She wore fresh pale pink on her fingertips. Something with a clever name she’d already forgotten, but that the manicurist insisted would be flattering and feminine. The woman tucked her hair behind one ear as she looked in the mirror. She turned to one side, then the other, smoothing down the front of her trousers, then raising her chin to examine her profile. She scarcely recognized herself in the mirror anymore.
Honestly, Helena. Whatever were you thinking agreeing to this?
The phone dinged with an incoming text message. A message from her sister. “You look absolutely gorgeous.”
Helena smiled and typed her reply. “You haven’t seen me.”
She held her phone at arm’s length. She’d never been one for taking selfies. When she thought about it, she’d rarely had her photo taken in recent years. She couldn’t remember the last time Roger had taken her photo, let alone even looked at her properly. It had been just as well. When he did look, there were comments. Cruel ones. She had loved his voice when they’d first met. In the last years, though, when she imagined his voice, she could only hear it saying things like old, given up, or no spring chicken.
She shook the memory off.
Click. The image of her smiling was nice enough. Then she plucked up her courage and took another. Mugging for the camera this time, duck lips and all. She sent them both.
“See? I was absolutely right. Fierce!” Julia replied almost immediately.
Her younger sister had always been such a great cheerleader.
Fussing with her appearance in the mirror, positioning her hair and applying lipstick—it was an exercise in procrastination and she knew it. It couldn’t be put off another moment. If she was going, she simply had to walk out the door.
She grabbed her bag from the desk in the office. It was the good one, a favorite from before she’d ever met him and before everything that came after. She looked down at the folder on the desktop. It was emblazoned with the solicitors’ firm logo. Opening the drawer, she placed the folder inside. It was done, now, finally.
Really, she couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was one of those early May days that delivered enough warmth to feel like life was thawing out a bit after a long winter. The station was an easy walk from what she’d started referring to as the new house, even though it was an early Victorian mid-terrace.
Most people would describe Richmond as the suburbs, but after two decades in Windsor, it felt positively cosmopolitan to Helena. She could’ve taken her share of the settlement and bought something smaller—a smart flat in Kensington or Chelsea, but that was a leap too far, she’d thought at the time.
It was late afternoon on a Thursday, but traveling this direction, into central London, it wasn’t too crowded. She’d found a seat in the middle of the carriage. The train trundled along, stopping along the route to pick up and deposit passengers as it did dozens of times a day. Helena didn’t fuss with her phone but simply stared up at the line map.
At Hammersmith, there was an influx of passengers onto the carriage. A couple with a baby, an older woman, older than Helena, with a dog, and a group of teenagers. The teenagers were in school uniforms with hoodies over the top. Loud and boisterous, shouting over the noise of the train with the energy of youth expelled through the physicality of taking up space.
Helena tried not to look at them, but she could pick up bits and pieces. Boys in heavy trainers, unlaced at the tops. Sleeves pushed up with stacks of bracelets on the girls. Hair in plaits or slicked back into tight ponytails. Tights with ladders that were so prevalent they had to have been intentional. Muddy boots. They had eyed her as they walked by toward the back of the carriage. Instinctively, she pulled her legs and arms in closer, as if to take up less space. It was something she’d become good at over the years.
The one with the dirty blonde hair, slicked back into plaits, eyed her again. She said, loud enough for her friends, “Aw, that bag is sick!” The girl approached, and Helena tensed all over.
The girl leaned in, quieter. “Do you mind me asking where you found it? I've been looking for one like that for ages.”
It took a moment for the juxtaposition to resolve in Helena's mind. Then she saw it clearly. The stack of bracelets, but one was Tiffany, and another the new David Yurman style. The boots dirty but new. Under the edges of the words she’d chosen to use with her friends, Helena recognized the polish. She probably had more in common with the girl, at that age, at least, than either of them realized.
Helena leaned closer. “Do you know Sellier, in Knightsbridge?”
The girl nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, on Cheval Place, I think? Yeah.”
“I bought mine years ago, just out of uni, but I was there last week and saw one just like it in excellent condition,” Helena replied.
“Thanks so much,” the girl replied. “Your outfit is really lovely, by the way. You going out?”
Helena nodded. “Thank you. I am. First time in—well, in a long time.”
“Aw, well he's so lucky!”
The girl went back to her group and picked up her phone, held it to her ear. “Mum? Can we go to Sellier after school tomorrow? The loveliest woman on the tube just told me they have that bag I've been looking for. Can we get it?”
Helena could feel the smile blooming across her face.
The kids got off at the stop before hers. The blonde girl turned back to Helena and smiled, giving a little wave as she disappeared out into the station with her friends.
Helena took her phone out and brought up the camera. She looked at herself. Not the way she had in the mirror before she’d left, but she tried to see what the girl had seen. And maybe she did, a little. She had more lines around her eyes than she had the last time she’d gone on a first date, to be sure. But she was pretty, still, no matter what Roger had tried to convince her of.
There you are, she thought. Still in there, aren’t you?
At Sloane Square, she exited the station and crossed the courtyard toward the bistro. She found the table with the man in the smart tweed blazer.
“Hello,” she said, extending a hand as he stood. “You must be Gerard. I recognize you from your profile. So lovely to meet you.”
He told her she looked lovely with an authenticity she found refreshing. He gestured to the seat across from him, and she sat down, shoulders back, head held high.