‘Online dating?’ I screwed up my nose. ‘No, thanks. It just doesn’t seem natural. Organic. Who picks out a date from a series of photos like one would pick a jumper out of a catalogue?’
‘Well, I got this top on-the-line,’ Mum said, pointing to her silky pink T-shirt. I had meant to ask where she got it and tell her not to go shopping there again. It looked strange, almost like PVC, too shiny and a little too tight, too.
‘Online,’ I corrected her again, stuffing the money in the ticket machine.
‘Just give it a go,’ she said, nodding. ‘You never know.’ She paused while my dad heaved my backpack into the boot of the car in the parking lot. ‘Ted, don’t put it in that way!’ Dad leaned in, and turned the backpack the other way. Mum nodded and slammed the boot.
‘Now, Ted, take the trolley back to the trolley bay. Why are you just staring into space like that?’ She waved her hand in front of his face. Then turned to look at me. ‘Did you know Bec has a new baby?’
‘Yeah, I saw. But how do you know that?’
She waved her hand as if I’d asked something silly. ‘Facebook, dear.’
‘But they’re not your friends on Facebook. Are they?’
‘No, but they’re your friends. I think they call it face-stalking.’
‘Have you liked one of their photos by accident?’ Oh, God, I felt mortified. How could I explain that? ‘Oh, sorry, guys, that was just my grandkid-wanting mother wanting me to have a life like yours. Please excuse her.’
‘No, of course not! Dear, give me some credit.’ She paused. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’
‘Mum, please don’t do that again.’
‘Doesn’t everyone in this day and age?’ she said casually, getting into the car.
She talked non-stop as Dad drove us out of the airport and pulled onto the highway for the hour’s trip home to Sydney’s North Shore. For the entire journey I managed to get in about twenty words, and the rest of the time I heard about the Chus (our neighbours) putting in a pool, whether or not the Sinclairs (other neighbours) were having marital problems, and something about a grey cat that kept finding its way into our yard and mewing for food at the back door.
When I got home, it was 11 p.m., too late to do anything but fall straight into my old, comfy bed.
***
The next morning Mum dragged me out of bed to go to the pool.
‘I’m still jet-lagged,’ I mumbled into Mr Bear.
‘You’ll love it, Emma, it’s good for your physique.’ She looked at the empty bowl on my dresser, and raised her eyebrows. ‘Ice cream? In bed?’
‘Actually, it was yoghurt.’ It wasn’t. It was ice cream.
Mum stripped back the covers then clapped her hands, ‘Right, up you get!’ When I didn’t move, she reminded me, ‘Betty’s been asking about you ever since you left.’
‘Betty?’ My ears picked up. ‘She’s still alive?’
‘Yes, Emma,’ Mum sighed. ‘She’s only in her early seventies.’
‘OK, OK, I’m coming.’ I stumbled out of bed, threw my swimming costume and towel in a bag. The truth is, I love aqua aerobics, even though I’m decades younger than everyone else. Before I left for London, I went every Saturday to the local pool with Betty and the gang.
In the pool change room I changed into the old swimming costume I’d found in the bottom of my closet. It was chic black Speedo, size fourteen, with a large print on the front that read in white letters ‘HAWAII’. I got the right side strap on, but the left side just wouldn’t stretch. I caught sight of myself in the bright changeroom mirrors and realised something terrible: it didn’t fit. Damn.
Under these horrid lights, my pale thighs appeared clotted with cellulite. But when I stepped out of the lights, the cellulite didn’t disappear as I’d thought (hoped) it would. My belly, which had always been somewhat flat, had a roll and a mound of pudge, that I’d never noticed in London, being dressed in jeans and jackets most of the year. My arms were undefined, and, when I held them up, the lagging skin where my triceps should have been, moved with a three-second delay, as though it was perpetually trying to keep up.
My dark blonde hair, long and wavy in the best of conditions, was now frizzy with humidity and escaping like a prisoner from my ponytail, my green eyes looked dull and sunken into my face and, to make matters worse, my chin had broken out in a heap of whiteheads since I’d got back. I looked like a very large, hungover version of Kate Winslet.
Had I looked like this in Fiji? During my night with Nick? I felt horrified … surely not. But it had been less than a week and so I guessed I really had looked like this.
‘Oh God, it doesn’t fit any more.’
‘Hmmm, yes.’ She was looking me up and down. ‘It doesn’t.’
I sat on the wooden benches feeling deflated. I stared at her trim figure; her string-bean legs were smaller than my arms. How did I even come from her?
‘Well, Emma, that’s why we’re here. So you can exercise your way to a tight tum and bum!’
‘You sound like one of those annoying motivational personal trainers,’ I said glumly.
Lorna laughed. ‘Funny you should say that. I’m thinking of getting my certificate.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘You’re going to be a personal trainer?’
‘Well.’ She looked at herself in the mirror and flounced her blonde shoulder-length hair. ‘Why not? Ted’s so busy in that damn garden, he may as well live in it. I want to do something for me.’
She fished around for fifty dollars in her purse and put it in my hand. ‘Now go and get yourself a new costume from the shop upstairs.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
The class had almost started by the time I slipped into the pool wearing a new black costume and pool-regulated swimming cap. But they’d run out of the normal swimming caps, and so I’d had to buy a new petal-covered old-woman’s swimming cap, in a soft baby pink. It made me think of Nick. His hands. His kisses. But that was in the past, Emma, I told myself. Stop thinking about Fiji!
Tina, the class instructor, was getting everyone to do eggbeater legs and arms.
‘Emma!’ a raspy voice called from the other petal caps.
‘Betty!’ I exclaimed, swimming over to her.
‘How was your trip?’ she said breathlessly, keeping her wrinkled face above the water. Some grey curls had escaped out of the side of her pink petal hat and were wet and plastered across her forehead.
‘Great!’
‘Got any goss for this old girl?’
‘Well, I learnt how to do the American two-step. I celebrated the Mexican dance of the dead. And I’m very good at telling an enchilada from a burrito.’
She laughed and I could see the gold fillings in her teeth. Her robust arms and legs pumped hard, moving her thick body up and down in the water.
Tina blew her whistle, and we started running clockwise in a circle, creating a whirlpool.
‘How was London?’ Betty spluttered.
‘Grey!’ I spat out a mouthful of chlorinated water.
She laughed. ‘You are a little pale.’
‘And fat.’ I grunted.
‘Nothing like some indoor exercise for that!’ She winked.
Tina