The Single Mum's Wish List

by Charlene Allcott

  About the Book

  Meet Martha Ross.

  She dreams of being a singer, but she’s been working in a call centre for far too long. She’s separating from her husband, the father of her eighteen-month-old son. And she’s moving back home to her parents, toddler in tow.

  Life has thrown her a few lemons … but Martha intends to make a gin and tonic. It’s time to become the woman she’s always wanted to be. And at least her mum’s on hand to provide free childcare – along with ample motherly judgement, of course.

  But Martha’s attempts at reinvention – from writing a definitive, non-negotiable list of everything she’s looking for in a new man, to half-marathons, business plans and meditation retreats – tend to go awry in the most surprising of ways. And soon she comes to realize that in order to find lasting love, happiness and fulfilment, she needs to find herself first …

  Who said starting over was easy?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ‘What fabulous, confident writing! One of the freshest, funniest, most exciting new voices I’ve read for a long time.’ Jane Fallon

  ‘A warm and insightful debut with a clever, funny and totally relatable heroine.’ Sunday Express

  ‘Very funny and delightfully relatable – this was a real treat.’ Trisha Ashley

  ‘We’ve all been a “Martha Ross” at some point, so we loved this hilarious and moving novel about starting afresh.’ Take a Break

  ‘Fresh and funny and REAL … Martha really spoke to me. She will steal everyone’s heart!’ Veronica Henry

  ‘Beautifully written and emotionally intelligent. I rooted for Martha from the start.’ Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail

  To Graham, for believing in me before I believed in myself

  1

  I THINK IT’S appropriate to begin at the end. People say it’s best to start at the beginning but I’ve never been a believer. I’m loyal to endings; I skip to the final page of every book I read. The end is where the truth is, and the end starts when Jacqueline opens her door.

  I’ve never seen Jacqueline looking anything less than glamorous and even with sleep still clinging to her eyes and a silk robe replacing her starched, navy shift dress, she looks like an off-duty Marilyn Monroe. I feel inadequate in my workwear 101 outfit of black T-shirt, black trousers and flats.

  ‘Martha,’ she says carefully, ‘are you OK?’ Jacqueline says things like, ‘Are you OK?’ when what she really means is, ‘What the fuck are you doing at my house at eight thirty in the morning?’ That’s why I need her. Jacqueline is my therapist.

  She asks me in. ‘Asks’ is a strong word; she makes a gesture close to a shrug and steps to one side. I can’t afford the luxury of socially acceptable behaviour, so I go through. Jacqueline ushers me past her magnolia-coloured therapy room and into a light, open-plan kitchen. I know this is her way of saying ‘this is not official’ but I don’t mind because I’ve always wanted to see what goes on behind the velvet rope. I spend 40 per cent of every session with Jacqueline wondering who Jacqueline actually is – what she does at weekends; if she does Pilates; if she still has sex with her husband; if her husband is in fact a wife. I am not disappointed; the room looks like something from the pages of Homes & Gardens. I am transfixed by a huge, tartan-print three-seater. I have always fantasized about having a kitchen large enough to house a sofa. I take a few moments to imagine a sofa-kitchened life but then Alexander wanders into the fantasy with his bare feet and his ripped Diesel jeans, and I remember why I am there.

  ‘I need you to tell me to split up with Alexander,’ I say. Jacqueline shuts her eyes briefly and then gestures towards a high stool next to a granite-topped island. My mouth is dry but she doesn’t offer me a drink and it doesn’t seem appropriate to ask for one. Jacqueline doesn’t sit, which I think is her way of saying she’s only tolerating my visit, but why become a therapist if you don’t want to invite crazy into your life?

  ‘You said to contact you whenever I needed and I really need an answer today.’ I don’t know why today; today is no more significant than any other day: a Friday morning, mild with a threat of rain, no major events in the calendar. It is sinister in its mundaneness. Jacqueline makes a face that I have seen many times and previously taken to mean she is absorbing the significance of my words, but now I’m wondering if it means ‘you are very irritating’. Perhaps it’s the facial equivalent of one of those words that can mean two completely different things, like beat or tender or leaves. I’ve forgotten the name for those sorts of words. Alexander would know; perhaps that’s another reason I should stay with him.

  During the pause in which Jacqueline is thinking or praying or whatever she is doing, I try and predict what she will say. I am thinking: ‘Why do you believe this is an issue for you?’ Or maybe: ‘Would it help if I reflected back to you what I just heard?’ Or her favourite: ‘I’m more interested in why you’ve posed the question.’ She really loves that one; my money’s on that.

  She says, ‘Yes, you should.’ And I feel nauseous. I immediately understand that I came here because I thought she would not be allowed to give me the answer my heart already knew.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say as I stand. ‘Sorry, I have to go to work.’

  Jacqueline continues, ‘We’ve spent a great deal of time discussing your relationship and it is obviously very flawed. In addition, your demeanour today suggests you may need some time to focus on yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say again.

  ‘Also, before you go,’ says Jacqueline, and I take a deep breath. She clears her throat. ‘I can’t see you again. I think some boundaries have been crossed here. I can recommend someone very good … very firm.’ She turns and writes something on a handily placed book of notelets on the island and passes it to me. I have an urge to sniff it but I put it in my trouser pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say and leave. This is the end.

  Actually, this is not quite the end. The end is twelve minutes later when I’m on the bus rumbling along the Brighton seafront towards the concrete prison that serves as my place of work. I send Alexander a text terminating our six-year marriage. It reads, ‘WE ARE OVER.’ Less than thirty seconds later he replies, ‘O
K.’

  2

  WHY I STAND by endings – beginnings are bullshit. Let me tell you about the start of Alexander and me. We were best friends but we weren’t really best friends; I was the dumpy chick he tolerated hanging around. Everyone knew I was hopelessly in love with him but anyone with eyes could see I wasn’t his type – I’m slightly above average height and more than slightly above average weight; I’m mixed race without any of the exoticism it claims to offer. My face is fine but forgettable. The only thing that stands out about me is my uncontrollable hair and I have spent a lifetime experimenting with products that might stop that being the case. So, I sat on the sidelines and I watched Alexander go through a series of petite, striking blondes, my favourite part being when they broke up and he would take me to the Twisted Yarn for a debrief. I would sip my dark ale (which made me gag at the time but now I actually quite like) and I would get to tell him all the things I had been secretly storing for a week, a month, or on one occasion, an entire year. To be honest, I was happy with that. OK, I was on the outskirts of happy; I could certainly catch the scent of happy if the wind was blowing in the right direction. And then one of the blondes broke his heart.

  Her name was Jenna. She was impossibly and impractically posh. She was one of those chicks that’s done everything, but really how much can you experience in a rural, all-girls boarding school and then a small, top-tier university and then a cushy job, handed to you on a gold platter by your father? Still, when she spoke, Alexander listened. He was like a Labrador when he was with her. He looked at her the way I imagine I looked at him. Anyway, Jenna ended the relationship with very little explanation. I heard a rumour she had joined a bloke called Tristan on his boat in the Caribbean for the summer but I kept that nugget to myself. Jenna always seemed to have one eye on the lookout for something better, so the break-up came as no surprise to anyone but Alexander. I’m assuming he had been dumped before but on this occasion, it consumed him. I waited by the phone for him to arrange our usual post-break-up pity party, but the call never came. When I tried to contact him, he wouldn’t answer and his voicemail message said he was ‘taking time out from life’.

  After a few days of this I did what any friend would do and went to his flat. I let myself in using a key I knew he kept hidden in a pot of dying lavender. The first thing that hit me was the smell – it was two parts gym locker room, one part that weird odour that haunts kitchen cupboards and always turns out to be rotting potatoes. Alexander was in bed and it looked like that had been the case for several days. The debris around him told a story – a broken photo frame, an overflowing ashtray, three empty wine bottles and a pizza box.

  ‘Alexander,’ I said gently. ‘Alexander, you have to get up.’ He continued staring into the distance, so I quietly set about filling a bin liner with rubbish. When I had finished he was asleep and I gave the kitchen a thorough clean and then made soup out of the selection of sad-looking veggies in his fridge. When I walked in to tell him the food was ready he was awake but still huddled under his duvet.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ he said.

  ‘Oh my God, nothing,’ I reassured him.

  ‘It was different this time,’ he said. ‘I was gonna give her this.’ He let his hand fall on to the bedside table, where lay a green velvet box.

  ‘Is that …’

  ‘Look,’ said Alexander. I walked towards the box slowly, as if it might detonate. I picked it up carefully and checked if Alexander was watching me; he was not. Inside, safe in its satin nest, was an antique ring. Not exactly my style, except for the bold emerald stone – a unique rock for a one-of-a-kind girl. Much later I would get that ring and, fool that I am, instead of seeing it as some other woman’s cast-off, I thought it meant I had won. At that point I didn’t want it anywhere near me. Without saying anything I placed the box in Alexander’s sock drawer.

  ‘You have to try.’ I sat on the edge of the bed and with some effort hauled him into a sitting position. ‘See, not so hard.’ Alexander gave me a weak smile.

  ‘Not so hard with you,’ he said. There was a pause in which I assume the room was silent but in my head I was screaming, ‘Kiss me! Kiss me! Kiss me!’ And he did.

  When huge things happen, it feels like everything should change. The sky should turn purple and the laws of gravity should no longer apply. It’s almost offensive how very much the same everything seems when I arrive at work. How can the security guy, Darryl, still be playing Candy Crush when I feel like every cell in my body has been altered? I’m thinking about this as I power up my computer and put on my headset.

  Oh yeah, I work in a call centre. I never actually say I work in a call centre; I say I work in customer services. Not that there’s anything wrong with working in a call centre, if that’s what you want to do, but from my experience no one does. We’re all waiting for our big break; even Darryl has shared his movie script with me. I want to be a singer. Slight problem – I’ve never sung in front of anyone. Well, I’ve sung in front of Moses. Moses is my son. Our son, mine and Alexander’s. You wouldn’t know it from their interactions. Alexander always looks mildly surprised when he sees him in a room – ‘Oh, you again? Well, I guess you can stay for dinner.’

  Moses is beautiful, though. I know that all parents are supposed to think their kid is beautiful but Moses actually is. When I was pregnant we played a game where we each got to pick the features we wanted our unborn baby to have; Alexander said he hoped he wouldn’t get my chin and he didn’t. He has my crazy black curls and his father’s startling green eyes – eyes that I know from experience will bestow even the most mundane utterings with an intoxicating intensity. Women stop me in town and tell me he’ll be a heartbreaker when he grows up, which is a creepy thing to say about a toddler, but I believe them.

  I thought being a mother would make me a grown-up, that I would have no choice but to grow up. It was only after he was born that I realized how little adulting I had got around to doing. I watch other mothers carefully for evidence of how to stay calm and keep a child vaguely clean but I always end up Googling ‘the dangers of eating cat food’ or fishing electronics out of the toilet. Sometimes I share these anecdotes with people around me, in order to gauge exactly how close I am to becoming a Daily Mail headline. Like Greg, who sits next to me at work. He has two girls; I know this because he has a gigantic picture of them on his desk – pretty, blonde things with lopsided bows and the promise of mischief in their eyes. When I tell him my mishaps he always chuckles or says, ‘It’s like that.’ Or, ‘Tell me about it, buddy.’ So I think I’m kinda on the right track.

  I took the job at Fairfax Financial Services because Alexander said I needed to think about my future. I’d left a temp job to have Moses and had nothing to go back to. I told Alexander I was thinking about retraining and might start to do some singing auditions, but he told me he couldn’t fund a dream-chasing lifestyle. The call centre had two advantages – it offered shift work, so I would be able to fit it around childcare and singing gigs; and it was hellish enough that I wouldn’t stay too long, six months tops. That was nearly a year ago. Now I wonder if even this job will fit my new life. Everything’s fallen apart and it all needs to be put back together like a sadistic game of Jenga.

  I try and make a start on constructing an image of what this new chapter will look like; I have a lot of time to do this because most of my job entails directing customers to yet another call centre where presumably someone will do something useful, by which I mean I say, ‘Putting you through now …’ two million times a day; it doesn’t take much mental energy.

  We’re allowed two breaks a day, one short and one long. Sometimes I would use the opportunity to call Alexander, not always but often. I feel bereft of this; it’s like when I gave up smoking – it wasn’t the nicotine I missed so much as the ritual of it, the way the process punctuated time.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ I ask Greg.

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘It’s bad for you.’

  ‘So I’v
e heard,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ says Greg, as if we are lifelong friends and I have intentionally kept this fact hidden.

  ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ I say. He doesn’t turn away.

  ‘You OK, buddy?’ he says. Every office has a Greg – you might know him as Steve or Dave, but they all share the same affable nature and inoffensive brand of charm. They’re usually found offering to make the older women strong cups of tea or having intense debates about football team managership with the lads in the post room; their strength is in their consistency, and as I look at Greg’s gentle, ex-boyband-member face, I’m hit by the fact that he is probably more reliable than the man I had pledged my life to. I nod my head. If I speak I will cry and if I cry I will be ‘woman who cries at work’.

  My phone rings and it’s Alexander, as if he knows I need him. My break is officially over, and I’m not even supposed to have my phone on my desk. The lines are automated and if I’m not available the customer calls will go unanswered, but I accept his call anyway. I give Greg a hand signal, one that I hope he understands as, ‘Cover for me, this is very important.’ He seems to comprehend because he winks at me.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, as I scuttle out of the room to the only place of sanctuary in the building – the disabled loo.

  ‘Thanks for answering,’ says Alexander.

  ‘Yeah, you too,’ I say. ‘I mean, thanks for calling.’ I realize this is the only time he’s called me during the day; he almost always sends a text and even then its content is of the practical, almost always instructional nature: ‘Buy milk’, ‘Can you pick up dinner?’, ‘Where’s the gas meter?’ Nothing personal or intimate. Perhaps by forcing space on him he has realized that proximity is what he needs.

  ‘It’s brave of you to say what had to be said.’ Alexander stops; I’m not sure if he’s waiting for me to speak or overcome with emotion but then I hear someone ask if he has a loyalty card and I realize he’s in a supermarket. ‘I’ve packed some of your stuff and I’ll drop it at your mum’s before you finish. Given that Moses has a room there, it makes sense if you both stay with her for a bit. I called and asked her to pick him up from nursery tonight.’