Jane Wenham-Jones - Mum in the Middle - Feel good, funny and unforgettable

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse an imprint of

HarperColl‌insPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Jane Wenham-Jones 2018

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Jane Wenham-Jones asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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,

downloaded, 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: 9780008278670

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008278663

Version: 2018-08-10

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperColl‌insPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017 Copyright © Jane Wenham-Jones 2018 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018 Jane Wenham-Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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: 9780008278670 Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008278663 Version: 2018-08-10

Dedication For Karen with love – I wish you were here to read it.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Family Gatherings and How to Survive Them – Jane’s Top Tips

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

For Karen with love – I wish you were here to read it.

To a Wonderful Mother on Mother’s Day.

Mum, I want to tell you

On this your special Day

How much I do appreciate

You in every way

I may not always show it

I may forget to phone

But today I just want you to know …

Ahh. They may fleece you, your kids. They may fill your spare bedroom – the one you need to turn into an office – with their junk and unstrung guitars. And empty a fridge in one sitting and spill cider on the new rug. But when push comes to Mothering Sunday shove they come up trumps. A small sentimental lump rose in my throat as I turned over the card from my darling youngest son:

… I need another loan!

Ho ho ho! Ben had scrawled, next to a large smiley.

Ha, Ha, Ha! You and me both, sonny .

I put the card on the kitchen dresser, with the one from Tilly and the florist’s greeting from Oliver, who’d sent an extravagant arrangement of creamy roses the previous day (no doubt arranged by his girlfriend, Sam, but gorgeous of him nonetheless) and surveyed the line-up.

My three lovely children – still costing me a bloody fortune but caring enough to remember what day it was. Even if they couldn’t be here. I allowed myself a small pang of self pity.

‘You time,’ Caroline, my best friend and one-time sister-in-law, had said at our last drink, before I’d got the train from London back to Northstone. ‘Time to get your life back.’ She had wagged a perfect ruby nail in my direction. ‘Kids gone, new house, new town, all sorts of fresh opportunities.’ By the back door was the final remaining black sack stuffed with detritus from Ben’s bedroom.

I missed him crashing and banging his way around the kitchen, leaving trails of sweatshirts and unwashed cups. And not simply because my boss had dropped a bombshell at Thursday’s meeting and put me in charge of the company Facebook page and I didn’t have a clue where to start.

Feeling a twinge of anxiety rising – Instagram had been mentioned too – I looked at the clock, grasped keys, handbag and Ben’s unwanted junk and went outside to peer into the bins. Not having yet got the hang of what was collected when, I’d left both wheelies on the pavement. The blue one was full of beer cans and last week’s newspapers. The black one was empty.

I dumped the sack inside it and began to pull the bin back up the drive of Ivy Cottage. A misnomer if ever there was one, since the only ivy in the entire place was wrapped around an old sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden of this decidedly non-cottagey, rather lumpen-looking semi, with an incongruous extension on the back. The estate agent had called it quirky.

‘Quaint,’ he’d added, waving his arm at the way the front door opened straight onto the square sitting room – a feature which still slightly took me by surprise if I came home post-rosé – and the steep stairs that ran up one side. The kitchen beyond needed updating. The whole place cried out for paint. But it had a garden and a pond and a walk-in larder. And after too many years of living in a house still half-owned by my ex-husband, it was all mine.

‘Living the dream,’ Caroline had called it. Away from the rat race in a gorgeous little town I’d always hankered after. ‘The next chapter,’ she’d declared, topping up our glasses with celebratory fizz and ticking off the excitements. The home to do up exactly as I wanted, the cool new friends waiting to be made, the space I’d now have in which to take stock and plan the rest of my life.