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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.

       CHAPTER TWO

      SPENT second week sorting out the contents of the attic, in between bouts of tears and eating chocolate.

      That was when stepsister rang. We’ve always had challenging relationship with one another. After all, her mother pinched my father from my mother… She got to live with them whilst I had to stay with my mother—who, not having my father to embrace any longer, embraced religion instead. Well, if you call witches’ spells and naked dancing round bonfires religion.

      Tara, that’s my stepsister, was sent to St Hilda’s Private School for Girls!

      She had a gold watch for her thirteenth birthday and ice skates! My mother wanted to give me a toad, and a book on how to cast spells.

      My mother was always ahead of her time. And it wasn’t her fault that the local council refused to see the benefit of her plan to hold parties to recruit new witches. They said that all the naked dancing was causing a nuisance and that people were complaining. And anyway, it was a definite health hazard on account of bare feet touching uncleansed ground of local park. Mother did an interview for local paper, but due to confusion at printers, the interview was printed under name of local v. moral councillor. Councillor was totally outraged when my mother was elected in her place.

      Now Mum lives in California, with her fourth husband. I don’t hear from her very much.

      Derek never really approved of her. His own parents were very traditional and old-fashioned. We only found out about his father liking to dress up in women’s clothes after he died. He had written in his will that the wanted to be buried in his favourite evening dress. Of course Derek’s mother pretended that it was just a joke, and in the end he was buried in his suit.

      Anyway, Tara has her own PR company. She’s never married. For every decade she’s past she’s had another piece of plastic surgery—which is why at fifty she looks thirty, but in a tight, shiny, this-skin-is-killing-me sort of way.

      Still, like I said, she caught me at a bad moment. I’d just found the box containing our wedding photographs and cards

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