Free Julia Gets a Life by Lynne Barrett-Lee

turns out, is Howard’s mother, and is also a friend of Moira’s (Moira knows everyone old within a ten mile radius). Apparently, she now lives in Bristol - which is where Howard comes from, and it was Moira who told her about the vacancy at the primary school in the first place etc. etc. Who would have thought it?
                ‘Anyway, nice to see you,’ said Howard..
                ‘Nice to see you .’ Damn. So obvious .
                ‘How are things going?’
                Howard knew all about Richard, of course. I had to tell Emma and Max’s teachers in case the standard of their school work suddenly plummeted and/or they burst into tears in the middle of PSE lessons or something. Which was wretched at the time, because I was in the bursting into tears stage myself, and the thought of my children bursting into tears in class made me want to burst into tears pretty much all the time, and what with Howard being my friend, and deeply sympathetic, I obviously did. Copiously. (Curiously, thankfully , Emma and Max had already moved on to the much more pragmatic ‘Great! We can watch Little Britain without Dad moaning!’ stage, of course.)
                ‘Much better, now,’ I said.
                 ‘I’m glad. I’ve been worried about you.’
                Wow!
                ‘By the way, I really like your hair like that.’
                Yes!
                So we had the dinner party. We had canapé things with what looked like burned bogies on them, then (at a table that looked just like those ones they set up in old fashioned department store windows) some sort of cold soup, then goujons of something with home-made tartar sauce, then chicken breasts wrapped up in string with some sort of spicy stuffing inside them (and dauphin potatoes, broccoli, beans, artichoke hearts etc. etc.), then pavlova or fruit salad or chocolate creme brulees ( or nothing, thanks, really. No, really ) then about thirty seven different varieties of cheese. Oh, and some grapes.
                And of course I wasn’t allowed to help with the washing up. While Moira and Caitlin and Dawn clattered purposefully to and fro, I was barred from the kitchen, and instructed to arrange myself in some part of their aircraft hanger lounge. This left me in the sort of conversational limbo that only a long married woman at a suburban dinner party can find herself once the umbilical cord of the other females (and therefore chats about three-for-two offers and washing instructions) had been cut. If nothing else it shored up my flagging resolve that life, the universe and everything was probably happening elsewhere, and that I seriously needed to go out and find it.
                Howard went off to phone and check on his Mother. While my face subsided to its regular hue. Boris and Stuart (the latter’s face had been set in a slight cringe all evening), had been clearly hoping to flick on the TV and catch up with the snooker or something. They both looked balefully across from their respective sofas as Moira announced my continuing presence with small snatches of what sounded like a press release, accompanied by the crackling of her static charged trousers.
                ‘Fair play. Julia’s had a dreadful time of it lately. Can’t have you beavering in the kitchen now, can we, my lovely?’ and ‘You stay by there, and just take care of the fellas for us, while we three get things straight.’ And, bizarrely, ‘So lovely to have such a pretty face amongst us!’ as if they three were all hags. I felt totally discombobulated. It seemed to me that I had been diverted down an altogether different avenue from the one I had previously travelled. No longer (practically speaking) a wife, I was not deemed fit for bringing a pudding (I’d phoned and checked) or for kitchen responsibilities, and instead was assigned a