Rescuing Rose

‘Still, it could have been worse. All’s well that end’s well,’ she concluded breezily. Not for Frodo. ‘And how was your weekend Rose?’

‘It was fine,’ I replied with a tight little smile. ‘You know, settling in. New house.’

‘Onwards and upwards,’ she said encouragingly.

‘Mmmm.’

‘No use crying over spilt milk.’

‘Quite.’

‘I mean, life’s not a…’ Oh God…

‘Bowl of cherries?’ I interrupted. She looked slightly nonplussed.

‘No. Dress rehearsal I was going to say.’

‘Okay Serena,’ I said mentally awarding her a Bafta for banality, ‘let’s get down to work.’

I stared, with anticipatory pleasure, at the envelopes in my over-flowing in-tray. There were brown ones and white ones, airmail and Basildon Bond. There were typed ones and handwritten ones, some strewn with flowers and hearts: I fancied I could hear the voices inside, crying out for my help.

My practised eye had already identified from the writing the likely dilemmas within. Here were the large, childish loops of repression, and the backwards slope of the chronically depressed. There the green-inked scorings of schizophrenia and the cramped hand of the introvert. While Serena logged and dated each letter for reference, I sorted out my huge index file. In this I keep all the information sheets which I send out with my replies. I’ve got over a hundred leaflets covering every human problem under the sun, from Abandonment to Zoophilia, via (and this is just a selection) Acne, Blushing, Body Hair, Confidence, Death, Debt, Insomnia, Jealousy, Nasty Neighbours, Nipples, Pregnancy (both wanted and unwanted), Race Relations, Snoring and Stress. Seeing the problems neatly ranged in strict alphabetical order like this gives me a satisfied glow. Having tidied the drawer – Smoking had somehow strayed into Smacking – I opened the day’s jiffy bags. Serena always has these X-rayed in the post-room because occasionally we get sent vile things; used condoms for example – disgusting – or lacy knickers, or porn. Usually, however, the bags simply contain self-help books of which I get loads. They’re sent to me by publishing P.R.s all desperate for a plug. I rarely oblige but can’t blame them for trying – I have three million readers after all. How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends announced the first one. Helping People Cope With Crime, How to be a Happy Homosexual, and Breathe Away Your Stress. I put them in the cupboard, arranging them neatly by height, then felt ready to face the day’s post. In my column I answer letters on any issue ‘Moral, Medical or Miscellaneous’, but I knew more or less what I’d find. At this time of year it’s failed holiday romances, dreadful second honeymoons, and disappointing exam results.

Dear Rose, I read, as I switched on my computer, I am 19 and have just failed my GCSE’s again…Dear Rose, last month I went to Ibiza and met this wonderful man…Dear Rose, I’ve just come back from a purgatorial cruise with my wife…Then there are the hardy perennials like low self-esteem and of course, Am I Gay? And I get so many letters from cross-dressers I can never meet a man without checking his feet for high heels. Then there are the weird sexual problems – this looks like one – I’m never judgemental, of course. Oh Christ that is so disgusting!! Dear Rose, I read, appalled. I’m a farmer, I’ve been married nearly twenty years, and to put it bluntly, I’m a bit bored in the sack. I’d like to ‘experiment’ a bit, shall we say, but my wife won’t oblige and this is causing a rift. She says it’s just ‘not on’ and that we should leave Grunty alone. Could you give me some guidance please?

Dear Jeff, I typed smartly, my fingers stabbing at the keys with distaste. All sexual activity with other species is illegal. I agree wholeheartedly with your wife. Interfering with animals is, moreover, an abuse of their rights – I suggest you stick to eating them instead!

I have my principles you see. Agony Aunts tend to be liberal, but we all have certain bees in our bonnets. Mine are zoophilia (gross) smacking (unacceptable), and infidelity (absolutely ditto). The number of women who write to me asking how they can persuade their married boyfriend to leave his wife! Take this letter here for example. Typical. Dear Rose, Please could you advise me what to give my lover for his birthday? I’d like to give him something personal rather than aftershave or a tie which his wife might spot.

Dear Sharon, I typed energetically. Thank you very much for your letter. I know the perfect birthday present for your married boyfriend – may I suggest that you give him the boot!

I mean, what do these women seriously expect me to say? Sleeping with someone else’s husband is the pits. Why can’t they find themselves a single man – God knows there are enough out there. And now I mentally pushed Mary-Claire Grey off the top of Tower Bridge before ploughing through the rest of the mail.

I get, on average, a hundred and fifty letters a week. I type half the replies then record the rest on a dictaphone and give Serena the tape. She also leaflet-stuffs the envelopes, shreds the old letters – so important – and organises the helplines which appear on the page. We ring the changes with these but we usually have five or six on the go. Fighting Phobias is a popular one, as is He Wants Me To Dress Up. We also have helplines on Prostate Problems, Impotence and Bad Breath. Obviously we have to be careful not to mix up the phone numbers alongside each one. Dear Rose, I now read. I am f**g pissed off because yesterday I phoned your f**g Hair Loss helpline and got Haemorrhoids instead! Those lines cost a pound a minute so I wasn’t f**g impressed.

I wrote back enclosing a conciliatory fiver and my leaflet on Self-Control. And now I tackled my e-mails which account for about a quarter of my mail. I find e-mails much harder to analyse than letters. There’s no handwriting with all its tell-tale signs and the language is cold and concise. You can see the problem itself very clearly, but not the person who’s having it. Because the main thing about the problem page is that the letters are often not quite what they seem. You have to work them out, spot the clues – like a crime novel – or deconstruct them like a piece of prac. crit. For example, someone might spend sixteen pages whining on about how they’re not getting on with their partner any more and how he’s always shouting at them and picking fights, blah blah blah. But then they’ll add, in the very last line, ‘but he’s only like this when he drinks.’ At which point I am frantically digging out my Alcohol leaflet and the number of their local AA. And that’s the real skill of being an agony aunt – you have to read between the lines.

At parties people often ask me what other qualities are required. Curiosity for starters – I’ve got that in spades. I’ve always loved sitting on trains, staring dreamily out of the window into the backs of people’s houses, and wondering about their lives. You have to be compassionate too – but not wet – your reply should have a strong spine. There’s no point just offering sympathy, or even worse, pity, like that dreadful Citronella Pratt. What the reader needs is practical advice. So that means having information at the ready: information and kindness – that’s what it’s about. Having said which I’m not a ‘cuddly’, ‘mumsy’ agony aunt – if need be I’ll take a tough tone. But the truth is that my readers invariably know what to do, I simply help them find the answer by themselves. Take this letter, here, for example. What a nightmare. Poor bloke.

Dear Rose, in 1996 my adored wife died in a car crash, leaving me distraught. Three years later I met someone else and, after a short courtship (too short I now realise), I married again. Although I don’t claim to be a saint, I believe I have treated my second wife well. She is a pleasant-looking, but unfortunately rather aggressive woman in her mid forties – she broke my finger very badly last year. I can just about put up with her mood swings, what I can’t put up with is her affairs. I know that she’s had at least two during our marriage, and now have evidence that she’s on her third. And please don’t tell me to get marriage guidance counselling because she flatly refuses to go. All I know is that I’m miserable: I feel so lonely and I don’t sleep well. I often fantasize about being free (we don’t have children). What do you think I should do?

Dear John, I typed. Thank you for writing to me and I’m sorry you’ve been having such a hard time. I know from my own experience that infidelity is unacceptable – it’s humiliating, it’s corrosive and it hurts. Any kind of physical aggression from your partner is also beyond the pale. You’ve already been forgiving twice, so maybe it’s time to say ‘no more’. John, only you know if your marriage can go on, but it does sound as though you might be at the end of theroad. Then, because I always try to add some kind words, I added: You’re obviously a very nice man, and I hope you find the happiness you deserve. Now, I don’t really know whether he’s nice or not because we’ve never met, but because he’s placed his trust in me I want to lift his morale a bit. Note that I didn’t actually tell him to start proceedings; that’s something I never do. In any case it’s pretty obvious that he’s coming round to that idea himself. What he was doing – and I often get this – was seeking permission to go ahead. Basically, he was asking me to sanction his decision to divorce and so, indirectly, I did.

Then there are all the sad letters – some so dreadful it breaks your heart. Letters with cheerful smileys all over them from children whose parents drink. Letters which start, I’m so sorry to bother you with my problems, but I have cancer, and have three months to live…Occasionally, there are the begging letters – like this one. I read it and sighed.

Dear Rose, My three-year-old daughter Daisy needs a heart and lung transplant – she’s been desperately ill since the day she was born. The doctors here say she’s inoperable, but we’ve just found a surgeon in the States. But the cost of the operation is thirty thousand pounds – money we just don’t have. Please, please, Rose, would you print this letter, as we’re sure you have many kind-hearted readers who’d help?

I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t print it because that’s not the function of my page and in any case it might not be true. But if it were true I couldn’t forgive myself for not having taken it seriously. So I wrote back enclosing the numbers for five children’s medical charities, and a cheque for seventy-five pounds. Ed used to get really cross when I did that so I stopped telling him after a while.

And now I read a letter from one of my many Lonely Young Men. Dear Rose, My problem is that I’m 35 and have never had a girlfriend. Girls just don’t seem interested in me, probably because I’m very shy with them, and I’m not at all good looking…I glanced at the enclosed photo – typical! He was very attractive…so I’ve been feeling very depressed lately and I spend every evening at home, on my own. But I would love to get to know a special lady who would be kind to me, and perhaps even love me. Please, please Rose, can you help?

Dear Colin, I wrote. Thank you very much for your letter and I’m sorry that you’re feeling so low. But let me assure you that you are a very handsome young man and I’m sure lots of girls would like to go out with you. But the point is you have to make a real effort to meet them – sitting at home’s no good! I think you should a) do an assertiveness course to help build your confidence and b) join an evening class (not car maintenance) where I’m sure you would soon make some female friends. I enclose my Confidence leaflet and the number for your local community college, and I wish you really good luck. I felt so sorry for him that, on the spur of the moment I added: P.S. If you feel you’d like to, do let me know how you get on. But as I sealed the envelope I realised that this was unlikely, and that’s the weird thing about what I do. Every month over a thousand total strangers tell me about their problems and their intimate affairs. I give them the very best advice I can, but I rarely, if ever, hear back. My replies go out into the void like meteorites hurtling through space. Did what I write help them, I sometimes wonder? Are things going better for them now?

I was suddenly aware that our new editor, Ricky Soul, ex-News of the World, was standing by my desk. R. Soul – as he’s respectfully known – has been brought in by the Amalgamated lowerarchy to try and jack up our sales.

‘How’s it going in the Agony and Misery Department?’ he asked with a smirk.

‘Oh, fine,’ I replied casually. ‘Fine.’ As he hovered beside me I made a mental note to leave a copy of my Personal Freshness leaflet on his desk. Then he reached for my letters – in total breach of confidentiality! – so I quickly swept them into a drawer.

‘Anything spicy you can lead with on Wednesday Rose?’

‘Like what?’ I enquired innocently though I knew.

‘Like “Dear Rose,” he said in a lisping falsetto, “I am a nineteen-year-old glamour model with a huge bust and long blonde hair and my boyfriend likes me to dress up as a nurse. I’m tempted to tell him that I don’t really enjoy it but am worried that he’ll feel hurt.”’

I groaned. Our old editor, Mike, who was sacked last month, used to leave me alone; but ever since Ricky arrived I’ve been under pressure to put in more sex.

‘Got any problems like that?’ he enquired with a leer.

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I replied. ‘However I have an accountant who likes to wear silk knickers under his pinstripes; a farmer who wants to commit pigamy, and I’ve had a letter from a fifty-five-year-old nun who’d like to become a man.’

‘I said spicy, Rose – not pervy,’ said Ricky pulling a face. ‘And not too many woofters, okay?’

‘Ricky, kindly don’t trivialise my readers’ problems. My column isn’t entertainment.’

‘Of course it is,’ he guffawed, ‘that’s exactly what it is: other people’s problems give us all a lovely warm glow.’ I suppressed the urge to club him to death with Secrets of Anger Control.

‘I’ve also had this,’ I said, handing him the letter about the sick child. He scanned the paper and his face lit up.

‘Great!’ he beamed. ‘A Tragic Tot! We’ll run with it – if she’s cute.’

As he sauntered away I turned back to my final letter with a frustrated sigh. It was from a girl whose fiancé had just gone off with someone else.

Can’t believe it… she wrote, wedding four weeks off…the shame and humiliation…can’t eat, can’t sleep…should I ring him?…suicide…

‘Poor kid,’ I said handing it to Serena. ‘I’ll make this one my lead.’ And, as I quickly drafted the reply, it was as though I were writing to myself.

Dear Kelly, Thank you very much for your letter: you’ve obviously had a terrible time. But your ex is clearly the WRONG man, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did! So the sooner you’re able to put this behind you the sooner you’ll meet someone who’s right. You’ve had a huge emotional shock, Kelly, so you need to be radical now. All those nice memories? Erase them! Remember your ex at his worst. Remember him picking his nose, for example, or clipping the hair from his ears. Remember him drunk and snoring, or correcting you in front of your friends. Do this often enough, and you’ll find that pleasant thoughts of him will soon go. Do NOT remember the time he mixed you a Lemsip, or the time he played ‘Only You’ down the phone. Next, get rid of everything that reminds you of him – ‘vanish’ him from your life. All the gifts he gave you – chuck them! And the photograph albums. Then tear up his letters – and the Valentine’s cards. Flog the engagement ring and treat yourself to a week at a health farm with your best friend. Finally, post up the ugliest photo you have of him and draw a red circle round it with a line through. You ask me if you should contact him. NO, Kelly! Do NOT!!! And in the unlikely event that he should call you, then I suggest you tell him to get stuffed! Salvage your dignity, Kelly – it’s so important – and just be angry instead. Those homicidal dreams you’re having? Indulge them! Don’t feel guilty – enjoy! Those sadistic little fantasies in which you pull out his nails – go right ahead. And if it helps why not simply pretend that your ex is dead? Kelly, you’ve clearly had a dreadful time, but I know that you’re going to be fine. And remember that none of these things will work nearly as well as finding another – and much better – man.

I breathed a cathartic sigh as I signed the letter. As I say, I sometimes take a tough tone. But if a man lets you down that badly then you have to kick him right out. And as I made my way home that evening I decided I’d follow my own advice. There were a few marital mementoes I hadn’t had the heart to discard but now I resolved to throw them away. I took the wedding photo out of the drawer, together with our engagement announcement, and my dried bouquet. In a file I found the air tickets to Menorca and the wallets of honeymoon snaps. There was a particularly nice one of Ed, standing on the beach in the evening sun. I could have delivered a deranged monologue to it – I was tempted – but instead I put it, with the other things, in an old shoebox which, to my bitter amusement, came from ‘Faith’. I tied the box tightly with string, pressed my foot on the pedal bin and prepared to let go.

‘Goodbye Ed,’ I said firmly. ‘I am ex-iting from you; I am ex-pelling you; I am ex-cising you. You are ex-traneous,’ I added firmly. ‘You are ex-cess. I am making an ex-ample of you, because I do not want you any more. I do not want you any more,’ I repeated as the bin began to blur. ‘I do not…want. You. I…do…’ – my throat began to ache and a tear splashed my hand – ‘…want you.’ Oh fuck. My heart had been hijacked by nostalgia, and I couldn’t let my memories go. As I reached for the kitchen roll I decided instead simply to hide the box; for if I was going to get through this I couldn’t let myself be ambushed by sentiment. So I went up to the top floor, into the large spare room, and pushed the box under the bed. As I straightened up – feeling better already – I detected a wisp of smoke. I glanced out of the window into Trevor McDonald’s garden. There, at the end of the short lawn, a bonfire was smouldering away. But what was being burned on it wasn’t autumn leaves, but two hockey sticks – how odd.

Chapter Three (#ulink_442d15bb-d7a2-55f7-8e9a-ea42b3b24abd)

After a nasty break-up it’s a good idea to put a few post-codes between yourself and your ex. The further the better in fact. There’s nothing quite like it for distracting you from the fact that you’ve just been given the push. Dumped in Devon? Then why not move to Dumfries? Given the big E in Enfield? Then uproot to Edinburgh. You’ll be too busy focusing on the newness of your environment to give a damn about Him. Not that I am thinking about Him. He’s history. My campaign to exorcise Him is going well. It’s already eight weeks since we split and I can barely even remember Ed Wright’s name. I’ve done what I advised that girl Kelly to do – I’ve neatly excised him, like a tumour; I haven’t even sent him my new address. So I think it’s all going to be plain sailing from here. Were it not for one thing…

I was coming downstairs yesterday morning when I had this terrible shock. I heard Ed’s voice, quite clearly. My heart zoomed into overdrive.