Free Chain Reaction by Gillian White Page A

can’t get a more reputable brand than that.
    Nothing to shame Joy there.
    As a mother she has a great deal to be proud of.
    Then, seven years ago and out of the blue, Vernon was made redundant.
    He had wanted to search for another job, difficult though that might be, at least it would be safe, but Joy said no, this is your chance to use that money and those brains of yours to become self-employed—‘your own man’ were the actual words she used as if, up until then, Vernon had been somebody else’s. ‘Your own man at last!’
    They were already in debt. Oh, not the dangerous, embarrassing kind—more like Access, Visa, Joy’s accounts at M&S, Laura Ashley, the loan for the second car, for example. Vernon knows now that that precious redundancy money should have been used to pay these off, but we would all be millionaires with hindsight, wouldn’t we?
    He has let Joy down with the failure of Marsh Electronics Ltd, the tatty shop where he goes every day trying to get rid of the bits and pieces, hopelessly picking the mail off the mat without ever needing to read the demands that spiral monthly like weeds in a garden.
    He has never been the kind of man to make a success on his own. He lacks the drive, the energy needed for that sort of lonesome enterprise. Now Joy would probably have done better, being more ambitious than he. She might have made a success of a dress shop—that’s if she hadn’t smuggled out all the stock.
    She tries to make out she does not blame him, that she believes he did his best, but she doesn’t honestly mean that, not deep down. Deep down she thinks that Vernon, her man and protector, has let her down badly. Oh yes, he knows his wife well enough by now. He is a fat, flatulent failure and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.
    Joy—you might well imagine some frivolous blonde but she’s not like that, not at all. Five foot four and firmly built, she doesn’t go in for glamour but taste, the navy-and-white-spotted styles of sailing folk. Underplayed, but just as costly as if you were dressing in silks. Timberland coats and Timberland shoes. Bridge handbags, or Emmy. Beautifully tailored mock-riding jackets, hand-knitted, chunky sweaters that somehow cost hundreds, leather jerkins from Jaeger while Vernon shops for his suits from Marks and feels fine in them.
    That rich, bronze tone in her dark brown hair does not come off a Superdrug shelf. She might wear her hair short in a sensible style but that cut and that loose perm cost an arm and a leg every time she goes to the salon.
    ‘Well, you want to be proud of me, Vernon,’ says Joy when she senses his disapproval. ‘You don’t want me to look like just any old thing.’ And she smuggles in her purchases and tells him she’s had them for years, it’s just that he is too lazy to notice.
    He dreads going round to view houses. He imagines what sort of property they will find for £45,000, and that is taking a risk by the time the bills are paid off. He can imagine the look of pain on Joy’s bravest face as she turns and smiles and says, This will do nicely, Vernon.’ She has put her name on several mailing lists and already picked out some which might suit, but the last place she wants to end up is some pebble-dashed, terraced, former council house at the wrong end of town.
    And the other morning she told him with horror that she’d dreamed of a mobile home.
    ‘It won’t come to that, dear,’ Vernon said.
    ‘Promise me.’
    ‘I promise you.’
    From the kitchen window she heard him discussing their affairs with Bob Pritchard next-door-but-one.
    She called him in. She shouted that the phone was ringing.
    Hands on hips she scolded, ‘Vernon, what in heaven’s name do you think you are doing?’
    ‘Just putting the world right there with old Bob.’
    ‘You were not putting the world right! I heard you! I heard you saying that things had reached crisis point. What’s that got to do with Bob? Angela has been longing to