Every Woman For Herself: This hilarious romantic comedy from the Sunday Times Bestseller is the perfect spring read. Trisha Ashley
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would have taken for me to realise that I was beginning the slow trek through that long, rocky hinterland before fifty, hand in hand with a grumpy old man? (And as Sherpas go, he’d have been no Tensing.)
A day or two later Matt phoned, his usual bossy self, and basically instructed me just to do as I was told, and he would see me right financially.
That would be a novelty.
And there was definitely an underlying threat there …
I’d finished the painting: miniatures of looming menace, my speciality.
When I lived on the moors among all those vast spaces I painted long, narrow landscapes where tiny figures were set like random jewels. But once transposed to the claustrophobia of a city (even one as beautiful as York), I began painting ever-smaller canvases in which the minute figures cowered under threatening jungle foliage.
They sold quite well through Waugh-Paint, a local gallery. Vaddie Waugh, the owner, said it was because they were so small that they were easily portable. Or maybe people just liked having something small, dark and threatening hanging on their walls?
I hadn’t told anyone about the divorce yet because it didn’t seem real. And anyway, there was only really the family to tell, and frankly I didn’t want to phone home and confess that not only had I failed in the motherhood stakes, I’d also failed as a wife.
The solicitor had explained everything to me, but it all slid away from my grasp immediately. All I understood was that financially we are up Shit Creek without a paddle, so there was no point in my fighting for half the house or a huge chunk of maintenance. The maintenance Matt did propose giving me was a pittance, though combined with my painting earnings I thought I would survive: Remittance Woman.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the house, but the only thing I’d regret leaving was my conservatory. I’d have to return home to the Parsonage at Upvale – but where could I put my jungle? I couldn’t paint without it any more.
I’d have to find some kind of job, and a house of my own if I could afford it, because much though I loved going home, it would be difficult to do it permanently after having my own place for so many years. I could live on my painting, but it would not pay a mortgage.
Having looked around the house, I found it totally amazing what Matt had removed without my noticing before! Still, I didn’t wish to keep ninety-nine per cent of the household contents anyway, since they were never my choice, and in fact were as alien to me as Matt now was.
Perhaps it could all go to one of those auction houses that take anything, though I supposed I’d better ask Alien Nation if he wanted to keep any of it first – that is, if he ever phoned again. He’d gone from checking up on me every other night (although after all these years he must have known I was either here or in Upvale), to one solitary, admonitory phone call.
A couple of weeks after the discovery that Matt was an alien, I opened the door to a most unwelcome visitor: Angie, raddled bride of Matt’s best friend and colleague, the revolting Groping Greg.
‘Angie! What are you doing here? I thought Greg’s contract didn’t end for another three weeks?’
Of course, had I known she was home, I wouldn’t have opened the door without checking who it was first, from the upstairs window.
She pushed a bundle of magazines and a box of chocolates into my arms. ‘These are for you,’ she said in the hushed tones of one visiting the sick. Then she trailed past me into the house, exuding a toxic effluvium of sultry perfume and nicotine.
If you dipped Angie into a reservoir it would turn yellow and poison many cities.
I followed her into the living room, where she draped herself into one of Matt’s minimalist white leather and birch chairs. She looked surprisingly comfortable, but then, she’s all sinew and leather herself.
‘I had to leave Greg out there and come home early, because the cleaning service said we had weird noises in the attic. But anyway, after Matt told us about the divorce, I just knew you’d fall apart! And since you’ve got no friends except us, I said to Greg, “I’d better get back and help poor Charlie.”’
Angie was not, and never had been, my friend. Her presence was about as welcome to me as a tooth abscess.
‘I’m not falling apart,’ I assured her, which I wasn’t, because nothing lately had seemed at all real. I wasn’t sure if I’d been living in a dream world for years and just woken to reality, or vice versa. Sleeping Beauty in her jungle. ‘Actually, I feel more as if I’m imploding – hurtling inwards on myself. There’ll be a popping noise one day, and I’ll have vanished, like a bubble.’
‘You poor thing! There, I knew I was right to come back. But look on the bright side, darling – you and Matt are having a friendly divorce, so it will go through really fast. Then he’s going to pay you maintenance, although I don’t suppose you’ll need much because you’ll just go back to that insane-sounding family of yours. Did you see your sister Anne on the news last night? There were bullets flying around her head, and she just kept on talking.’
‘Emily – my older sister – has second sight, so she knows Anne’s invincible to bullets. And I don’t know why you say my family’s insane. Matt was keen enough to marry me once he found out who Father was, even if he can’t wait to get rid of me now.’
‘Anne, Emily – and your brother’s called Branwell, isn’t he? What were your parents trying to do, breed their own Brontës?’
‘Yes – well, Father was, anyway. He thought if he recreated the hothouse environment and we didn’t become literary geniuses, or Branwell became the literary giant, it would prove his point. You know – like in his book: Branwell: Source of Genius?’
From her puzzled expression, clearly she didn’t know.
‘And Charlie’s short for Charlotte, of course. When the experiment palled on Father he sent us all to the local school, and although Em didn’t mind being known as Effing Emily, I got very tired of being Scarlet Charlotte the Harlot. My family always called me Charlie, anyway.’
‘Weird!’ she muttered again. ‘I suppose you will go back there?’
‘I’ll have to, but I can’t just return as if the last twenty-three years never existed.’
Though, when I did visit home it felt as if I’d never left. Everything was the same: Em running the place and striding the moors composing her lucrative greeting-card verses, Gloria and Walter Mundi haphazardly doing the housework and gardening, Father writing his infamous biographies and installing his latest mistress in the Summer Cottage, Bran and Anne turning up on visits.
And the moors. Nothing ever changed on Blackdog Moor except the seasons, that was what made me feel so safe there and so very unsafe here in York.
‘You can get a little job, can’t you?’ suggested Angie. ‘You’re not too old.’
‘What as? Besides, I might make enough from my paintings if I exhibited more.’
‘A London gallery, that’s what you need.’
I shuddered. ‘Oh, I couldn’t go to London! I’m a country girl at heart and hate big cities.’
‘Don’t be such a wet lettuce,’ Angie said impatiently. ‘It’s time to stop being a shy, mimsy little wimp once you’re past forty.’
I gave her a look. I may be reserved, stubborn and quiet, but I plough my own furrow, as she should have known by then. I’m an introverted exhibitionist. Why should I like crowds? I’m simply not a herd animal.
No one could accuse Angie of being mimsy or shy. She’s at least ten years older than I am, but her hair was dyed a relentless auburn, she wore eyelashes like tarantula legs, and her face had had every cosmetic art known to science applied to it at one time or another. Her body was lean, brown, and taut, except for the crepe-paper skin.