Rescuing Rose

If I believed in God – which, by the way, I don’t – I would have got down on my knees there and then and thanked Him, but instead said a silent Hurrah! Ed and I talked and flirted for another hour or so, then he offered to take me home.

‘But I only live next door,’ I protested with a laugh.

‘You told me that,’ he smiled. ‘But I’m not having a gorgeous woman like you wandering the streets of Clapham – I shall see you safely back.’

When you’re almost six foot one, as I am, you don’t get many offers like that. Men tend to assume you can take care of yourself – and of course I can. But at the same time I’ve always envied those dinky little girls who can always get some man to take them home. So when Ed gallantly offered to escort me to my door, I just knew that he was The One. After years of false sightings he’d arrived. Sometimes, in my single days, I’d been tempted to have him paged. Would Mr Right kindly make his way to Reception where Miss Costelloe has been waiting for him for the past fifteen years. Now, suddenly, there he was – phew! We spent Christmas in bed, he proposed on New Year’s Eve, and we were married on Valentine’s Day…

‘I had reservations,’ said Bella judiciously. ‘But I didn’t want to spoil it for you. Ed’s charming, yes,’ she went on. ‘Handsome, yes, intelligent yes…’ I felt sick. ‘He’s successful –’

‘And local,’ added Bea meaningfully.

‘He’s amusing…’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘He has, moreover, a magnetic personality,’ Bella continued, ‘and sex appeal in spades. But, at the same time there was something I didn’t quite…like. Something…I can’t quite put my finger on,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘I thought he was all right,’ ventured Bea. ‘And you can sometimes be a bit abrasive Rose.’

‘That is hypocritical bollocks!’ I snapped.

‘But you didn’t seem to have much in common with him,’ Bea went on calmly. ‘I mean what did you do together?’

‘Well there wasn’t a lot of free time because we were so busy…’ I racked my brain. ‘We went swimming,’ I remembered, ‘and we played Scrabble. We did the crossword too. He was useless at anagrams,’ I added with a twist of spite, ‘so I’d do those. But soon all we were having were cross words.’

The problems had started almost immediately – within a month of our honeymoon. Ed and I had gone to Menorca – not my first choice admittedly, but on the other hand it seemed perfect in some ways as the anagram of Menorca is ‘Romance’. Between you and me, though, I’d thought he might whisk me off to Venice, say, or Sandy Lane. But his mum has a little flat on Menorca and so we went there. We had a lovely week – it was too cold to swim, but we walked and played tennis and read.

Then we went back to work – I was doing a stint at the Post – when this amazing thing happened to me. I was sitting at my desk one lunchtime, putting the finishing touches to a rather vicious profile of the P.R. king, Rex Delafoy, when suddenly there was this commotion. Doors were banging, people were running, and an air of tension and panic prevailed. It turned out that Edith Smugg, the Post’s ancient agony aunt, had gone face down in the soup at lunch. No-one knew quite how old she was because of all the face-lifts, but it turned out that she was eighty-three! Anyway, before Edith’s stiffening body had even been stretchered out of the building, I’d been deputed to complete her page. And I remember standing, shocked, by her paper-strewn desk and wondering what the hell to do. So I stuck my hand in the postbag and pulled out three letters as if drawing the raffle at some village fete.

To my astonishment I found the contents riveting. The first was from a chap with premature ejaculation, the second was from a woman who’d sadly murdered her boyfriend five years before, and the third was from a seventy-three-year-old virgin who thought he might be gay. So I answered them as best I could and the next day I was asked to carry on. I didn’t mind at all, because I’d enjoyed it; in fact by then I was hooked. I didn’t care how many letters there were – I’d have done it for free if they’d asked. The feeling it gave me – I can’t quite describe it – this delicious, warm glow inside. The knowledge that I might be able to help all these total strangers filled me with something like joy. I suddenly felt that I’d been born to be an agony aunt: at last I’d found my true niche. It was like a revelation to me – a Damascene flash – as though I’d heard a voice. ‘Rose! Rose!’ it boomed. ‘This is Thy God. Thou Shalt Dispense ADVICE!’

I kept expecting to hear that they’d hired some B-List celeb to take over, or some publicly humiliated political wife. I thought they’d be handing me my cards and saying, ‘Thanks for helping out, Rose – you’re a brick.’ And indeed there was talk of Trisha from daytime telly and even Carol Vordeman. But a month went by, and then another, and still no change was announced, and by now they were putting Ask Rose at the top of the page, and my photo byline too. The next thing I knew, I’d got a year’s contract; so there I was – an agony aunt.

I’d always read the problem page; it’s like the horoscope, I can never resist. But now, to my amazement, I was writing the replies myself. It’s a role I adore, and the sight of my bulging postbag just makes my heart sing. All those people to be helped. All those dilemmas to be resolved. All that human muddle and…mess. There are lots of perks as well. The money’s not bad and I get to broadcast and I’m asked to give seminars and talks. I also do a late-night phone-in, Sound Advice, at London FM twice a week. And all this simply because I happened to be in the office on the day that Edith Smugg dropped dead! I thought Ed would be pleased for me, but he wasn’t – far from it. That’s when things began to go wrong.

‘Ed – what’s the problem?’ I asked, one Sunday in late June. He’d been in a funny sort of mood all day.

‘The problem Rose,’ he said slowly, ‘or at least the main problem – because there are several problems – is other people’s problems. That’s the problem.’

‘Oh,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I see.’

‘I wish you’d never become an agony aunt,’ he went on wearily.

‘Well I’m sorry, Ed, but I did.’

‘And I don’t like you bringing your work home.’

‘I have no option, it’s a huge job. In any case I’d have thought you’d be understanding given that you work in Personnel.’

‘It’s called Human Resources these days,’ he corrected me stiffly.

‘So it is. But you sort out people’s problems too.’

‘I sort out “issues” actually,’ he said. Not “problems”. And it’s precisely because I have to listen to people whining to me about their maternity leave or the size of their parking space, that I don’t want more whingeing when I get home. In any case I thought agony aunts made it all up.’

‘A common misconception,’ I said.

‘Well how many letters do you actually print?’

‘I answer eight on the page, twice a week.’

‘And how many do you get?’

‘About a hundred and fifty.’

‘So why bother with all the rest? I mean, why don’t you just put a line at the bottom saying, “Rose regrets that letters cannot be answered personally”.’

‘Because, Ed,’ I said, irritated by now, ‘those people are depending on me. They’ve confided in me. They’ve put their faith in me. I have a sacred duty to write back. I mean, take this woman for example.’ I waved a piece of Basildon Bond at him. ‘Her husband has just run off with a dental hygienist thirty years his junior – don’t you think she deserves a reply?’

‘Well do other agony aunts write back to everyone?’

‘Some do,’ I said, ‘and some don’t. But if I didn’t then it would make me feel…mean. I couldn’t live with myself.’

Gradually it became apparent that Ed couldn’t live with me either.

‘Will you be coming to bed tonight?’ he’d ask me sardonically, ‘and if so, how will I recognise you?

‘I shall cite the letters as correspondence in our divorce,’ he’d quip with a bitter laugh.

Then he began getting on at me about all my other alleged shortcomings as well: my ‘total inability’ to cook for example – well I’ve never learnt – and my alleged ‘bossiness’. He also objected to what he impertinently called my ‘obsessive’ tidiness – ‘It’s like living in an operating theatre!’ he’d snap.

By July conflict had long since replaced kisses and we were sleeping in separate beds. That’s when, in a spirit of compromise, I suggested marriage guidance – and that was that…

‘Ed was supposed to get the seven year itch, not the seven month itch,’ I said to the twins as I fumbled for a tissue again. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s so humiliating.’

‘Well what would you advise a reader in this situation to do?’ asked Bella.

‘I’d advise them to try and get over it – fast.’

‘Then you must do that too. There’s an equation for post relationship breakdown recovery,’ she added knowledgeably. ‘It’s supposed to take you half the time you were actually in a relationship to get over it. So in your case that would be five months.’

‘No,’ Bea corrected her, ‘it takes twice as long, not half – so it’s going to take her a year and a half.’

‘I’m sure it’s half the time,’ said Bella.

‘No, it’s double,’ insisted Bea. ‘Look, I’ll show you on a piece of paper if you like. Right, where x = the time it took him to ask you out and y = the number of times he told you he loved you and z = his income multiplied by the number of lovers you’d both had before then –’

‘Oh stop arguing you two,’ I said. ‘Because you’re both wrong – it’s not going to take me five months or eighteen months – it’s going to take me the rest of my life! Ed and I had our problems but I loved him,’ I wept. ‘I made this public commitment to him. He was The One.’

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Bella said gently. ‘If he really was The One, he would not have a) objected to your new career – especially as he knew it made you happy – and b) carried on with Mary-Claire Grey.’ At the sound of her name my tears slammed on the brakes and did a rapid U-turn up my cheeks. ‘May I inject a little reality here?’ Bella added gently as I felt a slick of snot slither down my top lip. ‘You’ve been let down; your marriage has prematurely failed; you’re nearly forty…’ – OH SHIT!!!!!!! – ‘…so you’ve got to move on. And I think you’ll only be able to do that successfully if you expunge Ed from your life.’

‘You’ve got to expel him,’ said Bea forcefully.

‘You’ve got to eject him,’ agreed her twin.

‘You’ve got to exile him,’ said Bea.

‘Erase him,’ Bella went on.

‘Evict him.’

‘Excommunicate him.’

‘You’ve got to exorcise him,’ they both said.

‘Exorcise him?’ I whispered. ‘Yes. That’s it. I shall simply Ed-it Ed out of my life.’

I felt better once I’d resolved to do that. Ed and I live eight miles apart, we have no mutual friends, my mail’s redirected, and we don’t have kids. We don’t even have to communicate through lawyers as we can’t start proceedings until we’ve been married a year. So it can all be nice and neat. Which is how I like things. Tidy. Sorted out. Nor do we have any joint financial commitments as the house belongs solely to Ed. I sold my flat when we got engaged and moved in with him. Ed wanted me to put in my equity to pool resources but Bella advised me to wait.

‘Rose,’ she said, ‘you haven’t known Ed long. Please, don’t tie up your cash with his until you feel certain it’s going to work out.’

Ed seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t do it, but as things turned out, Bella was right. As for letting all our friends know about the split – that had been taken care of by the popular press.

I shall simply carry on as though I’d never met him I decided as I opened more packing cases the next day. I shall be very civilised about it. I shall not get hysterical; I’ll be as cool as vichyssoise. In any case the unpalatable image of him canoodling with our marriage guidance counsellor would keep sentiment firmly at bay.

And now I masochistically replayed the scene where I’d found them together that day. I’d been invited to speak at a seminar on Relationship Enrichment and told Ed I’d be coming home late. I hadn’t thought it relevant to mention that it was being held in a conference room at the Savoy. But when I left at nine I had to walk through the bar and, to my astonishment, I spotted Ed. He was sitting at a corner table – behind a large parlour palm – holding hands with Mary-Claire Grey.

My unfailing advice to readers in such disagreeable situations is, Just Pretend You Haven’t Seen Them And Leave! But in the nanosecond it took my brain to clock their combined presence I had walked right up to them. Mary-Claire saw me first and the look of horror on her snouty little face is something I’ll never forget. She dropped Ed’s hand as though it were radioactive, and emitted a high-pitched little cough. Ed swivelled in his seat, saw me, blinked twice, blushed deeply and simply said, ‘Oh!’

I was relieved that he didn’t try and cover it up by saying, for example, ‘Gosh, Rose, fancy seeing you here!’ or ‘Darling, do you remember our marriage guidance counsellor, Mary-Claire Grey?’ or even ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘Oh…Rose,’ Ed stuttered, getting to his feet. ‘Well, what a surprise! I, er expect you’re wondering what we’re…’

‘Yes,’ I interjected. ‘I am.’ I was so frosty I gave myself goose bumps, but inside I was as hot as a flame.

‘Well, I…we…we were just having a chat, actually.’

‘A chat?’ I echoed. ‘How nice. Well, don’t let me interrupt,’ I added with a chilly little smile. Then I turned on my heel, and left.

Looking back, the only thing that gives me any solace is the knowledge that I retained my dignity. It’s only in my dreams that I throw things at him, and swear, and rage and hit. In real life I was as cool as a frozen penguin, which might surprise people who know me well. I’m supposed to be ‘difficult’ you see – a bit ‘complicated’. A rather ‘thorny’ Rose – ho ho ho! And of course my red hair is a guaranteed sign of a crazy streak and a wicked tongue. So the fact that I didn’t erupt like Mount Etna in this moment of crisis would almost certainly confound my friends. But I felt oddly detached from what was going on. I was numb. I guess it was shock. I mean, there was my handsome husband, of barely six months, holding hands with a troll! This realisation astounded me so much that I was able to retain my sang-froid.

‘Rose…’ he ventured an hour and a half later in the kitchen where I was tidying out a drawer. ‘Rose…’ he repeated, but I was having difficulty hearing him over the deafening thump, thump of my heart. ‘Rose…’ he reiterated, ‘you must think badly of me.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I do.’

‘I just want to say that I’m truly sorry. I know it doesn’t look good.’ Now that elegant little apology really annoyed me, because I was enjoying being on the moral high ground. The air’s very bracing at ten thousand feet, and of course there’s a wonderful view. ‘But I’d like to…explain,’ he suggested impotently.

‘No. Spare me, Ed. Please don’t.’

‘I want to,’ he insisted. ‘There are things I’d like to say.’

Suddenly I noticed that one of the cupboards was grubby and began wiping it with a damp cloth.

‘I’m not remotely interested in why you were holding hands with that pigmy,’ I said stiffly as I swabbed away.

‘Look, Rose. We’ve got to talk.’

‘You sound like the B.T. ad.’

‘Mary-Claire and I were just…chatting,’ he added lamely.

‘Ed,’ I said serenely, ‘that’s a lie: a) you were not just “chatting”, you were holding hands; and b) there was a pool of drool under your table big enough to support aquatic life. What’s the attraction?’ I added breezily as I reached for the Ajax. ‘She looks like a pig in a tutu to me.’

‘Well…she…she…Mary-Claire listens to me Rose,’ he said with sudden emphasis. ‘She hears what I say. You don’t. You take everyone else’s problems seriously, don’t you – but not mine, and would you please put that cloth down?’

‘There’s a nasty mark here,’ I said. ‘It’s very stubborn. I’ll have to try Astonish if this doesn’t work.’

‘Will you stop cleaning, Rose, for Chrissake!’ He snatched the cloth out of my hand and hurled it into the sink with a flaccid slap. ‘You’re always cleaning things,’ he said. ‘That’s part of the problem – I can never relax.’

‘I just like things to be shipshape,’ I protested pleasantly. ‘No need to snap.’

‘But you’re always at it. It’s bizarre! If you’re not at work or the radio station you’re cleaning or tidying, or polishing the furniture, or you’re sorting drawers. Or you’re colour spectrumming my shirts: or filing stuff away, or you’re hoovering the floor, or telling me to hoover.’

‘But it’s a very big house.’

Ed shook his head. ‘You can never relax, Rose, can you? You can never just sit and be. Look,’ he added with a painful sigh, ‘you and I have got problems. What shall we do?’

At this my ears pricked up like a husky. Ed was talking my lingo now. This was just like one of my monthly ‘Dilemmas’ when the readers, rather than me, give advice. Rose (name changed to protect her identity), has just found her husband Ed (ditto), canoodling with their vertically-challenged marriage guidance counsellor, Mary-Claire Grey. Rose, understandably, feels shocked and betrayed. But, despite this, she still finds her husband desperately, knee-tremblingly, heart-breakingly attractive, so is wondering what to do. And I was just about to open my mouth when I heard Ed say, ‘Maybe we should have a trial separation.’ Separation. Oh. S, e, p, a, r…I reflected as I pulled the knife out of my heart.

‘One is apart,’ I said quietly.

‘What?’

‘One is apart.’

‘Well, yes – we will be. Just for a while.’

‘No, it’s the anagram of separation,’ I explained.

‘Oh,’ he sighed. ‘I see. But I think we should just have a breather…take a month off.’

‘So that you can shag that midget again?’

‘I haven’t shagged her – and she is a not a midget!’

‘Yes you have – and she is!’

‘I have…not…slept with Mary-Claire,’ he insisted.

‘I have a diploma in Advanced Body Language! I know.’

‘Well, I…’

‘Don’t bother to deny it, Ed.’

He clenched his jaw, as he does when he’s cornered, and a small blue vein jumped by his left eye. ‘It’s just…’ he sighed, ‘that I was feeling neglected and she –’

‘Paid you attention I suppose?’

‘Yes!’ he said defiantly. ‘She did. She talked to me, Rose. She communicated with me. Whereas you only communicate with strangers. That’s why I wrote you that letter,’ he added. ‘It’s the only way I could get a response! You’re…neurotic, Rose,’ he snapped, no longer contrite now, but angry. ‘Sometimes I think you need help.’

At that I put my J Cloth down and gave him a contemptuous stare. ‘That is ridiculous,’ I said quietly. ‘Help is what I provide.’

‘Look Rose,’ he said exasperatedly, running his left hand through his hair, ‘our marriage is not going well. We rushed into it because, being older, we thought we knew what we were doing – but we were wrong. And I found you so vibrant and so attractive, Rose – I still do. But I’m finding it hard to live with you, so for the time being let’s give each other some space.’

‘You want more space?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Space.’

‘Well you can have all the space in the universe,’ I said calmly, ‘because I’m going to file for divorce.’

‘Oh,’ he said. I’d shocked him. I think I’d shocked myself. But I knew exactly what ‘let’s give each other space’ really meant, and I was going to be the one to quit first.

‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow,’ he added wearily.

‘No,’ I said, ‘there’s no need.’ I’d been chewing so hard on my lower lip that I could taste the metallic tang of blood.

‘You want to call it a day already?’ he asked quietly. I nodded. ‘Are you really sure?’ I nodded again. ‘Are you quite, quite sure?’ he persisted. ‘Because there’ll be serious consequences.’

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I am.’

‘Right,’ he said faintly. He shrugged. ‘Right. Okay…if that’s what you want. Well then,’ he said bleakly, ‘I guess that’s…it.’ He inhaled through his nose, gave me a grim little smile then walked away. But as he reached for the door handle I said, ‘Can I ask you something Ed?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’d just like to know why you asked me to marry you?’

‘I didn’t, Rose. You asked me.’

Christ – I’d forgotten. How embarrassing! I could have sworn it was the other way round. I certainly don’t have any memories of getting down on bended knee. All I recall is whizzing round the London Eye, drunk as a monkey, and finding myself engaged by the time we got down. But if, as Ed ungallantly claims, I was the one who popped the question, then it’s right that I should also be the one proposing divorce.

I was thinking about all this as I emptied the last few packing cases and cleaned the house after the twins had gone. The interior isn’t bad – just a bit dusty, that’s all. Off-white walls, limed wooden kitchen units, cream silk curtains (included in the price) and a perfectly respectable oatmeal Berber carpet everywhere. The house is the colour of string. It looks etiolated. Drained. Like me. I quite like it, I thought as I scrubbed and swabbed – too much colour would get me down. I decided I’d redecorate it later; I could live with this for a while.

And now, bearing in mind what the twins had said, I prepared to expunge the memories of Ed. I’d given this very careful thought. I went to the Spar round the corner and bought a packet of party balloons. When I got back I laid them out flat, then wrote ‘ED WRIGHT’ in black biro on each one. Then I inflated them, watching his name grow and expand on the rubber skin. Ears aching from the effort I watched the balloons bobbing up and down on the sitting room floor. They looked incongruously, almost insultingly, festive as they bounced against each other in the breeze. Then I found my sewing box, took my largest needle and stabbed them, one by one. BANG! went Ed’s name, as it was reduced to rubbery shreds. CRACK! exploded the next. POP! went the third as I detonated it, feeling the smile spread across my face. I derived enormous and, yes, childish satisfaction from this – it gave me a malicious thrill. Ed was full of hot air – his vows meant nothing – so this was what he deserved. I burst nine – one for each month I knew him, then took the last one, which was yellow, outside. By now the wind had picked up, and I stood in the middle of the lawn for a moment, then let the balloon go. A sudden gust snatched it and lifted it over the garden fence, before it floated up and away. I could still make out Ed’s name as it rose higher and higher, bobbing and jerking in the stiff breeze. By now it was just a yellow blob against the sky, then a smudge, then a speck, and then gone.

I heaved a sigh of relief then went inside for Stage Two of my ritual. I took a piece of string and tied knots in it, one for each happy memory of my time with Ed. The first knot was for when we met, the second was for New Year’s Eve; as I tied the third I thought of our engagement party; I tied the fourth for our wedding day. As I tied the fifth I remembered how happy I had felt when I moved into his house. Then I lit the end of the string and watched a neat yellow flame take hold. It climbed slowly but steadily, leaving a glowing tail of embers and a thin coil of smoke. Thirty seconds later and my memories were just a thread of ash which I washed down the sink. Finally, I riffled through a wallet of snaps and found a photo of Ed. He’s usually extremely photogenic, but in this one he looked like shit. The camera must have gone off by mistake, because it was looking straight up his nose. He was scowling at something, it exaggerated his slight jowl, and his face was unshaven and tired. So I pinned it to the kitchen noticeboard and made a mental note to have it enlarged. Then I went into the bathroom to perform the final part of my cathartic rites. Suddenly my mobile rang.