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

by Janet Hoggarth

  ‘Because there wasn’t anything happening when you asked.’

  ‘Can you leave now? I need to lie down.’

  He stood up and I could feel the tears starting in the base of my throat. At the door he turned, the streetlight highlighting his curly lashes and dark eyes. He saved all the soft gazes and twinkling for her now. I got the hard stares and eye rolls.

  ‘Amanda, I know this is difficult, and I am so sorry. I really am.’

  ‘You have no idea how difficult. Bye.’ And I slammed the door in his face. Do not cry, do not cry, do not cry.

  *

  ‘So it went well?’ Mel asked as I recounted it down the phone. ‘At least you know.’

  ‘But something doesn’t feel right,’ I voiced my nagging doubt. He was away at the same time Carrie was in Italy. Chance or cover-up? Did it matter? He wasn’t with me. But the scab was itching and I wanted to pick it off.

  ‘Shall I ask the crystal?’

  ‘It has a fifty per cent chance of being right, Mel.’

  ‘Well, it might help you think clearly. Beardy Weirdy to the rescue.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I sighed resignedly. ‘But we’re being ridiculous. Look at what I’ve become, putting my faith in a spinning crystal on a chain. How can a crystal know anything?’

  ‘It doesn’t, it just forces you to look at stuff and face it. It’s up to you whether you believe or not.’

  ‘Do you believe?’

  ‘I do when it gives me the answer I want!’

  I laughed hollowly. ‘Me, too!’

  ‘So I’m asking if Carrie went on holiday with him?’ If the crystal spun round and round it was a yes. Side to side was no. Obviously it was super scientifically accurate.

  ‘Yes.’ I could hear Mel’s breathing down the phone.

  ‘The crystal says yes.’

  ‘I fucking knew it.’

  ‘Shall I ask if they have been together before you broke up?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Er, it seems they have.’

  ‘He’s a liar.’

  ‘Well, it is a crystal, not a person telling us this, but there is someone who could tell you, if you wanted to go down that road.’

  ‘Who?’

  Ten minutes later I was skimming through the address book trying to find his mum’s number. There were several crossed-out entries for her, all written neatly in Sam’s swirling feminine script. Angela was an old hippie who lived in a refurbished Spanish farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with ten dogs, five cats and wild pigs roaming the scrubland. She also incongruously looked like she had stepped out of the pages of seventies Vogue, spritzed with that air of money and style that some people just manage to channel regardless of whether they are born in Chelsea or Romford.

  ‘Angela, it’s Amanda,’ I breezed, trying to sound confident but all I could hear was a treacherous wobble in my voice.

  ‘Amanda, dear, how are you? I was just thinking about you and wondering how you were doing. How are the children? Are they OK?’

  ‘Yes, they’re fine.’ And I rattled off a few activities they had been up to and our plans of visiting my dad for Christmas. If I had my way, Christmas would be cancelled for the entire world.

  ‘It sounds like you’re all sorted then and coping well…’ And the unsolicited question of what do you want? hung implicitly on the long-distance phone line between London and Valencia.

  I took a deep breath, my heart flailing around in my rib-cage once more.

  ‘I just wanted to ask you something. When did Sam stay with you in the summer?’

  I was so sure I heard a sharp intake of breath. And then silence.

  ‘Angela? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, dear. Oh, Amanda. I knew this would happen.’

  ‘Knew what would happen?’

  ‘That you would ask me this.’ It was my turn to remain silent. I could picture her battling with some sort of moral dilemma at the other end. ‘I told him at the time it would all end in tears, that he should tell you. His dad said the same. We all did.’

  ‘He’s told me about Carrie, the girl from work, that they’ve just started dating, but I don’t believe him. I think this has been going on for months and that they went away together to Italy and he asked you to lie for him. I think it was going on before he left.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. All of it,’ and then she started to cry.

  I slammed the phone down, rage coursing through my veins like a class-A drug, my entire body shaking. His whole family already knew…

  ‘Argh!’ I screamed unexpectedly, and I grabbed the first thing I could, which happened to be one of the kid’s little wooden chairs lovingly bought from John Lewis when Isla was two. I propelled it across the kitchen like I was the Hulk, smashing it into the door. The anger consumed me and, in my bid to trash something else, I stubbed my toe on the sly brick truck, but it didn’t even hurt. The toy pushchair was the next casualty, crashing against the sturdy metal dresser that housed my Technics record decks. The crunch it made was as satisfying as bursting a pulsating pimple. I wanted to smash something else. I eyed my nana’s beloved Ainsley bone china, daintily arranged on top of the other, corresponding dresser. Don’t break me, it seemed to squeak in a Disney voice. I threw open the mug cupboard above the kettle and started slinging mugs at the floor. Sam’s favourite orange one, which in his hurry to leave he had forgotten, splintered from the force of my thrust. I gathered up all the cushions from the Habitat chairs, pitched them on the floor and began stamping on them, fantasising they were Sam’s head. The kitchen door abruptly creaked open, breaking the spell. I stood there out of breath, trembling amid the carnage of my unbridled fury.

  ‘Mummy,’ Isla wavered, hovering behind the door. ‘What are you doing?’ She sounded terrified.

  I had no answer for her. She stared wide-eyed at the mess, taking in the violence committed while she slept.

  ‘It’s OK, Baba,’ I cooed, using her baby nickname. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it was robbers. I was scared. Meg made me come down. She’s crying upstairs.’ I felt my anger crash round my ankles, leaving me depleted. Poor Isla, being the brave one again, coming down to check if we were being burgled. I wanted to howl.

  ‘I’m sorry, Baba. I just went a bit nuts. I’m not great today. Remember me telling you Mummy has good and bad days? Well, this is one of those bad days.’

  ‘You’ve had a tantrum,’ she observed sagely.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘You’ll have to clear it all up.’

  ‘I promise I will.’

  I took her back to bed and then sat with Meg.

  ‘Mummy, why did you get so cross?’

  ‘Because I have a broken heart, darling. I need to fix it, and I can’t yet, so I get upset.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’ However, in my tenuous state of mind it didn’t feel like a promise I could keep.

  I woke the next day to find Meg standing next to the bed. She thrust a torn-off piece of paper at me. It was a tiny red felt-tip-lined heart, the inside deftly coloured with pink crayon.

  ‘It’s your new heart,’ Meg said seriously.

  I lay back clutching it to my chest.

  6

  Saved by a Superpower

  ‘Are you sure you should watch it?’ Mel asked me. ‘Not on your own, anyway. I can come up in the car?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I need to see what she’s like.’

  ‘But you might smash the kitchen up again.’

  ‘I won’t. My mum comes tomorrow. The house needs to be tidy.’

  I wish Google didn’t exist. Then I wouldn’t know what Carrie looked like. Her name had spewed forth a list of articles, pictures and headlines snaking down my laptop screen. The most recent one was today in the Guardian. A review of her sparkly new TV series debuting on Channel Four this evening. It received four stars from the deluded journalist who rated her ‘full of pizzazz and a new star in the culinary panthe
on’.

  Shall I pop in and watch it with you?

  Ali texted as well. But I wanted to be on my own.

  ‘Fuck you, Pizzazz,’ I muttered as I bleakly waited for the interminable adverts to finish at eight o’clock, peak viewing time. ‘She pizzazzed her way into Sam’s bed.’ Even though the heating was on and I was sitting on my hands, they refused to warm up.

  The credits began to roll with a fifties cartoon pastiche of a conveyor belt resembling The Generation Game except instead of cuddly toys and food mixers, there were shepherd’s pies, lasagnes, roast chicken and various cakes, and as they streamed past the cartoon lady with the red beehive hairstyle she waved a magic wand and they mutated into pimped-up versions of what they were before. Oh, how lovely. I wondered how she was going to pimp up Sam. Then it dawned on me – the new clothes, the shorter hair, how preppy he was gradually turning with each month he had been gone. Carrie, marking her territory.

  ‘Hello, my name is Carrie Stone and I’m going to show you how to turn every day favourite meals into real show stoppers with just a few twists and some imagination.’

  OMG!

  Ali texted immediately.

  She’s a fifties throwback. Look at that hair. High maintenance or what! And she’s got a massive arse.

  Yes, but she also had huge tits. Mine were shrivelled A cups, sucked dry by three babies. Hers were perky and young, two steamed buns to my wrinkled prunes.

  She must spend a fortune on hair dye.

  Mel texted.

  She’s not what I had in my head.

  She probably got it on expenses, I thought, inspecting the screen when her blemish-free face loomed in, filling the frame, her kohl-rimmed eyes playfully twinkling. It was that kind of auburn that could only exist in a box. No one was born with hair that striking. Her outfit was fifties starlet – black clinging dress with a plunging neckline revealing just enough alabaster cleavage to draw the eyes down. She had this way of winking at the camera and slightly manoeuvring her shoulders upwards when she said anything remotely coquettish, thus thrusting her tits at the camera. She was flirting with Sam while he filmed her and he was undoubtedly trying to conceal a huge stiffy.

  I think you’re prettier.

  Ali loyally texted.

  Colin said she’s ugly and bet she’s crap in bed. Also, that she probably has crabs, genital warts and the clap. Sorry for his crassness.

  Mel texted.

  Thought it might lighten the mood…

  ‘Now, the first dish I’m going to concentrate on today is roast dinner…’

  I switched the TV off; I couldn’t watch it any more.

  FYI I spoke to your mum yesterday. I know everything.

  I sent the text and turned off my phone.

  *

  ‘Welcome to Reiki One. I’m Natalie, your Reiki Master, and I will be taking you on your first journey within Reiki.’ Sitting cross-legged in her living room sipping my Women Blend herbal tea, the weekend after Carriegate: rake thin from not eating any solid food for four whole days, emotions rolling inside me like waves towards a beach, I pulled my jumper sleeves over my hands for extra warmth. It had been Mel who had encouraged me to try Reiki months ago. It couldn’t have fallen at a more fortuitous time. Two other women, one of whom was Natalie’s younger sister, were also in attendance.

  ‘Reiki is Universal Life Force Energy; anyone can channel it. Some people will not need to be attuned, like you are going to be today. You channel it from the universe and it comes out of your palms. You can’t use it to influence people; it is only for the greater good. So don’t attach any expectations to it. That is the simple explanation.’ She then relayed a history of Reiki and what we would be doing today.

  ‘Well, you know all about me, how about we go round the room and explain a bit about how you came to be here.’

  The other two women said their pieces about wanting to fulfil something in their lives, and then it was my turn. I wasn’t going to go into detail, I decided, I would just say I wanted to embrace a new direction.

  ‘My name is Amanda, and I found out three days ago my husband has been having an affair with a woman from work for the last seven months.’ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was like I had no control over my mouth. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.’ I promptly burst into tears. Natalie handed me a box of tissues.

  ‘I think you have to get it out,’ Natalie soothed me. ‘Tell us what happened.’

  The story crashed into Natalie’s calm and neutral living room in North London, bringing with it the wreckage of my marriage, my children’s broken hearts and the recent betrayal.

  ‘So, you had no idea he was with anyone?’ Francesca, the sister, asked. The other lady called Anna just held my hand.

  ‘Well, no, but yes. All along I didn’t want to know, and yet somehow I knew. I’ve always known.’

  ‘And what did he say when he finally talked to you this week?’ Natalie asked me in a concerned voice.

  Thursday’s events were freshly pressed in my memory, as yet unfuddled by time. I could still summon it word for word. We had sat in the dark car outside my house while Mum gave the children their tea. Sam looked dreadful and I was so, so glad. I wanted him just for that moment to know an acorn’s worth of the pain I had been enduring while he blissfully shagged and forged a new life with her. What I couldn’t comprehend was how angry he was.

  ‘Why did you have to ask my mum? Why did you have to drag her into this?’ he snapped.

  ‘I want to know why you lied to me, why you treated me like I was some sort of utter imbecile nagging old witch the few times I asked if you were with someone else. And then continued to lie when you got found out.’

  ‘I-I er—’

  ‘No, I haven’t finished! I want to know why you had an affair.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘We were over. You knew it, I knew it.’

  ‘I didn’t know it. I was scared you were with someone, and I was right, and I didn’t know why the feeling wouldn’t go away.’

  ‘Amanda, it had been dead in the water for ages.’ I shook my head. ‘It had.’

  ‘For you, maybe. Not for me. I was still here, even if I was a nag and a cow and all the things you said I was. I was still here, loving you, wanting to be in the marriage.’

  ‘Sorry. I just don’t feel that way. I loved you, you know I did. It’s just not there any more.’

  ‘No, you feel like that about her now, don’t you?’

  He turned away and shrugged.

  ‘Why did you lie? You’ve made it all so much worse.’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to hurt you even more.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. It’s not that! You didn’t care because you carried on being mean, saying awful stuff in marriage guidance. It’s something else. I’m sure your mum will tell me the real reason.’

  ‘All right! I couldn’t tell you because Carrie didn’t want to be implicated in any way just as her show was coming out. It wasn’t going to look good, whatever the circumstances, even though we were over.’ He managed to slip in that last justification as if it negated the act itself. I got out of the car. This man whom I had loved so fiercely, whom I would have followed to the ends of the earth, fell off his pedestal before my eyes and splintered on the ground, clay feet first.

  ‘Amanda, Amanda!’

  I spun round not caring what he had to say.

  ‘You have to believe me when I say that I didn’t want to hurt you. I really mean that. We had a good run, you and I. Eleven years isn’t bad.’ A good run? What was I, a fucking Broadway show?

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t believe anything from you ever again.’

  ‘You won’t blab, will you? To the press?’

  I laughed contemptuously. ‘Fuck you, Sam.’ I stomped into the house, shaking, my heart pounding in my ears, muffling his parting shot.

  ‘Oh, Amanda, that’s pretty awful,’ Natalie spoke quietly when I finished. ‘
He was probably so defensive because he knew he was in the wrong. But you know what, I think the timing of this is great for you. Don’t look at it negatively. Yes, it’s awful that your marriage has ended, but you have arrived here with all that knowledge behind you. You are being given the chance to become a Reiki person with a clean slate. You are open right now for change and positivity and you have been ignoring your inner self all this time – you knew he was having an affair; you chose to deny that truth. Now with it out on the table, you can work with your truth and higher self and really go to town. You have the chance to be a great healer. All the best healers have experienced some sort of trauma or massive life change.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes! Come on, let’s do a meditation, then get down to work.’

  Right then, I loved those three other women. I didn’t know them at all, but they held me together and something magical happened: I felt truly and honestly happy for the first time in years. The safety of that living room cocooned me from my past. I was finally living in that present moment, experiencing it with tingling nerve endings in its entirety, listening to everything Natalie said, following her meditation without a wandering mind, and when it came to the first initiation, I was overwhelmed. My beloved grandpa showed up.

  ‘Well done, Mands,’ he said in his gruff Liverpudlian accent as I sat on the floor, eyes closed, sensing the gentle movement of Natalie’s hands gesticulating behind me. ‘I’m proud of you.’ He was wearing his brown chequered flat cap, beige cords, his green woolly tank top and white shirt. The clothes I fondly remembered him in. The sceptical will scoff, he’s dead, how can he show up? Maybe the mind plays tricks, but my heart felt like it would burst from the authenticity because Grandpa would be the last person to reveal himself at a Reiki attunement – he regarded everything Beirdy Weirdy or religious with barely concealed contempt.

  We practised Reiki on each other, all of us astounded when it tingled on our palms, flowing out like an invisible superpower.