A Spring Affair

Milly Johnson is a very short but damned attractive writer of novels and greetings-card copy. Half-Glaswegian, half-Sassenach, her hobbies include eating Star Bars, singing in the car–where she is word-perfect at ‘Mr Boombastic’–and, in the name of research, hanging around with big wrestlers.

She lives bang in the centre of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, across the road from her mam and dad, with her two fast-growing sons, her goldfish Gene Hunt and the battalion of cats which are obligatory for a single, middle-aged woman.

When she isn’t trying to raise the awareness of bullying in the workplace or locking horns with the council over a much-needed Dodworth Road pedestrian crossing, she can be found in the wine aisle in Morrisons, cruising in the Med or scrubbing at ketchup stains on small boys’ school shirts (because washing powder commercials lie). She can currently speak 150 words of Italian–mostly flavours of ice cream.

Milly’s website is www.millyjohnson.com

A Spring Affair
is her third novel.

As usual I would like to give thanks to a few people here for helping me produce this book, both directly and indirectly. To my super-agent Darley Anderson and his gorgeous angels, and everyone at my publishers Simon & Schuster–in particular the lovely Libby Vernon for being a truly cracking editor and Suzanne Baboneau for being the best and sweetest Head Honcho I could wish for. Thanks also to the Essential Joan Deitch.

To my mam and dad for bragging mercilessly to their mates about me and pushing my sales up. To my sons Terence Johnson for plot consultations and George Johnson for allowing me to use his creation ‘Shirley Hamster’.

To my buddies–old ones and new ones, big ones and small ones, wrestling ones and non-wrestling ones, bright ones, beautiful ones, wise ones and wonderful ones. Especially the stalwarts–Paul Sear, Alec Sillifant, Catherine Marklew, Maggie Birkin, Tracy Harwood, Rachel Hobson, Debra Mitchell, Chris and Judy Sedgewick–and, as always, my dear SUN Sisters–Pam Oliver, Helen Clapham and Karen Baker. And of course, official moggy suppliers–Colin and Sara Atkinson at www.haworthcatrescue.org

To the fair and fantastic Stuart Gibbins at
www.newMedia4.com
for creating the best website ever for me and explaining techno things in such a way that even thicko me can understand them.

To a wonderful set of clever-beggar authors–Sue Welfare, Lucie Whitehouse, Lucy Diamond, Matt Dunn, Louise Douglas, Jayne Dowle, James Nash, Katie Fforde, Stephen Booth, Mel Dyke and Jane Elmor for their friendship and unerring support.

To
Heeleys Skips
in Barnsley–for filling me in on all sorts of details. And starting me off on an adventure by taking away my own rubbish and clearing up my life in the process. Trust me–it really does work like magic.

To my old mucker Superintendent (congratulations!) Pat Casserly and his family for lending me the perfect name for Lou.

Grazie bella
Franca Martella at BBC Radio Sheffield for being both my Italian guru and an all-round top bird.

Bacì
–to all my Italian friends at
Corbaccio
and around the dinner-tables and coffee pots of Milan. You made my smile extra wide whilst I was writing this story.

…And to Signor Marco Pierre White–for treating my little boy so nicely, for agreeing to feature as Lou’s fantasy man, and for being, like her, someone who simply ‘loves to cook’.

Spring-Clean Your Life!

Life feel too heavy and cluttered sometimes? Feel like you’re going nowhere? Did it ever cross your mind that all those little unwanted items in your cupboards are controlling you, draining your energies and anchoring you to the past? If you think all this sounds far-fetched, check out Mavis Calloway’s report on chapter 3 and see just how simple acts of clearing out some rubbish can put you on a path to your whole life moving forwards.

Women by Women
, Contents page, March edition

Sometimes the cosmos goes to a lot of trouble to help shift a life from its rut. On this occasion, for instance, it held up the dental technician on the M1 roadworks, gave the Practice secretary some tricky double bookings to cope with, and lumbered the dentist, Mr Swiftly, with a particularly awkward extraction that made his appointments run over by more than half an hour. All this so that the ante-room would be extra packed with bored people whiling away the time with the magazines in the rack, leaving just one tatty copy for Mrs Elouise Winter. And not just any mag, but
Women by Women–the
mag for women whose once-young and carnal energies were now ploughed into studying variations on hotpot and various crafts which were a bit too fuddy-duddy for Lou, despite the fact that, at thirty-five, she was starting to edge dangerously close to the chasm of middle age. Still, it was better than staring into space or reading posters about plaque. So she grabbed it and slotted herself into the only vacant seat, between a woman nervously tapping her foot and a pensioner who looked like Ernie Wise.

Lou turned to the recipes first but there was nothing
to excite.
Five delicious ways to serve a leg of lamb.
She shuddered. Not even a naked Marco Pierre White carrying a sheep limb in on a platter with a red rose between his teeth could make
that
sound attractive to her. She could never think of lamb without picturing rubbery seams of fat and mint sauce and being six years old, sitting alone in the school dining room, pushing it around her plate, willing it to get smaller and disappear so she could join the others and go out to play. She remembered how Lesley Jones’s mum had written to the school demanding that her child should not be forced to eat butter beans, but Lou’s mother Renee had refused to do the same for her with a lamb-avoiding note. Tagged onto the end of that memory was the still-fresh feeling of relief when she discovered a kindly dinner lady who would scrape away the odious lamb into the slop bucket and release her from the sad agony of the impasse.

Lamb was her husband Phil’s favourite, although she had hardly ever cooked it for him before things went wrong between them, before his affair. Since those dark days, three and a half years ago, it had appeared quite a lot on her menu, as it would this very evening as a direct result of that little comment he had made last night about her putting some weight on. Lou had tried to shut it out of her mind, but it had continued to rotate in there like a red sock in a whites boil wash–destructive and unstoppable. Just when she had started to believe that she was on rock-solid ground, he had to go and make a comment about the size of her bottom.

Lou carried on flicking through the mag, desperate to find something to divert her thoughts, because she would go half-mad otherwise. There was a pattern for a
crocheted lampshade that had a certain kitsch charm–except that Lou’s crocheting foray had begun and ended on the same afternoon when, aged eleven, she had made a succession of long tapeworm-like chains from some white wool. She never could work out how to do the turn onto the second and subsequent lines required to make the intricate tea-cosies or granny-square blankets that her sister Victorianna (or ‘Torah’ as she referred to herself these days) could so effortlessly make. Then again, Victorianna could always turn her hand to anything, as their mother boasted to unfortunate visitors when showing off her younger daughter’s accomplishments. ‘
Except to ringing home when she doesn’t want something or to asking you to visit
,’ Lou had wanted to snipe. But didn’t. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. Victorianna had been on her pedestal for so long, not even a nuclear explosion would nudge her off it.

Top ten dressing-gowns. Write your own will. Spring-clean your life!
Jeez, is this what is waiting for me around the age corner? thought Lou. It was looking more and more as if, one day, her interest in shoes and nice handbags would suddenly be diverted to mastering the art of laughing safely without causing a small Niagara Falls in the knicker area, or dislodging one’s false teeth. The dressing-gowns were dire, unless you liked the sort of nylon quilting that could give you a free perm if you happened to brush past something metallic, and she had already written her will–not that she had any Picassos to leave to anyone. Nevertheless, there were at least three people in front of her to see Mr Swiftly, so there was nothing for it but to try and be interested in having a good clear-out.

The article explained how
unburdening your cupboards of those unwanted and unused knick-knacks will lighten your spirit to a degree you would not think possible. How liberated you will feel, burning all those recipes you cut out from magazines and never tried, not to mention throwing away those garments in the wardrobe which are four sizes too small–the clothes you hoped you’d slim into and never did
.

The clothes bit in particular struck a chord with Lou. How long had those grey check, size eight trousers been waiting for her super-slim bum to rematerialize? She did a quick tally and was horrified to discover they had clocked up twelve years on both pre-marital and postmarital coat-hangers. In fact, she had gone up nearly two stone since deciding once and for all that she was going to slim down into them, and if Phil was to be believed last night, she was getting even bigger.

She had lain awake in the wee small hours, thinking how she needed to throttle back on the calories–she didn’t even dare to imagine what would happen if Phil’s eyes started wandering again. To thin women. She needed to get a grip. Quickly.

Clear your house and clear your mind. Don’t let life’s clutter dictate to you. Throw it away and take back the control!
the article cried, and some blind, lost part within Lou Winter lifted its head as if sensing light. She couldn’t remember the last time she had thrown anything out that wasn’t everyday wheelie-bin rubbish, and yet her cupboards were full to bursting. At worst it would give her something to do that might divert her thoughts from where they had started to go.

Wearing her best ‘nothing to declare’ face, she slipped the magazine into her bag when it was her time to be
called. It wouldn’t be missed, she decided, and it wouldn’t have withstood another reading. To compensate, she had a huge pile of magazines at home that she would bring over and donate in its place, when she began her so-called ‘miraculous’ clear-out.

If only she could start by clearing out her husband’s comment from her head…

At eight-thirty that evening, Philip Michael Winter, thirty-eight years old, owner of
P.M. Autos
as well as the first sign of a paunch and a bald patch which was becoming harder to hide with every passing day, sat back in his chair and let rip with a long fruity burp of approval.

‘Fantastic that, love.’

Lou smiled and he basked in the fact that he had made that smile happen. Never let it be said that he was one of those blokes who didn’t compliment his wife. Oh no, he always shared the feeling of satisfaction in his belly with Lou. She deserved to know when he had enjoyed his dinner. Lou was a good wife–the best. He never had to hunt around for a fresh shirt, the house was always clean, she cooked like an angel and she never turned him down in the bedroom. She was the perfect ‘surrendered wife’–well, she was now, after a bit of training. Although, let’s face it, Lou was pretty lucky to be married to
him
. He had put a nice four-bedroomed roof over her head and, thanks to the success of his used-car lot, they had all the latest mod-cons, decking in the garden and plasma TVs in three rooms.

Lou had been with him from the beginning, when
all he had were dreams of running his own car lot, the drive to see them through and an appointment with the bank manager.
P.M. Autos
was a family business, and as such he liked Lou to do all the accounts for him because no one was more trustworthy than his wife and she was bloody good at number-crunching. There was plenty of money in the bank so she could pay all the bills. He even encouraged her to have a little part-time job so she could have some independence and extra money for shoes and make-up and other women things. But only part-time–he didn’t want anything that might tire her too much, or interfere with his coming home every evening to a meal made by his own personal chef. He saved a fortune on restaurants. What was the point in going out? No one could cook like Lou and she would rather do it herself than have an inferior meal in fancy surroundings. He’d had the dining room and kitchen made into one huge cooking area for her and built a beautiful conservatory onto the side of the house in which to feed up and seduce potential business contacts with his wife’s superior fare. And she was more than happy to do that for him. He knew this, although he hadn’t actually asked her. But to be fair to him, had she ever said, ‘Let’s go out for a change’? Well, not since his diversion from the straight and narrow she hadn’t, anyway.

Tonight’s offering was melt-in-the-mouth pink lamb cutlets, mange tout, sweet apple potatoes and caramelized carrots (which he would desecrate with half a pint of home-made mint sauce)–and it was his absolute favourite. There were no sharers either, for he knew Lou and lamb went together like Dracula and garlic
cloves. She had a small, bland egg salad herself, he noted with a little twisted smile. It was amazing how many ripples he could cause just by slapping his wife’s backside as she climbed into bed and saying oh-so-innocently, ‘
Putting a bit of weight on again, aren’t you, old girl?’
The merest hint that she might be letting herself go and Lou was thrown back to that place of insecurity which he considered it healthy for her to visit occasionally–just to keep her on her toes and make her appreciate what she had.

To an outsider that might have sounded hard–borderline sadistic even–but Phil Winter would have argued how wrong they were. He cared about his marriage–and needed to be reassured that his wife felt the same and was prepared to put her share of the effort in as well. He didn’t want Lou falling down the slippery slope of not caring what she looked like and ending up like his business colleague Fat Jack’s wife Maureen who hadn’t just gone downhill, she’d travelled there on a bobsleigh.

And now, whilst Lou had a Muller Light, he shovelled down a toffee-apple crumble with calvados cream and Lou poured him out a whopping great brandy to follow. If he wasn’t too tired, he thought he might even initiate some hanky-panky this evening, knowing that Lou would be more than grateful for a bit of sexual security. A woman on the edge tried so much harder in bed, as he had found. For Phil Winter, life couldn’t have been better.

But it could have been better for Lou Winter, even though she did have what her mother would have said
was a very good thing going on, what with her nice house, healthy bank account, holidays abroad and a husband who worked hard. One of Phil’s most attractive features in his wife’s eyes was how much he enjoyed his food. She could never have married a man who was picky.

In saying that, her unmarried fantasies had been more about staring into the eyes of Marco Pierre White, the candlelight between them emphasizing his saturnine glower as he savagely ripped up hunks of garlic-heavy ciabatta to feed to her, his lips glistening with traces of oil, balsamic vinegar and a blood-red Shiraz. He was the only man she and her old friend Deb would ever have fought over. Lou didn’t really go for tall men like Deb did, but he ticked so many other boxes on her list that she would have overlooked that aspect–if she’d been given the opportunity. A passionate, food-adoring Yorkshireman-cum-Italian…oh, especially the Italian part…

The thought of Deb brought a smile to her lips and an unexpected lump to her throat. She coughed it away and turned her attention to Phil. The image of his shiny chin and satiated grin didn’t have quite the same effect on her as the
enfant terrible
of gastronomy–but that was real life for you. Her dreams were long gone.

Lou cleared up the plates and slotted them into the dishwasher, slamming the door on the sickly, minty smell. No one could ever guess how much she hated lamb, what misery it stood for. She pressed the button and the machine whirred and sloshed into action. The suds hit the pans and the plates and the cutlery, obliterating all traces of the meal, just like the dinner lady did,
all those many years ago. But this time there was no sense of the freedom that had sent her skipping into the playground, and no tidal wave of relief that her ordeal, at least for now, was over.