“‘You’ve Got Saggy Skin!’ — My 60-Year-Old Husband Pinched My Side in Front of Our Guests, So I Brought a Mirror and Showed Him What’s Really Hanging Down”

“Look, your skin’s all saggy!” declared my sixty-year-old husband, Bernard, pinching my side in front of the guests. So I fetched the mirror and showed him exactly what was sagging on his own person.

“Emily, what on earth is this?” Bernard asked, smacking his lips after his third glass of homemade sloe gin. Without warning, he reached over and decisively pinched me on the side.

Right above the waistband of my skirtwhere the fabric inevitably tugs a bit when one is seated.

He did it in front of everyone, loud and gloriously shameless.

“Bernard, really?” I tried to gently brush his hand aside as though batting away a persistent housefly, but he was determined.

His fingersshort, stubby things resembling overcooked chipolatasclamped onto my waist again. It didnt exactly hurt, but oh, the insult.

“Look here!” he bellowed at our neighbour across the table, Geoffrey, who was poised mid-air with a fork, aiming for the smoked mackerel pâté on toast. “I keep telling her: ‘Emily, lay off the crumpets at night.’ And all she says is, ‘Its age, its hormones’!”

Bernard roared with laughter, his belly wobbling dangerously, threatening to burst the buttons on his best shirt.

“Hormones, my foot! Its good old laziness, thats all!” he concluded, surveying the room with self-satisfaction.

“Bernard, just stop it,” I hissed through gritted teeth, feeling the tell-tale blush rising from my neck to my cheeks.

Geoffrey giggled nervously, riveted by the swirl of mayonnaise on his plate, as though the meaning of life was hidden in those creamy whorls.

His wife, Mabel, looked away politely and busied herself with her napkin, pretending nothing was happening.

“What do you mean, ‘stop it’?” Bernard was rolling now, basking in the attention. “Can’t even tell the truth these days? Look, love, you really do have saggy skin!”

He prodded my side again as if checking the readiness of a Victoria sponge.

“See, right here, just look at that rollall bunched up like a shar pei puppy. Not exactly a work of art, Em.”

A heavy, sticky silence fell over the room, broken only by the hum of the fridge from the kitchen.

“I do this for your own good,” Bernard continued with the tone of a wise schoolmaster, leaning back and folding his arms. “A woman should take care of herself so her man has something nice to look at. Its the law of nature!”

I stared at him.

Really lookedas if seeing him for the first time in thirty years of marriage.

Sixty-two, he was.

His belly hung over his trousers like a rain cloud on the Kent horizon.

A double chin led straight into his neck, merging gently into sloping shouldersskipping any semblance of jawline along the way.

The bald patch glistened under the chandelier, as shiny as a buttered crumpet at afternoon tea.

“So. Pleasing to the eye, is it?” I asked, far too calmly for even my own liking.

Something shifted sharply inside me. A clang, like throwing a huge switch.

No more embarrassment, no more smoothing things over, and absolutely no more infinite patience.

Just clean, crisp clarity remained.

“Of course!” Bernard beamed, thumping his chest and making a sound not unlike a hollow biscuit tin. “Here I amlook at me, keeping in shape!”

“What shape would that be, exactly?” I asked, eyes still fixed on him.

“A manly one!” He sat up as straight as his spine allowed. “Every morning, I go for a stretch. Five minutes waving my weights aboutIm full of beans!”

He actually tried to draw in his stomach to show off this so-called tone.

The effect was tragic. His belly gave a tremulous quiver, then obligingly flopped back to its rightful spot, draping itself lovingly over a belt buckle digging deep into his flesh.

“A blokes supposed to be an eagle, not a sack of King Edwards,” he finished with a flourish.

“An eagle, is it?” I rose slowly from the table, trying not to make any sudden movements.

“Where do you think youre going? Dont sulk, Em! he called after me, pouring himself another slosh of gin. Truth hurts, love! Should be dieting, not pouting!

I escaped to the hallway, redolent with the scent of old coats and shoe polish.

On the wall hung our old, inherited mirror.

Heavy thingan oval with a thick, solid wooden frame. It had seen us young and slim, once upon a time.

I resolutely unhooked it from its nail.

It must have weighed five kilograms at least, the frame digging into my palms. But I barely noticed, I could have been carrying a feather.

Back in the lounge, I marched in, mirror held before me like a medieval knight brandishing a shield.

Or like I was about to deliver a particularly dramatic verdict.

The guests froze, forks suspended in mid-air. Mabels mouth stayed open, a lone cube of pickled cucumber perched inside.

“Bernard, stand up,” I said, quietly but firmly enough that no one dared argue.

“Why? Going to make me dance?” He was genuinely puzzled but, face to face with my stony expression, thought better of argument. “Alright, Im upnow what?”

“No dancing,” I said, stepping in close enough to catch the familiar whiff of onions and alcohol. “Lets all admire the big eagle, shall we?”

I thrust the hefty mirror beneath his nose, forcing him back a step.

“Hold this.”

He instinctively took the frame, hands wobbling under the unexpected weight.

“Emily, whats this all about?” His voice, usually so bombastic, suddenly cracked with uncertainty.

“Look,” I commanded, with the same tone I use to shoo the cat off the worktop. “Really look.”

He stared at his reflection, which trembled in his unsteady hands.

“Yes, alright, its me. Get on with it?”

“Now, glance a bit lower,” I said, jabbing my finger at the glass, right where his sweat-stained shirt pulled taut. “See that?”

“What?” He was valiantly holding the line.

“Youve got saggy skin!” I announced, loud and clear, using his very own voice from five minutes ago. “And not just saggy, Bernard. Its positively resting.”

“Emily!” He tried to lower the mirror, his cheeks flooding crimson.

“No, hold it!” I pressed the lower edge, making sure he kept looking. See here, above your beltthose steel abs, are they?”

Geoffrey made a strangled snort, half choked on laughter, then coughed into his fist.

“No, darling, thats a life ring,” I went on mercilessly. “In case we all drown in lard.”

Bernard was now the colour of an overripe tomato seconds before it bursts.

“And what about this?” I pointed to his sides, rebelliously escaping his trousers. “Are these eagle wings? Or the little ears you get on a Christmas porker?”

“Enough!” he hissed, desperate to turn away. “Everyones watching! Are you trying to humiliate me?”

“Good! Let them watch!” I raised my voice, cutting through his hissing. “You wanted the truth, didnt you? Youre the grand high judge of household aesthetics!”

I stepped back to properly take in the whole scene.

“Well then, lets have a good long look at your own aesthetic,” I pressed on, “Turn to the light.”

“I will not” he began, but stopped dead.

“Turn!” I barked, so sharply everyones forks rattled on their plates.

He did, awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot.

And in the mirror, there he was in profilea far cry from any classical sculpture.

And that neck. Or rather, where a neck would normally be.

“See that triple fold behind your head, Bernard? I continued in the calm tone of a GP doing a health MOT. “Thats the mark of a pedigree shar pei, that is.”

Mabel had given up all pretenceher face buried in her napkin, shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

“And under your chin?” I pressed on, merciless. “Thats not a jaw, thats a pelicans pouch, what exactly are you hiding in there?”

“Im a man! Bernard squeaked, sounding all of six years old. Doesnt count for me!

“Oh, it doesnt, does it?” I laughed then, but it was a brittle, icy laugh. “So, for meafter two kids and decades at the cookerone little roll is shameful, lazy, and saggy skin?”

I moved right up to him and looked him square in the eye.

“But you, you cant lift anything heavier than the remote, and now youre more jelly than gentleman, and thats just manly?”

I ripped the mirror from his handshe was wobbling now, arms limp with effort.

He stood there, rumpled, shellshocked. The top button on his shirt had finally surrendered and now lay somewhere under the table.

All his sparkle and self-importance had melted away, like icing under a grill.

Not an eaglejust a middle-aged, very well-fed man, suddenly realising the emperor has no clothes.

And possibly no socks, either.

“Sit,” I said, propping the mirror by the sideboard. “And eat.”

He collapsed into his chair, which gave a protesting wheeze.

“And from now on, not a word about my figurenot a syllable,” I said, fixing my hair in the mirror.

I turned to him and added, softly, “Or Ill hang this mirror right opposite your seat. Youll get to watch your inner pelican eat dinner every night.”

Geoffrey was openly laughing now, dabbing at his eyes with a corner of the tablecloth.

Bernard quietly speared a single pickled mushroom, chewing slowly, gazing only at his plate, willing himself to shrink.

The room lightened, the tension melting away as though someone had finally opened a window in a musty old club lounge.

I returned to my rightful place at the head of the table.

I picked up the cake knife and served myself a ludicrously massive portion of Victoria spongethe very one Id baked yesterday, swearing I wouldnt touch so I wouldnt get fat.

The custard cream was gloriously squidgy, the layers crackled under my fork.

“Emily, pass me a slab as well, would you?” whispered Mabel, passing her plate. “To hell with the dietlifes too short.”

“And me,” Geoffrey grinned, pouring himself some elderflower cordial. “With a bit of luck, maybe Ill grow wings toobest fuel up!”

Bernard glanced up at me, just for a second.

There was something new behind those eyes: caution. Respect, even.

Then he looked at the cake.

Then the mirror, still standing guard by the walla mute witness to his defeat.

In its lower half, his socked feet gazed back: one black, one navy-blue (almost violet).

The majestic domestic eagle.

“Sorry, Em,” he mumbled, avoiding my eye and tracing the pattern on the tablecloth. “Shot my mouth off. Foolish.”

“Eat, Bernard, eat,” I replied, taking a luscious bite of cake. “Youll need your strength.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“For your weights,” I explained sweetly. “Sporting man, arent you?”

The dinner party found its groove againchatter about prices, the garden, the weather.

But something had shifted forever in the household pecking order.

My infallible family critic had collapsed back to earthas human as the next man, folds and all.

And you know what?

That cake was damned delicious.

Best thing Id tasted in twenty years.

Since then, the mirror has stayed put in the lounge. I never bothered to move it.

These days, whenever Bernard walks past, he cant help tensing his belly and straightening his back.

But hes never again mentioned my saggy skin.

Perhaps hes worried about waking the pelican.