Rural Affair, by Catherine Alliott
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Rural Affair, by Catherine Alliott
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Praise for Catherine Alliott
"Compulsively readable and highly entertaining." —Daily Mail
"Possibly my favorite writer." —Marian Keyes
''A rip–roaring read." —Sun
"Catherine Alliott has got it, that addictive blend of wit, frivolity, and madcap romance." —Time Out
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE HUSBAND SHE'S LOATHED FOR YEARS SUDDENLY DIES?
Poppy Shilling may have fantasized about her boring husband slipping on ice on his way to get the paper or contracting malaria from a mosquito bite, but she never imagined Phil would leave her so suddenly. When a freak cycling accident takes out her Lycra—wearing husband, Poppy can't help but feel relieved rather than distraught.
But when a mysterious visitor arrives after the funeral bearing secrets about her husband, Poppy quickly learns that Phil was not exactly the man she thought he was—and she might not be the woman she thought she was, either.
International bestselling author Catherine Alliott crafts an endearing and quirky "what if" story that will make your heart sing as you follow Poppy on her unforgettable journey.
Rural Affair, by Catherine Alliott - Amazon Sales Rank: #281358 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-03-01
- Released on: 2012-03-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Rural Affair, by Catherine Alliott Review "Alliott does a great job of keeping readers on their toes and giving us a not-so-traditional love story." - RT Book Reviews"There are laugh-out-loud moments but also enough emotional heft to elevate this above standard mommy-lit fare. A good choice for fans of Marian Keyes and Jennifer Weiner." - Booklist"A Rural Affair tells the story of a woman whose life is turned upside down not just by the death of her spouse but by his infidelity as well, and her efforts to recover and move on. Using humor to diffuse difficult topics, Alliott takes us through Poppy's depression, rage at the other woman's bold attempt to claim "her" portion of Phil's will, anxiety and resignation at being set up by her friends and neighbors, and eventual realization that she has a life to live, still. drey's rating: Pick it up!" - Drey's Library "Readers will enjoy the mother of two seeking A Rural Affair, but relearning how convoluted relationships are." - Genre Go Round Reviews"What an interesting book this is, filled with an assortment of village characters, all very well drawn. It has humor, friendships, love within families. " - Love Romance Passion"This is a great beach read, and highly recommended if you need something to keep you amused on a long journey." - jaffareadstoo
About the Author Catherine Alliott worked in London as a copywriter in advertising. She now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband a barrister and their three children. Catherine's first novel, The Old-Girl Network, became an instant bestseller across the UK, as did her subsequent novels, Going Too Far, The Real Thing, Rosie Meadows Regrets..., Olivia's Luck, and A Married Man. Visit www.catherinealliott.com
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
If I'm being totally honest I had fantasized about Phil dying. Only in a mild, half-baked, Thursday morning in Sainsbury's sort of way. I'm not talking about lying awake at night plotting his demise, no, just idly cruising those aisles, popping in the Weetabix, or driving to pick Clemmie up from nursery, dreaming a little dream, that sort of thing. Like you do when you're bored and you've got two small children on your hands and you've been married for a while to an irritating man. Wondering what life would be like without a husband. And always the life afterward bit, the nicer bit, not the horrid bit of the death itself.
Having the house to myself appealed. Getting rid of those ghastly leather sofas in tummy-upset brown, never having to hoover them again and get right down into the cracks, or keep the house immaculate as he liked, and as his mother had so assiduously done. No more wiping the skirting boards weekly, or turning the mattress monthly. No more meat and two veg and a lot more pasta. Or just a boiled egg. No more frantically raking up autumn leaves, I mused to myself now as one fluttered onto my windscreen, a beautiful, blood-red sycamore, spiralling down, winking at me. They could just lie where they fell, in a red and gold carpet on the grass as nature intended, instead of having to rush out like a lunatic when the first one dropped, Phil shouting, "Quick! They're coming!", raking furiously. These sorts of thoughts—innocuous, harmless ones, that crested, then sank, only to resurface some weeks later. Being alone with my babies, for instance; I glanced in my rear-view mirror at my toddler son as I drove along, watched as his thumb dropped wetly from his mouth and his eyes slowly closed. I reached back and deftly took the carton of juice he'd been clasping.
And OK—I straightened myself back at the wheel—just very occasionally, very fleetingly, my mind had inevitably turned to the mechanics of it. A piece of scaffolding perhaps, falling on his head from the construction site he walked under every morning, on his way from Charing Cross to Ludgate Circus: the one outside the Savoy, where they'd been at it for months. One of the workmen dropping a hammer. Clunk. But after six months, the scaffolding had come down—I'd checked. So...what about a mosquito bite? Turning septic? Quickly and painlessly, on one of our annual trips abroad—always Spain and always cycling. Same hotel every year, with other cycling enthusiasts. I read, mostly, and looked after the children. But the summer would slip by and Phil would remain unbitten, so, to embrace the winter months, I'd fondly imagined him slipping on ice as he went to get the paper in the village shop.
"It all happened so quickly," Yvonne, who ran the shop, would say, her saucer eyes seeing everything before it happened anyway. "One minute he was breezing out with the Telegraph; the next, he was flat on his back, blood pouring from his head!"
No, not blood, that would be horrid. All internal. I turned down the lane that led to my house, so narrow in places the hedges brushed the sides of the car. And unlikely too, because since when had an icy fall actually killed anyone? So then I'd had him falling off ladders while clearing gutters, but Phil didn't do much gutter clearance so that didn't really work; but then, it wasn't supposed to work. It was just a run-of-the-mill, quotidian fantasy most housewives surely toy with occasionally when they're married to—not a bad man, and not a complete fool, but not a terribly interesting or exciting man either.
I narrowed my eyes at the low autumn sun, pulling the visor down in defense. And since the cycling bug had bitten—he'd taken it up with messianic zeal a few years ago—he was almost permanently clad in blue Lycra, which didn't help. Even to Clemmie's first parents' evening, complete with extraordinary Lycra shoes. He'd arrived in the classroom, where Miss Hawkins and I were waiting, looking like Jacques Cousteau emerging from the depths. Miss Hawkins had dropped the register she'd been so flustered, and as he'd sat down beside me on an infant-sized chair, peering over his nylon knees like a garden gnome, I'd thought: not entirely the man I'd envisaged spending the rest of my life with. But then again he paid the bills, worked extremely hard, was faithful, didn't beat me, loved his children—despite sometimes behaving as if they were annoying relations of mine who'd come to stay: "Your daughter thinks it's a good idea to throw her food on the floor!" Surely his daughter too? And even though he liked to be in complete control of our little household at all times—even taking the TV remote to the loo with him—I didn't really hold it against him. Didn't really want him dead.
It was a shock, therefore, to open the door to the policeman.
"Mrs. Shilling? May I have a word?"
While he'd been cycling along the Dunstable Downs, the ridge of hills above our house, an easyJet plane returning from Lanzarote had simultaneously prepared for its descent at Luton. Dropping from freezing high altitude into warmer air, it had relieved itself: had fall-out. A chunk of ice, eighteen inches in diameter, had broken off from the fuselage and, five thousand feet below, found Phil, pedaling furiously. As my husband strove to render his body a temple, God, it seemed, had had other ideas.
I remember struggling to comprehend this, remember gaping at the policeman as he perched opposite me on my sofa, twisting his hat in his hands.
"A piece of ice? From where exactly?"
"From the undercarriage." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "From the toilet, as a matter of fact."
"The toilet?"
"Yes. Blue Ice is how it's known. Being as how it's mixed with detergent."
"What is?"
"The urine."
I stared. Not in a million years could I have dreamed this up. Fantasized about this in Sainsbury's. Phil had been killed by a piece of piss. A hefty, frozen block of pee, travelling at spectacular speed and velocity—and which, it later transpired, hadn't actually claimed him as he'd been cycling but, as bad luck would have it, when he'd stopped at a stile, taken his helmet off to scratch his head and wonder how to get the bike over. A freak accident, but not the first of its kind, the coroner would later inform me sympathetically over his bifocals as I sat at the back of his court in a navy-blue suit, hands clenched. "Thirty-five similar instances in the last year alone."
"Although in the last forty years, only five fatalities," the man from the Civil Aviation Authority had added stiffly. Six, then, with Phil.
"Right. Thank you so much. I mean—for telling me." This, to the policeman in the here and now, in my sitting room. I stood up shakily.
The officer got to his feet, uncertain. He spread his hands helplessly.
"Do you...want to see him?"
My mind reeled. "Where is he?"
"In the hospital morgue."
I caught my breath. Oh, God. On a trolley. In a bag. "No," I gasped instinctively.
"No, not everyone does." He hesitated, unwilling to leave so soon. "Well, is there...anyone you'd like to contact? Have with you?"
"No, no one. I mean, there is. Are. Plenty. But—not now. I'll be fine, really."
"Your mother, perhaps?"
"No, she's dead."
He looked shocked. So many dead.
"Really, I'll be fine." I was helping him, now. But he was only young.
"And the children?"
"Yes, I'll pick them up from school."
And pick them up I had. Well, only Clemmie. Archie was asleep in his cot upstairs, and I'd taken him with me and driven very slowly, because I was pretty sure I was in shock. I was a quiet mother at the gates, but not a distraught one, so Clemmie didn't notice anything, and then I'd driven back and given them tea. Chicken nuggets, I remember, which I only serve in extremis. At the table Clemmie had told me about Miss Perkins, Mummy, who's an assassin. "Assistant?" Yes, and got a moustache. And later I'd bathed them and put them to bed.
And then I'd walked around the house on that chilly, blustery evening, clutching the tops of my arms, gazing out of the window at the shivering late roses, the clouds rushing through the dark blue sky, flashes of sunshine casting long shadows on the lawn, waiting, waiting for something to happen. For the sluice gate to open. For my hand to clap my mouth as I gasped, "Oh, God!" and fell, like Phil must have fallen, I told myself looking for a trigger, in a terrible heap to the ground. I tried to imagine him lying in the bracken, his bike a tangled mess, his face broken, shattered. Nothing. So I walked round the house some more, the house we'd lived in together for several years—happy years, I told myself sternly. This lovely cottage, in this beautiful village, which we'd stretched ourselves to afford, had done up meticulously, sourcing terracotta tiles from Italy, Victorian light switches from Somerset, cast-iron door handles from Wales, and from whence Phil had commuted into London every day, toiling in on a packed train, to bring back the wherewithal to raise our children. A selfless, dedicated man. I waited. Nothing.
Shock. Definitely shock. I'd read about it.
On an impulse, I hastened to our wedding album, found it tucked away among the books by the CD player. My eyes flickered guiltily over Phil's Neil Diamond CDs, his Glen Campbell collection, which I'd never have to listen to again. I pulled the leather tome onto my lap. Tissue paper fluttered and a bit of confetti fell out. There I was on Dad's arm, coming up the church path in a mistake of a dress: leg-of-mutton sleeves, the real things happily hidden away under shot silk. Dad looked a bit worse for wear already, perhaps under the influence of a pre-match tincture. Then me and Phil coming out of church, but Phil had his eyes shut, so that didn't help, and neither did the gray morning coat he'd hired from Moss Bross, a totally different color to the rest of the male congregation's, much paler, and which he'd accessorized with a red carnation...
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Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Life isn't all flowers and happy endings!!!, By BCB & More I have read all of Catherine Alliott's books and looked forward to another (hopefully) good read. When I ordered my book from Amazon UK, I couldn't help but notice that there were already 4 reviews, 2 of which loved it and 2 of which loathed it. I was quite surprised by such an extreme reaction.Having now read the book I can understand why there was such a divide. Happily for me I liked this book. In the intro of the book we meet Poppy, the wife who sometimes resents her mean husband. The type of lady that can have bad thoughts about her husband, although she may not want those bad things to actually take place! As soon as I had read the first chapter I realised that I loved this type of character. The one which isn't all sweetness and light, the sort of woman that certainly isn't perfect and has the occasional dream about the what-if's.In addition to Poppy we meet her three friends, all of whom are not perfect. Her neighbour Jennie with the disastrous husband, newly separated Angie and the older and chain-smoking Peggy. All in all they are a bunch of women who all have their own issues and are far from happy in their own way.The story is based around Poppy trying to move on and find happiness after the death of her husband. There are a couple of scenes in it that had me laughing out loud even if they were a little far-fetched. I didn't particularly love the characters individually, I just felt that it was nice to read something that was a little nearer to the truth than some other books you read and made for a refreshing change.There are other characters that make an appearance such as Jennie's stepdaughter Frankie and some of the villagers and they all added to the eclectic mix of messed up and confused people trying to make the most of their lives. This book is certainly not romance and roses, but is more a true to life look at real women struggling through trying to make the right decisions. It may not be to everybody's taste and for those that are maybe not amused by black humour, maybe it's not for you. I tend to have quite a twisted sense of humour peppered with huge doses of realism so for me this book was perfect. Maybe a slight variation from what she normally writes but I really enjoyed it.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Second chances in the English countryside By Kim Adams Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep. - Dave BarryA RURAL AFFAIR takes place in England (not Ireland) but a sheep does deliver a few laughs that would even inspire Dave Barry to chuckle. In fact, I believe Barry would appreciate Alliott's subtle humor as the story unfolds from Poppy Shilling's point of view. Her absent husband is demeaning. He cares little for the children. Despite his busy schedule, he finds time to cycle across the countryside where he meets his untimely demise. At first, his death is a relief to Poppy who found herself wanting to be rid of him anyway ... but not that way. As his dirty laundry comes tumbling out of the closet, Poppy is shocked, then angry and finally relieved again that she can live her life with her children on her own terms. Along the way, she interacts with a cast of colorful characters in their rural village. Some are transplants, like Poppy, who sought the idyllic life away from bustling London. Others are entrenched in the rural footprint. All contribute to the laugh out loud moments that contribute to the novel's charm.A RURAL AFFAIR is women's fiction with romantic elements as the story focuses on Poppy's rediscovery of herself. Yet romance is interwoven throughout the story - the love affair with country life; a compassionate community rallying around their distressed members; and budding romances between unexpected characters. A RURAL AFFAIR is a pleasant read, especially for Anglophiles.I received an ARC from the publisher.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Good fun - with a serious undertone By Crowley Leslie Anne I bought this book by pure chance, in a hurried visit to W.H.Smith - and thoroughly enjoyed it. Amusing (and true) picture of life in an English village, and a heroine who would be maddening in real life, but great fun to read about in a novel. Underneath the fun (the hunting episode is hilarious) there are however sensitive pictures of the pains of bereavement, the difficulty of raising two small children on one's own, the censorious gossip and chit-chat of a village. I have rushed to buy another (this time on Kindle) by Catherine Alliott - excellent escapism, but with a solid base of knowledge of human frailty.
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