The Single Mums' Mansion: The bestselling feel-good, laugh out loud rom com

by Janet Hoggarth

  ‘Dad always used to change his aftershave with each different woman he had an affair with. That’s how I always guessed. It was excruciating. Remember?’

  ‘How could I forget double French? The only work we did was dissecting what was going on with your dad.’

  ‘I know,’ I sighed mournfully.

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions about what “it” is. He could be having his own midlife crisis about work, anything really. Three kids under five is really hard work.’

  Later on, I visited the downstairs loo where Mel kept all her Beardy Weirdy books. As I pulled the chain, I browsed the huge selection of spines and, looking back, I realise this was a pivotal moment in my life. I had flicked through this shelf many a time, picking up books but not borrowing anything. It had never occurred to me to read one of them, but a book was practically pulsating with some sort of answer to a question I had to yet to ask myself. The Journey.

  I grabbed it and devoured the blurb hungrily. The author had cured herself of some sort of cancerous growth by using various healing techniques that had amalgamated into the umbrella term she now called The Journey. But how did this relate to me?

  ‘You OK?’ Mel asked from outside. ‘Thought you may have fallen in.’

  I opened the door, brandishing the book. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, my stomach churning. The book felt hot, like some sort of magic talisman. Mel was holding Sonny, his head resting on her ample bosom, obviously a novelty compared to my bony chest.

  ‘Ahhh,’ was all she said.

  ‘Can I borrow it?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thanks, although I’m not sure it will help. She had cancer and, as far as I know, I don’t.’

  ‘It’s not really about that. Just read it and you’ll see.’

  *

  Later when I was back at home, after the kids were in bed and Sam was watching TV, I jammed my nose in the book. I couldn’t put it down. I never read books any more, which was senseless really because I was a writer and, in the past, could easily read two books a week. But my last published children’s book had been three years ago and I had no space left in my overcrowded head for following trends. Myriad unread books were dotted around the house, jammed onto shelves and in abandoned piles on my chest of drawers. I had let reading go like someone might subtly drop that friend that never calls you any more, wondering if they will ever notice. So it was, with great glee, I found myself able to read a book and not fall asleep.

  But the glee soon turned to despair because the very nature of the book meant you had to hold a mirror up to yourself, shining a searchlight directly into the black night of your soul and ask some torturous questions. The message in the book opened me up like an origami lotus flower. Be the best version of yourself by laying to rest all the ghosts of the past. Do not expect outcomes, just be with yourself and observe, and forgive, and let go of all the things that no longer serve you. If you do all of this, the present will fall into place and the universe will deliver what you need.

  Despite the initial despair, I began to feel alive for the first time in years, as if I had been given a life-saving blood transfusion. I had taken a step outside of my own skin and had turned observer on who I was and how I behaved. As soon as I did that, I could see all my faults laid out like neatly folded clothes. I was needy. I expected Sam to make me happy, and when he didn’t I blamed him. I lived in the future and in the past. I tried to control things and people so that I felt better about myself. Everything was always somebody else’s fault – period. I assumed what people were thinking about me, themselves, anything. I cared what other people thought about me. People’s lives affected my own. The list went on and on. There was some sort of perverse pleasure in looking at how imperfect I was. And that was another fault – not forgiving myself for anything. Jesus, this was going to be a hell of a lot of work. Each journey starts with a single footstep, the mawkish old saying goes, and mine had begun with a trip to the downstairs toilet in Bingham, where The Journey set me free. But it all felt a little too late.

  Soon after my fateful visit to Mel, Sam and I plunged further into a mire of unsaid grievances, until his no-show at Amy’s birthday, where he left me stranded without a credit card or cash, resulting in a blazing row the like of which we’d never experienced before. Subsequently the fateful sentence made its appearance. The one that had haunted my dreams since Isla had been born. ‘I’ve lost the love, Amanda.’ I threw up in the toilet next to Sonny’s room. The force of the grief was so strong that I wasn’t sure I was still alive after he’d spoken. It was frightening how the assembly of words in a sentence can inflict such pain.

  4

  The Truth Will Be Revealed

  I consulted the dog-eared print-out in my hand as I walked down cobbled Bermondsey Street, cool cafés bursting at the seams with Saturday afternoon tourists and locals making the most of the last-minute sunshine before winter arrived. Today everyone seemed to be exclusively living lives that only existed in trendy lifestyle magazines and Sunday supplements. I gazed at a couple with a baby on the opposite side of the road, the man lifting the baby out of the pram and sniffing his bottom as his tiny feet curled up, trying to retain the foetal position mid-air. I felt a stab of jealousy that they were a unit. Her name would be something like Nicola and he would be a Dan. They would have met in a bar five years ago, got married four years later and before the ink was dry on the wedding certificate, she was baking a bun in the oven. Everything was perfect, right now.

  ‘Just you wait,’ I muttered. ‘Just you wait until you have more kids and lose your way and Dan thinks he needs to find himself.’

  God, I wanted to punch myself. I could feel the heavy cloak of negativity swirling round my body so I bid farewell to Nicola and Dan, wishing them light and love, and spotted the half-hidden sign for the housing estate.

  The lack of control over my own future was excruciating. I tried to accept living in the moment: just be, sit in the pain, blah blah blah, but this week, I just wanted a silver bullet. My desperation at having my heart in someone else’s hands was compounded by the fact that Ali and Jim were giving it another go; he had apparently come to his senses. I was alone again on my path.

  The estate was quite charming, with trees lining a communal square and the autumn sun dusting the grey regulation paving stones with ochre light, softening the harsh concrete. I found the door number and knocked, apprehension playing out through the tips of my fingers as I tapped a soothing rhythm on the sides of my thighs. A tall balding man in his fifties answered the door. He was wearing a white linen granddad-collar shirt and jeans. Red prayer beads hung round his neck and he had a silver stud in his right ear. He looked the part.

  ‘Ah, Amanda, welcome.’

  I caught a waft of the obligatory patchouli oil and followed him into his small living room decorated with Indian statues of varying sizes and of differing gods, brightly woven rugs and a couple of those wall hangings with diminutive circular mirrors stitched into them. I sat at the table, which was covered in a purple silk cloth, and he turned to the business in hand.

  ‘Let’s do a Celtic Cross with the Tarot.’ He offered me the colourful pack to choose my fate. Come on, I coaxed them, show me what you know…

  ‘Have you got a particular concern, or do you just want a general reading?’

  ‘Relationships and work, I suppose.’

  He carefully lay the well-thumbed cards face down and started turning them over.

  ‘There’s been a split, and it has left you feeling terrible. I see you walking round this huge house sitting in the rooms and asking what went wrong, holding a baby’s clothes and crying.’

  My blood froze. He was talking about the very first time Sam had taken the children overnight, giving me some respite after weeks of no sleep and constant solitary childcare. I had met Amy in London to go to the cinema and have dinner, and it had all seemed a bit of a novelty, some freedom. But as the day edged towards night and I had to catch the bus
back with all the drunks and usual Saturday evening crowd, the sparkle faded fast. All I kept thinking was my babies weren’t at home waiting for me and I managed to cry silently on the 176, trying to halt the sobs that were fighting to emerge. I stumbled off the bus and as soon as my foot hit the pavement, a volcano of grief erupted from my mouth. Heaving sobs so violent I had to bend over. I somehow managed to totter down the road to the house and once inside fell on the floor in the hall. I lay there for ages, just howling like a wounded animal. How was I ever going to get used to this? I crawled up the stairs and shuffled to Isla’s room where I sat on her sofa, drinking in the pink aura, the cuddlies, the Disney cushions, her cosy bed. I tortured myself and peeked in Meg’s room too, her yellow walls plastered in stickers above her bed, her gorilla tucked in under her daisy-covered duvet.

  In Sonny’s room, I curled up in the rocking chair where I used to breastfeed him. His babygrow hung disconsolately over the side of his cot, unleashing a new wave of sobbing. I had always taken it for granted that I was able to tiptoe into their rooms and freely kiss their sleeping faces. The pain threatened to overwhelm me and I knew sleep would be evasive, so I placed Sonny’s babygrow on my face and inhaled his smell and tried to ride it out. I woke an hour later with it still there, freezing cold but much calmer.

  ‘Does this ring true?’ the Tarot reader asked gently.

  I nodded.

  ‘I want you to stop that wondering, stop tormenting yourself, stop blaming yourself. It is done. You did not cause it. He has chosen a path and is going down it. I can’t see if there is anyone else with him on this path… yet.’

  I didn’t like the way he said ‘yet’, but then I didn’t like the way my gut constantly grumbled at me, gurgling: Listen to me for a change!

  ‘You’ve gone through a massive period of personal growth also. You were just on that path when the split happened. You haven’t wavered. You’re facing in the right direction. Keep reading and visiting people, take it all in. All of it will help you become a new you. You have one friend, a Sagittarius, who is on this healing path too. She gave you a book that changed your head…’

  Gosh, he was good. I wondered if he could tell what I’d had for breakfast.

  ‘Work’s been slow,’ he continued. ‘But things will pick up. You write?’ I nodded astounded. ‘Everything with your writing will suddenly kick off in about two years from now. It’s going to be a bumpy path. This book you’re writing at the moment is just the start.’

  I had only just handed in the synopsis to my agent last week, after the entire plot spontaneously downloaded into my head while I was on the school run. I had never experienced that kind of artistic ambush before in all my years of writing, and had to feverishly scribble it down the minute I returned to the house.

  ‘I expect you want to know about romantic ventures in the future?’

  I shrugged. What I wanted him to say was Sam would return.

  ‘This card here indicates a man, younger than yourself. He’s not ready to meet you yet; he’s on his own journey right now…’ He stopped like he was listening to someone speaking. A handsome young prince stared back at me from the card. ‘Do you know anyone called Chris?’ he asked me suddenly. I shook my head.

  ‘My guides are insisting on this name Chris. Very adamant, they are. He’s going to be very important to you. It could be the young man.’ I racked my brains to try and uncover anyone with that name. ‘Anyway, look out for him. There will be a man before him. But you will know he’s not him. There’s energy for a marriage, too.’ I rolled my eyes. I NEVER wanted to get married again. I was technically still married. The thought of not being so was something I purposely ignored. I touched the underneath of my ring finger with my thumb and the gap still felt weighed down with the two rings that used to sit there snugly until recently.

  ‘And accept an invitation to tea. You will meet a new friend, someone familiar from the past. They will become important to you.’

  The next day thoughts of Chris, the handsome young prince, evaporated as I sorted school and nursery bags ready for the children’s return.

  ‘Mummy!’ Meg cried. She was always pleased to see me when she came home, but would then clam up for the rest of the time until she let rip with one of her ineluctable tantrums. She was a funny one. I gave her a hug, kissing the top of her head. Sam was lugging the kids’ blue suitcase. He looked slightly different each time I saw him, like now he had escaped he was shedding skins like a snake and trying on new looks. He was wearing a quilted Barbour old-man-style jacket and navy deck shoes with bright red socks.

  ‘I thought you might want this back,’ he said, not meeting my eyes. ‘Sorry, I forgot to return it after the summer.’ He stood on the front step and hugged all the kids. Sonny clung to his leg and I wanted to scream: See, he needs you!

  Later on, I set about returning the case to its home on the top shelf of my wardrobe. I failed on the first attempt, toppling backwards as it fell on my head.

  ‘Shit it!’ I yelled, and made a more violent second attempt, ramming it on the shelf and slamming the door against it, hoping it would stay put. That’s when I noticed it. The boarding pass, conspicuously white against the dark wood floor. It must have fallen out of the suitcase when it crashed on my head. I picked it up and read the name on there, sinking to my knees as I did so.

  ‘Mummy, mummy, why are you shouting?’ Isla had crept out of her room, her pale face luminous with apprehension.

  ‘I’m not.’ My heart fluttered in the base of my throat like a bird trapped in a chimney.

  ‘You were. You said a rude word.’ I had developed Tourette’s since Sam had left. I loved swearing anyway, the complete satisfaction of launching the forbidden words out into the ether. I do think that instead of Primal Scream therapy, there should be swearing therapy, where you deliver every single swear word you know (perhaps they could teach you some new ones, too) to a therapist in whatever way you like (mine would be shouting like a tazered crack addict) and then afterwards have a cup of mint tea and a digestive. I bet most people would feel a whole lot better after that. Fuckcuntbollockswankshitstabbingfucksticksdickswipefuckface. And… breathe. I said all that in my head rather than to Isla.

  ‘Just go back to bed, darling,’ I spoke quietly, my escaped lunatic voice desperate to make a scene. ‘I just hurt myself on the suitcase.’ I glanced at the boarding pass once more.

  5

  Deferred Responsibility

  Carrie Stone – that fucking TV chef he had been filming! Bile belched up my throat like paint stripper. I tried to swallow but my tongue dwarfed my mouth and began sprouting claggy sick-flavoured fur. Sam had talked enthusiastically about her in the past when they’d worked together years ago. I stared at the date on the boarding pass – it was the middle of August after he had left, when he said he had gone to visit his mum in Spain, alone. The boarding pass said Palermo. Wasn’t that Italy? Wasn’t that where we were supposed to go on honeymoon but didn’t? I wanted to shred the tell-tale slip of paper, but it was evidence that I wasn’t insane, paranoid or a needy ex-wife.

  I know about Carrie. She left her boarding pass in the kids’ suitcase. You’re a cheating snake.

  The phone erupted into life in my hand, the ring tone too loud for my ears.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘What are you doing sending a text like that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I exploded. Typical Sam, turn it back on me.

  ‘How about not jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘Oh, I see, that’s how we’re going to play it, are we? It’s me being paranoid again. Me being the nutty ex-wife. All in my imagination. WHATEVER!’

  ‘No. Carrie and I are very… new. Look, I’m not doing this over the phone. I’m coming round.’

  ‘I don’t want you to.’

  ‘This needs to happen. See you in a bit.’ Carrie and I are very new. I ran to the toilet and retched, dry-heaving into the bowl. A silent film of him tenderly stroking her face after sex proje
cted across the back of my eyelids as I heaved again. I didn’t know what she looked like, so I imagined Nigella crossed with Angelina Jolie, all sponge cakes and sordid sex. I slid down onto the red rubber floor and lay my cheek flat, the rest of my body collapsing after.

  ‘When will the pain end?’ I whispered. I just lay there, my legs curled up in a foetal position for ages until I heard a soft rap on the front door. Let him wait. He knocked again, this time a bit louder.

  ‘Amanda, I know you’re in there. It’s me,’ Sam called through the letter box. I peeled my face off the floor and stood up.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked sheepishly. His earlier bravado had deserted him and instead he appeared shifty. I opened the door wide and turned my back so he had to follow me to the kitchen. They say all the best parties happen in kitchens, but I also think all the worst conversations unfold there, too. I leaned my back against the cooker, and he sat on one of the Habitat chairs and looked at the ground.

  ‘So, you weren’t shagging her before?’ I asked, not that it mattered. He was now.

  ‘No! She was sort of engaged, then she broke it off with him and, you know, we kind of helped each other with this,’ and he waved his hands around the room like you could grab divorce with your fingertips and propel it away.

  ‘And the boarding pass?’

  ‘I don’t know. It may have been in one of her bags and fell in there when I got it out to bring back here.’

  ‘So, is this serious?’ I asked, twisting the knife into my innards, wincing as I did so.

  ‘Well, who knows?’

  ‘Well, you do.’

  ‘We’ll see. It’s new.’ He looked properly at me then and I defiantly held his gaze until he had to turn away. ‘I really am sorry, Amanda. I was going to tell you, but I didn’t even know if it was anything worth telling.’

  ‘I asked so many times and each time you treated me like I was a nutter.’