Difficult Husbands

by Mary de Laszlo

Genres: Holiday books; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

'A refreshing and fun read with terrific characters and plenty of surprises along the way – the perfect treat' Trisha Ashley Three friends. One surprise inheritance. And the perfect plan to deal with troublesome husbands… Newly divorced Lorna is struggling to adjust to life on her own. When she discovers that her beloved godfather has left her the grand (and crumbling) Ravenscourt House in the heart of Sussex, she soon has a project on her hands. Nathan sells delicious goodies at Mulberry Farm. When he meets Lorna at a Christmas market, neither of them can ignore the chemistry. But as they get to know one another, Lorna wants to know one thing – is he after her or the house? Together with Gloria – whose marriage to alcoholic Adrian has hit rock bottom, and Rosalind – struggling to deal with her womanising husband Ivan, the three friends hatch a plan. They’ll ditch their difficult husbands at Ravenscourt House and enjoy stress-free Christmases with their families. But nothing is ever that simple… An entertaining story of family, friendship and new beginnings that will delight fans of Trisha Ashley, Carole Matthews and Katie Fforde. 'Relax by the fire with a glass of wine and escape to the country in this heartwarming tale'. Leah Fleming 'A highly entertaining read ' Becca's Books

Release date: October 31, 2014

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 368

Sample

‘Reset.’ The director, his hair tied carelessly back in a ponytail, called out, and for the umpteenth time Lorna knocked on the fake front door, complete with Christmas wreath, while an underling, with the rosy face of a mischievous cherub, scattered fake snow at her from above. This tickled her nose and made her sneeze and the director sigh, call ‘cut’ and the whole take started again.

Christmas, anxiety gripped her, Christmas in summer. If only it was over when this shoot was. Even though it was months away she was dreading the real thing; her first Christmas without Stephen, without even her parents to escape to.

‘Reset.’ This time it went better. She opened the door and the camera focused on the ‘room’ conjured up in this stark warehouse. She counted to five while she pretended to be amazed by the magic she saw before her; blazing logs in the fake fireplace, cards hung in streamers among sparkling decorations. There was a show of Christmas fare laid out before her – at least she hadn’t had to cook it, the thought scudded through her mind – then the camera wheeled away to groups of happy, happy people toasting each other with pretend champagne. There were some spotless, tidy children behaving so nicely and quietly – a dream Christmas, when in reality it was often hell.

A small girl – pretty in pink – ruined this cheerful scene by tearing the paper off a ‘present’ only to find a block of polystyrene concealed under the glitzy paper. She howled in disappointment.

Poor little thing, Lorna thought, as her mother scuttled onto the set to retrieve her sobbing child, that is life though, disappointment often lurks under the glitz. She caught the eye of one of the ‘happy’ people, a woman whose face held remnants of beauty, who’d confided in her before they started shooting that she hated Christmas, her memories of a houseful of cheerful, noisy family celebrations taunting her, now she was alone.

At last it was over, ‘a wrap’. Thankfully, Lorna took off her winter clothes, handing them back to the wardrobe girl. She signed her chit, waved goodbye to the others and left, going back into the sunny day, probably the best one of the summer and she’d missed it while she acted out Christmas inside. Being an extra or ‘supporting cast’ as it was now called, was just another, rather unpredictable way – a fun way, if you didn’t count the early starts – of earning money.

It was a strange world of unreality; the commercial she’d just worked on portrayed only the pleasure of Christmas. There was no sign of it being a religious feast, or of unhappiness from a fractured family. It peddled dreams and perhaps spawned resentment in people, most people she’d have thought, especially in these hard times, who’d never achieve such a spectacle.

What would her Christmas be like this year? She could hardly bear to think of it. All those years of special, magical times with her parents and siblings, and continuing it all with her own children. Even when her parents died she had never confronted the fact that there could come a time when she could be alone for Christmas.

Lorna got into her car, hoping she wouldn’t get lost going home. These studios were usually stuck out somewhere on an industrial estate and were difficult to find, even sometimes for the Sat Nav. She always headed off hours early for if you were late on set you were sacked – that was it. ‘End of,’ as her children would say.

Her children, the thought of their pain when Stephen left them brought tears. Marcus said he’d probably go away for Christmas, not able to bear it without his father there, the father as he used to be. Flora slammed a few doors, muttering the same threats. This Christmas she could easily be alone, for the first time in her life, and it terrified her.

Lorna’s stomach churned like an out of control washing machine as she hovered outside the door to her ex-husband’s love nest. There was no make believe here, no fake door opening to reveal a Christmas wonderland as there had been in the publicity shoot she’d done way back in the summer. Christmas now swamped the shops and cluttered up the media, filling her with dread as how it would be this year, the first one without Stephen.

She jabbed at the bell quickly before she lost her nerve, before the ache of her broken heart overwhelmed her. Footsteps clacked on a wooden floor, hesitated, continued, and the door was cautiously opened. A girl stared fearfully at her.

Faced with her in the pallid flesh, Lorna was surprised. This was hardly the sexy siren she’d imagined. ‘Hello,’ she greeted her sourly. ‘I’m Stephen’s ex-wife. The horrible woman, who never loved him, never bought up his children or kept the house and his life in order.’

Stephen’s ‘sex toy’, as Lorna thought of her – the only way she could deal with this frightening change in her once kind and dependable husband – was ‘bottle blonde’ with dark roots and a doughy complexion. She jumped back into the flat as if she were about to be lynched. Lorna crossed the hall in a couple of strides into the living room, tossing the envelope containing Stephen’s mail onto a table by the door. The girl followed her, shooting nervous glances at Stephen. He stood rigidly at attention by the pseudo-marble fireplace, his expression like that of a schoolboy caught out with a porn magazine by his mother.

He looked old – and he was – and, sour joke, he had left her for a ‘younger’ woman, when she, his wife, was far younger than he was in the first place.

‘You may not notice the age gap now, darling, but you will in a few years,’ her mother warned her, though her eyes had lit up at Stephen’s lean and athletic looks. He’d weathered well, like an old piece of furniture. He had been much cherished by her, she reminded herself, and it hurt to look at him; so familiar, so loved and yet now so different.

He’d been her boss; they’d been drawn to each other at once, a coup de foudre, no less. Early on in their marriage, in her insecure moments, she’d wondered if he might leave her for someone more mature, not so ditzy, who couldn’t remember the aftermath of the war, ration books and a young Cliff Richard, because they hadn’t been born yet. But to her and everyone’s surprise and the children’s utter horror, he’d upped and left with someone who could in fact, she glanced at the girl, be not much younger than her, though there was a kind of waif-like look about her that might appeal to a man who seemed to have lost his self-esteem and sense of identity.

Why on earth was she putting herself through this agony? Lorna asked herself. There was no need; until now the post office had presumably re-delivered Stephen’s mail successfully, but she’d been hit with a sort of defiance, sick of bundling up his letters and sending them on, letters that had come home when he had not.

Even now, standing here in this drab love nest, its drabness exacerbated by the autumn colours of the trees outside, glided by the October sun, she realised that she still harboured a faint hope that this trauma was just a mad moment, an old age crisis, a nightmare she would wake from, and that he would come back to her. She’d have found him waiting here, the man he used to be, before the shock of losing his job had lured him into the clutches of a dubious shrink and this waif. Seeing he was not, she felt unbalanced and alone. Now she understood why some women, like her dearest friends Gloria and Rosalind, would rather carry on living with the devils they knew, than be alone.

Once they’d been so happy, so madly in love. She must not cry; must not stand here snivelling while this new woman in his life looked on. They were divorced, only just but divorced all the same. She still had not come to terms with it or the guilt she felt that she might have been able to prevent it, if she hadn’t been so occupied with her new cake business at the time, or questioned more thoroughly his furtive absences from home.

She’d trusted him too much – or some might say taken him for granted – to suspect anything as monumental as this.

To steady her nerves, Lorna concentrated on the room. It was a rented flat in Earl’s Court, with coffee-coloured walls, a beige and brown carpet and upholstery; the colour of shit, really. Dull and safe to suit all tastes, except for hers. She wondered what the bedroom was like, and the word stabbed her like a knife.

Stephen didn’t look well, hardly a good advertisement for a rampant sex life. Perhaps it wasn’t rampant, surely he was past rampant, he had been with her, anyway. Their lovemaking had become cosy, sporadic. She, wondering if he was afraid of impotence, and dared not mention it. She knew from friends that one mention of the dreaded ‘I’ word was a sure way of seizing up their hydraulic system.

‘This is not doing you any good, Lorna.’ Even his voice, once so rich and vibrant, sounded tired, and despite everything, it tore at her heart. Perhaps he was stricken by some mortal illness added to whatever happy, solve-everything pills his bloody doctor had prescribed. The man she had loved had been spirited away by a drug pusher hidden under the guise of a sleek, fashionable shrink, although, and this hurt her most of all, he had started to see this girl before his mind had been addled by the shrink. He’d met her in a club he’d been taken to by some of his colleagues to cheer him up, on the evening he’d been made redundant. It hurt her to think that this woman possessed something Stephen thought he needed that she, his wife, did not.

‘I’m off now. I don’t know why I came, perhaps to remind myself that our marriage is really over.’ Lorna said, scrutinizing the round face of the girl, whose slightly bulbous eyes reminded her of a Pekinese. All she needed was a squashed nose then she could be entered for Crufts, she thought bitchily. She couldn’t remember the girl’s name, if she’d ever known it. When Stephen told her he was leaving – pacing round their living room not meeting her eyes – he’d said, ‘I’ve found someone else, she’s had a difficult life and needs to be looked after’.

‘I need to be looked after,’ she’d wailed. ‘Have you forgotten you promised at the altar that you’d look after me until death us do part?’

‘You’re different, you’re strong and you’re so busy now with the shop and … you’re never here, always out doing things.’ He’d gone on to tell her about this girl’s sad life, on and on as if he couldn’t help himself and he expected her to understand. It was ‘she’ this and ‘she’ that. Perhaps he didn’t know her name either, but just felt macho and wanted by someone more vulnerable than himself and, guess what? She needed a visa. Looking at her now, Lorna thought the only thing in this girl’s favour was her youth and that was wasted on her.

‘None of this is helpful,’ Stephen’s voice held desperation.

‘Helpful to who? Or is it ‘whom’?’ Lorna challenged him, pain making her harsh. ‘It is hardly helpful to your wife and children to walk out on them just to help a complete stranger. Why can’t you work for a charity if you want to help people in trouble?’

The girl gasped, her hand clawed in Stephen’s direction, as if afraid Lorna might turn her over to some homeless organisation, or contact Immigration and shop her for being illegal, if she was.

‘Why did you come, Lorna? You could have sent on my mail, you have before.’ He fixed his eyes on some point over her head.

It was the approach of Christmas that had made her wobble, come to ‘suss things out’ as Marcus would have put it, coupled with a foolish hope that once Stephen had seen her in this dreary flat beside that dreary girl, he would have realised his mistake and been mortified at his out of character behaviour, and, despite their recent divorce, come back home. But she’d been wrong. He seemed devoid of emotion, for her, or the girl. No doubt the happy pills had wiped them out; if you feel nothing, then life is possible.

She would not see Stephen and this girl again, he’d made his choice and it wasn’t with her. She had failed him in some way she couldn’t fathom but she must accept it and move on. Was there, she wondered, in this competitive society, some sort of kudos at finding your other half enamoured with a glamorous ‘sleb’ or even royalty, instead of a plain, nondescript person like this one?

Lorna charged down the two flights of stairs to the front door of the block of flats. It smelt stale, of lost hopes, adding to her misery. She hurried out into the street, gulping in the chilly air. How could Stephen have given up their comfortable home life for this? Had he chosen to return here because he remembered that time from his youth when Earl’s Court was thought exotic; studded with flats and bed sits, humming with a hotchpotch of races and creeds, all bringing their own rhythm and vitality with them? He’d lived in a huge, draughty flat not far from here and she’d blissfully given her virginity to him there one winter’s afternoon. The memory smote her now, bringing the tears that were never far away.

She’d thought that their marriage would only end in death, probably his, as he was so much older than her, twenty and three quarter years, to be exact. Had she been too smug, pulling up the drawbridge on the outside world, not seeing the storm approaching? She was convinced that his early retirement had brought this destruction. Stephen’s firm had been taken over and those near retirement made redundant, and he’d never seen it coming, imagining his job was safe. It was a sudden and savage end to his career. Stephen was sixty-three, with two, possibly three more years to go before retirement. Losing his responsible, well-paid job shattered him; he had, as the experts loved to say, ‘lost his identity.’

It had been a shock to her too; she had never envisaged such a brutal end to his employment. She’d tried hard to be supportive, to keep her own fears – of less money, and of finding something to keep him occupied – to herself. It hadn’t helped that just before he’d lost his job, when life was stable, she’d used most of the money her mother had left her to buy a share in the cake shop with her friend, Martha. It was sod’s law that as Stephen lost his job and needed her there to lean on while he adjusted to this massive change in his life, she had become frantically occupied in getting this business off the ground.

At first Lorna was pleased he was there with time to help her to make sense of all the figures and rules and regulations, but he’d become dictatorial. This had upset Martha, who had put in most of the capital, so Lorna had felt she must stop asking for his advice. Perhaps this had made him feel even more unwanted, emasculated even, until he took up with this needy girl and, later, got into the clutches of the Harley Street drug pusher. It was like a bereavement; the man she’d known and loved, and who’d loved her, had gone. His body was still there, he still looked the same, but he was not. She’d heard people describe losing members of their family to dementia in the same way.

She turned into the Earl’s Court Road, the smell of a kebab shop reminding her she was hungry. She’d hardly had any breakfast, the thought of seeing Stephen and his new set up had taken away her appetite. But she’d done it, faced it once and for all and must now, difficult though it was, accept that she was a divorced – no, an independent –woman again.

She reached the tube station, she had a busy day ahead and travelling on the tube would save her the most time. Inside it felt warm and fetid, taking off the edge of her feelings of isolation. She joined the stream of people passing through; a Rastafarian in a woollen hat, two giggly school girls, a Muslim woman holding tightly to a small boy, preoccupied men in suits, all together, yet not together, all intent on their own lives.

She got out at Sloane Square and, not seeing a bus, walked down the King’s Road to the Chelsea Town Hall. There was a pre-Christmas Fair held in aid of Cancer Research, and she was sharing a stall with Gloria, who sold cashmere jerseys and scarves. Lorna, now with more time on her hands, had taken up a previous interest in making jewellery. They were casual pieces with unusual beads and buttons she bought on the Internet; twisted rope bracelets which looked great with jerseys and day clothes. She’d also put in a couple of boxes of her homemade cakes advertising the shop she had with Martha, hoping they might draw people in to buy them.

The first stall she encountered was a table laden with pâtés and cheeses, with a large half-cut ham in pride of place in the middle. The smell of the ham brought back memories of her childhood, her mother had cooked one every Christmas, and the aroma of tangy marmalade and Bourbon whisky mingled with the cooking meat wafted round the house for days.

This memory enclosed her like a security blanket from the past. Her mother would have stood no nonsense from that girl; she’d behave as if Stephen couldn’t possibly have left his wife and family for such a person, making him see how foolish he was being. She smiled in spite of her pain. Oh, Mum, I wish you were here, she thought, still sore from her death two years ago.

‘Could I have a slice of ham, please,’ she addressed the man wielding a knife on the other side of the table.

‘Just one slice?’ He frowned at her, two furrows biting into his forehead. His brown hair fell in unruly locks over his eyes. He kept looping it back behind his ears with his free hand and Lorna expected the imminent arrival of some Health and Safety inspector who’d decree that he imprison his curls in a hat to avoid germs polluting the food. He wore a navy and white striped apron over his clothes.

‘Yes, please.’ She felt a flush of embarrassment. Why ever should she explain? But seeing Stephen had unhinged her and she was overcome with this tiresome feeling that she had to justify herself.

‘Samples are there.’ The man gestured towards a green plate that held slivers cut from the edges of the ham. Before she could ask him again for her one slice, a gushing woman pushed herself in beside her and began to scoop up armfuls of pâtés, cheeses and chutneys in their festive wrappings and hand them to him. Once he’d taken the first load from her she picked up some more with little trills of excitement. ‘How lovely, beetroot and blueberry, and this homemade marmalade, such a treat, bought stuff is so jammy.’

The man beamed – no frowning eyes at her – as he added up her purchases, packing them into smart blue bags. Lorna picked up a sliver of ham from the plate of samples and put it into her mouth. It was so succulent, with a richness of orange coupled with muscovado sugar, and a hint of brandy in the glaze. She took some more and then, as the man was still dealing with his extravagant shopper, found she’d emptied the plate. She must hurry now or Gloria would wonder where she was and she must wash her hands before working on the stall. She turned to go and find a washroom.

‘I thought you were going to buy a slice, not scoff all my samples,’ the man called after her.

‘I’m sorry, but you were busy and I couldn’t resist it. It’s wonderful ham. I’ve got to rush now and go and help my friend. I’ll buy some for supper on the way out.’ She fled, washed her hands in the dank washroom and then, keeping well away from the food stall, went in search of Gloria, who was, to her relief, on the other side of the room from the man with the ham,

‘There you are! Was it ghastly?’ Gloria hugged her.

She nodded, Gloria’s concern flooding her eyes with tears. ‘Been busy?’ she managed, sniffing madly, taking off her coat, rolling it up and storing it and her handbag under the table.

Gloria laid a jewelled hand on her arm in a gesture of comfort. ‘Not bad, cakes are almost gone and I sold two of your bracelets and quite a few of your button brooches, they love them with the jerseys.’

‘Good, I must make some more.’ Lorna’s tears were mercifully halted in their tracks by the same woman who’d bought all those chutneys and pâtés and was now scooping up armfuls of cashmere and throwing in some rope bracelets. Whose money was she spending, she wondered idly as she packed them up, her husband’s, her lover’s or her own?

Gloria was a friend from childhood who had also married an older man, a friend of Stephen’s. Adrian was an alcoholic, an amusing cheery man when well, and utter hell when not. Gloria did all sorts of jobs to make ends meet; threw him out, took him back in, and some of their friends remarked, perhaps unfairly, that she saw her role in life as his saviour. Their only child, Justin, found his father’s behaviour intolerable and rarely came home, much to Gloria’s distress. But every time Adrian lapsed and Gloria was called upon to come and collect him yet again out of the gutter or from some sordid club, she stoically went. ‘I’m used to him,’ she’d say, as if he were an old coat she could not bear to part with. ‘Besides we had such good times together. I cannot leave him now.’

Lorna respected Gloria for that and had, in the bleak loneliness of the night, even envied her for still having him, though she feared that her care for him was destroying her. No one ever asked how Adrian was, they knew just by looking at Gloria. She looked fine now; her long blonde hair tied back, her face less strained than usual, yet Lorna, who knew her like a sister, could see the pain deep in her eyes.

The jerseys were selling well. They were well cut with a good selection of colours – they were every man or woman’s cashmere, not the best stuff. Lorna was going to buy one at cost price when she had a moment. She dithered between a raspberry pink and a pistachio green.

A male hand appeared among the colours, picking up the last raspberry pink jersey and thrusting it at her.

‘Seeing there are no samples I shall pay for this,’ he said, and she saw it was the man from the ham stall. He was about her age; his skin tanned more from being outside in the fresh air than sunning himself in some foreign sun. He gave her a weary smile; his face strained with exhaustion.

‘Are you sure you want this one?’ Lorna said, bossily. Perhaps she could persuade him to take that china blue or the primrose instead. It was, no doubt, for the woman in his life and she wanted it. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it was not for sale.

‘I am quite capable of knowing which colour I like. This is the one I want,’ he said. He pulled out his wallet and thrust some money at her.

‘Fine.’ Lorna cursed herself for saying anything; if she’d wanted it so much she should have taken it sooner. She took his money, frantically working out the change in her head. He’d given her two fifty pound notes, which she could easily cope with, but somehow by standing there so close to her, his eyes homing in on her face, he flustered her.

‘Twenty-five pounds change,’ he said with a laugh, as if he knew she was hopeless at maths.

‘I know,’ she said, though she was relieved that he’d confirmed it. Maths eluded her – that was another reason she missed Stephen. He was a wizard at figures, so she hadn’t bothered to try and improve herself; even the children laughed at her incompetence. She handed the man his change and with a last stroke of farewell, she slipped the pink jersey into a bag for him. She saw now, with a little unwelcome jolt, that he wore a wedding ring and wondered if her own smashed-up marriage would sour her towards all married men, imagining them cheating on their wives, trading them in for peculiar women who perhaps knew some bedroom tricks their wives did not. She wondered too if his wife or maybe his lover – he might have both – would look better in the jersey than she would.

‘Thank you.’ He took the bag from her. ‘If you still want your slice of ham I’ll keep you a piece. It’s almost time to pack up, thank goodness; it’s been a long day. Oh,’ He caught sight of the last cake in the box with its swirl of dark chocolate icing studded with nuts, ‘can I trade this in for the ham?’ He picked it up with a smile and disappeared before she could say anything.

An elderly lady approached the stall slowly as if mesmerised by the bright colours. She took a long time to make her choice, so by the time everything was packed back in the large, plastic zip up bags Gloria kept them in, Lorna assumed she would be too late for the ham. The room, before so festive like an Aladdin’s cave of tempting presents; luscious silk wraps and jackets, bright painted toys, shimmering jewellery and lots more was now half-empty; the stalls bare, boxes and bags piled up on the floor making the place appear tawdry and bleak.

She passed the ham stall; it had all been packed away. The cheap wood of the table now exposed was stained with years of pinpricks and ink. She felt a tinge of disappointment and turned away.

‘There you are.’ He appeared from another room, a small bag in his hand. ‘Don’t forget your ham. One slice.’ He smiled the weary smile of someone who wanted to be on his way.

Was he sorry for her for having no one else to share it with? She must curb this ridiculous self-pity she scolded herself, there were so many people worse off than her and anyway, why should he think of her at all?

He held out the navy bag and she took it from him. ‘Thank you so much, what do I owe you?’ He’d helped himself to her cake as a trade in but she felt she ought to ask.

‘Have it on the house as I had your cake, which, by the way, was delicious.’ he said with a tired smile. ‘But I’ve packed everything away now and it is rather an end piece.’

She wanted to say that she wished for a nice piece, a succulent piece from the middle with a thick layer of the glaze, but she did not; perhaps he’d sold it all and it was the last piece left.

‘Goo. . .