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TRISHA ASHLEY
Every Woman For Herself
For my father, Alfred Wilson Long, with love.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Alien Husbandry: 2001
Chapter 5: The Prodigal Daughter
Chapter 6: Pesto in the Kitchen
Chapter 8: Dangerous to Melons
Chapter 24: Strange New Powers
Chapter 26: Dazed and Confused
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
Chapter 1: Alien Husbandry: 2001
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
