I'd like to thank Randi for her editorial help. Any mistakes that remain are mine. Anyone who knows Shrewsbury will recognise the locations. However, all characters are not based on anyone living or deceased. And you'll love the Coleham Pumping Station which is operated by a team of dedicated volunteers.
Penny Dreadful was not her real name, obviously. Her real name was Penelope Jones. She had been married to her husband, Roger Jones, for seven years. Her behaviour had, for several of those years, been pretty dreadful, even though Roger hadn't known that at the time.
They had had a good, loving marriage, but the problem was that although Penny (to use an old expression) scrubbed up well, she was, to use another equally old expression, no better than she should be.
She had cheerfully acknowledged to having been a bit of a slut whilst she had been a student at the John Moores University in Liverpool (a university named after a home shopping catalogue magnate, a bit like the Montgomery Ward building at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois), but as Roger had studied for his degree at The University of East Anglia in Norfolk, he had never heard of what debauched behaviour she had gotten up to from any mutual friends.
After they had both graduated and returned to their hometown of Birmingham, they had met, started dating, got married and moved to Shrewsbury, a market town and the county town of Shropshire, a county to the north of Birmingham. Shrewsbury was only 47 or so miles from Birmingham, and was a good town for a young married couple to settle in.
They both had good jobs, although under the lockdown Penny had found herself furloughed, whilst Roger was able to work from home.
Shrewsbury had a good nightlife, a theatre, art galleries, a couple of cinemas and not one but two Wetherspoon pubs (one was a fairly large hotel), a large number of other bars and pubs and a great deal of original medieval architecture. Besides which, Chester and Liverpool weren't all that far away, nor was Manchester and Birmingham was close enough. And there were two cinemas in Telford, which was between Shrewsbury and Birmingham.
However, the Coronavirus lockdown meant they were trapped in their three bedroom detached house that was just over the other side of the river, in Longden Coleham.
She had come to him, two weeks into the lockdown. It was just a little after breakfast. "Roger," she'd said to him. "I need to go shopping. They are only allowing one member of each family to go into a shop, and as you have a call this afternoon with your colleagues in California, I think it's best if I do the shopping.
"I need to visit Wilko, Morrison's and perhaps Sainbury's and Boots, too. Maybe even The Range. I expect to have to queue for at least 30 minutes to an hour at each shop, so I don't expect to be home early. In fact, I expect to be away for a total of up to four or five hours or so, but it depends how it goes, really, I suppose."
He kissed her goodbye and she looked at him, with a long, lingering look. He couldn't understand why. Not until later. She climbed into her Audi and drove off, heading into the town of Shrewsbury.
He wondered why she was looking so pensive? Was it the Coronavirus lockdown? Some experts had speculated that some people might suffer mental ill-health as a result of the isolation brought about by the virus shutdown, but surely not Penny? She'd be good, he reasoned. A nice gin and tonic with a couple of cubes of ice was their medicine of choice. He chuckled to himself as he closed the front door behind her.
He decided against checking on the news, as there was nothing but bullshit about the lockdown, plus the activities of some fools who were breaking the lockdown rules and who the press had dubbed as COVIDiots. He grinned, he quite liked that term for them.
Every day, he and Penny took a long walk; they'd go through Longden Coleham, passing the Cross Foxes, then over the English Bridge, then through town, go past the Boathouse, walk round with the River Severn to their left, pass the Crown pub and then back home. Along with every other restaurant or pub, all of those watering holes were closed due to the lockdown. He especially missed the beers at the Cross Foxes and the home cooked food at the Crown.
Sometimes they went the other way round, just to vary their walking route. They noticed that the usual British reticence had been, in the main, replaced with cheery greetings and admonitions to "stay safe" and calls of "God Bless!" Obviously, at a safe social distance. So, he had mused to Penny one evening, perhaps the pandemic was having a positive impact, at least on British society?
Penny had nodded absently as they had returned to their house in Belle Vue Road.
An hour after she left on her shopping trip, he walked up the stairs to clean his teeth in the ensuite bathroom that was off the main bedroom and he saw, propped up on the pillows, a large A4 sized white envelope that bore the large laser printed notice: "Please read me."
He walked over to the bed, opened the envelope, which wasn't sealed, took out the contents and began to read. What he began to read made him sit heavily on the side of the bed.
"My darling, dearest Roger. This is the hardest thing that I have ever had to do, writing this letter to you.
I am typing it on my computer and printing it out, because if I wrote it out in pen and ink I doubt that I could do it without sobbing my heart out and dripping tears on the pages and smearing the ink.
Although I still love you a very, very great deal, I am leaving you for another man, a man who, and this is no slight on you, I love more than I love you. And yes, clichéd though this might be, it is Phillip, your best friend from childhood, the man who was your best man at our wedding.
And despite what you might, wrongly, suppose, I still consider that you were my best man at our wedding.
Please do understand, Phil and I never intended for this to happen, it's just that we fell in love. He is the love of my life, my soul mate, my man of my destiny. The man of my fate.
I am so, so sorry to leave you in this abrupt and, I admit, utterly cowardly way. But I could not do it in person, to see your kind, lovely, loving face as I told you that I was leaving you for your best friend, I could not have done that to you.
And yes, Phil does still consider you to be his best friend, even though he and I both know that, at least in the short term, you will no longer consider him to be your best friend. Who am I trying to kid? You will possibly hate him forever. And probably me, too, for that matter.
