That Will Do Nicely

• Tom Pascoe is the central character in the novel. He’s about 40 something… past the first flush of youth and he has just finished his marriage to his unlovely wife Theresa.

To say that their marriage had been less than perfect would be an understatement.

She was all want, want, want and she readily spent any money that they acquired, on various frivolities.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t as good at making the money as she had been at spending it. Their life, to that point, would have been considered my many as idyllic.

They lived in a period cottage in the tiny village of Patrixbourne, which lies to the east of Canterbury in the county of Kent.

Pascoe, who had spent his earlier life as a photographer, had given it all up in favor of working for his father-in-law’s business as a jumped-up clerk in an import-export office in Dover. It wasn’t his line of work at all, but it had paid the bills.

• A few months before, Theresa had pushed to have a party at the cottage so that she could show off the place to her friends.

Pascoe had gone along with it,because he didn’t want another battle which he would probably have lost. Not that he was weak; he just preferred a quiet life; and then all hell had broken loose when he had discovered his wife ‘inflagrante delicto’ with one of his colleagues from work. Their marriage was OVER!!!

Pascoe’s reaction had been to throw the pair of them unceremoniously out into the street in front of all their so-called friends. It had been extremely embarrassing but he had finally done something of which he was proud.

His wife took her time to take her revenge.

• Revenge doesn’t usually arrive by the mail… not a bomb or anything like it.

More of a bomb-shell. Theresa had taken advantage of her name which began with the letter ‘T’, just like Tom’s and had acquired a credit card in the name of T. Pascoe and had run up more than £18,000 worth of debt which in the mid 1980’s was quite a lot of money.

• Certainly more than he had and more than he had ever seen in one place at the same time. He was well and truly screwed. He took legal advice which was to pay up or file for bankruptcy which would not only ruin him but prevent him from any meaningful recovery for a number of years.

There had to be another way out of his predicament and this is where serendipity took his hand…..