Trisha Ashley - Every Woman For Herself - This hilarious romantic comedy from the Sunday Times Bestseller is the perfect spring read

For my father, Alfred Wilson Long, with love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Chapter 1: Alien Husbandry: 2001

Chapter 2: Wrong in the Attic

Chapter 3: All Panned Out

Chapter 4: Sheared Off

Chapter 5: The Prodigal Daughter

Chapter 6: Pesto in the Kitchen

Chapter 7: Enlightenment

Chapter 8: Dangerous to Melons

Chapter 9: Nature in the Raw

Chapter 10: Small Change

Chapter 11: Parting

Chapter 12: Jumbled

Chapter 13: Jam Tomorrow

Chapter 14: In Combat

Chapter 15: Taken Out

Chapter 16: Going Hairless

Chapter 17: Surprised

Chapter 18: Absolution

Chapter 19: Nuts

Chapter 20: Returns

Chapter 21: Home Comforts

Chapter 22: First Cuckoo

Chapter 23: To the Bone

Chapter 24: Strange New Powers

Chapter 25: Much Travelled

Chapter 26: Dazed and Confused

Chapter 27: Present Magic

Chapter 28: Snapdragon

Recipes

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

I’m delighted that Avon are reprinting Every Woman for Herself , because I have to admit it’s still my favourite literary child – and it’s obviously a favourite with readers, too, since not long ago they voted it one of the top three best romantic novels of the last fifty years, a great honour.

I haven’t rewritten it, merely tweaked a couple of errors into shape, brushed its hair and made sure it had a clean handkerchief, so since it was first published by Piatkus in 2002, it’s obviously very much of its time. But then, think how relaxing it will be to visit a remote Yorkshire valley with no phone signal for miles and only a dodgy dial-up internet connection. The Brontë family managed quite well without them and I hope you will too.

Happy reading, everyone!

Trisha Ashley

Got up at the crack of dawn to kill the Fatted Breakfast before driving Matt to the airport, only to discover that aliens had stolen my husband during the night and substituted something incomprehensibly vile in his place.

I expect their replicator was having a bad day. I distinctly remembered marrying a gentle, long-haired, poetry-spouting Jason King lookalike with a social conscience, but what was facing me over the breakfast table was a truculent middle-aged businessman, paunchy, greying, and flaunting a Frank Zappa moustache seemingly edged with egg yolk: but I knew better. The alien snot was the clincher.

It was not a pretty sight, but fascinating for all that.

I went to peer into the kitchen mirror to see if I’d changed as well: but no, I still looked like a miniature Morticia Addams.

‘Charlie,’ the Matt creature said impatiently, ‘did you hear what I said? About wanting a divorce?’

I certainly had; what did he think had ripped the veils of delusion from my eyes? But I was temporarily deprived of speech as almost a quarter of a century of married life flashed before my eyes in Hogarthian vignettes: Flake’s Progress .

The inner film came to a jerky halt. ‘Yes,’ I said finally, nodding. I understood.

Unfortunately my memory was not of the selective kind, a cheery sundial remembering only the happy hours, so my recollections were freely punctuated with loss. Lost mother, lost virginity, lost babies, lost husband, Lost in Space.

Charlie Rhymer, this was your life.

For some reason, Matt seemed disconcerted by my reaction. ‘We’ve grown apart since I’ve been taking these foreign contracts, and I’ve come to realise that this will be best for both of us. In fact, we can divorce right away, since we’ve been separated for more than two years.’

‘How can we be separated when you’re here?’ I asked, trying to get my head around this concept.

‘But I’m not really here, am I?’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m in Saudi.’

‘But you’re back for quite long holidays between contracts – and you said it would be better if I stayed here.’

‘You would have hated it – you know you don’t even like leaving the house, let alone the country.’

‘But that’s just York – it’s got the wrong sort of outside. I’m fine at home.’

‘ This is your home.’

‘I meant Upvale, and Blackdog Moors.’

‘You seemed eager enough to run away from it with me.’

‘That was love, and unplanned pregnancy, and Father.’

Matt said earnestly, ‘Charlie, it isn’t that I’m not still fond of you …’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. ‘In fact, thank you for having me.’

He ignored that; I’m not sure he even heard it, like most of the things I say.

‘It’s just that I’m not getting anything out of this marriage,’ he continued.

‘You make me sound like a bank. What were you expecting to get out? More than you put in?’

‘At least there are no children to complicate things,’ he said, which was a very low blow. He was starting to make me feel quite sick.

‘I’m sorry it’s come to this, Charlie, but we really can’t go on. I’ve been offered a long contract in Japan, and I can’t afford to continue maintaining two households.’

‘But the house … the mortgage?’ I said, my brain starting to limp onwards a bit, now the first shockwave had broken over my head. ‘What will happen?’

‘The divorce will go through quickly if we’re both in agreement – my solicitor will send you things to sign. Then I’ll pay you maintenance every month, so you won’t have anything to worry about. The solicitor will get in touch with you and explain everything.’

‘Will he? Is that what you’ve been doing this week, organising our divorce? Why didn’t you talk to me about it, instead of suddenly handing me a fait accompli on your last morning home? After all, I haven’t done anything, have I?’

‘No, you haven’t done anything,’ he agreed curtly. ‘Perhaps that’s just it. I’ve moved on, and you haven’t. Other women have families and careers and interests. Perhaps now you’ve turned forty, it’s time you got out there in the real world.’

I’d been cocooned for the twenty-three years of my married life, and now suddenly I was to be ripped from my chrysalis and told to make like a butterfly?

He rose from the table. ‘I’ll ring you from Saudi, once you’ve had time to think it over.’

Questions were already beginning to bubble scummily to the surface, like: when did he see this solicitor? How long had he been planning this? What does he mean, he’ll give me maintenance? Was there some other woman behind this? Who on earth would want him?

‘Hurry up and get the car out,’ snapped Alien Nation in a reasonable impersonation of my husband, ‘while I get my bags.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got a plane to catch. It’s time to go.’

It certainly was. I went into the conservatory, locking the door carefully behind me. Although it was so tiny, once I was in the middle where my easel and table were, you couldn’t see me for jungle plants.

Palms, bamboo and bananas, and a fig tree in a big pot … Dense foliage and warm, slightly steamy, air.

Matt banged on the glass a few times like a deranged moth, shouting, but I disconnected, picking up a brush and carrying on painting the tiny, naked, cowering figure at the heart of the rampant forest. It looked like Steve, the handsome young gardener at the park, and something threatening was definitely lurking in the undergrowth.