The Second Life of Sally Mottram
The wonderfully entertaining new novel from bestselling author of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin.Long-time Potherthwaite resident Sally Mottram cannot stand the decline of her town. The bookshop is about to close, abandoned buildings line the canal and Potherthwaite’s residents seem stuck in a disheartened rut. Something has to be done, but what? And who will do it?When an unexpected tragedy shatters Sally’s life, she bravely takes on the task herself. Supported by a group of locals, including thrice-married Marigold Boyce-Willoughby, who is forever looking for love, and married couple Jill and Arnold Buss, who might both be falling for their new neighbours, Sally embarks on her ambition to bring the town back to life. But can one woman rally a whole community to save itself?David Nobbs’ much-anticipated new novel is a hilarious, heartwarming tale about what keeps our community spirits alive.
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DAVID NOBBS
The Second Life of Sally Mottram
For Chris
Contents
6. A very short chapter, but fear of a very long evening
BOOK TWO:Sally Makes a Journey, and a Decision
12. In which Totnes is mentioned many times
13. Uncharacteristic behaviour
25. A grand night in the hills
31. An emissary with a wet handshake
35. An envelope of distinction
36. Public and private changes
Of course they didn’t know, on that day, that it was the first day.
Sally Mottram had never liked Potherthwaite. She had never even liked the North of England. She endured it because of Barry’s business.
She liked it less than ever today. She had walked the length of the High Street, as part of her exercise routine, and because she wanted to call in at the bookshop on the Potherthwaite Quays – the plural was an exaggeration. There she had received the devastating news that the bookshop would close in three weeks, unable to match the special offers given elsewhere in a world where a book is expected to be a little cheaper than a starter in Pizza Express.
On the Quays there was a very basic café and an empty building with a rusting sign that stated ‘The Terminus Bist o’. The bistro had closed its doors – another exaggeration, its door – seven months ago. Soon ‘The Canal Bookshop’ would also be empty. One day a letter would drop off there too, and ‘The anal Bookshop’ would fester among the floods for ever.
This was the scene at the end of the Potherthwaite Arm of the Rackstraw and Sladfield Canal, which the great Sir Norman Oldfield no less had once planned to turn into a rival for Wigan Pier. Sally stood and looked at the dereliction. Up the canal, three narrowboats lay moored. One had sunk, but the canal was so shallow that it was hard to notice this. The second was rotting, as was its occupant, a sculptor who had suffered from sculptor’s block for seventeen years. The third was beautifully maintained, and lived in by a rather posh couple, who had once just managed to get to the Quays through the silt, only to find that there was no longer enough water in the cut for them to turn round and go home. They had lived there for eight and a half years now, getting slowly older and slower, but always offering generous noggins to their new friends.
Something had to be done about Potherthwaite, but who would do it?
She turned her back on the sad scene, and began to walk along the unimaginatively named Quays Approach towards the east end of the long High Street. Waddling complacently towards her was Linda Oughtibridge. Some people thought she did the flowers for the church quite beautifully. Others didn’t. Linda Oughtibridge was in the former camp, Sally Mottram in the latter. Sally noticed something that afternoon that had never occurred to her before. Linda Oughtibridge was just about the squarest woman she had ever seen.
‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs Mottram,’ said Linda Oughtibridge in a voice treacly with false enthusiasm. ‘Not a bad day.’
Not a bad day! This was almost the final straw for Sally. It was a vile day. The lowering sky was uniformly grey. True, it was dry, but there was dampness in the chill air. True also that there was no wind, but the stillness was so complete that the air almost became solid; walking through it was hard work.
There’s a certain kind of smile that demands to be wiped off a person’s face, and there’s a certain kind of face that demands to have the smile wiped off it. Linda Oughtibridge possessed just such a face, and just such a smile, and she was smiling now. The words formed themselves irresistibly in Sally’s brain.
‘Oh, piss off!’
The shocking words hurtled from her brain towards her lips, where she clamped down on them just in time.
‘Not so bad, Mrs Oughtibridge.’
In twenty-four years of meeting, neither Sally nor Linda had ever ventured into Christian-name territory.
The narrowness of her escape brought Sally Mottram’s flesh out in goose pimples. She had nice flesh; she was an attractive woman in a slightly restrained way, but with an elegant shapely backside over which at least two men in the town fantasized furiously. She was forty-seven, and was experimenting, but not too boldly, with hair the colour of straw. She had a husband and two grown-up children, a boy and a girl. Her husband was a lawyer. She was not the sort of person who said ‘Piss off’ to esteemed arrangers of the church’s flowers.
