By their clothes shall you know them
Charlotte Moore URSULA'S STORY by Sandra Howard Simon & Schuster, £12.99, pp. 353, ISBN 9780743285568 £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Ursula's story begins at dawn on the day her ex-husband is to marry his new love. Ursula lies awake, alone with her bitter thoughts, until a reporter rings seeking her reaction to the wedding. For Bill Osborne is no ordinary ex; he edits a national newspaper and hosts a popular television series, while his new bride is a cabinet minister, no less.
If the intrusive journalist wants a co-operative response, why ring at 6 a.m.? And why hasn't Ursula changed her telephone number? Such questions remain unanswered, and indeed Sandra Howard has surprisingly little to say about living one's life in the public gaze, other than to point out that it's a pain. Ursula won't spill any beans, but waits for the next call, from her lover, Julian.
Julian is an antiquarian book-dealer with a year-round tan and a mysterious past. He has topaz eyes and unusual talents — 'his hand unerringly finding the G-spot through my trousers'. Ursula is alive to his charms — even talking on the phone 'I feel my nipples beginning to tingle and prick' — but she can't bring herself to get too close.
Her tense and contradictory emotional state is well drawn. Julian is nothing but a lean, muscled cliché — 'The Porsche, like a powerful stallion, has a reek of male energy, and Julian has, too' — but in describing the hurt and confusion left behind at the breakdown of a marriage Howard is subtle and perceptive. Those close to Ursula point out that it's good that her children like their new stepmother, but she's shutting out common sense. She pampers her ego by attracting men, but she's lost the ability to trust: 'Resisting the need for contact has become a habit and it's a hard one to break.'
Julian has a secret. The village gossip suggests that he's unhealthily close to Ursula's bookish, just pubescent daughter Jessie, while Perry, a creepy wine-merchant who wants to add Ursula to his list of extramarital conquests, insinuates that Julian has Aids. Ursula throws all vestiges of judgment to the winds and sets off for a night of passion with Perry. Two things save her. First, when Perry whispers in her ear that 'blonde pubes do it for me, there's nothing more turning on', even Ursula can't fail to notice that he's repellent. Second, there's a call on her mobile — Jessie has gone missing.
Howard has done her homework. The search for Jessie, the police interviews, the psychological profile of the abductor, are meticulously and convincingly described. But do we really need to have it spelled out that 'the tension is unbearable' or that 'the atmosphere is tense' as the family awaits news of Jessie?
Howard's tendency is to overexplain, to leave the reader with too little to do. Sympathetic characters are not only invariably well-dressed (plum cutoffs and a classic cream silk shirt', 'a sexy halter-neck T-shirt and canvasy white short skirt'), they also, like Julian, have unusually vivid eyes — 'bright green', 'lit-up green,' violety-chocolate,' or, in Ursula's own case, plain violet but with an intriguing ability to reflect the evening sky. By contrast, Erica, the nasty gossip, has 'bulbous grey eyes,' hideous handbags and a 'dull beige trouser suit.' Perry the seducer's 'crinkly' eyes are an ambiguous grey-blue, but to the alert reader his ill-assorted 'yellow-striped shirt and rustcoloured trousers' will have given his game away, along with the exclamation marks that pepper his speech, those little arrows of insincerity. Ursula 's Story is like the 'cheat's mayonnaise' that Ursula herself makes; smooth, tasty enough, unchallenging and unashamedly lightweight.
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