The Afternoon Tea Club

Stuart had just gotten divorced and decided to take a year out and tour Australia. And there, on a train between Sydney and Brisbane, he met Hazel, the woman he was now married to. They’d moved to Devon and ran a hotel there, complete with her young daughter, Stephanie, and a rescue dog they’d called Ozzy. The Wallabies, Dora called them all. A property developer bought the boutique spa hotel in London and Dora’s mother sold the family home and flat but kept the Cotswolds hotel she now lived in and ran with Dora. And even though Dora would later admit that it wasn’t such a bad thing, no longer running around the world with the likes of Pepe, she still had her off days when she wished she could just do that.

Hence why her mother’s recent outburst had Dora lamenting to her friend Jodie that life was becoming ‘predictable’.

‘I’m still living at home with my ox of a mother, for God’s sake! And she thinks I should be settled and married like The Wallabies by now.’

‘Aw, honey,’ Jodie had crooned. ‘But you’re not the marrying kind.’

Admittedly, Dora had certainly evaded that institution! But she’d soon be fifty, a fact that concerned her greatly because, where had all that time gone?! She was certainly at an age where she no longer felt happy in her own skin and had not been on a date or hooked up with anyone delectable in years. She felt as though she was drifting again, with no particular direction in mind. She seldom went out, unless Jodie rang out of the blue and they spent a rare weekend together at Jodie’s home, back down in Southampton, getting rat-arsed down the pub, whilst her bloke was working night shifts for his security company. Yet it somehow felt wrong that she was still living with her mother. In fact, everything felt wrong with her life.

‘It’s all slipping away from me, especially since my looks have faded,’ she’d whine to anyone who’d listen.

So, fed up of her friend’s whinging, Jodie had rung one day with a suggestion.

‘Look, why don’t you have a shot at Botox or whatever. Works wonders for me.’

‘No chance! I don’t like pain and what if it all went wrong?’ Dora had blared, robustly.

‘Look, just have a think about it. I can send you a whole bunch of literature on it.’

Just a little nipping and tucking could work miracles, the brochures had said. The glittering photos of the before and afters had certainly looked inspiring. And there were all sorts of procedures to choose from – invasive and non-invasive. And so, reassured by Jodie, Dora had asked her friend to drive to their hotel and then dragged her along to her appointment to try out a bit of Botox.

When they got back to the hotel Yvonne had squinted at the results, and then pulled a face. ‘Is that a botch job or what?’

Disillusioned, Dora went back to try and get it sorted out the next day.

‘Oh I’m sorry, love,’ the receptionist had told her. ‘You have to wait till it wears off. Round about three to four months after your first injection, sometimes less. And then we can have another go at it.’

‘What? So I’m supposed to look like a frog in the meantime, am I?’

‘You must’ve moved while they were doing it,’ Jodie had said, suppressing a giggle. ‘It should’ve been fine. Oh, don’t worry about it. Just put a bit of lippy on and smile more instead of frowning. Anyway, I thought the intention was to get your forehead done? Not your mouth.’

‘I know but I hate my saggy face! And anyway, you should’ve persuaded me to use your chap.’

‘But you rarely get leave of absence from your hotel. Plus, like I said, he’s on holiday. Anyway, it doesn’t look that bad.’

Despite her friend’s encouragement, she didn’t feel any better and her smile was definitely wonkier than it had been. She wasn’t sure that a bit of lippy would help but clearly there was nothing she could do about it all now.

‘Oh, how I hate getting old and decrepit,’ she’d groaned to her mother.

‘You behave like a small child!’ her mother had snapped. ‘Just grow up and find yourself a man and settle that roving spirit of yours.’

‘Well, that might happen if I looked prettier than I do. But just look at my crow’s feet, my lined forehead, my crappy skin.’

‘What do you expect after sitting on a beach for nearly ten years?’ her mother had shot back. ‘And do you hear me whinging about my looks?’

Dora snapped. ‘No. But you’re allowed to be wrinkly at eighty-nine. It’s expected of you.’

Their sparring had become amiable over the years. True, she had been a daddy’s girl and absolved of all failings and errors because of that. But now she was much closer to her mother. She was even closer to The Wallabies and popped over to see them sometimes, when being in one place for too long took its toll.

Yet it was on a rare couple of days’ visit to see her mother’s sister, Aunt Philippa, in Southampton, after nagging her mother to leave the staff in charge of the hotel and come with her because she was fed up of doing things by herself, that Dora spied a flyer in a shop window offering free afternoon tea at a nearby community centre, the following day. And it transpired that the building was on a road parallel to where Philippa lived.

So because Dora was feeling out of sorts and generally fed up with her life she decided to act on that flyer and find out what afternoon tea at the Borough Community Centre was all about. And as her bloody mother had complained about her moping about, she intended to leave her mother and aunt to catch up whilst she went off on a little adventure for the day.

Who knows, Dora thought, it might just cheer me up a bit.

Plus it said she was going to get a free cup of tea and a piece of cake.

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