
C X
I’d met Debs at a yoga retreat a year after I’d become friends with Lorna, back in the days when I could still do the Downward Dog without straining my wrists. She was in her twenties then, just back from Kerala in India, and was teaching the class. We’d bonded over sneaking out to smoke in the breaks, not that I smoked now. There were so many holier-than-thou people on the course who frowned at her roll-ups but she didn’t care a hoot. I liked her for that, and for her energy, enthusiasm and slightly askew view of the world. She was from an upper-crust family, not that anyone would ever guess. Her family had lived in Holland Park and she’d gone to the best private schools but became a wild child in her teens. She was expelled for smoking dope, then decided she needed to find God. She travelled to India to find a guru, join an ashram and live a simple life. That was what first got us talking, because we’d both tried different teachers out there, the first being the Bhagwan Rajneesh. His group wasn’t for me, though. I gave it a few months but I didn’t feel I’d found my tribe with them, though it might have had something to do with the fact that all the followers were known as sannyasins and were given a new name. I was given the name Shital. Even though it meant ‘cool’, for obvious reasons I never felt comfortable with it. ‘Shital, come and get your lentils and rice,’ fellow followers would call, and some thought it was hilarious to abbreviate the name to Shit.
Debs had led a colourful life. As well as her travels in the East, she’d lived in a yurt in Wales, in a commune in Cornwall, then on a canal boat outside Bath. Everything changed for her when her parents died in a car crash ten years ago and suddenly, as their only child, she became wealthy with a capital W. She moved out of her canal boat and into her fabulous flat in the Circus, one of the most prestigious addresses in Bath.
Debs, Lorna and I had shared everything, the rollercoaster ride of bringing up our children – my two sons, Sam and Jed, Lorna’s three daughters Alice, Jess and Rachel, and Debs’s boy Orlando, known as Ollie. We’d been through triumphs and woes and seen each other through some tough times, including their recent personal losses, which is why I’d been reticent about moaning on about my perfectly nice husband.
Debs had been devastated when Fabio left after five years together. She’d genuinely thought she was loved, but apparently not enough. After he’d first gone, she’d hidden away, smoked dope and drank to oblivion, then emerged one day and told us she was going to reinvent herself. She’d had dark hair extensions put in and wore it all piled on top of her head. She’d got a tattoo on her shoulder saying ‘Carpe Diem’, and had every treatment under the sun to keep looking young, not that she needed them. In the last weeks, she’d been looking into Internet dating, out to prove she was still desirable. So far, she’d had three dates and had reported back after each one, sometimes during. So far, all disasters – too old, too boring and, apparently, the last one had halitosis.
I felt for her. She was a strong woman and some men were intimidated by that. She’d used some of her inheritance to buy a run-down two-storey house on the north side of town, then spent a fortune renovating and turning it into The Lotus Health Centre, a light and elegant spa that was a heavenly place to visit.
I’d never been keen on Fabio. She’d met him on holiday in Italy and he’d swept her off her feet with his charm, plus he was great eye candy, lean and good looking with a mane of dark hair. Fabulous Fabio. They’d made a handsome pair while they were together, but I had always thought that he was an opportunist, not that I ever said that. She deserved a man to share her success who was financially independent and not after her money. Nate, her first long-term partner and Ollie’s father hadn’t been a good bet either. She’d met him on her travels in America, a restless artist who’d returned to the UK with her but never settled. He was last heard of running a rehab centre somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, a centre Debs had contributed to financially. She was always a sucker for a good cause. There’d been a few men in between Nate and Fabio, but no one lasting.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked when I arrived at Debs’s flat to find piles of black bin bags filling up the hall.
Her apartment was on the ground floor in a Georgian terrace, and I always felt I was entering a bohemian art gallery when I went there. The place had high ceilings, fabulous tall windows at the back looking out over a walled garden, and lovely old marble fireplaces. It was decorated in rich reds and aubergines, and she had paintings and artefacts from her Eastern travels in every room, with plush purple velvet Chesterfields in the sitting room. Even her cloakroom was an experience, with a lime green and turquoise interior, antique Victorian glass chandelier and a life-sized poster of Kali watching from the wall opposite the loo. It could be unnerving sometimes, as the Indian goddess looked fierce, her tongue out and her many arms ready to do battle.
‘Fabio sent me a text yesterday,’ she replied, and showed me the message left on her phone. I’ll b over 2 collect my stuff at the weekend. Can let myself in if u leave it in hall. ‘So I’ve been clearing out Il Bastardo’s things. Should have done it months ago. You can help if you like.’
‘Sure, I’d be glad to,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what I can do.’
‘Clear him out, like in that song in South Pacific.’ She began to sing, ‘“I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair.” I’ve been going round the flat and I realized that Fabio’s presence is everywhere – a photo in one room, an ashtray in another, a painting he’d liked in the study. Every room holds some reminder of him, and it’s time to get rid.’ She began to sing again. ‘I’m gonna feng shui that rat right out of my lair.’
‘Hasn’t he been back for some of it?’
‘Only to collect a small case when we first broke up. He probably doesn’t need much if he’s sitting bollock-naked with his legs wrapped behind his ears in a state of sexual ecstasy every day. I’ve gathered some of his things – shoes, books, one of his precious laptops, hairbrushes, CDs, and most are in the bin bags, but first I have some small adjustments to make to his clothes. You crack open a bottle of wine and I’ll get started.’
I did as instructed, and when I took a bottle and glasses through to the sitting room, I saw that Debs was sitting on the sofa with a pair of scissors and was cutting out the crotch from Fabio’s trousers. When she’d finished with those, she started on his underwear. ‘Come and get these then, you arse,’ she said as she made a mound of clothes near the front door.
‘Seriously, Debs?’ I asked. ‘Is this the way? I thought you believed in letting go and moving on.’
‘That’s what I’m doing. I’ve also Super Glued all his books shut and put them in a neat pile by the door.’
I couldn’t help chuckling to myself when I thought about Fabio’s expression when he reached for a pair of pants. I wasn’t sorry he had gone. ‘Lorna still hasn’t cleared out Alistair’s things,’ I said as I sipped wine and watched her as she went through Fabio’s CDs, squeezing out a dollop of glue onto each surface then placing the CD back