MY PRE-WEDDING IMAGE WAS MY BEST

Liz Jones, now 62

LAST week, my ex-husband wrote a chippy piece in a broadsheet bemoaning our ‘age gap’ marriage (I was 16 years his senior). So, I dug out this photo, taken when I was 41, and a few months before we met. Not so shabby, eh?

The picture was taken in my office at Marie Claire, where I was editor-inchief. I was in my prime. I knew it then, I know it now. I have newly veneered teeth: I’d ruined the enamel by surviving throughout my 20s on a diet solely of Cox’s apples, four a day, due to my lingering anorexia.

I have a body honed by Pilates classes, and I was eating healthily. My hair is expensively dyed. My skin is great: the adult acne cured by an impending menopause.

What is most attractive about me then is that I look relaxed, but also full of hope, and possibility. After a long, hard slog to the top I had arrived, and I had the body — and wardrobe; it was stuffed with designer clothes; on my wrist is a Rolex — to match. I have long, elegant, expensively tanned fingers. Perfectly pedicured feet.

I was so confident I even dressed down in the office: it was a Friday, and I was about to get on a plane.

Of course, liking my body didn’t last long. My marriage collapsed and my new-found confidence with it. My face soon, over the next few years, became strained and anxious. My eyes became wide and watchful, looking for the next disaster. But here I am. Posed, poised for my next adventure.

Who knew that someone who looked like this was going to crash and burn?