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War of the Wives: A Gripping Women's Fiction Novel of Family Drama and Betrayal - Softcover

Cohen, Tamar

 
9780778317487: War of the Wives: A Gripping Women's Fiction Novel of Family Drama and Betrayal
Softcover
ISBN 10: 077831748X ISBN 13: 9780778317487
Verlag: MIRA, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Think marriage means happily-ever-after? Think again… 

Selina and Lottie are complete opposites. Where Selina is poised but prudish, Lottie is quirky and emotional. Selina is the dutiful mother of three children and able manager of their stylish suburban home. Lottie lives with her eccentric teenage daughter in a small city apartment fit to bursting with color and happy chaos. But these women also have one shocking similarity: they're married to the same man…and they've just found out he's dead. 

Selina has been married to Simon Busfield for twenty-eight years, Lottie for seventeen. Neither knows a thing about the other until the day of Simon's funeral, where the scandalous truth is revealed in front of everyone they know. Another wife, another family… And they've onlyjust scratched the surface of Simon's incredible betrayal. 

With dark humor and razor-sharp wit, Cohen expertly unravels a story of deception and betrayal, where two very different families will discover they are entwined in ways that will change them all forever. 

"Witty, ludicrously melodramatic and psychologically perceptive." 

—Sunday Telegraph  

"A cracking debut…. Fatal Attraction with a clever twist at the end. Addictive." 

—The Bookseller on The Mistress's Revenge

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tamar Cohen is the author of five novels: The Mistress's Revenge, The War of the Wives, Someone Else's Wedding, The Broken (published asThe Fallout in NA) and Dying for Christmas. Her books have been translated into several different languages. She also writes for newspapers and magazines in the UK and lives in London with her partner, three children and one badly behaved dog.

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SELINA

Flora is perched on the kitchen table, her big blue eyes following me around the room. She has just finished a very long-winded story about a party she and Ryan went to where Ryan was the only person who refused to wear fancy dress. Ryan thinks fancy dress is "gay," apparently. Give me strength! I maintain a diplomatic silence. I've discovered that's the best way of dealing with the matter of my daughter's inappropriate boyfriend. If I were to voice an opinionthat he has all the charm of a dead haddock, for instanceshe'll go back to giving me the sanitized PR version of Ryanthe Dear Leader version, as Simon calls itlike she did in the beginning when it became obvious what Simon and I thought of him. At least this way I get to hear the truth, even if the price is that I have to swallow my own tongue at times.

So I nod and murmur appreciatively and start wonderingoh, the guilthow soon I'll be able to switch her off.

That's the problem with using Skype. You can never get away. There's some old friend or family member on the screen on your table, or the arm of the sofa, and you've had a lovely chat, but you're now running out of things to say, and because they can see everything that's going on, you can't invent a saucepan boiling over, or a ring at the door or any of the normal things that end a conversation. So there's an awkward pause while you come up with something else to say and try to stop yourself thinking about the million and one things you really ought to be getting on with.

The other problem with Skype isand I know this makes me sound as if I come from the Jurassic erathat you cansee the other person. The other day I was thinking about how Simon and I never use Skype, even though he's always away. Of course, that's partly to do with us both being so ridiculously busy, but really, I realized, it's more to do with the business of sitting there looking at each other. Even though we've been married all these years, it made us both uncomfortable the couple of times we tried it. It's sointimate. When we first got together, we used to spend hours sitting across from each other in cafés and pubs, playing with each other's feet under the table while we put the world to rights, but what couple who've been married nearly thirty years still gazes into each other's eyes when they talk? There's something unnatural about it. Awkward. I found myself focusing on the collar of his shirt or the wayward lock of hair he kept smoothing back with his hand.

I don't actually want to be able to see the people I'm talking to. It's distracting. While Flora launches into yet another long-winded story, I'm looking at her frizz of hair and thinking (yet again) how much better it would look if she had it cut. Nothing extreme. Just a little bit of shaping. And I'm looking at her desk in the architectural firm where she works as a PA and noticing, with a bit of a wince, that she has some kind of cuddly toy on there (no doubt bought by Ryan in a petrol station somewhere), and I'm looking at her clothes and wanting to cut through her story and shout "Color block!" or "Texture!" or "Layering!" or any of the stupid things overbearing mothers want to say to their grown-up daughters but don't dare. It's a kind of maternal Tourette's, I suppose.

Instead, I tell her I have to be getting to the gym. This isn't technically a lie. I do have a class. Flora doesn't need to know it doesn't actually start for another hour and a half. Then we have that awkward Skype goodbye moment where neither of us wants to be the first to click Disconnect. Silly, isn't it? It ought to be a straightforward technological act. Lean forward, press, gone. Yet it feels like an emotional rejection. At the gym, I try to concentrate.

"Into the half moon. And ho-old"

While my body obediently contorts itself as instructed by the new rather Germanic instructor of Hatha Yoga (Advanced Wednesdays), my mind keeps itself busy.

1. Book Pierre's for Book Club Christmas lunch (just let them try to tell me there aren't any tables left, inSeptember!)

2. Research printers for Simon's study. Criminal, those ink cartridge prices.

3. Ring around for history tutor recommendations. Surely one of the other mothers must know someone, preferably someone who doesn't smell of weed like the last one.

Starting to ache now. I shoot a glance at the mirror that runs the length of the studio wall in front of me, surreptitiously comparing myself with the rest of the class. Body straight, arm stretched. Not bad, as long as you overlook the slight sheen on my forehead. So unforgiving, those overhead lights, even after two sessions of Botox and a discreet dermal filler (not that I'd ever admitthose to anyone). But when you consider I probably have a good ten years on most of the women here, I think I'm doing okay. But I don't like to think in terms of age. So counterproductive. And so bloody depressing!

4. Call Lorenzo, and make sure he has the revised flight times. Oh, and get him to stack the firewood in the main living room. Not much use to us outside the back door. Not with Simon's back. Which reminds me.

5. Make appointment with chiropractor.

6. Email that friend of Hettie's about the Cricket Club fundraising quiz questions. No soap opera questions this time, please, God!

7. Send out Tweet about the Book Club lunch. Mustn't forget!

Ouch. I don't actually gasp out loud, but my arms are starting to feel the strain. Sadist, this instructor. Some of the other women have already collapsed in a heap on their mats. Stamina. That's the thing. You can have a twenty-five-year-old body, but if you have no stamina, you might as well give up.

"And straight into the upward-facing dog."

In my head I hear Josh's voice mutter, "You're an upward-facing dog," and I can't help smiling. Internally, obviously. Such a worry, that boy, even at seventeen, but he can still make me laugh. The other day I asked him to unload the dishwasher, and he muttered under his breath, "You're a dishwasher," and we both looked at each other crossly and then laughed like drains. Not funny in the slightest, now I think about it, but somehow it was at the time.

"Come on, ladies, stretch those necks, lengthen those backs."

The instructor has very muscly calves, I notice as I stretch and lengthen like crazy. (Even at fifty-one I retain a ridiculous compunction to please. I can criticize the instructor till the cows come home, but it doesn't stop me craving her approval. Go figure, as my friend Hettie would say.) She makes her rounds of the class, tucking in chins and pulling back shoulders. She could be a pretty girl if it wasn't for those calves, but I don't think men really like that kind of thing, do they? All that gristle. It's so important to know where to draw the line. I think so anyway. I know I'm probably not best qualified to know what men want, having been married for so long, but you don't have to be actively engaged in the business of men to appreciate what they do and don't like. It's like our villa in TuscanyI'm not looking to sell it, but I still like to know what's happening in the Italian property market. It's a question of being prepared for every eventuality. I know there are some people who believe being prepared spoils things, takes away from the spontaneity of life. The same people who love surprise parties, probably. Personally, I can't think of anything worse. What if you had on a dress you'd always loathed, one of those "fat dresses," as Flora calls them, that you throw on those mornings when you wake up feeling the size of a house? (I don't actually have a fat dress myself, although I do have a couple of pairs of good quality leggings I reserve for that time of the month.) What if the person organizing the party forgot to...

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Verlag
MIRA
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
077831748X
ISBN 13 
9780778317487
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
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