LIZ JONES’S DIARY
In which I call the Botox doctor
ITIS TEN YEARS since I drove to Hertfordshire one afternoon and rescued Lizzie the racehorse. Before I took delivery of her to a livery yard in Windsor, I went on one last holiday with my husband to Africa. He announced, on day three, that he had cheated on me yet again.
Having banished him that night from my lodge on the island, watched his tiny plane heave into the blue sky the next morning, then called my agent (it’s funny how when you become successful, the only person you have left to call is your agent), telling him how dare he broker a deal for my husband to write a kiss-and-tell account of our marriage, I flew home to an empty house.
I sat down and made a list of where I stood at this sudden crossroads. I could stay in my lovely house, but I had no one to go out to dinner with. I had a horse installed in Windsor who was confined to a stable 22 hours a day; I would often arrive to find she had no haynet. If I moved to the countryside, her life would be immeasurably better. Life was boring in London. I figured the move would be good for my writing. A change from all the columnists who live in mansions within the M25, complaining about the service at Ottolenghi.
My life might look random, but I’ve always made decisions based on one dilemma: what on earth am I going to write? Not what would be safe, or sensible. I know, a trip to Africa! I know, a week in St Tropez! Which is why David and I started emailing again, cautiously at first. He sent me gifts, and I replied with a thank-you, when I should really have returned them. I told him he could stay with me on his way to Scotland. I invited him to the premiere of Fifty Shades Darker, which meant we ended up in bed together: inevitable, as he’d booked a ‘small plus’ room.
Before the premiere, I did what I always do. I tried to make myself better for him. I drove to Croydon to my eyebrow practitioner, a dynamic woman called Kelly Forshaw. Her job might sound frivolous, inking the brows of women with less money than sense, but she does this to fund her more serious work: repairing the faces of burns victims or the areolas of women who’ve had mastectomies.
Next stop, resembling none other than Amy from Towie, I drove to Harley Street, to the Cosmedics clinic, to meet Dr Ross Perry. On the fifth anniversary of my facelift, and after the worst five years of my life, I am here to be assessed. Dr Perry, the sort of man who oozes sortedness, the sort of man I’m sure who takes skiing holidays, switches on a bright overhead light and examines my face. ‘How old are you?’ he asks, peering closely. I can’t tell him that. I shave off ten years. Let’s see if the previous surgeon’s handiwork was worth it. ‘Your jowl is very good, very tight, and your cheeks are full,’ he says. That’s the nicest thing a man has said to me since David said he loved me ‘heart and soul’.
‘But…’ I knew there was a but. ‘I will put some Botox in your forehead, around the side of your eyes and between your brows. And a little filler on one side of your mouth, as it’s drooping a little.’ (Can you blame it?)
For good measure, he removes a tiny bump on my forehead, some patches of discoloration and the mole on the end of my nose. He tells me not to get my face wet for a couple of days. I’m reminded of when I had collagen in my lips in the spa atop Harrods, in the mid1990s, and the practitioner told me, as she unsnapped her latex gloves after what was probably the most painful half hour of my life, that I must not snog for at least three days. I’d scoffed, then. She thinks I have a boyfriend! I will never again kiss a man, I told her. But I suppose none of us knows what’s around the corner. A wedding. A (fairly) sane man who says he loves me heart and soul.
I left the clinic feeling slightly battered, but fit to face the world. I’m going to try again. With everything. I’m broken, but not completely bowed.
‘How old are you?’ he asks, peering closely at my face. I shave off ten years