Big Birthdays

‘Try to think of me as your favourite Grandma,’ I said to the personal trainer whose services I had won in a raffle. I was a cowering wreck with tears in my eyes and he was a softly spoken ex-Marine from the Bronx. He asked me all sorts of unanswerable questions. What do you want from your body? Are you interested in maintenance or do you want to upgrade? This was about the most personal thing a stranger has said to me since the nervous pilot in Puerto Rico on my honeymoon insisted all all the passengers on his small plane confessed to him our weight. What I wanted was to go to sleep. Up all night with Mary for the third day in a row I was having quite a lot of trouble just standing. I closed my eyes and did what he said. I used the sort of breathing I had found useful during childbirth. I tried to visualise nice things like rainbows and being in a coma. After what seemed like several days it was over. But to morrow he is coming back again to fulfil the rest of the ‘prize contract.’

It never rains but it pours. This week two very good friends of mine are turning fifty and forty. They are both having their parties on the same night and I will divide my time equally between both. I do so want to get the presents right.

The forty year old I have known for nine years. A Lacanian psychoanalyst, subtle and witty, he’s not hard to please but he always appreciates it when you make the effort to go that extra psychic mile. I try to think of all the thing he likes. The Big Labowski is just about his favourite thing. He also loves the line in Fargo where one person remarks how nice the hotel cafeteria is and the other nods in agreement, ‘It’s a Radisson.’ Sometimes we mutter this phrase to each other as a short hand for ‘Hi how are you?’ Briefly I wonder about buying him a few shares in the Radisson group. Maybe £50 worth. It might amuse him-but in a strange way this feels both like trying too hard and not trying enough. Besides, he may be completely over that line by now and think the present abstract in the extreme. I have half a short story on my computer about a psychoanalyst somewhere which I could finish and put it in a nice box, but when I find it and realise it’s probably going to end up quite a long novel, I decide not to bite off more than I can chew. I sometimes like to give men presents that are domestic and a little tender, an item for the house, some linen or bathroom or kitchen things. In Paris last week I strolled past a huge display of electric tagines in the Bon Marche thinking, ‘I wonder’, but I knew I didn't mean it for real.

The fifty year old is my dear friend and neighbour Kate, top ‘lender’ of chocolate, reader of first novel drafts, internationally acclaimed expert on gender in the workplace and all round excellent egg. For her I am already making a three tiered chocolate cake decorated with glossy dark icing and very white orchids, but she will need a present as well. There is an A-line knee length champagne coloured silk skirt in ALexander McQueen, with sewn down pleats opening out into laser cut butterflies and a scalloped doily-ish hem. It’s one of the most stylish garments I’ve seen in a while and just screams out for a second wedding- but it sure doesn't come cheap. A small pinkish python envelope clutch bag caught my eye as well, but it would be such a strain not leaving it everywhere. Then it hit me. What I’d really like to do is hide something in the cake -I’m not quite up to a dancing girl - but I could install a small box in the top tier in which a little sparkling gift is stowed. Imagine the excitement in the bustling, Happy Birthday crooning crowd. Hear the gasp of confusion as knife hits parcel. Watch the wonder turn to gratitude and melt into admiration. Failing that, perhaps she’d like some sessions with an ex-marine I know.

Susie Boyt’s latest novel ONLY HUMAN is published in paperback on Monday. www.susieboyt.com