Читать книгу My Secret Wish List - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 4

THIS is it, then, is it? This is all I’ve got to show for my life. Apart from droopy boobs. This is what it all comes down to. Me, the computer, and a medical diagnosis that says that I must stop being self-pitying and accept that I am past sell-by-date! I must conquer unattractive and immature desire to possess Madonna-style bod and a stomach washboard-flat enough to flaunt navel stud.

That’s one of the reasons I am keeping this diary. As a form of therapy. On the advice of the personal, one-to-one life-changing session I had with one of the universe’s top life-coaches (a birthday present from trendy stepsister who works in Public Relations—well, it was more of a consolation present, really.) The one-to-one session was a ten-minute phone call and an impossible-to-fill-in questionnaire which came in the post and which I thought was junk mail. Luckily managed to rescue it from the rubbish before Mr Russell—that’s the elderly pensioner who lives two doors down—dumped his dog’s poop-a-scoop in my wheelie bin.

Anyway, one of the things life-coach instructed me to do was keep a diary, so that I could write down all thoughts and feelings and thus find out hidden meaning behind own self-destructive tendencies—like eating chocolates and agonising over non-husband’s opinion that boobs are saggy when I should be going to gym and should also be doing helpful things in community, like busybody neighbour from three up who patrols local park counting number of discarded used condoms.

I have always been a sucker for a bit of self-indulgence, which is probably why I am currently two stone overweight—well, actually it’s only one stone ten pounds now, but scales haven’t been reliable ever since they were used under broken leg of late mother-in-law’s commode.

So here I am, aged fifty-one, miserable, moody and menopausal.

Hard to believe that five weeks ago I was congratulating myself on how serene, successful and satisfying own life was. But that was before daughter sent me a birthday card which read ‘Happy Easter’; son rang from university to say he was putting off taking his finals because he wanted to ‘chill out’ for a year or two first. Oh and—almost forgot—before my husband came home too late to take me out for the celebratory dinner I’d booked at Chez Luigi’s (Luigi is Italian, but Roux Brothers-trained, and he’s very good about Derek only ordering one starter and one sweet, asking for two sets of cutlery and then complaining about the small portions).

I was in bed, eating the last of the Christmas chocolates—the soft cream centres which I really hate and always leave until I am really desperate—wrapped in typical husbandly Christmas present of flannelette nightdress big enough to go round myself twice. Husband had written tender little note with the present, saying he thought it would be large enough to hide gross sight of droopy boobs.

(Husband has definitely got ‘from Mars’ sense of humour and thought it very funny to send self birthday card showing hideous old hag lifting skirt to reveal boobs down to knees, having written inside that the card reminded him of me.)

Anyway, husband walked in wearing oversize shiny nylon trousers that he thinks make him look trendy but in reality make him look like a chimpanzee. I suppose it’s not husband’s fault, though, that he has short legs and big stomach.

Husband’s earlobe was still weeping from the new earring he had put in. His tattoo was finally scabbing over and his hair finally beginning to grow again after Beckham haircut that went wrong. Husband said he’d got something to tell me. Thought it was going to be a joke. Well, in a way it was.

He said that we didn’t have anything in common any more. This is a complete lie. What about our huge mortgage and the set of semi-antique chairs his mother gave us, two with wonky legs, and one with ‘Digger loves Jimmy’ scratched on it? (Jimmy was his uncle. He never married.) Not to mention the twenty-seven years of marriage and the two children we produced?

But what do twenty-seven years of unwanted memories and two children mean to a man who’s head over heels in lust with a raving nymphomaniac of a twenty-something-year-old woman called Cheree (it was Sheryl, but she changed it) with dyed blonde hair and enormous inflated breasts?

My own best friend, Jacki (who knocked the ‘e’ off the end at the same time as she ‘lost’ years off her age and ‘found’ herself in the Gambia with some toyboy who made her realise what life was really all about), says I could have boobs lifted, but I can’t see the point since no one else but me is ever going to see them again. Luckily my own eyesight isn’t what it was!

Jacki’s divorced now. She loves it. She got to keep the house, the car, and David’s money! But I think that must have had something to do with the affair she was having with their accountant.

Derek—that’s my own husband—well, was my husband—is now rushing through the divorce because he doesn’t want to leave any messy ends when he and Cheree leave the country and she’s concerned that if he dies whilst they’re away I will inherit everything. (She must mean all his debts, because Derek swears there isn’t any money). Derek told me that he and Cheree were going to sail round the world together and that he’d already sold the business—that alone was a shock ’cos only the previous week he’d been moaning that the business was losing so much money he’d be lucky to give it away!

And the money it was losing wasn’t really ours—not strictly speaking! It was the money the building society had given us and in exchange we had given them the deeds to our previously almost-paid-for house—the only asset we had apart from the pension which Derek cashed in early to put into the business.

Derek was originally a salesman but then had brainwave to set up own business as a ‘Disenfranchised Refrigeration Unit Relocation and Rehabilitation Consultant’. No, I haven’t a clue what it means either—but it must have something to do with old fridges since our garage was full of them until they got taken away at dead of night.

I just hope that husband remembers to tell Cheree to pack his anti-seasickness tablets—he was once terribly ill on the channel ferry. It was just as well that the ferry hadn’t actually left the harbour at the time, because if it had heaven knows what might have happened. It was a bit embarrassing when they had to unload all the cars because ours was first on. We’d missed the earlier ferry because Derek hadn’t tied the luggage rack on roof securely enough. The cases had fallen off, and so we’d had to wait for the next one. Anyway, I am sure Derek was being unfair when he said that those dents in the car were put there deliberately by other happy holidaymakers.

Of course Cheree won’t have much to pack. For a start she only wears bikini bottoms and not tops, on account of fabric rubbing on her very sensitive nipples. (Husband told me about her little problem—well, not so little, really. He told me last year, when he took her to a conference in Brighton, and I saw them both on television lying on the beach. Apparently that was why he’d been rubbing cream into her nipples. He didn’t want her suing him for employer negligence on health grounds.)

I suppose I knew then, really, but I told myself it was just a phase he was going through and that we were both too adult and sensible to throw away a marriage as solid as ours. Jacki said at the time that it was no wonder Cheree had had her boobs inflated. At least now they stuck out as far as her teeth.

For the first week after Derek told me THE NEWS I didn’t do anything. Well, there wasn’t anything I could do, really. And then the estate agent arrived and said that the house should sell pretty easily but that it was a pity it wasn’t in better decorative order. No one wants plum-coloured bathroom suites any more. I told Derek that when we bought them.

We were doing up this large Victorian house we’d bought for a song—well, not so much a song as a whole opera—when we found out about rotten floorboards and roof timbers. He said the plum bathroom suites were a bargain and wouldn’t show the dirt. His mother said he was probably thinking about his grandparents. Apparently they kept coal in their bath!

But then the estate agent mentioned his fees, and Derek blew a fuse and said he would sell house himself. Why pay greedy, unprincipled rogue of agent when an up-market, lovingly restored des-res like ours, in a prestigious part of town, would have people queuing up to take it off our hands?

Agent pointed out that by law you’re not allowed now to lie about property. Derek went red in the face and said it hadn’t stopped them when we had bought the house through the same estate agency. Agent stopped him to ask if had eradicated all woodworm and replaced floorboards.

After agent had gone, Derek said I should never have admitted that we had not, and that he couldn’t afford to have the asking price reduced by £50,000. He said that I was deliberately trying to make things difficult for him and was behaving like total cow, just as Cheree had said I would.

Anyway, agent left after Derek refused to sign form declaring no problems with neighbours! He couldn’t sign it, really—not when whole street knows that family five down is so incensed with Derek parking his old banger—sorry, company car—outside their house so that he wouldn’t lower the tone of our house that they took all wheels off the car one night and put it up on bricks. They would have had it towed away, but scrap dealer didn’t want it!

Our house now has homemade ‘For Sale’ sign leaning drunkenly in front garden, but so far there haven’t been any viewers apart from man from council wanting to know if Derek has planning permission for searchlight he put up outside to deter would-be thieves (and the tomcat from next door).

Of course I had to ring Derek to tell him about son’s plans. Obviously Derek has more fatherly concern than previously evident as he came straight round! His mobile rang when he arrived—it plays the opening bars of ‘We are Sailing’.

Derek said son was old enough to make his own decisions and that he couldn’t afford to keep him at university any longer anyway. Derek also asked if anyone had made an offer on the house. He said there should be enough equity in it after we’ve paid off the mortgage for me to buy myself a little flat—apparently property’s v. cheap in certain parts of country and no need really for me to greedily take up so much space in such an expensive part. Also pointed out that if I had got a job all those years ago, when he asked me to, I would be in a much better position today to take care of myself financially. I didn’t know just what a strain he had found it supporting me.

Cheree earns a very good salary, he added.

Since he employs her, I suppose he must be right. However, I did remind him that the reason I could not work was that I took care of his incontinent, infirm mother for ten years.

Husband replied that at least Mother had pension, and also money from sale of her own house, to contribute to the household.

Felt like reminding him that his mother gambled away all her pension playing bingo until she was banned from local old folks’ club for almost causing an affair—yes, we thought she’d made a mistake at first, and it should have been affray, but turned out she was right. She had tried to steal husband off another woman. Mother-in-law claimed hadn’t tried to steal at all, but had won so much from other woman that she had been forced to put up husband as collateral.

Husband said we needed to make sure we get a quick sale because he and Cheree wanted to spend the winter in the Caribbean—and besides, the building society were pressing for overdue mortgage payments. Husband also v. kindly said he had decided to put house in my name—if I would just sign form agreeing to hand over any equity in sale to him. Said I would think about it.