left me. I mean, what am I going to say to the insurance company? “Squirrels ate my furniture”?’
‘“Weasels Ripped My Flesh”!’ I exclaimed, perking up. ‘I’d forgotten all about that song, but my eldest sister Em used to play it a lot years ago.. Wasn’t it Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention? Or no – maybe it was Jethro Tull. Those were her two favourite bands so it must have been one of them.’
Angie sighed. ‘Not weasels, squirrels,’ she said in cold, clipped accents.
What a matron she would have made if she hadn’t got off with Greg and left the nursing profession! Or a wardress.
‘Sorry, it just reminded me of that song and … but do go on. Squirrels ate your furniture?’
‘Yes. Grey ones.’
‘How did they get in? There must have been a hole somewhere.’
‘A tiny one, but they found it. Still, I expect the insurance will pay up in the end.’
‘Unless squirrels are an act of God, Angie.’
‘Don’t be silly. How can squirrels be an act of God?’
‘You never know. When our garden wall fell down that time, they said it had been undermined by moles, and that was an act of God, so—’
‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ she asked warily.
I smiled encouragingly. ‘I expect they’ll pay up – and what a shame about that furniture. I really liked some of it, especially that knobbly triangular chair. Although bottoms aren’t that shape, are they? And with all those bits sticking out it wouldn’t have been very comfortable, and although it would fit right into a corner of a room, you don’t usually want to sit right in the corner, do you? So I expect you can replace it with something more practical when you get the money.’
‘You do go off at a tangent.’
‘I’ll have to go off altogether, Angie – I’ve got my hairdresser’s appointment.’ Which I absolutely loathe; but my roots were showing.
‘That dead-black Goth look with the dark eye make-up and purplish lipstick is very out of fashion,’ she said, scrutinising me severely.
‘I know, but Matt insists, and—’
Suddenly I realised that it didn’t matter any more what Matt liked or didn’t like. He wouldn’t be here to throw a major wobbler if I stopped dyeing my roots, wearing heavy black eye make-up and vampire-style black clothes …
It was a look that seemed less and less me as I got older. I mean, it was what I was into at seventeen, when I ran off with him, but I didn’t think I’d be stuck in a timewarp forever afterwards.
But now I could do what I liked.
‘I can do what I like,’ I told Angie, brightly.
‘You always did,’ she said sourly. ‘Wasn’t that part of the problem?’
‘Only in the major things, the ones that mattered, like the painting. In little things Matt had it entirely his own way. And I hadn’t realised we had a problem.’
I was about to add that until the morning Matt asked for a divorce I hadn’t realised how old he was either, but just managed to stop myself in time: like Angie and Greg, Matt was a good ten years older than I.
Greg was an awful, red-faced old roué who tried to jump on women the moment he was alone with them. He was Father’s type, I suppose, but without the leonine good looks – and Father did go in for his mistresses one at a time, as a rule.
‘Greg will be home in a couple of weeks, if you want any help,’ Angie offered.
‘Oh, no thanks, Angie,’ I said hastily. ‘I’m sure I can manage.’
Her eyes fell on the stack of magazines she’d brought, and she pounced on the top one. ‘Now, what’s that doing there? I didn’t mean to bring that old copy of Surprise!. I only kept it because it had photos of that gorgeous Mace North in it.’
‘Who?’
She exhibited the magazine, and I scanned the man on the cover with no recognition whatsoever, although his was a very distinctive face. His slightly oblique, hooded dark eyes seemed to be staring back at me assessingly (and probably finding me wanting).
‘You must know him! He’s a well-known actor, and he’s got this deliciously plummy voice, a bit like Jeremy Irons.’
‘You know I don’t watch much TV. But it sounds an unlikely combination with that face,’ I commented. ‘He looks a bit – barbaric.’
‘It’s the Tartar blood.’
‘Oh? I thought tartar was something you found on your teeth,’ I said disagreeably.
‘Not that sort of tartar – it’s a place in Russia. Mongolia? The High Steppes, or Chaparral, or something? His great-grandmother was a Tartar and that’s where those fabulous cheekbones come from, and the come-to-bed eyes …’ She gazed at the magazine and sighed. ‘He’s sort of like a young Bryan Ferry crossed with Rudolf Nureyev.’
‘Rudolf Nureyev’s dead.’
‘You must have seen photos.’
‘Yes, but I don’t find men in tights very appealing. I’d never have made Marian.’
After a minute she smiled weakly: Sunrise over Yellowstone Canyon.
‘You will have your little joke,’ she said, hoisting herself to her feet and tucking the copy of Surprise! firmly under her arm. ‘I’d better go and sort out the roof rats. I’ll soon have the little buggers out of there.’
Her car was parked opposite, outside Miss Grinch’s, who would not be pleased, because she liked the front of her house kept clear so she had a better view of what her neighbours were doing. Had Angie been a man visiting me while my husband was away she would have been straight across with a milk jug or sugar bowl to try to catch me out in some imagined misdemeanour.
I don’t think I’d ever done anything to surprise her – I must have been such a disappointment. You’d think she’d have lost interest. Apart from Angie and Greg, Matt’s friends didn’t bother me when Matt was away, and if Greg came to the door when I was on my own I’d pretend I was out.
I always checked from the landing window first, after one nasty experience soon after I married Matt, when Greg found me on my own and was horribly overfriendly in a near-rape kind of way.
He was even like that in front of Angie at parties, but she didn’t seem to mind particularly. Maybe she thought he was all mouth and no action. Maybe he was all mouth and no action when it came to the crunch – I didn’t intend finding out.
When she’d gone I finally phoned Em, the Ruler of Upvale Parsonage, told her about the impending divorce, and asked if I could come and live at home for a while.
‘OK,’ she said.
