Garden TOUR

So much went unspoken in her past — so much love never expressed

- Jennifer Trevelyan

I was sitting in a cafe, alone. It was a hot summer's day and I'd managed to wrangle a few hours away from the kids. I had the idea to try to find something nice and pretty in the last of the sales. A little pick-me-up after the stress of the holidays.

The music that was playing in the cafe was David Bowie – Life on Mars, I think. I like that song, but I couldn't hear it, or enjoy it, because sitting at the table next to me was this very plain woman, talking loudly. Or maybe not talking loudly but passionately, so that once I'd noticed her, it was hard not to keep noticing her.

At first, I was annoyed with her. She had lank brown hair and a wide face.

'In my whole entire life,' she was saying to her friend, 'no one has ever told me I'm beautiful. Even the men I've dated in the past, none of them have ever said it.'

I felt bad then for thinking that she was plain, which she was, and for being annoyed with her.

I glanced at the friend, whose response seemed inadequate, to my way of thinking. Reach out, I thought, touch her hand, tell her you're sorry to hear that. The friend was nodding, saying 'Yeah, yeah' as if she understood. But sometimes 'Yeah, yeah' can mean, 'You've told me this already, you're boring me.' I know this because when my mother, who's in her 80s, starts telling me about how her neighbour keeps parking halfway over her drive, blocking the garage, I often catch myself saying 'Yeah, yeah'. Verbally rolling my hand through the air. Get on with it, I'm busy, I have better things to do.

'Every day,' the plain woman went on, 'I get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, there's something wrong with you. You're not good enough. No one is ever going to love you. Every day, I say that to myself, out loud.'

'Yeah, yeah,' the friend replied, stirring her tea.

I couldn't shop for pretty things after that. I just couldn't.