Good Husband Material. Trisha Ashley

really, James, there was no cat to let out of the bag, if by that you meant a guilty secret. If I’d thought a detailed list of all my old boyfriends would amuse you I’d have given you one.’

      ‘You didn’t have any other boyfriends. Valerie told me.’

      I felt distinctly ruffled both by the idea of him and Mother discussing my suitability (I mean, she probably assured him I’d only been round the block once, low mileage, practically a born-again virgin), and the fact that it should matter who else I’d been out with (or in with) if he loved me. I bet she also tried to smooth over my unattractive points: i.e. my height (I always wear flat shoes), the cleft chin (Mother calls it a dimple) and the strange colour of my hair (strawberry blond).

      ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were Fergal Rocco’s type anyway, since he’s so extrovert and wild, and you’re as prissy as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood rolled into one,’ he added unforgivably.

      ‘Prissy? I am not prissy!’ I exclaimed, hurt and angry. ‘Anyway, when you proposed you said it was my being so reserved and home-loving that attracted you in the first place!’

      And then, with a sudden flash of belated illumination, it occurred to me that prissy was just the sort of wife he’d been looking for and thought he’d found, since I’d been quietly working hard at my course and my writing – and at that time wore sombre clothes, too. I probably seemed exactly the sort of girl his uncle Lionel had told him he ought to marry, since neither of them has the ability to tell ‘good girls’ from ‘bad girls’ (possibly because the distinction no longer exists).

      A nice, quiet, malleable young girl … only he didn’t realise I’d been hardened into quietness by fire.

      James was scowling blackly ahead over the steering wheel. ‘Suddenly discovering that your quiet, librarian wife is the ex-girlfriend of a notorious rock star is a bit unsettling, and I can assure you that Lionel and Honoria wouldn’t have welcomed you into the family as warmly as they did if they’d known.’

      ‘If that was warm I wouldn’t like to see them meeting someone they disapproved of.’

      ‘You may yet do so if they find out about this.’

      ‘I don’t see why they should. Or why their approval should be necessary.’

      ‘Of course it is! A solicitor needs the right kind of wife. They did comment at the time that you had appalling taste in clothes, but it would probably improve with a

       little guidance.’

      ‘How nice of them!’ I said drily.

      Honoria always wears things made out of hairy tweed like sacking, and high-necked shirts.

      I remembered the first time Lionel and Honoria had met Granny, Mother having managed to keep her hidden until then.

      But James must have told them about her, for we had all been bidden to dine at the pretentious and stuffy restaurant they favoured for such jollifications as interrogating future in-laws.

      They had seemed mesmerised both by the size and profusion of Granny’s diamonds, a selection of which had as usual been pinned and hung at random over her billowing bosom. As she often says: if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em.

      This might have had some bearing on the marked effort to be polite to her they made even after she called the waiter over and demanded, pointing at her soup,‘What do you call this?’

      ‘Chicken soup, madam,’ he’d replied haughtily.

      ‘If that’s chicken, it walked through on stilts.’

      ‘How very droll your dear grandmother is,’ Honoria had remarked in an aside to me. ‘A true original. You are her only grandchild, aren’t you?’

      ‘What? Oh – yes, Dad was her only child.’ I’d replied vaguely, wondering why I found Mother embarrassing whereas I never found Granny so.

      Granny is clever, sharp, kind and loving, and if she doesn’t want to put on airs and graces I don’t see why she should. She says herself that Yorkshire folk are as good as any and better than most.

      I gave a snort as I recalled James’s expression when Granny had written down a recipe for chicken soup and told the waiter to give it to the chef; then I realised he was still burbling on about my dress sense. Lack of, that is.

      It wasn’t doing much for his driving.

      ‘Not that your taste has improved,’ he was saying. ‘All that black you used to wear was a bit gloomy, but you’ve gone too far the other way now.’

      ‘Because I’m happy, and I want to wear bright, cheerful colours while I’m still young enough.’

      ‘I suppose Fergal Rocco liked you in gaudy clothes?’

      He liked me best in no clothes at all.

      I just managed to button my mouth before it got away from me, and after a brief struggle in which my lips writhed silently, managed to say with supreme self-control, ‘Look, I only went out with him for a few months, then Goneril went to America and he dropped me like a hot potato. I never saw or heard from him again after he left. Satisfied?’

      ‘You’ve never seen him since?’

      ‘No!’

      Only in my dreams. And let us hope James doesn’t get a sudden urge to read one of my books (unlikely though it seems) wherein all the romantic heroes are remodelled and transmogrified versions of Fergal.

      Tish the literary vampire.

      Frankenstein Tish, creating a new Fergal each time from the best bits of the old (and there were some choice bits), joined to new parts culled from my imagination. (I’ve got a good one. Lurid, even.)

      Wonder if Fergal gets pale and listless every time I write a new novel? I wouldn’t like to think I was draining his batteries …

      Who am I kidding? Yes I would! It would serve him right for breaking my heart.

      James pulled up outside the flat with an over-dramatic swerve and stalked silently off without opening my door, one of the little old-world courtesies that first endeared him to me.

      I only hope he’s not going to brood over this. I don’t know why he’s so upset about it, since he knew I hadn’t lived in an ivory tower before he came along. (A concrete university accommodation tower, actually – the urge to escape Mother overcame me.)

      Perhaps it’s just that the type of man I went out with doesn’t match the image of me he’s been cherishing.

      Sometimes lately I’ve thought the image he has of me doesn’t match me very much either.

      You know, even now I’m not quite sure how I came to be married to James!

      I wasn’t actually looking for Mr Right. Not even for

       Mr Will-Do-at-a-Push-if-Desperate.

      I remember telling him quite plainly that my life was blighted and I intended living quietly in the country devoting myself to my writing, and him saying he’d always wanted to live in the country too (his self-sufficiency phase). Then he just sort of sneaked up on me with flowers and chocolates and stuff. While spontaneity was not his middle name, dependability was: he was always there.

      And being older he seemed rather suave and sophisticated. And attractive, even if not exciting, which was a plus point after Fergal: I’d had excitement. In fact James had practically had ‘Good Husband Material, Ready to Settle Down’ stamped on his forehead.

      I don’t know what was stamped on my forehead, but it must have been misleading.

      He was, in many ways, terribly conventional, and I think, looking back, that he thought I was too. I was so quiet and stay-at-home (or stay-at-digs) after Fergal.

      On this reflection the car door was suddenly wrenched open, and I would have fallen out if I hadn’t