always thought Matt was a waste of space. Anyway, he won’t be very interested – he’s got a new mistress.’
I groaned. ‘Is she in the Summer Cottage yet?’
‘Not yet. She’s renting a house down in the valley. But she’s always round here, and they’re all over each other. It’s revolting. And she’s got twin little girls who sit about giggling. She leaves them here when she goes out with Father.’
I supposed it was better than leaving them in an empty house, but not much – Em didn’t like children, so she wouldn’t see their presence in the house as being anything to do with her.
‘He’s never had one with children before, has he?’
‘No, unless you count Bran’s mother, and that was unintentional. He’ll probably get tired of her, if she won’t move into the cottage. You know how he likes everything convenient.’
‘Flossie says hello,’ I told her.
Em’s voice immediately softened to a medium baritone that was positively sugary. ‘Give her a big kiss on her shiny black nose from me, and tell her Frost can’t wait for her to come and live here.’
Flossie was petrified of Frost, a giant grey lurcher with questionable habits (a bit like Father, really), but I appreciated the sentiment.
‘I will – and thanks, Em.’
‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘You’re just – there.’
‘Where else would I be?’ she asked, sounding puzzled.
I didn’t turn up for my hairdresser’s appointment in the end, which made me feel like I was bunking off school. I realised I need never sit in one of those foul-smelling torture chambers again.
Things were moving so quickly now that I’d decided to start packing my belongings. I’d put the stuff I didn’t want in the small spare room: it was half-decorated as a nursery, a place of abandoned hopes, so entirely suitable. Anything going with me would be stacked at one end of the living room.
I’d been looking at the heap of magazines left by Angie, and I was feeling extremely irritated: none of them seemed to have any connection with reality as I knew it. They might as well all be called Rich Young Brain-Dead Anorexic London-Based Fashion Victim Magazine, and have done with it. Where were the magazines aimed at women like me? Skint Old Northern Woman, perhaps? I’ll have to write my own:
Skint Old Northern Woman: Issue 1
Our motto is: Every Woman For Herself!
Welcome to our new magazine for the older, more frazzled reader. While written primarily for the Northern woman, it may also prove invaluable for those Southerners harnessing their huskies ready to brave the Frozen North, containing as it does many cultural hints.
To any peripheral Skint Old Southern Women, why not write your own issue, addressing the topics you find important?
We welcome readers’ letters, except those sycophantic ones saying how wonderful our magazine is: we already know that, so for God’s sake write about something. If you have an embarrassing personal problem write in to Sister Charlie’s ‘In Confidence’ page: she will only share it with the entire readership …
I thought I’d discovered a fascinating new hobby.
The house was now on the market, and Matt, via his solicitor, had said he’d give me half of any profit, though I could see that it would all be eaten up by these mysterious debts and the overdraft. It had never felt like my house anyway, so I didn’t care.
He’d also said he’d stored everything that he wanted from the house, and he didn’t mind what I did with the rest.
What a busy boy he must have been during that week at home – and how unobservant of me not to notice.
He was going to carry on paying the mortgage and utilities until the house was sold, but for some reason he hadn’t transferred any extra money across that month for food, etc. Was this a mistake, or had I already dwindled to the present of the odd duck?
Seeing that I would have to start selling the furniture now (however odd an appearance that would give to prospective house purchasers) I went out to the supermarket and removed as many cardboard boxes as I could fit into my ancient 2CV.
I also laid in a large supply of long-life consumables, like baked beans, jars of olives, red wine and dog food, before the money ran out altogether.
Em phoned: the mistress and her children had got into the house, and were laying waste like Angie’s squirrels.
None of the others had managed to sidestep the Summer Cottage like this, and Em had begun an offensive against the invader. Em did offensive very well. She hoped to have them out before I moved back, but in the meantime the mistress was domiciled in my room! I was highly indignant, even though Em had removed all my personal belongings from it and stored them in one attic, and the two little girls in another.
She would have much preferred squirrels, and so would I.
Why did it have to be my room? Why not Bran or Anne’s? Having foreign bodies in my only remaining sanctum was the last straw. Think the aliens were now taking over Yorkshire.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get them out,’ Em said grimly. ‘Father won’t be able to stand them around all the time once the sexual novelty’s worn off – you know what he’s like. Then I’ll put your room back as it was.’
‘But it will never be the same again,’ I said sadly, for now I really did feel like a dispossessed person. I was blowin’ in the wind.
I told Em about Skint Old Northern Woman, and she said it was a wonderful idea, and she would write some inspiring verse for it, or maybe cookery hints, like: ‘In Yorkshire We Eat Faggots’.
Em has a knack for writing doggerel verse, which is very saleable: practically every greeting card seems to contain one of hers. Now she reminded me that we all had old portable typewriters. Father bought them when it became clear that we weren’t going to write Gondal-type stories in the minute notebooks he kept giving us. Perhaps he thought we needed a bit of twentieth-century apparatus?
When I found mine, the ribbon had dried to paper tape, and trying to buy a new one proved to be a vain quest, for the computer age had long overtaken me.
When I eventually did track one down it was the wrong sort and I had to hand-wind it onto the old spools. I feared I may have red and blue hands for the rest of my life. Still, it worked.
Skint Old Northern Woman
In this issue:
Tart up that skirt
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