Read Diary of an Unsmug Married Online
Authors: Polly James
I’m hovering in the garden, still in my dressing gown, and trying to see whether any of our neighbours owns an incinerator I could borrow or are building an early bonfire, when Greg phones me on my mobile – to say that he bought a copy of the
Lichford News
while he was on his way to work.
‘I’m bringing it round,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute, so get dressed, now. Then you can come into the office with me, if you want to, once you’ve seen the article.’
‘I doubt I
will
want to,’ I say. ‘Seeing as reading what The Boss has to say to the local press usually makes me want to resign. I can’t see this time being any different.’
‘Well, it is,’ says Greg. ‘You can take my word for that. Put the kettle on.’
Max already has, so I go the window to watch for Greg to arrive, though he seems to be taking ages. Oh, he’s just sent me a text.
‘Approaching now,’ it says. ‘Have the door open, ready to admit me. Can’t be seen.’
I’ve just done as he asks when he comes hurtling around the side of the hedge in the front garden, bent double, then drops to his knees and crawls up the path.
‘Out of the way,’ he says, pushing past me on the doorstep. ‘And shut the door – as fast as you can!’
‘Is someone following you or something?’ I say, as he finally stands up and hands me a totally mangled bunch of flowers.
‘From The Boss,’ he says. ‘Or from Petty Cash, to be exact. Andrew told me to buy you something to show his appreciation.’
I’m not sure what five crushed, scentless – and almost petal-less – yellow roses are supposed to denote, but any appreciation involved seems pretty minimal.
‘God, they’re a bit tragic, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘And why were you hiding on your way here?’
‘Didn’t want Ellen to spot me,’ says Greg, shuffling his feet. ‘She’s starting to scare me a bit, she likes me so much. And stop moaning about the flowers. You’re just getting cocky because you’ve had far too many recently.’
‘That’s true,’ says Max, appearing from nowhere, yet again. ‘Though the red roses weren’t actually
bought
for Molly – were they?’
‘No,’ say Greg and I simultaneously, and with an excess of head-shaking, to add an air of verisimilitude. I have no idea whether it works or not – but, as soon as Max goes off to make coffee, Greg says in a whisper, ‘Is he suspicious about Johnny, Mol?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘but he’s being very nice to me if he is. So it’s a good job Johnny showed his true colours, just in time.’
‘
Yes, it is
,’ says Greg, nodding furiously. He doesn’t approve of serial cheaters any more than I do, not since his last girlfriend slept with half of Young Labour. Maybe he should introduce Ellen to them, if he wants to get rid of her.
‘Anyway,’ he says, throwing himself onto the sofa, and dumping the
Lichford News
onto the coffee table, ‘shall we have a look at this?’
Andrew’s face stares up at me from the front page, captured in the act of blowing into a breathalyser, watched by a policeman, whose face looks oddly familiar. ‘Local MP arrested for drink-driving,’ says the headline, which is
huge
.
‘Oh, my God,’ I say. ‘What a nightmare.’
‘Ignore that, for now,’ says Greg. ‘It’s not important. Andrew says you’re to look at the article below the one about him.’
He points at it, while I wonder what the hell he’s talking about. How can
anything
be more significant than The Boss getting himself arrested – and for driving while drunk, of all the stupid, irresponsible things to do? It’s a PR-disaster, even on a good day to bury bad news, which this one clearly isn’t.
‘Here,’ says Greg, pointing again. ‘“A mindless act of vandalism”.’
I look at it, then do a double-take, when I inspect the accompanying photograph – which is of a leylandii tree, or what
was
a leylandii tree, before it was cut down. On Silverhill Close, where the Parkers live. Oh, and where The Boss was, at the time he was arrested.
‘Holy shit,’ I say, to which Greg replies, ‘Exactly.’
‘Let me see,’ says Max, coming into the room with a tray of coffees.
Greg passes him the paper, which he reads for a minute before looking up and saying, ‘Andrew did that?’
‘Yep,’ says Greg. ‘Though don’t tell anyone he did. He wanted to prove something to Molly, to make her come back. It’s lucky he was driving away by the time he was spotted, really – otherwise we’d be reading a headline about an MP being guilty of criminal damage, not just drink-driving.’
‘Christ,’ I say, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
‘Exactly,’ says Greg, again. Then we all sit in silence, staring into space, while sipping our coffees.
‘But how did Andrew come to be photographed while he was being breathalysed?’ says Max, eventually. ‘That was bad luck, wasn’t it? Did someone tip off the press or something?’
‘Good point,’ says Greg, picking the paper up, and inspecting it more closely. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
After a few seconds, he passes the paper to me. ‘Oh, for f*ck’s sake,’ he says. ‘Look at the photo credit. It’s only Edmund Bloody Beales. Talk about sod’s law! It’s the first time he’s ever got all his subjects’ heads in shot.’
‘Mr Beales – so
that’s
where I’ve seen that policeman before,’ I say. ‘He’s the one who doesn’t wear his high-vis jacket.’
‘God almighty,’ says Greg. ‘I need a drink.’
He doesn’t believe me when I tell him that there’s no alcohol left in the house since Max’s party, until he checks all the cupboards for himself. Then he says he’s going to the pub, as it’s an emergency.
‘Will you be at work by the time I’ve had a few gins, Mol?’ he says. ‘Has Andrew done enough to convince you that he’s still one of the good guys now?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say, though I’ve no idea what my decision will be.
Drink-driving: terrible. Vandalising a tree: normally, also terrible – but brilliant, if it means Mrs Parker sees the sun again before she dies. Why is
nothing
ever black and white?
‘Andrew was only
just
over the limit,’ says Max, giving me a hug when I groan in confusion. ‘If that makes any difference? We’re talking about degrees of guilt, you know … and whether bad behaviour can ever be justified.’
Now
there’s
a profoundly uncomfortable thought.
‘Um, yes,’ I say, wriggling a bit. ‘I suppose we are.’
I’d better focus on only blaming people who are
definitely
at fault, in future – like Johnny, who I wish would stop emailing me all the time. I can’t keep on hitting
delete
every five minutes, so maybe I should change my email address.
Oh, but I can’t, can I? Not my Parliamentary one, not if I
am
going to go back to work. I’ll just have to mark Johnny’s emails as junk. That seems appropriate, after all the stuff he tried to get me to believe – like being in love with me. Thank God I came to my senses, just in time.
‘I need to deal with a few emails,’ I say to Max. ‘Urgently, but I won’t be long.’
Then I kiss him, properly, and he kisses me back, before I stand up and walk towards the door. On the threshold, I turn around to look at him, and he smiles at me, like he used to, in the early days. I feel like a very smug married indeed.
(Oh,
bloody
hell.)
From:
Hunter, Johnny
Subject:
Urgent - re AIDS test.
Date:
1 November 2010 07:12:55 GMT+3
To:
Bennett, Molly
Molly
See below. I have to be tested yearly, to get my work permit renewed. Ask the Russian Embassy if you don’t believe me. Not
everyone
tells you lies, you know. I don’t.
Johnny
Decree of the Russian Federation # 1158 from November 25, 1995
‘On Establishment of Requirements to the HIV Test (AIDS) Certificate, presented by the Foreign Citizens and Stateless Citizens upon their Application for Entry Visa to the Russian Federation for the Period over 3 Months.’
REQUIREMENTS
To the HIV Test (AIDS) Certificate,
presented by foreign citizens and stateless persons upon application for an entry visa to Russia for a period over 3 months
Polly James is about to chain herself to her desk to start work on her second novel. Before she does, we thought we’d find out a bit more about her, and what the experience of writing
Diary of an Unsmug Married was like.
Are there occupational hazards to being a novelist?
There certainly seem to be, as I became horrendously unfit during the writing of Molly’s diary. First, I developed an inexplicable addiction to pink shrimp sweets, gained two stone and sent my cholesterol through the roof – and then I became so unfit that I tore the ligament in my right shoulder – just by typing. None of this was particularly helpful, given that I had quite a tight deadline for delivery of the book, and I’m right-handed.
The plan for writing the next book is to stay away from the pink shrimps and to keep some time free for exercise, though I overheard my husband increasing my life assurance the other day – ‘just in case’.
Where do you work and is there anything distinctive about your workspace?
In theory, I work at a beautiful desk that my husband bought me as a gift, and which is in our spare bedroom (though I won’t allow the room to be called that, as I still haven’t accepted that my daughter really
has
moved out for good, even though she left for university in 2005 and hasn’t come back yet).
The desk would look great in front of a window, but I daren’t put it there because I’d get so distracted by what my neighbours or passing strangers were up to if I did. (I love people-watching, and am very nosy.) Instead, it faces a blank wall, which
should
serve to keep me focused on writing.
It doesn’t, because I’m not working at my desk at the moment. Instead, I’m sitting slumped on the sofa in the living room, in an attempt to find a position in which I can type without using my right arm, because of the aforementioned shoulder injury. This means that I can be distracted by anyone and everything, and often am.
What do you keep on your desk and what is the view?
No view, as mentioned earlier … other than of what’s on the desk itself. If I turn round, though, I can then see straight out of the window, and right across the small square on which I live, to a street of perfect Georgian houses situated on the other side.
If I wrote historical fiction, this would be a great help as – every time I see that view – I find myself imagining people from the Georgian era coming out of their houses and going about their daily lives (as long as I ignore the pub on my street … and the coffee bar … and the mini-mart).
On the desk itself, I have a gigantic computer screen a supportive ex-employer gave me to help me with writing the book, as my eyesight’s so awful that I was struggling with the small screen on my laptop. Now I just plug that into the big screen, add a keyboard and mouse, and off I go.
That combination takes up almost half of the desk and I tend to use the other half as a dumping ground, so it’s often drowning under piles of books, until I lose patience and put them all back into the bookshelves for a while. There are only two books that are allowed to stay on the desk permanently: a copy of ‘Elements of Style’ and one of ‘The Right Word at the Right Time’. (Both are highly recommended.)
Next to those are two index card boxes (which I always intend to use to help me plot things and then forget about completely), and a set of three filing trays labelled ‘Book one’, ‘Book two’, and ‘Other’. The ‘Book two’ tray looks worryingly empty at the moment.
There’s also a pen pot containing loads of pens (
none
of which ever seem to work); a box of eye drops (for dry eye, the curse of those who spend all day in front of a screen, however large); a copy of my invitation to the Orwell Prize award dinner (to remind me that I
can
write well enough to be short-listed, if I try); and a towering stack of notebooks, yellow legal pads and used envelopes.
I’ve scrawled ideas on all these things at one time or another, but not in any ordered way, so now none of my notes make any sense, even before I catch the pile with my elbow and send the whole lot crashing to the floor. (This happens at least twice a day.)
Despite the gargantuan proportions of the paperwork pile, and the huge computer screen, the most noticeable thing on my desk is a shocking pink sticky note stuck squarely in the middle of it. On it is scrawled, ‘Never sell another book that you haven’t already written, you bloody,
bloody
idiot’.
Molly’s always worrying about tempting fate, but are you superstitious, too? If so, what superstitions do you have?