A Rural Affair

Index. Or there’s Pride and Prej?’ she said, rather warming to her role of literary doyenne in her salon. She leaned back expansively in her chair and waved her pencil about. ‘I mean, I know we’ve all read it, but just to kick off with, you know? To get us in the mood and –’

‘Who’s read it?’ interrupted Peggy.

Angie and Jennie looked smug. They stuck up their fingers. Looked rather pityingly at Peggy.

‘Poppy, you have too.’ Jennie nudged me.

‘Oh.’ I stuck up mine. I’d been looking at a spider crawling up a rafter into the roof.

‘Really?’ Peggy asked. ‘You’ve all read it, have you?’

‘Of course,’ said Jennie.

‘Or have you just seen the film?’

Three fingers wavered slightly. Then lowered.

‘I’ve seen both versions,’ said Angie defensively. ‘The Keira Knightley one and the old one.’

‘Come on, let’s not kid ourselves that we’re going to wade through the classics,’ Peggy said drily. ‘I vote we kick off with Wilbur Smith.’

Jennie looked pained. ‘Yes, we could, but the idea is to stretch ourselves a bit, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ Peggy lit a cigarette. ‘I thought we were here to enjoy ourselves. Thought we were doing this for pleasure.’ She blew out a thin line of smoke. ‘OK, how about Lawrence, then? He’s a bit more stretching, although admittedly mostly in haystacks.’ She gave a throaty chuckle.

‘Poppy?’ Jennie turned to me. ‘Any ideas?’

I came back from the spider. It had gone right up into the rafters, into the apex of the roof.

I stared blankly. ‘Anne of Green Gables?’

How odd. Dad had attempted to read that to me when Mum died. We’d started with Black Beauty, but had to stop when Ginger died. I remember the tears rolling down Dad’s wind-blown cheeks as he sat on my bed. I even remember my pink floral bed cover. We hadn’t liked Anne, though, had never got to the end. Found her wet.

My friends exchanged startled looks. Angie attempted to give this due consideration.

‘Yes … we could read Anne of Green Gables,’ she agreed, ‘but –’

‘Oh, let’s forget the bloody books and talk about who we’re going to ask,’ said Peggy, wriggling on her bony bottom in her chair. ‘Far more exciting.’

Jennie raised her eyebrows and shuffled her notepad. ‘OK,’ she said wearily. ‘Peggy? You’re clearly itching to fire away.’

‘How about Angus Jardine, Pete the farrier, that smoothie antiques guy Jennie fancies, and Luke the organ- grinder in church.’

We looked at her aghast.

‘Peggy, this is a book club, not a frustrated-women’s dating agency!’ Jennie spluttered. ‘I meant local women!’

‘Why do they have to be women?’

‘Well, they don’t, exclusively. But usually, you know …’

‘Usually it’s the little women who get together? When their hunter-gatherers come home? Bustle out importantly to show they have lives too?’

Jennie and Angie looked at one another.

‘Peggy’s got a point,’ muttered Angie.

‘But we can’t have the four of us, and four men. How would that look? We need a couple of women, for heaven’s sake,’ Jennie insisted.

‘Saintly Sue?’ suggested Angie. ‘If we can put up with her halo. And my sister might come?’

Jennie crossed her legs and sucked in her cheeks. Angie’s sister was a scary ex-Londoner called Virginia who worked in advertising. She’d recently moved locally on account of leaving her husband, a wealthy hedge-fund manager. Jennie had cooked Angie a dinner party one night when Virginia and various other high-achievers were guests, but she’d had problems with the turbot and, out of nerves, proceeded to get disastrously drunk. At two a.m. Jennie had crawled into the double bed in Angie’s spare room to sleep it off, unaware that Virginia, equally plastered, was already installed. The next morning, Virginia had leaped out of bed bellowing: ‘Bloody hell – I’ve just left my husband, and the first person I sleep with is a woman!’

Jennie wasn’t necessarily in a violent hurry to meet her again.

‘Yes, your sister,’ she mused, as if giving it ample thought. ‘Who’s delightful, of course. Only I wonder if she isn’t a bit