Sarah May - The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva

The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia

Nudist Colony

Spanish City

The Internationals

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!

Cover Page

Title Page The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva SARAH MAY

Dedication 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!

The PRC - THE PRC - THE PRENDERGAST ROAD COMMITTEE CONTACTS LIST Name Address Tel. Harriet Burgess 236 Prendergast Rd 020 8369 4435 Ros Granger 188 Prendergast Rd 020 8369 2311 Kate Hunter 22 Prendergast Rd 020 8369 7866 Evie McRae 112 Prendergast Rd 020 8369 4956 Jessica Palmer 283 Prendergast Rd 020 8369 4221

Prologue

April

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

May

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

June

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

THE PRENDERGAST ROAD COMMITTEE

CONTACTS LIST

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.