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The Mum Who’d Had Enough: A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for fans of Why Mummy Drinks
Fiona Gibson
The voice of modern women is back! Perfect for fans of Milly Johnson and Carole Matthews.‘More than funny, it’s true!’ ElleAfter sixteen years of marriage, Nate and Sinead Turner have a nice life. They like their jobs, they like their house and they love their son Flynn. Yes, it’s a very nice life.Or, at least Nate thinks so. Until, one morning, he wakes to find Sinead gone and a note lying on the kitchen table listing all the things he does wrong or doesn’t do at all.Nate needs to show Sinead he can be a better husband – fast. But as he works through Sinead’s list, his life changes in unexpected ways. And he starts to wonder whether he wants them to go back to normal after all. Could there be more to life than nice?
FIONA GIBSON
The Mum Who’d Had Enough
Copyright (#u58af7183-7e41-5591-ac3d-4787cad13e88)
Published by Avon, an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2018
Cover images © Shutterstock (http://Shutterstock.com)
Cover design © Emma Rogers 2018
Fiona Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008157043
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008157050
Version 2018-10-02
Dedication (#u58af7183-7e41-5591-ac3d-4787cad13e88)
To the wonderful carers at McClymont House
‘Your partner may not be the best person to teach you how to drive. It can be hard to take criticism from someone you love’
From How to be a Confident Driver by Dawn Campion, Motoring Books
Table of Contents
Cover (#u1b261ada-4493-57f6-894d-32fee60a64ff)
Title Page (#u299fbb16-29fa-5929-aa75-a89267caba97)
Copyright (#u5f4aeebb-9b39-57c1-a96c-b645054a6120)
Dedication (#u05ad96ba-b8cc-5be2-9b5e-a6b67e6e32f5)
Epigraph (#uf22b9421-c0fc-580e-a753-76a008ebce89)
Chapter One: Nate (#u0846e2e9-0461-5ca7-ae24-c5930fd44ed1)
Chapter Two (#udbaeea89-e736-58ba-89a9-fdfe201d383e)
Chapter Three: Sinead (#u9bffe944-f48a-5f32-a1b0-633a69aa48ae)
Chapter Four: Nate (#u5fba0bf3-d16b-503c-a06c-d8254ce87508)
Chapter Five (#u87f7bf93-bc4d-588a-aeaf-98a4b8fee9d0)
Chapter Six: Sinead (#ud0bcb0ef-58ed-5f11-83ae-52f60a84e727)
Chapter Seven: Nate (#ua95b7c2c-d247-5dd3-8446-4a43517ac30b)
Chapter Eight (#u828043b8-7688-5adf-b9c5-5c5108e2e9d7)
Chapter Nine (#u99174e63-1ffb-53c4-8573-e225c224a8e2)
Chapter Ten: Sinead (#u465d358d-01d7-5fa6-a413-d4e4533c96e6)
Chapter Eleven: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen: Tanzie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty: Tanzie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five: Tanzie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Tanzie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Sinead (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Flynn (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty: Nate (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u58af7183-7e41-5591-ac3d-4787cad13e88)
Nate (#u58af7183-7e41-5591-ac3d-4787cad13e88)
It’s Scout who wakes me by licking my face. Scout, the fox terrier we would only adopt as long as he wasn’t allowed on the furniture, and who is now luxuriating, sultan-like, on the king-sized bed.
‘Christ, boy, get off me …’ I flip over to joke with Sinead about waking up being snogged.
The joke will have to wait. Sinead isn’t lying beside me.
Strange; it’s unusual for me to not hear my wife getting up, and these days she’s been getting up all times of the night. She is easily disturbed by nocturnal noises – I really should have set those mousetraps last night – and has been suffering from, I don’t know … anxiety, I guess. Often, I wake up at some ungodly hour and she’s lying there with her eyes wide open, looking tense and afraid. Perhaps it’s hormonal? At forty-three, I think she’s a bit young for the menopause – not that I’m any kind of expert.
I just try to help. Really, I do. I gently suggested she might try herbal supplements – I’d heard Liv at work enthusing about the soothing properties of sage – but Sinead just snapped, ‘I appreciate your handy hints, Nate, but I’m fine, thank-you-very-much!’ Even so, it had been pretty shocking when she announced, a few weeks ago, that she was planning to see a therapist. All I could think of were Woody Allen films and everyone talking about their emotionally abusive mothers, and by all accounts Sinead’s childhood was extremely happy.
Did that mean she wanted to see a therapist because of me?
Having manoeuvred Scout to one side, I check the time on my phone: 6.43 a.m. I climb out of bed and pad quietly out of our bedroom and across the landing, past Flynn’s room.
No need to wake him yet. Our son’s school is on the other side of town and most days Sinead drives him there, even though he can manage the bus no problem and thinks it’s ludicrous that we want to ferry him anywhere at sixteen years old. Flynn has cerebral palsy. While most kids think nothing of it, you get the odd little arsehole who wants to start something, and there were a few bullying incidents on the bus when he was younger. Understandably, his mum still likes to deliver him safely to the door (or at least, around the corner from school, which is the closest he’ll allow). He comes home with his mate Max, who lives two streets away, so that’s fine.
Of course it’s fine. Flynn is virtually an adult. I need to stop thinking of him as our little boy.
More urgently right now, I have a strong desire to find out where my wife is. I check the bathroom – no Sinead – and head downstairs with Scout trotting along at my side.
In the living room, last weekend’s newspapers are still strewn messily across the coffee table. ‘Honey?’ I call out. ‘Where are you?’
No reply. I go through to the kitchen, expecting to find her there, sipping coffee and explaining that she just woke up stupidly early and couldn’t get back to sleep. But there’s only Bella, my mother’s sleek and regal collie, whom we are dog-sitting while Mum scales some Cumbrian mountains with her new bloke. Still dozing in her own basket, Bella wouldn’t dream of jumping onto anyone’s bed. Mum thinks it’s appalling that Scout is allowed onto ours. Judging by her reaction, you’d think we allowed him to sit on the table and lap at our soup.
‘Sinead?’ I call her more loudly this time, then place a hand on the kettle. It’s cold. Detective Nate Turner surmises that his wife has not yet made coffee. I fill it and, as I switch it on, I spot a sheet of lined A4 paper lying on the worktop.
It is entirely covered with my wife’s rather charming, elegant handwriting – albeit a little scrawlier than usual – and looks like some sort of list. A to-do list, I assume, giving it a cursory glance. Sinead is fanatical about writing things down; she reckons it’s the only way she can ‘keep on top of this family’.
I look at the list again, properly this time. At the top of the sheet, she’s written a heading and underlined it several times:
Everything That’s Wrong With You
I frown and stare at it. She can’t mean me. As far as I know, she sat up pretty late last night, probably working her way through that second bottle of Blossom Hill, judging by the empty sitting by the bin. It must be some kind of stream-of-consciousness thing, maybe triggered by yesterday’s session with Rachel, her therapist. Although Sinead is loath to tell me what goes on between them, I’d imagine Rachel gives her various mental exercises to do. She probably told Sinead to list all the things she thinks are wrong with herself.
I look down at Scout, who is staring up at me with unblinking brown eyes. ‘Is that what she pays all that money for?’ I ask him, at which he tilts his head. As far as I’m concerned, Sinead is pretty much all-round-brilliant just as she is. I have always believed this, from the night I first spotted her at the All Saints gig in Leeds (we often joke that we wish we could say it was Oasis or Blur) and she was dancing in her vest top and combats, long blonde hair swooshing around her finely boned face. My belief in her wondrousness has only increased over the years.
I look back at the list, suspecting now that I probably shouldn’t even read it, if it’s meant to be part of her therapy …
Unable to resist, I start to read:
You don’t listen to me.
You take me for granted.
You don’t consider my needs …
