S H A R O N
O W E N S
THE SUMMERHOUSE
A short story by Sharon Owens
Julia had always loved her summerhouse. Painted pale green inside and dark green
outside, it had a pointed grey slate roof and two dainty window boxes. In a world
full of clutter and noise the summerhouse was the one place she could retreat to
with a cup of tea and her thoughts. She would do a quick check for spiders and then
settle herself on the comfortably upholstered wicker sofa. Lying back on the floral
cushions she could stare up through the glinting windows at the changing sky. Julia
loved watching the shadows of drifting clouds and swooping birds flickering across
the wooden-
It was a fanciful thing to say but Julia felt as if the summerhouse was her friend. “Julia has nothing to do with herself all day,” her friends said to each other. “A right lady of leisure sitting there in her summerhouse like Virginia Woolf!” Julia was all too aware of what they said about her but she didn’t mind. She had a secret and some secrets were too important to share.
Julia was an agony aunt for several top newspapers and magazines. Her pen name was
simply “June”. The gig had come about by accident after she’d sent in a few letters
of advice to the problem page of a national paper. She didn’t like to tell anyone
about her “career” because she was very shy and self-
Most days she would wait until her husband Derek and their four grown-
But one day she was jolted out of her tranquillity by a message which read: “Dear
June, I am having a breathless affair with a married man. He has four grown-
Julia suddenly realised that Derek had been rather quiet for the past six months. He’d been paying more attention to his appearance, wearing expensive aftershave and refusing dessert. He’d been away twice, supposedly at a conference. And their love life had tailed off considerably. Julia wondered if her husband was the one who’d been leaving Margot from north London breathless.
The sun came out and Julia made tea and went as usual to her nest of floral cushions
in the summerhouse. She could confront him and demand to know what was going on,
she thought crossly. She could tell him about her alter ego and the tell-
In the end she decided to send her advice to Margot via the problem page and hope for the best. “Dear Margot, I sympathise with your plight. It must be so hard for you, to pine for this man, not knowing if he will ever leave the security of his family. If your affair has been going on for longer than six months without him broaching the subject of the two of you setting up home together, experience tells me he is unlikely to do so. I would ask him for time to consider your options, say six weeks, during which you should break off all communication with each other. After that, if your feelings remain undimmed, invite him to share his life with you fully. He may decide to stay where he is, and if this is the case, you should close this chapter of your life and look to new and better horizons. Take care of yourself, June.”
The days passed very slowly. Derek seemed preoccupied and irritable, constantly checking his mobile phone for messages. He was often unable to sleep, pacing the house at night and making himself cups of cocoa which he would sip in the conservatory. Julia would cuddle up to him when he came back to bed, telling him she loved him dearly and what a lovely husband he was. She spent less time on housework and more time buying pretty lingerie and being intense in the bedroom.
“What’s going on?” he said one evening, when Julia had filled the conservatory with
tea-
“I love you. That’s all,” she said, smiling gently.
Eventually, as she’d hoped he would, Derek got over his interlude with Margot and came back to her. They would sit in the summerhouse together on summer evenings, holding hands and kissing tenderly. He never told her about Margot, and after a while Julia gave up being “June”.
Life was just too precious to waste it worrying about other people’s problems.
THE END