Untold Story Read Free

sat on the repro fainting couch by the window. Amber had bought it, she said, for the husbands who became a little dizzy when they saw the price tags. “Though there’s nothing in here over four hundred bucks,” she had added, a little wistfully.
    “I’ve got to show you these photos,” Amber said now. She retrieved the gossip magazine from the counter. “This one was taken last week. And then here she is in the nineties. Doesn’t she look so different?”
    “Don’t we all?” said Lydia, barely giving the page a glance.
    “Her nostrils are uneven,” said Amber. “That’s always a telltale sign.”
    Lydia took another bite of her panini so she didn’t have to say anything.
    Amber started reading aloud. “‘She may have had a lower eye lift and, judging by her appearance, her surgeon may have employed a new technique by going in underneath the actual eyeball—this reduces the risk of scarring and can have excellent results.’”
    Lydia pulled a face. “Why do you read this stuff ?” She waved the sandwich at the stack of magazines on the coffee table.
    “I know, I know,” said Amber. “It’s ridiculous. She’s definitely had Botox as well.”
    “Who cares?” said Lydia. “Her and every other actress her age.”
    Amber tucked her hair behind her ears. Last year she had cut bangs and this year she was growing them out and her hair kept falling over her eyes so the tucking was a repeated necessity, but it had also become part of her repertoire of self-adjustments and taken on an apologetic quality. She laughed. “I don’t know why I read this stuff. But everybody does. There’s even a college professor comes in here and she spends more time flicking through the magazines than flicking through the racks. Guess she doesn’t like buying them herself, but what do you think she reads at the hairdresser’s? Not one of her professor books, for sure.”
    Lydia held a sliver of pastrami out to Rufus. “Well, we think it’s silly, don’t we, boy?”
    Rufus licked her fingers in assent.
    “Oh my God,” said Amber.
    Lydia loved the way Amber said oh my God . It was so American. It reminded her of how English she felt after nearly ten years in the States, and that when everything else about her felt not so much hidden as worn away, her Englishness, at least, remained.
    Almost ten years. It was 1997 when she arrived—not only a decade but a millennium ago.
    “Oh my God, I’d forgotten—I’ve got these gowns in back I really want you to try. They are going to look so fabulous. I can’t wait to see.” Amber ran into the stockroom, and Lydia watched through the open door as she shucked plastic-sheathed dresses off the revolving rail and laid them over her arm.
    When she’d arrived in Kensington, it was Tevis who had sold Lydia the house, but Amber with whom she’d first made friends. They had shared a table in the bakery, there were only four tables so you normally had to share. Over a cappuccino for Amber and an Earl Grey for Lydia they recognized in each other an instant acceptance, and Lydia, who for seven years had made only acquaintances, was relieved to give herself up to this inevitability. She was careful, of course, but after a few conversations, filling each other in on their backgrounds, there wasn’t much need for caution, and Lydia found herself wondering why, for so long, she had held back from everyone.
    That first afternoon Amber told Lydia about her marriage, to her childhood sweetheart, how he’d cheated on her with her best friend, how she’d forgiven them both because “it just kind of happened,” they were attorneys in the same law firm and she was a stay-at-home mom and looked kind of schlubby most days, and how when she looked in the mirror she felt sort of guilty about the whole thing. She’d given herself a makeover, of course, and they did “date nights” and talked and got a whole lot of issues out on the table, like how he hated her meat loaf and had never been