Looking at life in the face

A sudden gust of wind caused Diane's skirt to lift up and as she pushed it back down she noticed an elderly gentleman sitting at a table on the pavement outside the café on the corner glance at her and she felt herself blush. At school, their summer uniform dresses were voluminous and long, to protect their modesty and now here she was on her sixtieth birthday still embarrassed by a display of legs.

Diane caught sight of her reflection in the café window. She sighed heavily. From a distance she could pass for a much younger woman. It was her face that gave away her age.

She looked at her watch and walked round the corner to the Age Rejuvenation Clinic. The advert outside the café announcing a special offer to Roll Back the Years and Take ten years off your face had caught her attention last week and she had booked a consultation.

The last ten years had been the worst of her life, she thought as she rang the bell of the clinic. She'd give anything to cancel them out and wipe them away.

The young receptionist was beautiful. She had clear smooth skin and huge brown eyes with thick lashes. Her eyebrows and lips looked like they'd been painted on. She told Diane that her name was Erika and she would show her on the computer what her face would look like after the treatments of fillers and Botox. Erika tapped away and then produced two images of Diane.
As Diane looked at the images on the screen she gasped. In the After picture she looked almost beautiful. Her face had a serene expression and she looked untouched by pain and tragedy. For a moment, she saw herself young again, on the threshold of her life, full of hopes and dreams.

Erika smiled at her.

'You must have been gorgeous when you were young, I bet you had a lot of men after you.'

Diane smiled back at her, 'That's very kind of you. Actually there were quite a lot, but I only ever wanted one of them, my husband.'

Erika clasped her hands together and closed her eyes.

'I love having lots of admirers it gives me such a feeling of power. When would you like me to book you in for your treatments.?'

A sudden noise of thunder made Diane jump and she realised how tense she had become. She looked again at her Before image. She could see her mother's sweet mouth gently smiling at her before she died, she could see her sister's pretty blue eyes trusting and loving before the terrible accident that had taken her away. She could also see the pain and heartache that had haunted her ever since and the deep furrows made by all the tears that had flowed down her face. She could see the creased brow and the hard lines etched round her mouth that had been her defence when her husband Paul had had an affair with one of his students. He had told her it didn't mean anything it was just light relief, that she had become distant and closed in with her grief and he felt he had no place in her life anymore. She hadn't been able to forgive him. She had felt her heart being squeezed by a vice and could only think of her pain. She had told Paul to leave. That was six months ago and now he was staying in a room at the university where he taught.

Erika was waiting, her expression blank. Diane stood up. She couldn't cancel out the past ten years, They had been painful and her heart had broken seemingly beyond repair, but it was her life. It was her life and so precious. She had been broken and hurt but she would survive and carry on living even more for the people that she had loved and had left her. She held out her hand to Erika,

'Thank you so much for your time, but I'm quite happy with my face the way it is.'

A sudden squall of rain caused Diane to stumble just as she turned the corner by the café. The elderly man was still there and he jumped up to steady her. She felt a jolt go through her and turned to look at him. With a shock, she saw it was Paul. He wasn't such an elderly man after all, it was the slump of his shoulders that made him look so weighed down. He looked dejected and very sad.

 He smiled at her, a hesitant guarded look in his eyes

'I thought it was you Diane, or rather I hoped it was, it was your legs that gave you away when your skirt blew up.'

Some of his old mischief crept into his voice. Oh how she had missed that, she had made no room for it in recent years, it had seemed inappropriate in view of her grief.

Paul held out his hand,

'Let's go in the café shall we? It's getting stormy out here. Please can we have a coffee together?'

She took his hand and held on to it like the lifeline it was. They went together into the shelter of the warm cafè. Together away from the storm.