Free Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley Page B

my little girl is a Writer!’
    I winced, even though I get this sort of thing all the time. Then I braced myself to ask, ‘You haven’t been – well – drinking again, have you, Mummy?’
    ‘Oh, there’s the doorbell!’ she said brightly. ‘Must go, darling. I’ll let you know if I can arrange anything for Granny so that I can come and take a little holiday with you. Bye-ee!’ And the line went dead.
    I hadn’t heard any doorbell, and I replaced the receiver with a feeling of deep depression. Mother generally has that effect on me.
    James was immersed in his paper, oblivious both to me and to Bess, who was staring fixedly at the door. (Normal dogs whine.)
    ‘Bess wants to go out, James!’ I said loudly, but he pretended not to hear, so with a sigh of resignation I took the lead off the door.
    Standing in the icy darkness of the lane waiting for Bess to perform, I thought: What a day!
    ‘ You have remembered that I’ll be late home tonight, haven’t you?’ James said casually about a week later, preparing to dash out after breakfast.
    He looked pretty good in his natty dark suiting, but I always think he would look even better striding about the heather in a kilt like his forebears did. He has that sort of look. Rugged. (Which he isn’t, really.)
    ‘Remember? How can I remember when you never told me in the first place?’ I exclaimed in surprise.
    ‘I told you days ago.’
    ‘But what about dinner? Just how late will you be?’
    He looked annoyed at my perfectly reasonable question: ‘Don’t wait for me – I’ll pick something up.’
    ‘Eating junk food on the run isn’t healthy, James.’
    ‘Then I’ll go and eat at Howard’s afterwards, and stay overnight!’
    ‘Eating at Howard’s is even more of a health hazard. It’s all takeaways, and too dark to see what’s in them, because the electricity’s always cut off.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Howard!’
    ‘You mean, apart from him being a drug-crazed, free-loading ageing hippie who’s never worked in his life?’
    ‘Howard’s all right – we were at school together,’ he protested, as if that qualified Howard as a member of the human race. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided: I’m staying there tonight.’
    I didn’t say anything more, because if I hadn’t nagged him about junk food he probably would have come home instead. I don’t think I handled that too well.
    After James had gone (with overnight bag, though Flit gun would have been more to the point) I went into the front garden and hammered the spike of the rotary dryer with unnecessary force into the rough grass. I can’t afford to keep using the tumble dryer all the time, although when you hang clothes out in March it’s a toss-up whether they are going to dry or be glazed like mutant frozen prawns.
    With the first load of washing churning away I went up to my little writing room. I’d been working on the floorboards, which were not good enough to sand and seal, so I’d painted them cream and stencilled roses round the border.
    Piled in one corner were light cardboard boxes filled with some of my varnished leaves. (James says two baskets of dead leaves are more than enough in one sitting room.) I had a brain wave, and soon there were drifts of golden leaves along the walls and piled in the corner opposite the door, where they whispered at the least small draught. It looked lovely, though I am very sure that James will say it is a weird idea. He is so stick-in-the-mud and staid about everything
I
do, yet
he
can go off and stay with Horrible Howard who really
is
weird.
    By then the washing was done and, as I was hanging it out, the vicar called: a tall, thin, middle-aged man radiating an air of youthful enthusiasm, and wearing a bright purple T-shirt with his dog collar.
    As he shambled up the drive with that strange gait some men have – knees turned out as though they have been kicked in the naughty bits and never recovered – I hastily swivelled the