Julia Gets a Life by Lynne Barrett-Lee Read Free Book Online

So I’m liberated at least, if still misunderstood.
                ‘Julia, how are you, my lovely? It must be a couple of months since we saw you two in the Dog and Trouserleg.’ She forms her glossy mouth into puckered enquiry. It’s been three, in fact.
                 ‘That’s because I’ve left Richard,’ I told her.
                 Inhalation. ‘Left him?’
                ‘Well, thrown him out, really.’
                ‘Thrown him out? ’
                ‘Well, he left, and I...’
                ‘ Left you, my lovely? How could he?’ Hand on bosom. ‘But why?’
                ‘Because I told him to. Well, sort of. He..I...he slept with someone, and... well, we’ve split up, and...’
                ‘With who? No, don’t tell me. No, do tell me. Who?’
                ‘Rhiannon De Laney.’
                ‘Rhiannon De Laney? Rhiannon De Laney !’
                Then, ‘RHIANNON DE LANEY!’ For the benefit of the lady plugging the leek potage , presumably.
                ‘Yes, her.’
                Moira’s frosted pink fingers rattle the trolley. ‘Great Saints alive! So you’ve split up? I should say so. SHR!’
                ‘SHR?’
                ‘Serves Him Right, my darling. You poor child (Moira is forty seven). How could he? And you so...so... Oh!’ She embraces me, heartily.  
                Of course, what I really wanted to get across was that the leaving, though Richard’s in a physical sense, was very much mine in a philosophical one. But I can’t keep going around saying I’ve left Richard because people keep getting confused. My GP actually reached for my notes last week and began scribbling across my address. On the other hand, I don’t want to say Richard’s left me, because then people think that he really has left me - which winds me up, obviously, because there is a whole world of difference between your husband having a quick one ( two ) and you kicking him out, and him leaving you for another woman. Which means I have to start putting them straight which confuses them further and...Pah! Why is life so complicated?
     
                TTD Monday. Find succinct grouping of words to accurately describe potential (actual?) breakdown of marriage, with clear reference to housing arrangements, without sounding like a pathetic, sad person on Jerry Springer.
     
                Trouble is, every time I find myself explaining the circumstances of Richard’s departure to anyone I have this compelling urge to burst into tears regardless of whether I’m feeling happy at the time or not, which is both crazy and inconvenient, and will make people think I am just hanging-on-by-a-thread. And I cannot remonstrate with them about it because everyone knows that you only bang on about how you’re definitely holding it all together when you’re about as together as a half finished jumper with the knitting needle whipped out. And as soon as my face takes on that characteristic wrestling with itself appearance, people always want to clutch me to them and put their arms around me, which everybody also knows just makes it a zillion times worse. I feel a bit like an ear with a gobbet of wax in it. The more someone tries to gently tease bits out, the more it begins to hurt. Perhaps I (and my babes, of course) should leave the house. At least that way I won’t have to keep explaining things all the time. I blame pregnancy. Before I got pregnant I watched the whole of Gone With The Wind without so much of a sniff. Now I cry at Bernard Matthew’s chicken commercials. How low can you sink?
                On this occasion however, I was rescued from the sobering prospect of having my chin wobble in front of Moira Bugle - which would have involved me in being made to sit down on a bench, copious