Stuck in Second Gear

Chapter 1

1

‘Hello, is that Mrs Marshal?’

‘Yes, but it’s Ms Marshal,’ Lucie replied, emphasising the Ms heavily. Honestly, more than twenty years into the twenty-first century, you’d think garage mechanics could cope with divorced women who did not want to be reminded that they were once married to berks like Miles Marshal.

Not for the first time, she wondered if she should revert to her maiden name and become Miss Lucie Chilvers all over again. But she’d been a Marshal for more than half her life, she realised with a shudder, and her daughter, Zoe, was a Marshal too, of course, unless she was going to marry that man and take on his surname, now that they were having a baby.

What was his surname? It occurred to Lucie with a burst of regret that she didn’t know. Since her divorce from Miles, there was a distance between her and Zoe that had never existed before and although it made her deeply sad, Lucie felt as if she didn’t know where to begin with repairing it.

‘So, it’s about this car,’ the mechanic said, interrupting her thoughts.

‘Yes, well, how is it doing?’ As the car was eleven years old, had broken down and had been stretchered to the garage on the back of an AA lorry, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the patient update.

‘Well…’ He sighed and she could picture him shaking his head sadly. ‘It needs a lot of work.’

She braced herself and wondered how much ‘mechanic’ she would be required to speak here.

‘The exhaust has to be replaced,’ he began. OK, exhaust, yup, she knew that was the pipe sticking out the back.

‘Along with the brake pads, one brake disc and the wheel struts.’

Lucie tried to keep up. This was something to do with braking and wheels.

‘We need to look at the power steering as something isn’t right there,’ he went on. ‘And you broke down because the clutch cable has gone, so that needs to be replaced.’

Clutch cable? What in the freak was that? Did anyone really know?

‘Two of the tyres are bald, so they’ll have to be changed.’

Oh God, tyres were always bad news. They were made of rubber but seemed to cost more than kryptonite or uranium.

‘So, altogether, I’m afraid you’re looking at about ￡2,400 worth of work including labour.’

‘How much?’ she asked, hoping that maybe she hadn’t heard this correctly. Good freaking grief, this was bad. The bloody car had only cost her ￡5000 and now she realised why.

‘￡2,400,’ he repeated. ‘Power steering, wheel struts and the clutch cable involve quite a bit of work. And to be honest, there are some other things needing doing too, but this would be the bare minimum to get it back on the road and through its MOT in June.’

Lucie did a mental run-through on the current state of her bank accounts. It was nearly the end of May, so only a few hundred pounds were left in her current account and she needed all of that for groceries, bills and any other expenses before payday. Her precious ‘rainy day’ savings account, carefully scrimped and saved over the past two post-divorce years, stood at exactly ￡2,867. And then there were the two credit cards. One was hers and was about ￡500 in the red, due to some of the unexpected expenses incurred as she set herself up in her extremely modest post-divorce rental flat.

The other… Oh dear God, that bloody other card, with a debt of almost ￡9,000. That other card had been racked up by Miles but had been landed on her as part of their acrimonious divorce agreement, when she’d slowly come to realise that there weren’t any ‘assets’ to split between them – only enormous debts caused by all the terrible business decisions her ex-husband had made. Too late, she’d realised that this particular card which had been used to pay his expenses had been in her name.

The full divorce revelations had totalled to absolutely not one penny of equity left in their beautiful home, a credit card ￡9,000 in the red in her name, plus being legally obliged to sign half of her pension savings over to him and having to wind up her own interior design business because it was too interconnected with his company. The only slight positive amidst all the calamity that had struck almost exactly two years ago now was that she’d never been a director in Miles’s company. Otherwise, she would now be liable for half of the ￡470,000 he still owed banks, other lenders and the tax authorities. And he’d offered her a directorship several times. She shuddered at the thought.

‘So…’ The mechanic broke the long pause. ‘Do you want us to go ahead with the work?’

Now it was her turn to sigh. What choice did she have? She couldn’t ask them to tow it to another garage for a second opinion. Selling the car wasn’t an option as it wasn’t worth much and she needed it for all the regular visits to her dad. And she certainly didn’t have the money for a new one. So, that preciously scrimped rainy-day account would have to be raided. And then there would only be ￡467 left. Not enough for any kind of rainy day at all.

She felt a jag of self-pity. Mrs Lucie Marshal used to drive a two-year-old white Mercedes with leather seats and personalised plates: LUC 13M. Mrs Lucie Marshal used to live in a fabulous architect-designed house with a wow-factor kitchen and marble-clad bathrooms; plus, she had enjoyed the gorgeous wardrobe, the holidays and the lifestyle to match. So it was hard to now be struggling to pay for repairs on a tatty old Nissan that she knew could not last much longer, even if it did get new brake discs and bloody wheel struts.

Still, moping about and dwelling on what had been and gone wasn’t going to help. So, she took a breath and tried to sound brisk and together as she said, ‘Yes, please go ahead.’

‘No problem. It’ll be ready for you tomorrow afternoon,’ the mechanic added.

So that meant taking the bus to go and see Dad today.

Before she left the flat, Lucie checked herself over in the mirror. Not too bad was her first thought. Thanks to her beautiful mother, she had the kind of strong, olive skin that held wrinkles at bay for longer, and today she had enhanced it with a touch of blusher, brown pencil round her coffee-coloured eyes and a swipe of plum lipstick. Her brunette hair, home-coloured, was just above shoulder-length with a thick blunt fringe, which she trimmed herself between hairdresser visits. She thought she could still pass for a woman in her forties despite turning fifty the Year of The Divorce. Talk about two major calamities happening at once. Her stars had definitely not aligned that year. Oh no.

I’m maintaining , she thought to herself, in spite of it all .

As she had a day off work today, she was in jeans and a nice shirt instead of her office clothes. She still carried an expensive handbag and wore a good watch and gold earrings – all left over from her previous life. But this cheap and practical hooded anorak she was pulling on now, bought at the supermarket and designed to cope with ordinary life – walking to the station, popping out to the garage for milk – wasn’t something that the former Mrs Lucie Marshal would have wanted or even needed.

I used to wear Chanel… came the vicious little thought to torment her. Followed by I used to run my own very successful interior design business. And now I wear a Tesco anorak and work in admin and catch the bus. But it never helped to think like this. She knew it didn’t help. So she sighed, shook her head and tried to think about something, anything, else.

With yet another sigh, she scooped up the assortment of envelopes that had arrived in the post, stuffed them into her handbag without much of a glance, and hurried off to the bus stop.

After a fifteen-minute wait in this bland part of town, she caught the bus, took a seat, and spent several minutes looking out of the window. For late May in the south of England, it was a cool and gloomy day, so everything looked duller and greyer than usual. She remembered the unopened mail and brought the envelopes out of her handbag.

Turning them over in her hands, she could see that two were obviously junk mail, so she pushed those back into her bag. Of the remaining two envelopes, one looked like a bill or a bank statement; the other was a silver envelope with a large white label on the front, her name and address handwritten in black, elaborate, curled handwriting. She had an ominous feeling about that envelope, so she turned to the much more boring white one with that unmistakable financial communication vibe. Ripping it, she brought out the pages and unfolded them.

Oh, for crying out loud. It was a statement for that bloody credit card. She stared for several moments at the balance outstanding: ￡8,775. Next month’s minimum payment was going to be ￡263. Infuriatingly, she didn’t even know what Miles had spent this money on. To find out, she’d have to dig back through stacks of old statements, assuming she’d kept them. In fact, how could she have kept them when she didn’t even think she’d seen them? Miles had kept his use of her card hidden from her and must have jumped on the statement every month as soon as it arrived because she’d not known about this bill until the divorce, and now, here she was facing a payment of ￡263 a month for at least the next four years, and she didn’t even know what for.

Impulsively, she took out her phone and dialled the customer contact number. When she finally managed to get through to a human, she asked, without much hope, if she could get copies of the statements that showed what the original transactions were.

‘There haven’t been any purchases for two years, so is it possible to look back before then?’ she asked.

‘Certainly,’ came the chirpy reply. ‘We’ll be happy to help you with that.’

After a pause, the voice gave some company names that meant nothing to Lucie.

‘In July 2022, there are payments to NuLife Co and Rejooven8 Ltd… Then in August, there’s a ￡2,500 payment to the Inland Revenue.’

That sounded like Miles… spend now and worry about the tax bill later.

‘Are you able to send me those statements please?’

‘Of course, they’ll be with you within five working days.’

Once she’d hung up, she was left holding the shiny silver envelope with the elaborate handwriting. She stared at it for several moments. Already, she had a horrible suspicion and felt that she would like to spend just a few more moments holding it, and not knowing the exact, awful details. But, glancing out of the window, she could see that the stop for her father’s house wasn’t far away now, so maybe it was best to just get this over with.

She pushed her finger under the envelope flap and tore the silver paper, then she pulled out the thick card and accompanying slips of paper.

Reluctantly, and with a pain in the pit of her stomach, she read the words ‘To Lucie and her guest’, handwritten at the top of the thick and luxurious invitation, followed by:

Jacasta Fletcher

and

Miles Marshal

request the pleasure of your company

at their wedding

and

ceremony of love amidst the peonies

#peoniesandlavender

Maison Violette, near Perpignan, France

on Saturday, 16 July, from 3p.m.

Ceremony – drinks – dinner – dancing

Please RSVP by 16 June

www.peoniesandlavenderwed.com

#Jacastasweddingstory

It wasn’t possible, as Lucie sat on a bus in a Tesco anorak, not to feel stunned by this, even though she had known it was coming. Well, she’d known her ex-husband was engaged to this beautiful Jacasta person, fifteen years his junior. But Lucie hadn’t known until now that they were getting married in July, in a ceremony of love amidst the peonies, whatever the heck that was, and in France, and that they were going to invite her, along with that sad ‘plus one’ request.

Good freaking grief.

She wouldn’t go.

Of course she wouldn’t go!

Why on earth had they asked her? Only to make themselves look good, look magnanimous, of course.

Maison Violette, near Perpignan, France… She resisted the temptation to google it straightaway, but had visions of a gorgeous French mansion house with a marquee in the garden on a hot summer evening near the Med.

Her first furious thought was how could Miles even afford a wedding like this when he was still supposed to be in so much debt from his disastrous business fail, which had pulled their marriage down with it?

She looked through the other papers that had come with the invitation – a list of accommodation options with ‘some rooms are available at Maison Violette for family; please contact us to arrange’, then there was an RSVP card, plus a page with instructions on how to access the gift registry, the wedding website, the wedding venue and plenty of encouragement to follow Jacasta’s daily updates on Instagram.

Feeling a flare of anger, she crumpled the pages up, folded the invitation in half and stuffed all of it back into her handbag.

Just leave me out of it! I don’t want to know! she thought to herself.

Bloody Miles… How dare he land on his feet like this when she was now living such a totally different life.

Bloody Miles and his gorgeous young girlfriend and their glam French wedding. All so very different from when they got married all those years ago.