Chapter 2 - Part 2

Delftware, as found on Isa's windowsill

Chapter 2 – Part 2

“Why don’t you look on the Internet?” said Ellen.

 “On the Internet? Look for what?” 

Ellen took another handful of Macadamia nuts and crunched them away noisily. 

“Guys. You know, dating sites.” 

Isa nearly choked on her wine. 

“Are you mad? I’m fifty-three!” 

“So? It’s not as if you’re past it! You look okay. In fact, you look great! Lush, voluptuous...” 

“Over-weight you mean.” 

“No, I mean attractive. You may not see it yourself, but you still get stared at, Isa. You can still pull, girl! But you’ll have to make a bit of an effort. You’ve let yourself go a bit.”

 “Gee, thanks, girlfriend!” 

Ellen had to ward off a well-aimed black olive.

 “Seriously, Isa. Paint your nails, go see your beautician, get your hair done, better still, let’s go to that spa we talked about. We could...”

 “You are a raving lunatic! Besides, I don’t have the money to go to a spa. Or go to a beautician. I have to live on one salary now, remember? And I have no, absolutely no inclination to ‘pull’, as you so charmingly put it. I have done my pulling. My pulling days are over.” 

With heated cheeks and flashing eyes, Isa did indeed look sexy. If only she could see it herself, thought Ellen. She watched her friend, critically trying to see her with fresh eyes, and noted the good teeth, generous mouth, shapely legs, elegant hands, creamy skin and ample boobs.

 “You’ll get awfully lonely.”

 “Why?” Isa got up to get the wine out of the fridge. 

“Why would I get lonely?” she persisted as she returned, stumbled over a cushion on the floor and splashed a wave of Ellen’s wine down her friend’s new shirt. (Copyright Renée Koopman – If you steal this, you are a very bad person!) 

“Shit! Sorry, El. I have no time to get lonely. I see approximately three customers a week, all of them with their issues, and their quirks, and let’s not forget their egos! I talk to my darling daughters. I have my cat. I have you.” 

Frowning, Isa slugged back her wine and then shot Ellen a look.

“Fuck, that sounds boring,” she muttered. 

“I rest my case.” 

Ellen looked like Isa’s cat when he had got to the quiche. She loved being right. 

“Okay. First thing’s first. Boot up, Google some sites, write a profile, and then put up your feet and wait for all those gorgeous guys to contact you.” 

Isa blew a raspberry. 

“All those old, divorced, freaky, nerdy, mummy’s boys you mean. You know the old saying, don’t you? All the nice men are either gay or still married.” 

“Christ, that IS an old saying, from the Eighties, I’d say. I’m serious, Isa. Do something, or you’ll end up old, grumpy and very alone, mark my words!” 

Isa looked thoughtfully at her oldest friend, and filed away her remarks to be mulled over in the near future, when she was alone. 

“Want a top-up?” she asked instead. 

Ellen looked at her almost full glass, one eyebrow quizzically up, thinking about her childhood friend and her tendency to become quite a bit of a soak. She used to envy Isa. Isa The One Who Has It All, she used to secretly call her. Used-to. Now she felt a bit smug. Her own husband was sitting on her own couch right at this instant, safely watching Eurosport Live. No risk of him straying to greener pastures. Safe, sweet, boring Ben.

 “Oh, what the hell, life is for living, and I’m on my bicycle anyway.”
© Renée Koopman

Chapter 2 - Part 1

Ducks (photograph © Wibe Koopman)

Isa’s Sundays used to be filled with people. A husband, her two daughters, her Mum, friends. She used to rush around her kitchen from two in the afternoon; preparing dinner, chilling wine, making sure everything was just so for when everyone would sit around her huge teak dining table at six.

When did all this change? The rot started with her Mum dying of the cancer that had sneaked up on her five times previously. The sixth time the cutting and medicating couldn’t save her. Isa mourned her in silence. She wasn’t given to loud and public mourning. But she missed her mother terribly. 

Then, out of the blue, her husband of twenty-five years dropped a bombshell into their tidy lives. He had fallen in love with a woman fifteen years younger than Isa. And this woman loved him. Love! So he moved out. And moved in with his new love. Isa mourned the demise of her marriage as she had mourned her mother. Quietly, secretly, but not bitterly. Thus was life. Husbands left for greener pastures and greener leaves, one only had to look around the supermarket to see the evidence. 

But when in the course of one year both her darling daughters left as well, one to study International Business Law in Maastricht and one to teach abroad, Isa had to face down a huge urge to get seriously depressed. The wine hardly got the time to chill properly. (Copyright Renée Koopman – If you steal this you are a very bad person!) 

Her few true friends rallied round. But all of her not-so-true ones disappeared along with the Sunday dinners as soon as they got the message that Isa wasn’t her normal cheerful welcoming self. 

Isa got through it by working hard. How ever late it had got the night before, how ever many glasses of wine she had guzzled down in the evening, she was there in time for her first appointment of the day. Slowly, very, very slowly, she found she could smile, and then laugh again at the antics of het cat. 

She managed to shoulder the burden of her daughters’ shock over the phone at their father’s midlife crisis, with carefully contrived humour, and clichés straight out of women’s magazines. “But don’t you hate him, don’t you hate her,” they would ask, and she would give a little chuckle (mentally patting herself on the

shoulder in the meantime; oh, how good you are at acting grown up!), and reply “No, no, how can I hate them for something as natural as falling in love? Don’t forget we had you, and you are worth it, all of it.” (Pat, pat, pat, and a quick trip to the off-license after work)

Anyway, Isa counted herself lucky in a way. Robert, perhaps feeling guilty, had agreed to a quick, harmonious divorce. Not for her the screaming rows, the spitting fits, the tug of war. She had, a whole bottle of Chardonnay gone, for a few minutes considered cutting up all his suits (weren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing?), but couldn’t find the scissors and then nearly fell down the stairs, so she gave up on that idea. Another cliché.

After a while things calmed down even more, and she found she could see Robert around town without wanting to throw her arms around his knees and beg him to reconsider. He couldn’t be more gallant about it all. Came round to fiddle with her dishwasher when it broke down. Offered to mow the lawn. Looked radiantly happy. Life with his young lithe wife certainly agreed with him. Isa swallowed her tears and ran to the CD player to put on Adele when he’d left for his new home.
© Renée Koopman