Chasing Marian

Gail Schimmel, Pamela Power, Qarnita Loxton, Amy Heydenrych

Description

Four strangers, two cities, one chance online meeting.

Jess is a yummy mummy of two whose life is slowly unravelling and who has recently separated from her husband. Ginger is a happily widowed granny with a salty tongue and a wicked sense of humour. The gorgeous and sensitive Matt is an almost-qualified psychologist, who still lives with his parents. And Queenie, a librarian from Cape Town, has an absent boyfriend and a secret writing habit.

What could these four strangers possibly have in common?

They are all die-hard Marian Keyes fans. And when they hear that Marian is due to visit South Africa to attend a literary festival, they are all desperate to meet her. Together they come up with a mad-cap plan. Will they succeed – or will life intervene?

Sujets

• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770107618
• Langue: English

Extrait

Chasing Marian


Chasing Marian
The Most Anticipated Feel-Good Novel of 2022
by
Amy Qarnita Pamela Gail Heydenrych Loxton Power Schimmel
with fictional guest appearances by Marian Keyes & Himself
MACMILLAN


First published in 2022
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X19
Northlands
2116
Johannesburg
South Africa
www.panmacmillan.co.za
ISBN 978-1-77010-760-1
e-ISBN 978-1-77010-761-8
© 2022 Amy Heydenrych, Qarnita Loxton, Pamela Power and Gail Schimmel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This book is a work of fiction. It is based on a wide range of personal experiences and observations. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing and proofreading by Nicola Rijsdijk and Jane Bowman
Design and typesetting by Nyx Design
Cover design by Ayanda Phasha


Jess
People notice a woman who drinks alone in public. I suppose they say things. Or at the very least, they wonder. Is she lonely, depressed, friendless? Or simply overconfident, carefree, celebratory? I’m guessing it’s always one or the other.
The other day, I might have been the one to make a remark to whoever I was with.
Watch to see if she ordered a glass or a bottle.
Does she sip or does she gulp? Is she waiting for someone? Does that make it okay? Or does she just keep on drinking, sitting there on her own? There’s something deliciously rebellious about a woman doing that, I think, swirling the crisp dry rosé in its pleasingly bulbous glass.
‘Can I top up your wine, ma’am?’
‘Please.’ I smile at the waitress in her neat white uniform and red lipstick as she fishes the translucent Babylonstoren bottle out of its nest of ice. ‘Keep going, keep going, and … stop.’ The elegant glass is filled to the brim – it’s more like a bowl of wine. I clutch it with both hands to avoid spilling.
A woman I guess to be in her seventies – wearing a sheer, leopard-print shirt, a shock of white hair and dewy skin testament to medical science – taps the leg of my table with her cane.
‘A woman after my own heart,’ she says. ‘You’ve figured out what matters long before I did.’
I wonder what she means. Is wine what matters? Or being comfortable enough to sit at a beautifully set table in a crowded restaurant and not feel awkward? Or maybe that most radical indulgence: a mother-of-two taking time out for her own enjoyment? Before I can ask, she sidles up to a table in the corner of the smoking section, where her three equally preened friends are waiting for her with a game of bridge, and a gin and tonic heavy with garnish.
I twirl my spaghetti puttanesca onto my fork and take another sip of rosé. Lean back and watch the shifting tides of people floating through Tashas. Nestled in the heart of Hyde Park Corner, it provides a temporary escape to a carefully manufactured fake-Paris. Outside, Johannesburg rages on with its power cuts, complicated history and oppressive heat, but in Tashas, with its muted blush décor and gentle lighting, the café is suspended in a blissful golden hour. It’s one of those places that’s always full, usually with folk who come day after day and order the same thing. At a marble table in the centre sits the middle-aged lawyer, always with the front button of his shirt loosened, his tie flopped to one side as he loudly proclaims the fine details of sensitive, high-stakes cases on his mobile phone. His hair looks as if it’s held in place by its own power supply. There’s the personal trainer who comes straight from her sessions at the private gym nearby to ‘enjoy’ spinach and scrambled egg whites, and there’s the diamond-encrusted retired couple who eat every meal at the café, but move to a different table over the course of the day. In between, there’s the reliable throng of battle-taut mothers in imported yoga pants, and self-important men in suits, more on their cellphones than at the table.
I have opinions about every table. I make up stories. So of course I wonder what stories these strangers could make up about me. Here I am, the sun pushing through the skylight, casting a golden spotlight on my blissful set-up – a seemingly bottomless bowl of pasta, a bottle of rosé on ice and the latest novel by Marian Keyes – my first I’ve read by her, in fact. I’m a few chapters in. I laugh out loud at some of the lines (not discreetly into freshly manicured hands like some of my ‘ladylike’ peers would do).
I am either serenely blessed or raving mad. There is no in-between.
This anonymity is addictive – I drink it up faster than the wine. In my sweeping block-printed maxi dress, sparkling gold sandals and mass of unmanageable black curls, I could be a tourist exploring Johannesburg for the first time, or a high-powered executive grabbing some ‘me-time’ after acing an important presentation. I am all too aware that privilege floats around my every gesture, a too-strong, too-expensive perfume, but I’m in a room where everybody else is wearing it too.
Another woman walks past my table, round about my age, so late thirties-ish. ‘Sorry, I just have to tell you that your hair is incredible. Are those natural curls?’
‘They are,’ I say. ‘I only just chucked out the straightener and started embracing them.’
‘Well –’ she waves her hand – ‘your hair, all of it, looks stunning.’
‘Thank you,’ I demur. Although I feel completely different on the inside, I am approached often with compliments on the woman I present to the world. Beauty has a strange ability to hide the truth.
To everyone else at this restaurant, I am a woman who has my priorities straight, a woman with an enviable life, who has the time to read during the day.
I am absolutely not a woman whose husband has just left her.
And there’s more.
A vaguely interested passer-by who cares to notice my eager slurping would never guess that the pasta in front of me is my first tentative foray after over ten years of stoking a fear of gluten, and that I haven’t had a sip of alcohol in almost the same period. That through a gradual gaslighting process involving sketchy online testimonies and social media influencers half my size, I’d convinced myself that gluten disturbed my Gut Microbiome – an elusive, consistently moody fairy queen with an ever-growing list of demands. If only I could please the Gut Microbiome, I would magically be transformed back into my early twenties, pre-childbirth body with its pre-motherhood confidence. As for alcohol, I stopped drinking when the hangover began to outweigh the brief respite of the night before. Besides, my husband – possibly soon to be ex-husband – Joe, didn’t quite approve of Unhinged-dancing-in-the-kitchen-to-punk Jess. He preferred Quietly-stirring-macaroni-cheese-while-picking-on-a-salad Jess.
Another sip of wine. Another mouthful of pasta.
The grey-suited men come and go, rushing through the time on their hands. I notice that my Gut Microbiome has not voiced her discontent, and my head actually feels lighter. There’s no headache in sight.
I love this wine. I love this book. Marian gets me like nobody else. She feels like a powerful ally in uncharted territory. Yet I find that I’ve been reading over the same sentence for the past ten minutes. Suddenly my setting feels forced, stale.
The pasta’s turning cold. I gulp the wine.
I can only mask the cracks with humour and high living for so long. Very soon, those close to my orbit will begin to guess that I’m going through A Time.
I pick up my phone, alive with notifications. I check WhatsApp. Fifteen unread messages, the bulk from my four-year-old’s preschool moms’ group. There’s an update from the class mom on the Valentine’s Day picnic, and someone advertising the babysitting services of their nanny. As per usual, Kelly, the group’s most enthusiastic contributor, has shared details of her four year old’s vast intelligence:
‘Madigan woke up this morning and said, “What a bootiful time to be alive, Mummy.” A wonderful message we could all do with today xxx’
Strangely, the great orator has never graced us with her musings – the most I’ve heard from her is a muffled grunt. Not that I begrudge the child, just the pressure mothers feel to persistently frame their children. Willow, my four-year-old, is my second child. Hannah, my eldest, is twelve going on twenty-five, and I know by now that no matter how hard you try, there are no prizes for ‘best child’ or ‘best effort’. Childhood, much like life, follows its own course. Sometimes I wish I was a better mother to them, but I comfort myself saying at least I’m not the worst.
I scan through the predictable coos and sunny emojis.
‘How lovely, Kelly!’
‘Clever girl!’
‘What a lovely girlie and what a lucky mummy …’
I itch to say, ‘Nobody gives a shit, Kelly.’ Instead, I promptly leave the WhatsApp group. Does nobody else notice this shit? Does nobody else want to call out the airs and affectations and burn the whole system down?
Another WhatsApp group lights up. It’s the organising committee for a charity fundraising gala to aid the victims of gender-based violence in South Africa. It’s a cause I’m passionate about, but I still shake my head at the fact that I’m at an age where I’m called upon to arrange such events. Isn’t there a respo