Reading Matter By veronica Henry

Jill’s world had shrunk to her husband and family. What on earth will she do now he has left?

For three weeks she didn’t even leave the house. She just lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, wondering how doing everything for him all of their married life had been so very wrong.

What on earth was Monica Bloxham doing for him that she hadn’t? All she could think of was that Monica was good at golf, and she, Jill, wasn’t.

Monica was lady captain, and maybe that was the ultimate status symbol Jeffrey had lusted after all those years, after the Jag and the private school for the kids.

Eventually, of course, she had to get up. Her girlfriends came round and gave her tough love. And when she eventually made it to the front door, and stepped www.myweekly.co.uk outside, she found she didn’t feel as bad as she had done when she was under the duvet. There was a fresh autumn breeze, and a glittering low sun, and she picked up her handbag and thought, with a whisper of a smile: retailtherapy.

She still had access to the joint account. He hadn’t had the guts to stop money going in, so there was plenty. He’d just sidled out of the front door after dropping his bombshell, and moved in to Monica’s new build on the Cherrywood estate. Her divorce settlement.

She felt different as she walked down the high street. Lighter of heart and mind. As if some tension had left her. There was nothing for her to do, no commitments, and instead of feeling daunted, she felt rather liberated. She didn’t have to look at her watch, or plan what they were having for dinner, or rush to the dry cleaner for his dinner suit.

Without even thinking about it, she walked into the boutique halfway up the high street. She used to walk past it without a second glance, because it was filled with dresses and scarves and jewellery that were undeniably pretty but a bit frivolous and rather cheap – what she would have once considered tat.

She always shopped in anonymous city department stores, for stiff, formal, expensive designer outfits which, she realised now, made her look ten years older than she was, to attend all those work dos and civic functions and charity balls. Only now she didn’t have to go to any of them.

She looked through the new season dresses hanging on the rails. Her hand hovered over one in particular which had caught her eye. It was burnt orange. Rich and glorious. She didn’t think she’d worn anything but navy or taupe for twenty years.

She had CAUGHT HERSELF eating TUNA out of the CAN the other night

The assistant handed her a size twelve, and she demurred. “I won’t get into that.” “Yes, you will. Easily.” Funny – she had always thought she was a size sixteen, but she must have lost weight over the past few weeks. She had lost her appetite rather. As well as not having to cook three-course dinners every night for Jeffrey, who really only liked meat and two veg and didn’t consider salad to be a meal – although she had insisted on tuna niçoise once a week, to keep up their intake of oily fish – she just couldn’t be bothered to cook for herself.

She had caught herself eating tuna out of the can the other night, because what was the point of boiling up new potatoes and eggs and blanching green beans just for one? She’d eaten the tuna out of the tin and tipped a few black

olives into a bowl, and that was it.

The dress fitted perfectly. The fabric was light and silky and caressed her skin as she smoothed it down over her body. She surveyed herself in the mirror. Rather than looking like a stressed and spurned middle-aged housewife, she looked… well, if not exactly foxy, then ten years younger than she felt inside.

She decided if she couldn’t enjoy food then she would enjoy being slim, and added a pair of jeans and a couple of luxurious sweaters to her pile: one hot pink, one baby blue, both off the shoulder. As she walked out of the shop, she felt herself standing taller.

What if Jeffrey leaving wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her? What if this was actually her chance for a new beginning? A chance to rediscover herself ? Not be Mrs Corporate Wife, always saying and doing and wearing the right thing? Just… Jill. She wasn’t sure if she could remember pre-Jeffrey Jill and what she had enjoyed. The sort of person she had been. She had been so young – only just twenty-one when they married – and she’d gone straight into having the children, so any vestige of the girl she had been had been replaced by Jill Version Two, the dutiful, responsible wife and mother.

Jeffrey had done his duty too, to be fair, and had kept Jill and their three children in comfort. They never wanted for anything. Though now, she realised, there were lots of things she’d secretly craved. Time to herself. Freedom. Her own opinion – she was rarely allowed that. Her own hobbies – certainly not those. Life revolved around making sure the children were fulfilled in their extra curricular activities – rugby, tennis, swimming, tae kwondo, ballet, Brownies, Cubs, riding … It was endless.

Once they had gone to university, it was golf, golf, golf for Jeffrey, and Jill couldn’t really think of anything to do but redecorate the house from top to bottom, because she had all but withered to nothing.

What had she done as a girl? What had she enjoyed?

Reading, she thought. She’d always been a bookworm when she was young. Had loved nothing better than curling up with a thumping historical novel.

There’d been no point in trying to read with Jeffrey and the children around – one or other of them always wanted something. In the evenings, she watched television with Jeffrey, his

choice of channel: Poirot, Inspector Morse or anything that involved real police chases. If she had tried to bury her nose in a book it would been a frustrating exercise.

Even on holiday there was no respite. She had given up trying.

But now, the thought of curling up with a book excited her. Why shouldn’t she do exactly as she liked with her newfound freedom? She recalled the authors she had admired. Daphne du Maurier – she remembered her heart thumping as she turned the pages of Rebecca, gripped. Mary Stewart – she had been there, in the court of King Arthur, with Merlin, the mist swirling round them. All those Georgette Heyer heroines, dashing around in barouches – though she wasn’t sure even now what a barouche was.

She walked into the bookshop at the far end of the high street. Nightingale Books. It had been in Peasebrook for as long as she could remember, but to her shame she had never been inside it.

As soon as she walked in she felt safe. And another feeling… a tiny fizz. She recognised it as excitement. She hadn’t felt excited for a very long time.

For a moment, she felt like a prisoner let out of jail after serving twenty years inside. She felt slightly giddy and bewildered and unsure of herself. The assistant smiled. “Are you looking for anything in particular?” Jill put her head to one side. “Yes. Actually, yes I am. I want… all the best books from the past twenty years. Anything you think I should have read.” The assistant blinked. “What – all of them? I don’t know where to start. That could be hundreds.”

Jill laughed. “I suppose that is a bit extreme. How about a few of your favourites? Just to get me started.”

The girl laughed. “I can’t think of a nicer brief. What sort of thing do you like? Romance? Crime? Historical?”

Jill looked around the shop. There were so many covers calling out to her. She had no idea where to start, or what she might like nowadays.

“A bit of everything. A pick and mix. Nothing too heavy or demanding.”

For the next hour, the two of them wandered round the shop, with the girl making suggestions. Jill considered each thoughtfully, and felt thrilled as her basket filled up. The girl put all her purchases in a cardboard box. “Happy reading.” Jill grinned. “It’s time for some metime. I never knew what that meant, but I’m hoping I might find out.”

She went to the deli and picked up some paté and cheeses and little tubs of salad, and two loaves of sourdough bread. Delicacies she could enjoy but didn’t need to spend time on.

For the next few days, she binge-read, getting up occasionally for coffee or bread and cheese or a glass of wine.

She realised how small her world had been for so long. It had been something of a gilded cage. She’d had no freedom to speak of. She knew of nothing outside Jeffrey and the children’s needs.

She realised something else. Their lounge had every mod con. A massive flat screen television, a sound system, lights that dimmed and curtains that closed at the touch of a button. But it didn’t have a bookshelf. Only a special shelf for DVDs, and even that was outmoded now they had a smart telly.

So she went into Pennfleet and bought an old set of bookshelves in a junk shop, and a tin of pale grey eggshell, and spent the afternoon sanding them down and re-painting them. Then she arranged all her new purchases on them. They didn’t even fill one shelf, but she wasn’t worried. Instead she felt the thrill of anticipation at all the books that might join the others.

She shivered at the thought of everything she had missed. If she read one a day she would never catch up.

Aweek later, there was a knock at the door. She yawned, stretched and rolled off the sofa. She answered the door in her jeans and the pink sloppy sweater that fell over one shoulder, her hair falling naturally around her face. She was barefoot. Jeffrey gaped for a moment. “Jill?” he said. She couldn’t help laughing. “Who else would it be?” “I made a big mistake,” said Jeffrey. “Really?” said Jill. “I’m coming home, love,” he said, with a tentative smile, holding out his arms. Even two weeks ago, she would have welcomed him back. Not because she loved him, but because she couldn’t imagine life without him or what she was supposed to do. And because she felt lonely rattling around the house. Now, however, she just felt irritation that he’d interrupted her reading. She was in the middle of Eat,Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and loving it, fantasising about her own escape to warmer climes, and a pair of dark eyes. You were never alone with a book, she realised. She stared at him. “No, you’re not,” she told him, and shut the door in his face. Moments later she was back on the sofa, feet curled under her. She didn’t hear Jeffrey’s outraged knocking; she was there, in Italy, eating gelato and feeling its cool creamy sweetness on her tongue, the real world firmly shut out. It didn’t matter if she never went there in real life, for in that moment, that was where she wanted to be and that was where she was.