Rescuing Rose. Isabel Wolff

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ