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

by Janet Hoggarth

  ‘I’m Chris,’ he said, just as my drink went down my throat the wrong way.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked as he patted my back to prevent asphyxiation.

  I nodded. ‘I have three kids,’ I choked out, my motives unclear at this point.

  ‘Oh. OK. Can I get your number?’ It threw me. The kids were supposed to be a deflection.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So we could meet up again? Go for a drink?’

  ‘I only do dinner.’ Which wasn’t true, but tonight I wasn’t in the mood for making anything easy.

  ‘Well, we could go to dinner. Where’s good round here?’ I mentioned the expensive French place to be facetious.

  ‘OK, we can go there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, I was kidding.’

  ‘So you’ll give me your number?’ I was impressed I wasn’t putting him off.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  I rattled it off. By now he was the only one left of his friends. Jacqui had disappeared ten minutes ago to meet Andy the fireman after his night shift, and Ali was waiting patiently with her coat on.

  ‘Can I get a kiss goodbye?’ he asked, and shot me a sly grin. He was very cute.

  ‘No. Sorry, you have to have a date to get one of those.’

  ‘Just on the cheek then?’

  I gave in and offered up my cheek and he swung round and kissed me gently on the lips.

  ‘I’ll call you!’ and he was up out of his seat and through the door before I could protest.

  33

  First Date Nerves

  ‘Glass of red?’ Sam looked at me from under his brows as we stood side by side at the bar. We were on a date. It was so skewed and familiar yet alien all at the same time, rather like existing in a parallel universe.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Get a seat, I’ll bring them over.’

  I wanted to laugh; the place was deserted apart from the crusty old gimmers at the bar, and a couple of builders in their plaster-covered work clothes. This place was a bit of a last bastion, ungentrified old man’s pub stalwartly clinging onto the squelchy red floral carpet and nicotine-stained beige walls, with a few chocolate-box framed paintings by Constable. It still sold pickled eggs, and not in an ironic hipster way.

  Just before Sam had left, Rob had offered to babysit as we attempted to inject some missing spontaneity back into the daily grind of three children under five. We rarely left the house, just the two of us. There would always be a crowd or a reason to go out: someone’s birthday or Christmas drinks. It would never be to reconnect and talk to each other, remind us why we got married and found each other irresistible all those years ago. So that week before Sam stung me with ‘I’ve lost the love’, when the grumbles of discontent were too loud to ignore any longer, I had begged him for a date. This pub was what he’d come up with. The writing was on the wall but I had been blind.

  ‘God, I’ve not been in here for years. Didn’t we come here once?’

  ‘Yes, I think it was where you were going to tell me you wanted to leave, but bottled it.’

  ‘Ha, funny.’ Not it wasn’t. The chasm between us widened further still. ‘How are the kids?’ Argh, small talk.

  ‘Well, Isla is dating a sixteen-year-old from the sinkhole estate. Meg is smoking crack most days, and Sonny’s started collecting knives. They’re the same.’

  ‘Are we not going to have a serious conversation?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t ask me questions about your own children when you’re going to see them tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you on your period?’

  ‘FYI you are banned from ever asking me that again.’

  ‘I was kidding!’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock. Now why don’t you just tell me what is so important you couldn’t tell me in the car outside the house like you normally do.’ I found I was drinking my wine much quicker than usual and my heart rate had picked up its pace in anticipation of whatever bombshell he was about to drop. My instinct was to prepare for the worst.

  ‘Well, you know we were going to get married in August?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, we’re not any more.’

  ‘Not getting married?’ For some reason this made me want to laugh like a drain.

  ‘We are getting married, but we’ve had to bring the date forward because of the TV show. The schedules have been rejigged and they want the wedding segments filmed and done before the summer.’

  ‘Can’t they just film it when it happens in August and splice it together?’

  ‘But they want it to go out over the summer. We’re filming the main body of it all now.’

  ‘OK, so when’s the new date?’

  ‘The last Saturday in May. It’s a bank holiday weekend.’

  ‘OK. Why does it involve me?’

  ‘Well, because we’ve had to move the date so far forward we’ve had to find a different venue.’ I had no idea where the first one was, and I didn’t want to know. Because I knew I would Google it and play Top Trumps against the beautiful wedding we’d held at his dad’s house in the country. ‘And the only place we could find was my dad’s house.’

  ‘What?’ I squawked. ‘You can’t; that’s where we got married. It’s the same!’ The gimmers and the builders swivelled their heads away from their pints and pickled eggs to stare at me. I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, but the disbelief that had thundered into my guts propelled me onto my back foot and I lost control.

  ‘It’s not the same. They’ve redone the barn and it’ll be in there.’

  ‘But you’ll be able to see where we had our first dance on the patio to the fake Gipsy Kings.’

  ‘You won’t. It’s not even close.’ A hairline crack appeared in his nonchalant façade, a faint glimmer of shame flickered behind his eyes.

  ‘I can’t believe it…’ I whispered. ‘Nothing is sacred.’

  ‘Look, I’m not apologising. I can’t help it, the schedule changed and it’s all last minute.’

  ‘There must have been somewhere else free. Anywhere but where we got married.’

  ‘There wasn’t.’

  I drained my wine, but my hand was shaking so badly I spilled some down my chin and it dripped onto my cream jumper.

  ‘Do you want another one?’

  ‘What, you mean there’s more? I thought the meeting was over.’

  ‘Have another drink. I do want to talk about the kids, too.’ While he was at the bar, the parallel universe split in two, exposing a memory I had until now deemed too painful to revisit. However, the scenario it was too futuristically reminiscent of was staring me in the face, tracing a familiar path fourteen years apart. Tomorrow I was going on a first date with a man whose face I could not recall, just like my first date with Sam. Since Chris had texted and arranged the date over a week ago, his likeness had faded fast like an unfixed silver photograph exposed to sunlight; only the essence of him remained. I knew he wasn’t unattractive and he was tall and dark, and I remembered the kiss he stole as he left the Adventure Bar.

  September 1997, and I’m walking ambivalently towards the now defunct Virgin Mega Store on Oxford Street, to meet the DJ who had nervously rung me, asking for a date after I had helped him select tunes at the thirtieth birthday party five days previously. As I reached my destination a man jumped out of a doorway and hugged me to his chest.

  ‘Oh, thank God you’re not a hosebeast!’ It was Sam, and I burst out laughing.

  ‘A hosebeast?’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose. They must have slipped when he launched himself.

  ‘Ugly. You’re far from it. Sorry, I was just panicking because I couldn’t remember what you looked like.’

  ‘Charming!’

  ‘Oh, that came out wrong. Sorry again. Shall we go and get a drink? Where do you want to go?’

  ‘I thought Riki Tik’s in Soho.’

  ‘Oh, wow, that’s where I was going to suggest too.’ I scrutinised his face, inspecting it to see if he was a
ttempting to create a fake persona to fit with mine and charm me into bed. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  What followed was possibly the most perfect first date anyone could ever experience. No wonder I was so traumatised when he left – nothing had ever lived up to all that potential. I think I was still waiting for an action replay all those years later. Or I could have just been looking back in anger, bitter that the dream had soured. After a drunken kiss in Waxy O’Connor’s, the cavernous Irish pub on Rupert Street, we decided it was still too early to go home, both desperate to devour more of each other. The only place still open was the Haagen Dazs’ ice-cream parlour in Leicester Square. We ate ridiculous sundaes, spooning them into each other’s mouths, giggling and pulling stupid faces. I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, living an entire life in one night, fighting against the inevitable rising sun, not wanting to break the spell.

  ‘Come home with me,’ he whispered after the clock-watching waiter declared us in love. ‘Just to sleep.’

  I knew he was the one for me. I could feel it embedded in my skeleton, within my DNA, the knowledge solidifying in the morning on the bus to work as he tightly gripped my hand, while I wore his Nigel Hall baggy grey jumper to shield me from the walk of shame into the office. I had inhaled the faint traces of his Acqua di Giò cologne for the rest of the day, my work colleagues laughing at my lovesick demeanour. His parting words on Tottenham Court Road had been: ‘Isn’t it amazing we found each other?’ I would love for eternity that beautiful boy who fed me ice cream and held me all night without the promise of sex.

  Tears stung my eyes and I hurriedly blinked them away. Sam slid a large glass of red before me.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked, fear skimming across his face, obviously terrified I was about to unleash some kind of hysterical diatribe.

  ‘Fine. The kids?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, I was wondering if on the day of the wedding, you could have them for the evening.’

  I shook my head, more in bewilderment of where I found myself. If I could tell that younger me on that magical date what was yet to unfold, that years later this darling man would ask me to have our three children on his wedding night so he could enjoy screwing his new wife unhindered by responsibility, would I have done anything differently?

  ‘Is that a no?’

  ‘It is, yes. A step too far. I will be busy the weekend you get married. I will be going out.’

  ‘Oh. I could get someone to drop them off at yours.’

  ‘I said no.’

  *

  ‘Just go!’ Ali cried at me as I hovered on the threshold of the house, my feet already pinched in my fuck-me red stilettos. ‘You look gorgeous.’ I was wearing a high-waisted denim A-line skirt that laced up from halfway down my back and a see-through custard-yellow short-sleeved blouse with miniature Zebras printed on it. Ali had picked it out of the jumble sale piles of clothes I had hurriedly discarded on the floor in a tantrum.

  ‘I don’t even want to go,’ I complained, hoping she would let me off with an elaborate sick note.

  ‘Look, if you hate it, just leave. Chalk it up to experience.’

  Good luck.

  Jacqui texted as I tottered down the road, my shoes already beginning to rub.

  I am not shagging him! Dinner dates before that happens. I AM MY WORD.

  I was adamant about Being Impeccable With My Word.

  My phone rang.

  ‘So, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Shit. Mel, I feel nothing. Last night was so weird. Sam isn’t the man I married. I don’t love who he is now. It’s like he changed so gradually I never noticed. He feels dead to me and that opens up a whole new grieving process.’

  ‘Listen to me. I am saying this for your own good. Do not think about this right now. You are going on a date. You have no idea what this evening will be like, but don’t taint it before you even get there. Relax.’

  ‘Thanks. I needed that. I’m so caught up in feeling nothing for Sam that I don’t think I can feel anything for anyone ever again.’

  ‘You will. Enjoy your date. I’m going, so pull yourself together, woman!’

  I slipped my phone in my bag as the pub veered into sight. For the first time that evening my stomach fizzed with nerves. What did he look like? What if I just wanted to leave? This was only the second official first date I had ever been on in my life. How would it live up to the other one? I pushed open the swing door and walked to the front of the bar where he’d texted he’d be waiting. I couldn’t see him and anxiously swept my eyes from one side of the pub to the other, cringing when a mum from school waved at me from across the room.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He stepped from behind me. ‘Sorry, I was in the loo.’ He smiled at me and I sighed in relief. He wasn’t a hosebeast.

  34

  I Am Not My Word

  ‘There’s a mum from school here,’ I said covertly as he handed me a glass of red wine. I thought it might break the ice, introduce the children into the conversational arena in case he had forgotten I was a mum. He glanced indiscreetly round the pub. ‘Don’t stare! She’ll come over!’

  He looked so much younger than in the sliver of recollection I had dredged up and I wondered if he was thinking the exact opposite, and what was the requisite amount of time to stay in order to be polite. In spite of any misgivings, we fell into easy conversation covering all topics, even the prohibited ones outlined under Common Dating Law.

  ‘So how did you and your girlfriend break up?’ I pried when I had almost finished my wine, the alcohol rendering the first dating commandment obsolete. Thou Shalt Not Enquire About Past Break-Ups… Chris took it in his stride.

  ‘Well, we basically never had sex.’

  ‘Oh, right, how come?’ Had they been part of the Let’s Wait brigade, only copulating once a ring was firmly in place?

  ‘She was a prude and I think she didn’t like sex, at least, not with me.’ Commandment two and three broken. Thou Shalt Not Slag Off Your Ex. Thou Shalt Not Talk About Sex.

  He had been in a long-term relationship from very young and it had fizzled out but they had clung to the wreckage for a few more years of misery, neither wanting to admit defeat.

  ‘When she ended it, I was upset, but decided to change my life. I started running and lost four stone.’

  ‘You were fat?’ You could not tell at all. He was very trim and muscly.

  ‘Yes, Fat Chris existed. I keep an old railcard photo as a reminder in case I ever slip into bad habits. I’m not going back there.’

  ‘Wow, good for you. How long have you been single then?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘And when you were with Laura, you never wanted to get married?’

  ‘God, no way! That should have been a sign really. We never lived together in eight years.’

  ‘And do you think you want to get married now?’

  ‘Why, are you asking?’ The edges of his lips twitched imperceptibly as he tried to keep a straight face. He enjoyed watching me squirm.

  Strike four. Thou Shalt Not Discuss Marriage.

  ‘Er… no. I was just wondering. I was married. I’m divorced now.’

  ‘Would you get married again?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I think the children would like me to!’

  ‘How old are your children?’

  ‘Sonny’s three, Meg is six and Isla is seven. You don’t mind about someone having children?’ I just wanted to clarify that fact before I wasted any time liking him, assuming there would be a second date.

  ‘No. I’m not naïve enough to think people won’t have pasts.’

  ‘But I bet you didn’t set out to meet someone with a family in tow.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, a few months ago my best friend dared me to go on a dating website, so he set it all up. But the women they were matching me with weren’t for me so I jumped off pretty sharpish.’

  ‘What, older women with kids?’ I laughed.

  ‘Wel
l, I stated no kids in my search and I did have an age preference up to late thirties. But when you meet someone in real life and not on a screen it’s completely different. You’ve finished your drink. Do you want another one?’

  ‘I’ll get them.’ Standing at the bar I realised I really liked him. There was no fakery, no blustering bravado, just two people connecting with the ease of old friends. I couldn’t imagine us running out of things to say.

  ‘So, how old are you?’ I asked curiously, the age-gap red flag flapping.

  ‘Thirty-one. It’s rude to ask a lady her age!’

  ‘I’m forty.’ His eyebrows shot up while the rest of his face remained tactfully impassive.

  ‘Right. You don’t look it.’

  ‘What does a forty-year-old look like, then?’

  ‘I obviously knew you had three children, but assumed you’d had them quite young. I was expecting you to say you were a few years older than me, maybe.’

  ‘Does an age gap bother you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He looked me directly in the eye without even hesitating. If he was playing a game, it was a good one because I couldn’t tell. We talked about work – he was a computer programmer – about the waiting game with my book to find a publisher, about food, holidays, the children. And then he told me something that was a game changer.

  ‘I don’t live in London full time. I live with Mark only a few days a week. The rest of the time I live in Birmingham. I’m going to move down permanently at some point, though. The night I met you was my first proper weekend in London.’

  ‘Oh, how come you do that?’

  ‘I moved back to live at home two years ago. Work were very good and set up working from home for me as long as I commuted in three days a week. But some weeks I could work from home the entire week. My dad became very ill with early-onset Alzheimer’s and it got so bad Mum couldn’t cope on her own. I’m the youngest, unmarried and single, so it seemed obvious that I should move in and help out.’