Trisha Ashley - Every Woman For Herself

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 un safe 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.

Flossie wandered in from her basket in the kitchen, wrinkling her nose at Angie and sneezing violently, before climbing onto my lap and regarding my unwelcome visitor with the blank expression only Cavalier Queen Charlotte Spaniels can assume. I’m convinced they are the result of an early failed cloning experiment.

‘At least there are no children to dispute custody of,’ Angie said, staring at Flossie.

I’d learned not to look upset when people said this sort of thing to me, as if I hadn’t desperately wanted children. ‘No, there is that, and Matt has always hated Flossie, so we won’t be disputing over her .’

‘So everything’s all right? Matt says the first part of the divorce will go through in a couple of weeks, and six weeks after that, it’s finalised. Isn’t it quick?’

‘That’s because I didn’t contest anything – I haven’t even got my own solicitor – and we can’t go for mediation because we’re in different countries.’

‘Matt says you don’t need a solicitor, because the house is in his name, and remortgaged to the hilt anyway, and there are lots of debts, so there isn’t much to share. But I’m sure he will be generous with maintenance. You’ll be fine.’

‘Yes, though I do suspect any mildly generous impulses he has now will dwindle away, like in Sense and Sensibility .’

She looked blank.

‘You know, Angie, where the widow and her daughters were going to be looked after by the son who inherited everything, only the allowance sort of dwindled away to the present of the odd duck?’

Angie isn’t much of a reader. She carried on staring at me with her mouth open for a full minute.

‘The odd duck?’

‘Not literally, in Matt’s case. How could he send me a duck from Saudi? Or Japan, which he’s supposed to be going to next. What an awful lot of students want to learn English.’

‘Just as well – and Greg’s been offered a Japanese contract too. I quite fancy it.’ She looked around her vaguely. ‘What are you doing with everything? You can’t take it all back with you to Upvale, can you?’

‘No, but I wouldn’t want to anyway – I’ve never thought of most of the furnishings as mine. They’re all Matt’s choice, and most of them were already here when we married. There’s very little we chose together. Unless Matt wants any of it, I expect I’ll sell it. There are places that come and pack it all up and take it to an auction for you.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think you get much for it. Doesn’t Matt want it stored?’

‘Apparently not. He must have been plotting this long before he came home for his last holiday, because he’d already removed all his personal stuff into storage without me noticing.’