A Rural Affair

for callousness.’

I frowned as I hastened on. ‘Phil was having an affair, Jennie. For four years. I hate him for that. I hate him for lying to me, deceiving me and betraying me. I didn’t have a life, not a proper one; he saw to that. I just want to get on with what’s left of my life now. See what else is out there.’ I shook her off and strode towards the door, our organist ahead of us.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Jennie was saying, scurrying after me. ‘It’s just that social conventions being what they are, people will expect a tad of grief nonetheless and –’

‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ I told her firmly. ‘Not under the circumstances.’ I beamed as I bore down on Blondie.

‘Hell-o there! It’s Luke, isn’t it? I’m Poppy Shilling.’

He turned, a sheaf of music under his arm; smiled, surprised. Then, as the penny dropped, so did his countenance. He regarded me gravely.

‘Oh, Mrs Shilling. Oh, yes, I heard. I’m so terribly sorry. Please accept my sincere condolences.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I said, waving my hand airily. ‘That’s all over and done with now, dead and buried even – hah! Now look, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a few of us gals,’ I waggled my eyebrows jauntily, ‘are forming a bit of a book club. Didn’t know if you’d like to join?’

He gazed, startled. Was he all there, I wondered?

‘It’s on a Tuesday night,’ I went on more slowly, kindly even, in case he couldn’t keep up, ‘at Angie’s place. That’s Angie, the very attractive divorcee, who’s not here tonight although she’s usually in the choir. And her house is the pretty manor house you pass just as you go out of the village. We’ll have drinks and nibbles at seven and nothing too serious book-wise. In fact we might not even have books at all!’ I turned to grin at Jennie, who was looking strangely horrified. Odd, my friend Jennie: one minute she wanted me to snap out of it, the next, to snap right back in.

‘What Poppy means,’ she purred, shoving me out of the way and walking beside Luke as he went to get his bike from the church porch, ‘is that we won’t be tackling Dostoyevsky immediately, if you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, right. Jolly interesting, I expect, but a bit heavy, I agree.’

Was it my imagination, or was he shooting me interested glances over his shoulder as he bent to apply bicycle clips to his trousers? I could overlook those, I thought as I posed coquettishly on the church step, one arm stretched high above my head on the door jamb, the other on my hip.

‘Who’s jolly interesting?’ Oh Lord, Saintly Sue was looming from the shadows, breasting her music, cheeks very flushed. The Only Virgin In The Village, Peggy called her; desperate to be plucked.

‘Dostoyevsky,’ Luke told her, straightening up. ‘Jennie and, um, Poppy here, are starting a book club.’

She almost bounced on the spot, cashmere embonpoint jiggling. ‘Oh golly, how exciting! Can I join?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. Jennie shot me an aghast look.

‘Of course you can!’ she gushed.

I blinked. ‘Can she? I thought we didn’t want any more women? Bearing in mind …’ I covertly inclined my head Luke’s way.

‘No, no, I meant too many older women. Didn’t want it getting too, you know, pensioner-ish.’ She cast Sue a collaborative look. ‘But of course Sue can come, Lord yes. See you both next Tuesday, then.’ She had my arm in a vice-like grip. ‘Seven o’clock. Oh, and it’s going to be at Peggy’s house, not Angie’s – the one with the white picket fence. Toodle-oo!’ She frogmarched me off down the path at speed, leaving Luke gazing after us blankly; Sue, as if she’d been shot.

‘Have you been drinking?’ Jennie hissed.

‘No, why?’

‘Because you’re behaving as if you are completely and utterly pissed. You’re being outrageous, Poppy!’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, and I end up looking like some ageist bigot just to get you off the hook!’

I stopped in the lane. Felt my forehead. I did feel a bit inebriated, actually. A bit light-headed. I was aware that my timorous desire not to rock the boat had been replaced in some fabulously epiphanic way by a desire to be true to myself whatever the consequences. The trouble was, my feelings had been suppressed for so long without the valve being even slightly loosened, that now the lid was off, the contents were not so much out, as all over the walls.

‘Sorry. Sorry, Jennie.’ I walked on, slower now. ‘But the thing is,’ I said carefully, feeling my way, ‘I feel the truth is so … well, crucial, suddenly. Of such vital importance, you know?’ I turned to face my friend earnestly. I felt faintly visionary about it; might even get a bit evangelical. ‘I mean, it’s so liberating, isn’t it?’ I urged. ‘Why don’t we all just