Cleo

Sometimes it seemed I was destined to lose children one way or another. I’d never liked self-pity. Undignified, tiresome. I’d begun to discover ways out of it. One was to accept invitations to meet grieving parents and to interview people experiencing loss. Their trauma was often recent and more raw than my own. On the few occasions I was able to offer reassurance, my pain was replaced with a sense of doing something vaguely worthwhile. The past five years had informed me about human sorrow. While no two griefs are the same, nobody understands suffering like those who’ve been there.

The shrink had a box of tissues on her table. Tears were her trade. Not wanting to give the impression I was one of her run-of-the-mill weepy clients I was determined to keep my eyes dry.

“What you need,” she said, crossing her legs and gazing through her salmon-pink lenses, “is a fresh start, something to boost your self-esteem.”

Even though I wasn’t crying, my body badly needed to ooze. My nose started streaming uncontrollably. I glanced longingly at the tissues, but reaching for them would be an admission of defeat. The only alternative was to emit loud regular sniffs.

“Do you know what would do you the world of good?” she asked, sinking into a chair carefully positioned under a Rothko print in pastel pinks and yellows. Presumably the painting was intended to soothe anguished clients with its gentle shades. It probably worked for those who didn’t realize poor Rothko succumbed to depression and killed himself. “A one-night stand.”

Her words sailed across the room and exploded in my ears like missiles. Mum (due to a range of sexual hang-ups of her own not worth delving into here) had raised me from the cradle to treat my body as a temple, preferably open to only one dreary but dependable worshipper for my entire life.

“You mean finding a man I have nothing in common with but am mildly attracted to and just sleeping with him for the sake of it?”

She nodded. The shrink was obviously mad. She wanted me to die of guilt.

“It would be a healthy way to start a new phase of life,” she said.

“What about the kids?” I asked.

“They needn’t find out,” she said. “It’s nothing to do with them. Arrange it for one of the weekends when your ex-husband has custody.”

Arrange it? People arrange one-night stands? She asked me to make up a list of potential victims. The only blokes I met were at work. Male journalists are unbelievably indiscreet. I had no desire to be added to the list of women in the office who “do it with anyone.” A couple of friends’ husbands had dismayed me by turning up at the house and thoughtfully offering their services, but I was in no way willing to betray my women friends. My list was blank.

“Good luck,” said the shrink, smiling as I scribbled a shaky signature on the check. “And remember, be open.”

An opportunity to put her advice into practice turned up a few  weeks later when Mary the fashion writer set me up on a date to accompany her friend to a fund-raising dinner. Mary assured me I’d love Nigel, who was recently divorced from his second wife, though not for the usual reasons of being disgusting to live with and a total reject. I’d read about Nigel’s activities in our business pages. He was the corporate equivalent of a giant with an eating disorder, a compulsive devourer of small companies. He was an unfamiliar type, potentially dull, if all he could talk about was money. But I was used to interviewing people. I assured myself I could draw out the interesting side of a house spider if necessary. Mary said Nigel had ticks in all the right boxes. I wasn’t sure what she meant. It was years since I’d been on a date. The rules must’ve changed. In fact, there was only one rule back in the old days—don’t let him go all the way unless he’s at least hinted he might want to marry you. During the years I’d spent buried in suburbia, dating seemed to have turned into a clinical cross between supermarket shopping and animal husbandry.

The night of the date arrived. I was so nervous my hands were trembling. Cleo always liked to supervise my clumsy attempts to apply makeup. She sprang up on to the bathroom vanity as I opened the makeup drawer—one of Cleo’s favorite places in the entire house. Her passion for makeup must’ve been a throw-back to her Egyptian heritage. Given half a chance, she’d steal a sable brush, run away and de-hair it bristle by bristle under my bed. Cleo jumped into the drawer and patted the shiny pots of eye shadow. She seemed to favor purple tonight. With no other beauty consultant available, it was logical to take her advice. She mewed encouragement as I applied two brooding streaks of shadow to my eyelids. Th e effect was more post–encounter with Muhammad Ali than cocktails with Mark Antony, but I was running out of time. Cleo toyed idly with my lipstick, a lurid crimson, which I snatched from her paws.

“What do you think?” I asked, applying a final circle of lipstick.