Amazon.co.uk Review
The heroine of Jane Wenham-Jones Raising the Roof has just bought a one-way ticket to a dungeon of debt--a ramshackle house in the grottiest street in town. Cari's house has got woodworm, dry rot, blocked pipes and a slimy green carpet that reeks. Plus there's no one to do her stud work (not that she knows what stud work is). It's certainly not the fast track to becoming a property mogul she thought it would be when she signed on the dotted line.
Before you can say fixed-rate mortgage, she's skulking on the kitchen floor with a pile of unpaid bills on the doormat and the bailiffs at the door. Her sister's had a nervous breakdown, her infuriating mother won't leave her alone and her tenant--who was meant to be the answer to all her prayers--is a drug addict hell-bent on destroying what's left of her house. And she can't work out who's her knight in shining armour--Henry, the podgy supermarket manager with heady dreams of becoming area manager; Guy, the curly-haired journalist with an expert sexual touch or Ben, the massive builder with a House of Horror grin.
Raising the Roof is a thirtysomething girl-seeks-boy spin-off that's got more than a few cracks in its plasterwork. Cari's an unbelievably dizzy heroine, who's more interested in wrinkles and weight loss than the cycle of spiralling debt she's facing. And it's often hard to empathise as the foundations of her life--and house--crumble. But if it's light-hearted, frivolous escapism you're after, Raising the Roof is worth the downpayment.--Jane Honey
Review
'Thoroughly enjoyable and full of deft sparky humour' Jill Mansell
Woman's Own (Best Book)
'Frothy and fun - a light and enjoyable read'
Product Description
After the devastation of being left by her husband Cari takes advice from a friend and buys a house to do up for rental. However, lumbered with an infuriating mother, a friend who's permanently pregnant, a neurotic sister on the verge of a nervous breakdown and a first tenant who turns out to be a drug addict on benefit, Cari's new life quickly becomes more than she bargained for.
About the Author
Jane Wenham-Jones
Jane Wenham-Jones lives in Broadstairs, Kent where she walks by the sea and dreams of fame. After a motley assortment of jobs and entrepreneurial endeavours she began writing for women's magazines in 1996 and has since had more than seventy short stories published. Raising the Roof is her first novel. She is currently writing her second.
Jane Wenham-Jones lives in Broadstairs, Kent where she walks by the sea and dreams of fame. After a motley assortment of jobs and entrepreneurial endeavours she began writing for women's magazines in 1996 and has since had more than seventy short stories published. Raising the Roof is her first novel. She is currently writing her second.
Excerpted from Raising the Roof by Jane Wenham-Jones. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Martin – Hope by the time you find this note, you’ll have settled into your new life. We both know we’re doing the right thing but I want you to understand that you will always be very special to me. Whatever I’ve said, I look upon our years together with love and appreciation. Hope you will never forget I am still – and always will be– your friend. Look after yourself. Love Cari xxxxxx
Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! I watched Martin load the last cardboard box on to the back of the van and imagined what he’d look like if I shot him. I was just picturing him staggering backwards, blood spurting, when he smiled a last smarmy smile at the driver and turned a weary, sad one on me.
‘Cari, I—’ he began, as if he were in a made-for-television drama or capable of human emotion.
‘Take care!’ I interrupted brightly, although actually it would have suited me best if he’d been pulverized in a twenty-car pile-up on the M25. ‘Speak to you soon.’ And I kissed his cheek, noted with quiet glee the confusion in his eyes, turned and marched back up the steps to shut the shiny red door of the marital home behind me.
Pausing for a moment to see if I was going to fall into a crumpled heap, and finding that – strangely – I wasn’t, I took up my position in the window to watch the van leave. As it pulled away, Martin gave a last, wounded, I-have-been-much-maligned look at the house and slid behind the wheel of his pretentiously numbered car. Then he drove away.
Martin gone.
I sat quite still on my window-seat – the scene of many a fine emotional crisis before this one – and waited to be desolate. Nothing happened at all.
Martin has left me.
I have been abandoned.
I live on my own.
I am an ex.
Nothing.
I tried an experimental gulp, just to see if any of the previously never-ending supply of tears – which had gushed all over the place at regular intervals yesterday – were on standby to burst out of my eyes but no. In fact, I found the smile I had created with which to bid him farewell felt quite comfortable on my face. And apart from a king-size hangover, which was sending intermittent signals to my shrivelled brain urging me to throw up, I felt very little pain at all.
How extraordinary.
Emotions are funny like that, though. Mine never do what I expect. I’ve always blamed it on the larger-than-average helping of loopy genes handed down to me (see later ramblings on mother and father) but in this case I think it was plain inexperience. I mean, all I knew about a Major Break-up of a Serious Long-term Relationship was that it gave me an instant ten points on the How-Stressed-Are-You? scale and all sorts of unwanted attention from my family. (Another ten points.)
Well, how would you know until you do it? And other people’s examples can be dubious. My mother threw a lavish party with salmon twirls and champagne after she ran away from my father, whereas Auntie Maud, upon discovering Uncle Geoffrey packing his bags, slit her wrists in the bath.
A veritable queen of the mood swing at the best of times, I’d tried to take a middle road, dabbling in varying degrees of hysteria, gluttony and alcoholism between immense bouts of Positive Mental Attitude in which I planned my glittering new future, while always intending to keep this final day free to allow for hours of inconsolable sobbing as the need arose.
But now – how disconcerting life can be – the time had come (burst into refrain of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’) and here I was, irrevocably dry-eyed. In fact, if I analysed the odd mixture of tingling anticipation, sense of dramatic importance and sweet, poignant self-pity, I would have said it smacked of feeling strangely cheerful. Not, of course, that that was any long-term guarantee. A good rant always temporarily raises my spirits and there’d been plenty of weeping and wailing and throwing of cutlery the night before.
Martin – Hope by the time you find this note, you’ll have settled into your new life. We both know we’re doing the right thing but I want you to understand that you will always be very special to me. Whatever I’ve said, I look upon our years together with love and appreciation. Hope you will never forget I am still – and always will be– your friend. Look after yourself. Love Cari xxxxxx
Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! I watched Martin load the last cardboard box on to the back of the van and imagined what he’d look like if I shot him. I was just picturing him staggering backwards, blood spurting, when he smiled a last smarmy smile at the driver and turned a weary, sad one on me.
‘Cari, I—’ he began, as if he were in a made-for-television drama or capable of human emotion.
‘Take care!’ I interrupted brightly, although actually it would have suited me best if he’d been pulverized in a twenty-car pile-up on the M25. ‘Speak to you soon.’ And I kissed his cheek, noted with quiet glee the confusion in his eyes, turned and marched back up the steps to shut the shiny red door of the marital home behind me.
Pausing for a moment to see if I was going to fall into a crumpled heap, and finding that – strangely – I wasn’t, I took up my position in the window to watch the van leave. As it pulled away, Martin gave a last, wounded, I-have-been-much-maligned look at the house and slid behind the wheel of his pretentiously numbered car. Then he drove away.
Martin gone.
I sat quite still on my window-seat – the scene of many a fine emotional crisis before this one – and waited to be desolate. Nothing happened at all.
Martin has left me.
I have been abandoned.
I live on my own.
I am an ex.
Nothing.
I tried an experimental gulp, just to see if any of the previously never-ending supply of tears – which had gushed all over the place at regular intervals yesterday – were on standby to burst out of my eyes but no. In fact, I found the smile I had created with which to bid him farewell felt quite comfortable on my face. And apart from a king-size hangover, which was sending intermittent signals to my shrivelled brain urging me to throw up, I felt very little pain at all.
How extraordinary.
Emotions are funny like that, though. Mine never do what I expect. I’ve always blamed it on the larger-than-average helping of loopy genes handed down to me (see later ramblings on mother and father) but in this case I think it was plain inexperience. I mean, all I knew about a Major Break-up of a Serious Long-term Relationship was that it gave me an instant ten points on the How-Stressed-Are-You? scale and all sorts of unwanted attention from my family. (Another ten points.)
Well, how would you know until you do it? And other people’s examples can be dubious. My mother threw a lavish party with salmon twirls and champagne after she ran away from my father, whereas Auntie Maud, upon discovering Uncle Geoffrey packing his bags, slit her wrists in the bath.
A veritable queen of the mood swing at the best of times, I’d tried to take a middle road, dabbling in varying degrees of hysteria, gluttony and alcoholism between immense bouts of Positive Mental Attitude in which I planned my glittering new future, while always intending to keep this final day free to allow for hours of inconsolable sobbing as the need arose.
But now – how disconcerting life can be – the time had come (burst into refrain of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’) and here I was, irrevocably dry-eyed. In fact, if I analysed the odd mixture of tingling anticipation, sense of dramatic importance and sweet, poignant self-pity, I would have said it smacked of feeling strangely cheerful. Not, of course, that that was any long-term guarantee. A good rant always temporarily raises my spirits and there’d been plenty of weeping and wailing and throwing of cutlery the night before.
