The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

by Laura Pearson

‘When you’re young and you’re a woman,’ I say, ‘everyone’s interested in you. In what you look like and what you’ve got to say. And then there’s a point in your life, around fifty or so, when it all stops and you become invisible. And it’s stupid, really, because by then you have much more interesting things to contribute to the conversation, but no one wants to hear them.

I won’t give the thought space to grow.

With Dot, I had one kiss and more love than I knew what to do with and an aching want that’s never gone away, not for a single minute. But with Arthur, I had a life.