**Five Faces of Tomorrow**
Last night, I sat with the girls under the striped umbrellas of a beachside café in Brighton. The air smelled of salt and pine, tinged with the faint melancholy of a summer evening. When Mary first agreed to join us at the spa retreat, shed imagined something drearylike those old NHS convalescent homes with stiff beds and boiled cabbage. Instead, we found ourselves in a sleek hotel with massages, facials, and miles of emerald woods to wander.
The sea was bracing, even in July, but still a joy. To the left of the beach lay the ladies nudist section; to the right, the gents. The womens side had us giggling”Well, weve still got it, relatively speaking!”but the mens? Pure horror.
“Bloody hell, that blokes got less going on than my toddlers Action Man!” Lizzie cackled.
“And that short chaps practically buried under his own gut,” added Diane.
“Cheers, ladies!” called a voice from the sand.
We nearly choked on our G&Ts, hurrying off before we got an eyeful of anything else. Forgot how small England can be.
Dinner ran lateno one wanted the night to end. The sunset bled into the waves, and as always, the talk turned to our aches: high blood pressure, stiff joints, sleepless nights. Then, inevitably, to the dread of growing old alone.
Mary tried to lighten the mood: “Honestly, with the way the worlds going, we might dodge old age altogether.”
But the others were already deep in ithorror stories, hopes, regrets. Then Diane perked up.
“Remember when I vanished at the market? Met this old Romany woman selling crystals. Bought this.” She pulled out a blue-green prism, its tip chipped. “Said it shows the future. Five visions leftone for each of us.”
We laughed but touched it anyway.
**First vision: Diane.**
At eighty, shed been a widow five years. Her daughtersome high-flying exec in Canary Wharfvisited out of duty, never warmth. One day, Diane toppled off a stool reaching for a vase. Bruises everywhere. Her daughter moved her in “temporarily.”
White walls. White sofa. White silence.
She spilled Ribena once. “Mum, for Gods sake!”
“Just adding colour,” Diane joked. No one laughed.
**Second vision: Lizzie.**
Raised her son solo. Sacrificed everything. He married a German girlcold as a bankers handshakeand suddenly, Lizzie was a ghost in her own home.
“Dont touch that.” “Stay out of the way.”
She cried into her pillow at night. Then one call to Diane: “I cant do this anymore.”
“Pack a bag. Well manage.”
And they did. One half-blind, the other hobbling, but together.
“Liz, youve swept the dirt into a pyramid.”
“At least its organised!”
They bickered over politics, technology, whether the world was ending. Didnt matter. Evenings were for tellyDiane describing the screen, Lizzie scoffing at the news.
“Maybe its a mercy I cant see properly. Everythings gone bloody ugly.”
“Rubbish. Were just relics.”
**Third vision: Sarah.**
Her twin daughters took turns hosting. The house hummed with kids, smelled of bubblegum shampoo.
“Gran, did you really live without Wi-Fi?” a curly-haired boy gasped. “Did you fight dinosaurs?”
“Course. With a butter knife.” He hid under the table. She ruffled his hair, thinking: *This. This is the good bit.*
**Fourth vision: Mary.**
Two divorces, forty years in A&E. She saved, planned, picked a posh care homegardens, bingo, ballroom Tuesdays.
And then? She bloomed. Day trips, new friends, a dapper widower with a walking frame whispering, “Fancy a slow dance?”
“Only if you promise not to keel over.”
**Fifth vision: Martha.**
She and her husband bought their dreama cottage in Cornwall. A local girl helped cook and clean. After his stroke, Martha wheeled him to the cliffs each evening.
“Glad we did this,” hed murmur.
“Me too.”
Silence was just as sweet.
When the visions faded, we sat quiet. The sky purpled; the waves hushed.
“Well,” Martha finally said, “couldve been worse.”
“Couldve been lonely,” Diane corrected.
“Or boring,” Sarah added.
We clinked glasses. The crystal on the table caught the dying lightdim but stubborn. Not broken. Just clearer.
“However it happens,” Mary said, “its still life. Just later in the day.”
The sea murmured agreement.
*Lesson? Growing olds like a British summerunpredictable, occasionally grim, but with the odd golden hour that makes it all bearable.*
