his sexuality had taken Bob months of tortured soul-searching and on her more charitable days Gloria knew that to be the absolute truth. Unfortunately it didn’t negate the reality of discovering that nine and a half hours A.B.F.C.O (After Bob Finally Came Out) the word on the street, the village green, in the woods, and even in Big Kev’s corner shop, was that she was obviously such a dud as a wife, she’d managed to turn her own husband gay.
And, not that she would ever have admitted it but filling up every corner of her soul had been the question: what if she had?
She knew she wasn’t the warmest of individuals.
That she was more alpha than any other letter of the alphabet.
She favoured cutting the extraneous bullshit, setting goals and driving in a straight line towards them.
How else did Bob think they’d created such a glossy magazine-worthy lifestyle?
But Bob uttering the words he could never take back had attacked the very security she’d attached to that magazine-worthy lifestyle, and worse. Someone being in love with her turning out to be a big fat lie and all the confidence that came along with that simply snuffed itself out.
Then, Bob and Bobby choosing to live their lives just down the road while quietly and respectfully taking every care not to throw their relationship in her face? Well, she defied anyone to understand just how much worse that made it all.
But it had.
So very, very much.
In the intervening three years they’d found a way through for the sake of their daughter and in all the shared custody pickups and drop-offs not once had Bob commented negatively, sarcastically, or carelessly about how she was choosing to deal with the fallout from their marriage ending.
Until that afternoon.
When he’d seen his daughter bravely defending her and all his deliberately withheld assumptions for the sake of peace had tumbled out of his mouth as critical assertions.
The biscuit Gloria had been eating turned to stone in her mouth as it occurred to her that her appalling behaviour had ceased being a completely justifiable coping method and become instead rather an effective way of showing the whole of Whispers Wood that she possibly wasn’t woman enough to rise above what had happened.
The weight of shame in that sat in her throat along with the bit of biscuit.
It seemed no matter how much you worked to set your life up perfectly so that you got to enjoy living it, life happened and things changed.
But if she didn’t?
Couldn’t?
What kind of example was that to set for Persephone?
As if recognising her shields were only at thirty percent Old Man Isaac had leaned forward, and quietly stated, ‘I have to tell you Gloria we’re all a little worried about you.’
She’d wanted to sneer, ‘How very dare you.’
She’d managed to hold her tongue but not the snort of laughter from slipping out. But then she’d felt a rogue tear slipping down her cheek and the next thing she knew, she’d looked down at the chessboard, tipped over her King, and whispered, ‘I concede.’
That afternoon, she’d gone home and downloaded the Headspace App to every device she owned, bought herself a warehouse-sized supply of self-help books and decided she’d play chess with Old Man Isaac once a week and if he wanted to talk about how she could go about putting some changes in place, she’d soak up the strategizing.
Naturally, she also started a man ban, which wasn’t actually that difficult considering the meagre offerings provided by the online dating service she’d used.
With hard work and determination gradually the anger that had sat so close to the surface twenty-four-seven, started feeling more … well, less.
Sure, sometimes, someone would go and ruin her best of intentions by saying something so monumentally stupid that the needle on her ‘sarcasmometer’ spiked straight to eleven and words would come out of her mouth like they had used to. Sans filter.
Slowly but surely though she’d started to trust that a cutting remark wasn’t always the best opening. Sometimes (cue Eastenders dun, dun, duns …) a smile was.
People stopped holding their breath or assuming the brace position when they were around her.
And then last year Emma Danes had moved all the way from Hollywood to Whispers Wood to run Cocktails & Chai at The Clock House on the village green and Gloria had her perfect opening to start making amends for what she’d put the residents of Whispers Wood through.
The tearoom/bar was to open alongside the new day spa, hair salon and co-working office space in the old building which had once belonged to Old Man Isaac until Kate Somersby had been persuaded to return to the village and have a go at turning the grand Georgian house into her dream business.
With The Clock House set to become the heart of the community once more, what better way to repay the residents of Whispers Wood for giving her a chance to come good, than by working for them, Gloria had thought.
Community Service, she’d decided to call it.
Fast-forward eight months working part-time at Cocktails & Chai and quest to become a better, more pleasant, less angry person – tick box.
Until, that was, last Christmas, when Emma Danes had gone and ruined everything by asking Jake Knightley to marry her.
Gloria
Incessant wedding talk!
That’s what had brought Gloria to Fort Tuna the Terra Pest.
Every day since Emma and Jake’s engagement Gloria had felt snippets of her former snarky-self seeping through the puncture wounds left by Whispers Wood’s specialist chosen ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ subject.
Emma was her boss and her friend and the thought of ruining that friendship or losing the job she’d come to love over being driven mad because everything was bloody ‘weddings’ this and bloody ‘weddings’ that …
Admittedly not from Emma and Jake, which, okay, was a little weird but, hey, there was a secret comfort in the fact that if the very people who were engaged weren’t talking openly about when they were getting married, maybe that meant they wouldn’t actually get around to getting married. Which would definitely cover the whole, Why Would You Even Want To/Need To feels that Gloria had discovered she was experiencing in spades.
Ugh.
The Feels.
All the things she’d done to cauterize them and now they popped back up to the surface again?
Startling her, annoying her.
Scaring her.
‘This can’t be my last session,’ Gloria stated carefully, focusing her attention on the large hammered silver bowl sat politely in the centre of the pale wood coffee table between the neutral grey sofa and bland beige chair.
‘Why can’t it?’ Fortuna asked. ‘You’ve reached the goals you set out for yourself when you came here.’
‘But I’m not fixed yet.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush as if embarrassed at having to be spoken. Reaching out, she plucked one of the stress balls from the bowl she’d been staring at. ‘Only this morning I told my boss that her engagement ring – which naturally, turned out to be a family heirloom – looked like a dehydrated