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The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva
Sarah May
The queen of the black-hearted soap opera is back!Welcome to the upwardly mobile Prendergast Road…On Prendergast Road, deep in Nappy Valley, among olive trees in terracotta, lower fuel emissions, Lithuanian prostitutes, teenage drug dealers, stalkers and soaring house prices, five desperate women wait…The progeny of the IVF generation is ready to start school and only one of them is destined to get a place in Nappy Valley's most oversubscribed cradle of learning. How far will these women go to get that place?Follow Kate Hunter into the depths of her impeccably honed life, as she struggles to maintain the façade of perfection. When exactly did life become a life class? Is happiness overrated? Is it just possible that beneath the flawless sheen of her friends' and neighbours' amazingly trouble-free lives, beneath the freshly-ironed shirts and home-grown veg, lie the same half-truths, the same uncertainties and the same desperation to keep up with the Joneses…?Sarah May is an intimate observer of society (AKA curtain-twitcher of the highest order) and her novel is an hilariously dark-hearted soap opera of our everyday lives. In a society that always strives to be more organic, less carbon-polluting, more virtuous than any other, 'The Rise and Fall of the Domestic Diva' is a breath of fresh air (imported from the mountains of Nepal and filtered organically for purity, of course. A snip at only £6.99.).
By the same author (#ulink_29ec2cb9-9282-5084-a206-b042c6348516)
The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia
Nudist Colony
Spanish City
The Internationals
The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva
SARAH MAY
This book is dedicated to all women who are either currently attempting - or who have in the past attempted - to raise children and pursue a career…at the same time. Whatever your bank balance… whatever your dress size…whatever the state of your mental health …you’re all DIVAS!
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uc58614c3-4802-52db-8aba-671d80d82e16)
Title Page (#ua6b80505-2b57-5c63-b262-df5eef1a8233)
Dedication (#ue593ce43-0ff0-58a6-9ddb-b234ab595991)
The PRC (#u21fe288a-08a7-5e9f-82fe-0cbf4780d2ab)
Prologue (#uf3f9f467-fe55-55b2-9f90-d5e6be463ae6)
April (#u781dfa4a-93bb-5ebf-8bb7-5c1253f153eb)
Chapter 1 (#u188ec5f9-8577-523a-a381-ad3d7cf3c88e)
Chapter 2 (#ud9853b13-383c-5f93-b848-9f8e88e0f1fc)
Chapter 3 (#u180ac932-91d1-5eb3-b1a4-9fd6712cce93)
Chapter 4 (#ubd3016c3-86a3-5009-9e04-61330ed30a52)
Chapter 5 (#ua6880e88-4cfa-5b07-960b-5fc3f3bfe2f3)
Chapter 6 (#u67ca148f-7ddf-553f-9297-a43b895df896)
Chapter 7 (#u79036393-05fc-514e-923f-efadaa6120be)
Chapter 8 (#uad2fcb9f-fcb5-5862-9d1c-362c213727c6)
Chapter 9 (#u98f9d0ee-2a55-5c7e-a013-6ce29059ffe7)
Chapter 10 (#u89821203-394e-5c5a-81a5-2e9d47c9de18)
Chapter 11 (#u9e2be5a8-72c1-549b-b6a0-ea9f26b63341)
Chapter 12 (#ua1d6cbba-7907-5acb-92e1-5827216f95fe)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
May (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
June (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#ua124d275-0831-5aa4-9549-936c25502286)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
- THE PRC - (#ulink_c8339d1e-6838-5046-a7a2-12529357f53b)
THE PRENDERGAST ROAD COMMITTEE
CONTACTS LIST
Prologue (#ulink_e9062306-a5d3-5ca1-8a39-9861bbf93f9d)
Deep in a valley in the heart of south London, Kate Hunter woke up suddenly among the kind of rumples only a nightmare’s sweat can give black sateen sheets. It was 4.52 a.m. She pulled the sheet up over her head, not wanting to see the early hours’ outline of their IKEA wardrobe, IKEA bed, or IKEA chest of drawers - in case she saw something else that wasn’t meant to be there; something that didn’t feature in the IKEA catalogue - excluding Robert.
The only thing she could remember about the nightmare - and it was a vivid memory - was the feeling of water beneath her. She’d been floating effortlessly until she became aware that the dress she was wearing was beginning to pull her down - was in fact weighted in some way. As soon as she became conscious of the dress, her legs fell down through the water and she started to drown.
She and Robert had argued the night before - or rather, she had argued and he had watched. This was the way they rowed these days. What had the row been about? She didn’t know any more - all she remembered was Robert sitting on the edge of the bed, looking sad and slowly undressing.
For a moment she thought it had started to rain, but it was just a dry April wind brushing through the branches of the rowan tree outside.
Peeling the still-damp sheet from her face, she watched orange streetlight and flat moonlight fall through the broken blinds and compete for space on the bedroom walls. Turning towards the unconscious hump of Robert’s back, she curled into his warmth, her fringe tickling his spine in a fragile apology as she let her nostrils fill with the scent of his skin - and drifted back to sleep.
On the brink of losing consciousness, she thought she heard a strange, sobbing scream. Her body jerked momentarily awake. One of the children? Robert’s mother - Margery - asleep on the sofa bed downstairs? Whoever it was, she wished… she wished…her right leg slipped out of the side of the bed until her toes were hovering just above the floorboards. So that it looked as though she’d been dancing.
At that moment, Robert Hunter woke up without meaning to, unsure whether it was the scream - which he’d heard in his sleep - or Kate’s hair and breath running up his spine that had done it. Rolling carefully onto his back and trying not to trap any of his wife’s hair under his shoulder blades, he listened. In his muddled, pre-dawn mind, he became convinced that Kate’s breath on his spine and the scream had conspired to wake him.
The scream unsettled him and, not entirely convinced he wasn’t still asleep, dreaming, he took himself off to the bathroom and had a perplexed, early morning wank in the shower.
Afterwards, he let his back slide down the tiles until he was crouching, hot water pounding on his bent head.
Today he was teaching Jerome.
On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, he taught Jerome - and today was a Thursday. He didn’t know when exactly it had happened, he was only aware that now he plotted his week mentally around when he did and when he didn’t teach Jerome.
There were children who got to you and then there were children who got inside you. Every teacher he knew - apart from himself, up until now - had one, and his was Jerome. When he shut his eyes he could see Jerome’s face more clearly than he could see his own son, Findlay’s, and what terrified him more than anything was that Jerome was changing him in a way nobody else had; not even Kate, not even his children… and he hated Jerome for that. He’d never been afraid of teaching before, but he was afraid now.
The dry April wind carried on making its way up Prendergast Road through the branches of winter-flowering cherries, silver birches, poplars and more rowans, past bay-fronted Victorian terraces whose drawn curtains were meant to conceal nothing more than healthy functioning families coping with life’s run-of-the-mill ups and downs. The wind knew better, but didn’t have anybody to tell.
As it brushed past No. 112 (which had featured on TV’s Grand Designs only a fortnight ago), Evie McRae - in the grip of exhaustion-induced insomnia after having scored more than a line of cocaine in her garden office - left the house with her five-month-old daughter, Ingrid, and headed for the 24-hour Sainsbury’s where she did the McRae weekly shop.
Ingrid was an abnormal baby.
She slept through the night - often for more than twelvehour stretches - leaving Evie with very little to talk to other women about. So she’d woken Ingrid up - partly because she hated spending time alone and partly in the hope that by 8.00 a.m. she would have the same shadows under her eyes as everybody else she knew - and was now pushing her, screaming, down empty aisles towards the one open checkout.
At No. 188, Ros Granger woke up in an empty bed. It was only 4.52 a.m. Martin was sleeping on the floor of his office at Curlew & Fokes where they were so stretched on the immigration case that most of the lawyers working on it were only getting a maximum of four hours’ sleep a night. After making sure the alarm was set for 6.30, she buried her face in the pillow that still smelt of him and waited to fall back to sleep. ‘I deserve to be happy,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I do deserve to be happy.’
At No. 236, Harriet Burgess woke up to eight-week-old Phoebe’s still newborn-sounding screams. She had been dreaming that Miles had grown breasts and was feeding their daughter. Probably because her sister had phoned last night to tell her she’d just found out that prehistoric Irish chieftains used to symbolically breastfeed their entire kingdom - men, women and children. What sort of person knew this kind of thing? What sort of person thought other people wanted to know this kind of thing? Hauling herself out of bed, she went through to Phoebe, the sensory-triggered security camera they’d had installed in the hallway training its lens on her as she plodded past.
