Фиона Гибсон – The Mum Who’d Had Enough: A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for fans of Why Mummy Drinks (страница 2)
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
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
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
Did that mean she wanted to see a therapist because of
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.
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.
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: