The Forgotten Guide to Happiness by Sophie Jenkins

Author:Sophie Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008281816
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Heroines

On Tuesday evening I was looking at the big red clock as it ticked calmly and the hand inched past the hour. Nancy had gone to her usual seat at the head of the table, wearing a flame-red cardigan with pearl buttons and a grey skirt, and she was holding her black leather book up as if it was a Bible she was swearing an oath on. Joan was right oppos-ite me, Kathryn was sitting next to Jack, Neveen was next to Joan.

We listened to the people going to the class at the bottom of the corridor, waiting for Turo. He was never usually late so, despite my rule about starting on time, I decided to give it a little longer before my motivational speech.

It was ten past when Turo hurried in apologetically. Instead of wearing the black leather jacket he was wearing a tweed overcoat with elbow patches.

That was the first thing I noticed.

The second thing I noticed about him was that he had a black eye. The bruise looked quite fresh, blue with red undertones, and his eyelid was beginning to swell shut.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said as he sat in his usual chair, rubbing his hands to warm them and he took a bottle of water out of his bag, then his notebook, and lined them up.

‘Good evening,’ Joan said to him pointedly. Suddenly she noticed his swollen eye and her voice softened. ‘Whatever’s happened to you?’

‘Nothing much,’ he said, smoothing his beard. After a moment’s silence he added, ‘From now on I want you to call me Arthur.’

Ah.

There it was; the whole story told in a sentence.

Joan didn’t pursue it, although her eyebrows were still raised in a query.

She’d never liked calling him Turo. She always used it archly, as if the word was faintly ridiculous.

I began with my theme of the day, which was heroines.

‘There’s a temptation to make the heroine of a novel the feeble kind of person that needs to be rescued,’ I began.

That was as far as I got because Kathryn interrupted me breathlessly.

‘I have a question about that,’ she said. ‘My heroine is both the protagonist and antagonist. Killing Ryan sets up a whole new set of problems for her and each solution seems to make things worse for all of them rather than better. I don’t know what to do about an ending.’

‘She’s quite obviously a psychopath,’ Joan said. ‘At the end she gets locked up – I can’t see that you have any other alternative.’

‘Or she could get away with it,’ Neveen pointed out.

‘Get away with murder?’

‘Er, women very rarely get away with it,’ Kathryn said. ‘They’re usually judged more harshly than men in court because their actions are premeditated – they have to be because how could a woman win in a fair fight?’

‘It depends on the size of her,’ Neveen said.

We all looked at Turo; sorry, Arthur. He was a tall man. We were forced to re-evaluate our mental picture of his ex.

‘Donna might be grateful that he is dead.

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