Every Woman For Herself. Trisha Ashley

– well, Father was, anyway. He thought if he recreated the hothouse environment and we didn’t become literary geniuses, or Branwell became the literary giant, it would prove his point. You know – like in his book: Branwell: Source of Genius?’

      From her puzzled expression, clearly she didn’t know.

      ‘And Charlie’s short for Charlotte, of course. When the experiment palled on Father he sent us all to the local school, and although Em didn’t mind being known as Effing Emily, I got very tired of being Scarlet Charlotte the Harlot. My family always called me Charlie, anyway.’

      ‘Weird!’ she muttered again. ‘I suppose you will go back there?’

      ‘I’ll have to, but I can’t just return as if the last twenty-three years never existed.’

      Though, when I did visit home it felt as if I’d never left. Everything was the same: Em running the place and striding the moors composing her lucrative greeting-card verses, Gloria and Walter Mundi haphazardly doing the housework and gardening, Father writing his infamous biographies and installing his latest mistress in the Summer Cottage, Bran and Anne turning up on visits.

      And the moors. Nothing ever changed on Blackdog Moor except the seasons, that was what made me feel so safe there and so very unsafe here in York.

      ‘You can get a little job, can’t you?’ suggested Angie. ‘You’re not too old.’

      ‘What as? Besides, I might make enough from my paintings if I exhibited more.’

      ‘A London gallery, that’s what you need.’

      I shuddered. ‘Oh, I couldn’t go to London! I’m a country girl at heart and hate big cities.’

      ‘Don’t be such a wet lettuce,’ Angie said impatiently. ‘It’s time to stop being a shy, mimsy little wimp once you’re past forty.’

      I gave her a look. I may be reserved, stubborn and quiet, but I plough my own furrow, as she should have known by then. I’m an introverted exhibitionist. Why should I like crowds? I’m simply not a herd animal.

      No one could accuse Angie of being mimsy or shy. She’s at least ten years older than I am, but her hair was dyed a relentless auburn, she wore eyelashes like tarantula legs, and her face had had every cosmetic art known to science applied to it at one time or another. Her body was lean, brown, and taut, except for the crepe-paper skin.

      Flossie wandered in from her basket in the kitchen, wrinkling her nose at Angie and sneezing violently, before climbing onto my lap and regarding my unwelcome visitor with the blank expression only Cavalier Queen Charlotte Spaniels can assume. I’m convinced they are the result of an early failed cloning experiment.

      ‘At least there are no children to dispute custody of,’ Angie said, staring at Flossie.

      I’d learned not to look upset when people said this sort of thing to me, as if I hadn’t desperately wanted children. ‘No, there is that, and Matt has always hated Flossie, so we won’t be disputing over her.’

      ‘So everything’s all right? Matt says the first part of the divorce will go through in a couple of weeks, and six weeks after that, it’s finalised. Isn’t it quick?’

      ‘That’s because I didn’t contest anything – I haven’t even got my own solicitor – and we can’t go for mediation because we’re in different countries.’

      ‘Matt says you don’t need a solicitor, because the house is in his name, and remortgaged to the hilt anyway, and there are lots of debts, so there isn’t much to share. But I’m sure he will be generous with maintenance. You’ll be fine.’

      ‘Yes, though I do suspect any mildly generous impulses he has now will dwindle away, like in Sense and Sensibility.’

      She looked blank.

      ‘You know, Angie, where the widow and her daughters were going to be looked after by the son who inherited everything, only the allowance sort of dwindled away to the present of the odd duck?’

      Angie isn’t much of a reader. She carried on staring at me with her mouth open for a full minute.

      ‘The odd duck?’

      ‘Not literally, in Matt’s case. How could he send me a duck from Saudi? Or Japan, which he’s supposed to be going to next. What an awful lot of students want to learn English.’

      ‘Just as well – and Greg’s been offered a Japanese contract too. I quite fancy it.’ She looked around her vaguely. ‘What are you doing with everything? You can’t take it all back with you to Upvale, can you?’

      ‘No, but I wouldn’t want to anyway – I’ve never thought of most of the furnishings as mine. They’re all Matt’s choice, and most of them were already here when we married. There’s very little we chose together. Unless Matt wants any of it, I expect I’ll sell it. There are places that come and pack it all up and take it to an auction for you.’

      ‘Yes, but I don’t think you get much for it. Doesn’t Matt want it stored?’

      ‘Apparently not. He must have been plotting this long before he came home for his last holiday, because he’d already removed all his personal stuff into storage without me noticing.’

      ‘You’re not the most observant of women, are you? Head in the clouds. Or the plants.’

      ‘I might want a few bits and pieces, because I don’t think I could live at home again for very long, not after living in my own house for years. And I need somewhere to put my plants.’

      ‘I don’t think Upvale sounds very exciting. Matt said it was just one steep cobbled road like a Hovis advert, with three streetlights, half a dozen houses, your Parsonage, and a lot of dirt tracks leading to farms.’

      ‘There are a lot more houses than that in Upvale, but they’re spread out. And the only cobbled bit is about a hundred yards in front of the pub.’

      ‘I didn’t know there was a pub. Civilisation!’

      ‘Yes, the Black Dog, after the local legend. There’s Blackdog Moor, too, haunted by this huge, hideous fanged creature, with blood-red eyes and jaws dripping with—’

      Angie shuddered. ‘No more, please. What with noises in the attic and demon dogs I won’t sleep a wink tonight all on my lonesome.’

      ‘Oh, yes – the noises in the attic. Are you haunted, Angie?’

      She should have been, by the ghosts of all the creatures who died in animal experiments on cosmetics.

      ‘No, it’s squirrels.’

      ‘Squirrels? You’ve got squirrels in your attic? What colour? Those nice little reddish Squirrel Nutkin ones, or the big grey ones?’

      ‘What does it matter? They’re all vermin, and they’ve chewed to bits the furniture I’ve stored up there! Squirrels! They’ve eaten all the wooden parts of the chairs, and the grandfather clock, and a nice tallboy. I suppose I’m lucky it isn’t rats, which is what I thought when I got back on Wednesday and heard all those funny thumping noises. Isn’t that what you’d have thought, Charlie?’

      ‘What?’ I said, dragging my mind back from my own problems with some effort. ‘I’m the madwoman in the attic, I think, or will be. Perhaps I should join your squirrels.’

      ‘Who mentioned madwomen?’ she demanded crossly. ‘Do concentrate, Charlie. The little tree rats have eaten all the lovely furniture Mother 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