Nine Perfect Strangers

‘Got car trouble?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Frances. She sat up straighter and tried to smile. She ran a hand through her damp hair. ‘Thank you. I’m fine. The car is fine. Everything is fine.’

‘Are you sick?’ said the man. He looked faintly disgusted.

‘No,’ said Frances. ‘Not really. Just a bad cold.’

‘Maybe you’ve got the proper flu. You look really sick,’ said the man. He frowned, and his eyes moved to the back of her car. ‘And you were screaming and sounding your horn like you . . . were in trouble.’

‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘Well. I thought I was alone in the middle of nowhere. I was just . . . having a bad moment.’ She tried to keep the resentment from her voice. He was a good citizen who had done the right thing. He’d done what anyone would do.

‘Thank you for stopping but I’m fine,’ she said nicely, with her sweetest, most placatory smile. One must placate large strange men in the middle of nowhere.

‘Okay then.’ The man straightened with a groan of effort, his hands on his thighs to give himself leverage, but then he rapped the top of her car with his knuckles and bent down again, suddenly decisive. I’m a man, I know what’s what. ‘Look, are you too sick to drive? Because if you’re not safe to drive, if you’re a danger to other drivers on the road, I really can’t in good conscience let you –’

Frances sat up straight. For heaven’s sake. ‘I just had a hot flash,’ she snapped.

The man blanched. ‘Oh!’ He studied her. Paused. ‘I always thought it was a hot flush,’ he said.

‘I believe both terms are used,’ said Frances. This was her third one. She’d done a lot of reading, spoken to every woman she knew over the age of forty-five, and had a double appointment with her GP, where she had cried, ‘But no-one ever said it was like this!’ For now they were monitoring things. She was taking supplements, cutting back on alcohol and spicy foods. Ha ha.

‘So you’re okay,’ said the man. He looked up and down the highway as if for help.

‘I really am perfectly fine,’ said Frances. Her back gave a friendly little spasm and she tried not to flinch.

‘I didn’t realise that hot flashes – flushes – were so . . .’

‘Dramatic? Well, they’re not for everyone. Just a lucky few.’

‘Isn’t there . . . what’s it called? Hormone replacement therapy?’

Oh my Lord.

‘Can you prescribe me something?’ asked Frances brightly.

The man took a little step back from the car, hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry. It’s just, I think that was what my wife . . . Anyway, none of my business. If everything is okay, I’ll just be on my way.’

‘Great,’ said Frances. ‘Thank you for stopping.’

‘No worries.’

He lifted a hand, went to say something else, evidently changed his mind and walked back towards his car. There were sweat marks on the back of his t-shirt. A mountain of a man. Lucky he decided she wasn’t worth killing and raping. He probably preferred his victims less sweaty.

She watched him start his car and pull out onto the highway. He tipped one finger to his forehead as he drove off.

She waited until his car was a tiny speck in her rear-view mirror and then she reached over for the change of clothes she had waiting on the passenger seat ready for this exact situation.

‘Menopause?’ her eighty-year-old mother had said vaguely, on the phone from the other side of the world, where she now lived blissfully in the south of France. ‘Oh, I don’t think it gave me too much trouble, darling. I got it all over and done with in a weekend, as I recall. I’m sure you’ll be the same. I never had those hot flushes. I think they’re a myth, to be honest.’

Hmmph, thought Frances as she used a towel to wipe away her mythical sweat.

She thought of texting a photo of her tomato-red face to her group of schoolfriends, some of whom she’d known since kindergarten. Now when they went out to dinner they discussed menopause symptoms with the same avid horror with which they’d once discussed their first periods. Nobody else was getting these over-the-top hot flushes like Frances, so she was taking it for the team. Like everything in life, their reactions to menopause were driven by their personalities: Di said she was in a permanent state of rage and if her gynaecologist didn’t agree to a hysterectomy soon she was going to grab the little fucker by the collar and slam him up against the

wall, Monica was embracing the ‘beautiful intensity’ of her emotions and Natalie was wondering anxiously if it was contributing to her anxiety. They all agreed it was totally typical of their friend Gillian to die so she could get out of menopause and then they cried into their prosecco.

No, she wouldn’t text her schoolfriends, because she suddenly remembered how at that last dinner she’d looked up from her menu to catch an exchange of glances that most definitely meant: ‘Poor Frances.’ She could not bear pity. That particular group of solidly married friends was meant to envy her, or they’d pretended to envy her anyway, for all these years, but it seemed that being childless and single in your thirties was very different from being childless and single in your fifties. No longer glamorous. Now kind of tragic.

I’m only temporarily tragic, she told herself as she pulled on a clean blouse that showed a lot of cleavage. She tossed the sweaty shirt into the back seat, restarted the car, looked over her shoulder and pulled out onto the highway. Temporarily Tragic. It could be the name of a band.