from you, and glad everything is going well for you. Yes, I’m happily married and love living here, but since I’m terribly busy, what with my family commitments and work, perhaps we could postpone having a reunion? I’ll let you know when I have a bit more free time.
All the best,
Fran
That should hold him … for ever?
I am doing loads of work to distract me from my gnawing hunger, though in between I pore over the soft porn of cookbooks, salivating. Oooh, crème caramel! Aaah, tarte aux cerises!
Which somehow reminds me of the afternoon I took the Restoration Gardener DVD out of the miscellaneous box and started guiltily watching it with the curtains in the sitting room shut tight, which must have made the Wevills frantic with curiosity.
They have started parking halfway across my drive like they did last time Mal was away, making it very difficult for me to get my car in and out; however, they prefer that to parking on their own narrow drive because it means they get to stare in the front of the house whenever they get in their car.
They only do this when Mal isn’t here, of course. And how do they know he’s away? Because he tells them – and gives them permission to do it, so they don’t have to keep moving one of their cars to get the other out!
After my sharp email to Mal he didn’t communicate with me at all for two days, which was probably just as well since I was seething, and then suddenly he rang me as if nothing had happened. I might have thought he hadn’t got my reply except that I could spot the Weevil-shaped hole in the dry biscuit of his conversation. I expect they have put a whole new spin on my daily round of giddy dissipation: walking in the fairy glen, going up to Plas Gwyn to help Nia whitewash her studio and see what new finds she and Rhodri have made in the attic, coffee (and sometimes a hand with the washing-up – old habits die hard) at Carrie’s, or down to the Druid’s Rest in the early evening for a wicked glass of diet tonic.
Now Mal phones me every couple of days, though there was a time when he would call me every night when he was away; and even though he is the other side of London he would still have driven back for the weekend at least once. And I’m sure he forgets who he’s talking to half the time, since he tends to address me in computer-speak monologues that slide effortlessly in through one ear and out the other.
I have barely touched on the fringes of understanding the Internet, though if the day ever dawns when I have to start submitting my artwork by computer I expect I will manage it: when I need to know something, that’s the time to learn it, otherwise I’d just be cluttering up my brain cells with a lot of useless information.
Since he doesn’t ask me anything about myself I haven’t mentioned that my hair has mysteriously got two inches shorter and shows a distressing tendency to go into ringlets, I’ve planted a rose in his part of the garden and half-covered the fireplace in pottery shards and mosaic tiles.
The only personal thing he let fall is that he has seen a bit of Alison, his first wife. What I want to know is, which bit?
This morning I let three lots of estate agents into Fairy Glen to value it for Ma, and they didn’t seem to know quite what to make of it.
The bright colours and sparkling, cluttered rooms stunned them speechless, as did the very basic amenities, even though it does have a bathroom and a kitchen of sorts. And none of them explored the garden further than the flattish area around the cottage, not having come equipped for hiking.
They scribbled in their notepads, scratched their heads, then valued it at about ten times what I thought it was worth, even though the glen is pretty useless for anything much except enjoying (and I must take lots more photos of it in case it is lost to me as inspiration – or at least in its present, magically neglected, form).
Of course, Nia might be right and no one will buy it, though then Ma couldn’t afford her cruise, which would be a shame. Dad left her quite comfortably off, but I don’t think she could get right round the world without augmenting her cash flow.
When I phoned her with the valuations she was absolutely amazed, but decided she would go with the highest one from sheer hopeful greed, though she still wouldn’t sell it, even at the asking price, if she didn’t like the person who made the offer!
Later I went to the Druid’s Rest, since Carrie wanted to show us the fruits of her research into the Life and Times of Gabe Weston before Rhodri got there, and secretly I am sure that Nia was as keen to see what she had turned up as I was.
Mona Wevill was sitting in her car in front of my house smoking when I went out, and she stared at me deadpan as I skirted round the bonnet and headed into the village. Creepy, or what?
Nia and Carrie were in the back parlour with the stuffed trout, two halves of Murphy’s and an open packet of dry-roasted peanuts between them.
‘Hi, Carrie. Hi, Nia – how’s it going up at Plas Gwyn?’
‘Fine, except I wish Dottie would stop trying to stable her horse in my workshop. I’ve left her a perfectly good loose box at the end of the wing, but she can’t seem to grasp the concept of change. She does realise Rhodri’s doing his best to maintain the place, though, in her own dim way, and she’s trying to help.’
‘I went up there yesterday,’ Carrie said, ‘and planned how I wanted the tearoom set out, once we get permission.’
‘And reminded us that we hadn’t thought of toilets for the visitors,’ Nia sighed. ‘Another thing to fit in somewhere.’
‘You’ll get there,’ Carrie said encouragingly. ‘Anyway, aren’t you both just dying to see what I’ve got on Gabriel Weston?’ And she dumped a big carrier bag of stuff on the tabletop.
Not only had she scoured her contacts, the Internet and the magazine racks of the nearest town for further information on Gabriel Weston, she’d even gone to the length of buying his book!
Restoration Gardener looked just the sort of thing I would like if I weren’t horribly and unreasonably prejudiced against the author, who smiled enigmatically at me from his book jacket photo.
‘You know, the more I look at his face, the more I wonder if I’ve totally flipped and become one of those women who imagine they are having a relationship with someone famous,’ I confessed, picking it up to study it more closely. ‘Maybe it was just someone who looked a bit like him? I mean, he can’t be unique, can he?’
‘He looks pretty unique to me,’ Carrie said, scrutinising his picture with the eyes of a connoisseur. Then she riffled through the heap. ‘I got most of this off the Net. There’s lots about a paternity claim case, back when he’d just started making a name for himself on TV.’
‘What? A paternity case?’ I snatched up the first sheet that came to hand and started reading, and so did Nia. After a bit I looked up. ‘It wasn’t his baby after all!’
‘No,’ agreed Carrie, ‘but there must have been something in it, because his wife divorced him – see, read that one there.’
‘Reputation Restored! TV gardener cleared in paternity claim row … but too late to save marriage.’
‘Perhaps she simply wasn’t the “stand by your man” type?’
Nia was frowning
