Rescuing Rose. Isabel Wolff

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СКАЧАТЬ went on, ‘repent at…’

      ‘…haste. I’ll be divorced in just over six months!’

      But the twins are right. It had happened too fast. But then when you’re older, you just know. I mean I’m thirty-six…ish. Well, thirty-eight actually. Oh all right, all right – thirty-nine: and I’d never believed in instant attraction, but Ed had proved me wrong. We met at a Christmas drinks party given by my next door neighbours in Meteor Street. I was making tiny talk by the Twiglets with this pleasant tree surgeon when I suddenly spotted Ed. He shone out of the crowd like a beacon, and he had clearly noticed me; because he came strolling over, introduced himself, and that was that. I was concussed with passion. I was bowled over. I was gob-smacked, bouleversée. I felt my jaw go slack with desire, and I probably drooled. Ed’s incredibly distinguished-looking; elegant, a young forty-one, with strong cheekbones and an aquiline nose. You can fall in love with a profile, I realised then, and I fell in love with his. As for the chemistry – there was enough erotic static crackling between us to blow the lights on the Blackpool tower. He told me he was Head of Human Resources at Paramutual Insurance and that he’d just bought a house near Putney Bridge. And I was waiting for some gimlet-eyed glamour puss to zoom up and lay a ferociously proprietorial hand on his arm, when he added casually, ‘I live there alone.’

      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 СКАЧАТЬ