Dear Rosie Hughes: This is the most uplifting and emotional novel you will read in 2019!. Melanie Hudson
much nailed it, except for the kids. Josh agreed he’d leave his money in the property for a couple of years and rent in town, he was away at sea most of the time anyway, but if I was staying at the cottage then I would have to pay all the bills. I agreed, but the reality was that I couldn’t afford it. To rewind further, I left the Navy in 1999 (after the shortest military career in history). I liked being a Navy Met Officer, but once I married Josh I wanted to settle down and start a family. So, I got a job at the Met Office in Exeter, but joining the reserves was a way of keeping my link to the Navy and it also meant I could afford to keep the house once we decided to split. Then, last November, I was asked if I’d consider deploying to Kuwait, to support the Army as a Met Forecaster. Call it impetuous irrationality, but I said yes (probably because I didn’t want to look like a coward). The Met Office released me for six months and before I knew it, I’d picked up my kit, done a bit of training, jumped onto an RAF transport jet and here I am.
Shit look at the time! Must dash. I must prepare a forecast for the 1800 briefing, but I’ll write later with more info. Please write as often and as much as you can. I’m miserable and friendless out here. I want to know what you’re up to now! You said you’re an author? What are you writing? Did you ever finish that steamy novel?
Love, Rosie
P.S. Even though I’m in a target-rich environment, there are no hunks around here – sorry.
P.P.S. Apparently the whole village is in bewilderment as to how you’ve managed to buy that flash barn conversion overlooking the river. Bloody hell, Aggie! Have your lottery numbers come up or something?
‘E’ Bluey
From: Mr Hughes, Rosie’s Dad
To: Rosie
Date: 3 January
Dear, Babe
How are you settling in? How was the journey? Mammy wants to know where you are exactly and if you’ll be staying in Kuwait if it kicks off? Are you in a bunker? Also, she wants to know if you’re getting enough food, especially roughage (I know you’ve only been there a day or so, but you know how she worries about your bowels). Speaking of that kind of thing, we took Fluffy to the vet this morning because she kept wiping her backside on Mammy’s sheepskin rug. She’s had her anal glands squeezed (£45 quid!) and seems brighter so fingers crossed the rug will be spared future embarrassment when Aunty Joan comes over.
I bumped into that big lass you used to knock about with at school the other day. She’s not fat now, but big enough to see that she still likes her food. She stole my mango (perfectly ripe and half price too!). I was going to cut a bit up for Mammy with some avocado, although why I persevere with avocado God only knows, the bloody things are either as hard as iron or on the turn and I never catch them right. Anyway, she’s going to write to you – Agatha, not Mammy. Mammy sends her love in my letters (you know she’s not one for writing).
What else to tell you? Bill and Mary over the road are having their windows done. We don’t think they’ve thought it through. Faux wood effect. Nuff said. They’re having a big conservatory built, too. He calls it an ‘orangery’, the daft sod. How can a terrace house cope with an orangery? The new bloke next door to Bill (Tracy and Jack’s old place) put in a complaint to the council. He thinks it will block out all the light from his chicken hutch, but Bill is ploughing on with it. We don’t mind what he does because, like Mammy says, having a house in the street with an orangery will put the price of ours up and she’s fancying a bungalow. But I’ll only ever leave this place in a wooden box, so she can think again!
The weather has been raw this week with a vicious wind but at least it’s too cold to snow so that’s something. Well, I’ve just heard the letterbox go and I’m waiting for my metal detecting magazine to come so I’ll sign off. Mammy is sitting in her chair looking through holiday brochures (she says she fancies a cruise, but I think we all know she could never cope with all the people and the chatter). Maybe we’ll treat ourselves to a new caravan at Whitby, although they are such a price these days I doubt we will.
Well, that’s all for now. If you feel a bit low over the next few weeks, take out this letter and pretend I’m singing along with Nat King Cole in the car, just like we used to:
Light up your face with gladness, hide every trace of sadness, although a tear may be ever so near, that’s the time you must keep on trying, smile what the use of crying, you’ll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile
And remember - Keep Your Head Down (KYHD)
Love you, babe
MammynDad x
P.S. Did you take my snow shovel to Devon? It had a smooth handle and the angle of the scoop was perfect. I can’t find another one for love nor money.
‘E’ Bluey
From: Aggie
To: Rosie
Date: 7 January
Dear, Rosie
Of course I drank my bloody pint! We only had our bus fare and there was no way I wasn’t having a drink. Admittedly, there was a faint tang of Polygrip and I had to fish out a bit of popcorn, but other than that, it was pretty tasty.
Right then, here’s a quick update on the past few years. After university I moved to London and worked as an editor at Maddison and Black. It was a fab job, loads of social, loads of shagging and a couple of years later I even finished my much-discussed first novel (plus another two). I’ll let you into a big secret (but only because you’re stuck in the desert and can’t spill the beans) … I ghost-write comedy romance novels for (none other than) celebrity chef, Isabella Gambino (Isabella my arse, she’s called Sharon Froggatt). Isabella is a sweetheart and I suppose it’s fitting that I (a woman who was whipping up a Victoria sponge whilst transiting the birth canal) now write books for the best baker on the planet. Isabella sends me free copies of all her cookbooks, which means I have to run the equivalent of a marathon every week just to keep the diabetic nurse from my door, but here’s confession time: after banging out eight books in eight years, I’ve dried up. My imagination is kaput! My latest work in progress, My Foolish Heart, is just not coming together AT ALL. So, I’ve left my characters languishing in the doldrums, and they hate that.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that Mum is frustrated to hell that she can’t tell anyone I’m a writer. But truly, it’s amazing she’s kept schtum all these years. She’s still an absolute dragon and I never know from one day to the next if she’s talking to me, but on balance, I think she’s glad I moved back home (a knee-jerk decision following the breaking of a heart – his, not mine). The problem with writing is that I sit alone for hour after hour lost inside my own imagination, which, as you know, is a bizarre and wild place to be, and what’s worse, my imagination is pretending to be someone else’s imagination, which adds even more weirdness to the situation. But at least the lives of my pretend friends are sexy and interesting, which is more than can be said for my crappy old existence at the moment. It’s a sad state of affairs when my characters are getting more action in the bedroom than me *breathes deep and heavy sigh*. My latest serious squeeze was a competitive fisherman, David. He got me into bed by saying I was his greatest catch (please!). We lived together for a while but it was an average type of relationship. Predictably, I woke up one morning and realised he bored me out of my mind, and even if he didn’t bore me out of my mind, there was no competing with his ultimate fantasy – not me dressed in red lycra wielding a whip – but the elusive twenty-pound conga eel (or some kind of big fish or another). So, one day, while sitting in silence at the riverbank burning the skin off my top pallet with scalding coffee, I took my lead from the salmon, told him it was over, fought my way up stream and came home to spawn.
But now, I find that sperm is in scarce supply, which is worrying. There is this one man I met a couple of weeks ago on the Internet who seems rather nice. He’s Irish and (thank God) very tall. I’ve begun to imagine myself playing Maureen O’Hara to his John Wayne in The Quiet Man, but without having to live in Ireland or grow roses. Not that I have anything against the Emerald Isle, except it rains a lot and I’ve promised