Besque Official Store ad: The Pharmacist Got Worried for My Safety.

The pharmacist asked if someone was hurting me. The pharmacist leaned across the counter, lowered her voice, and asked if I felt safe at home. I didn't understand at first. Then I followed her eyes down to my arms. Purple blotches, from my wrists almost to my elbows. Some fresh, some fading to that horrible yellowy green. A new one on the back of my hand that I didn't even remember getting. "Oh, no, love," I said, and I laughed, because what else do you do. "I just bruise easily." She smiled, but she didn't look convinced. I walked out of that chemist with my prescription and cried in the car park. I'm sixty-eight. For most of my life, I barely bruised at all. Then, somewhere in my sixties, it started happening from nothing. Brushing past the kitchen door. Putting my handbag down on my lap. Leaning on the arm of the sofa. I'd look down an hour later and there'd be a new purple patch, like someone had spilled wine under my skin. My legs were the same. My shins. Even the tops of my feet. And my skin itself had changed. It had gone thin and papery, dry and crinkly like tissue paper that's been screwed up and flattened out again. I stopped wearing short sleeves. Then I stopped wearing skirts. I'd do the shopping in a cardigan in the middle of July, sweating, just so nobody would look. But people did look. The woman at the bus stop. The young lad at the supermarket till. I could feel their eyes going from my arms to my face, wondering. The worst was my granddaughter. Lily was five, and she came running at me for a cuddle like she always did. Then she stopped dead and stared at my arm. "Nana, who hurt you?" "Nobody hurt me, sweetheart." She wouldn't hug me for the rest of the afternoon. She kept patting my arm very gently, like I might break. I went home that night and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. I'd started to feel like I was breaking. My daughter made me see the doctor. She ran some bloods and checked my medications, and she asked a lot of questions. Everything came back fine. She said it's something she sees a lot in women my age, and there was nothing sinister going on. I was relieved, of course I was. But it didn't change how I felt when I looked in the mirror. "Just look after your skin," she said. "Be gentle with it. Keep it well moisturised." So I tried. I bought the thickest lotion the chemist had. It sat on top of my skin like a film, and by lunchtime my arms felt just as tight and dry as before. I tried a few more. Same thing. Then one Tuesday at my water aerobics class, I was getting changed as fast as I could in the corner, like always, when Pat from the next locker caught my eye. Pat's seventy-one. She rolled up her sleeve and showed me her forearm. "Snap," she said. A bruise, right there, just like mine. I nearly burst into tears again, just from knowing it wasn't only me. "Your skin looks lovely though," I said. And it did. Soft, glowing, almost dewy. "That's the oil," she said. "My daughter-in-law got me onto it. I stopped using lotion altogether." She reached into her bag and handed me a bottle. "Take it. I've got another at home. Use it every single day." It was Besque Magic Body Oil. I read the back of it on the bus home. Seven cold-pressed botanicals, 100% natural. No water, no fillers, no synthetic fragrance. Evening primrose oil, rich in GLA, which helps support firmness and elasticity. Rosehip, to help skin hold onto hydration. Sweet almond oil, to smooth and soften. Vitamin E, an antioxidant that helps protect skin from everyday environmental damage. Then geranium, lavender and patchouli, to help even the look of skin, calm it and protect it. It made sense. My lotion was mostly water. This was all nourishment. That night I tried it for the first time. I'd been worried it would feel heavy and greasy on my delicate skin. It didn't. It was silky and warm, and it sank straight in. I smoothed it gently over my arms and hands, down my legs, over the tops of my feet. Slowly, carefully. It felt like I was finally being kind to my skin instead of just slapping something on it. And it smelled beautiful. Soft and floral, with something warm underneath. I kept going. Every morning after my wash, and again before bed. After a week, the tight, dry feeling was gone. A few weeks in, my arms felt soft. Properly soft, not that crinkly tissue-paper feeling. My skin looked healthier. It had a glow to it, a sheen that caught the light when I moved. My legs didn't look grey and ashy anymore. Even my hands looked cared for. I won't pretend I never bruise now. I still get the odd one. My doctor says that's just part of my age. But the skin around it looks and feels like mine again. And somewhere along the way, I stopped hiding. Last Sunday was Lily's sixth birthday party in my daughter's garden. I wore a short-sleeved dress. The first time in two summers. Lily ran at me, and this time she didn't stop. She threw her arms round me and said, "Nana, you're so soft!" I've thought about that every day since. I'm far from the only one who's found this, either. More than 550,000 women use Besque, and it's rated 4.9 out of 5 across 20,000+ reviews. If you've been hiding your arms too, tap Learn More to see what Pat handed me that Tuesday.