Also by Janet Hoggarth
The Single Mums Mansion
The Single Mums Move On
Janet Hoggarth
AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS
www.ariafiction.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Janet Hoggarth, 2019
The moral right of Janet Hoggarth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788545693
Aria
c/o Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
www.ariafiction.com
Contents
Also by Janet Hoggarth
Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Main Cast List
Prologue: The East Dulwich Forum
Chapter 1: I Do
Chapter 2: I Don’t
Chapter 3: Reality Bites
Chapter 4: Norman
Chapter 5: The Mews
Chapter 6: Welcome to the Jungle
Chapter 7: First Big Drama
Chapter 8: Francesca
Chapter 9: Intervention
Chapter 10: Jo
Chapter 11: Tinder
Chapter 12: Who the F*ck Is Alice?
Chapter 13: Samantha
Chapter 14: Vlogging
Chapter 15: Clothes My Daughter Steals
Chapter 16: Carl
Chapter 17: AA
Chapter 18: The Spy
Chapter 19: Nick
Chapter 20: It Takes a Village
Chapter 21: The Airing Cupboard
Chapter 22: Debbie
Chapter 23: Francesca’s Secret
Chapter 24: A Tale of Two Dresses
Chapter 25: Jo
Chapter 26: PR SOS
Chapter 27: Viola
Chapter 28: The Aftermath
Chapter 29: Elinor
Chapter 30: A Star Is Born
Chapter 31: Hattie
Chapter 32: The Big Shave
Chapter 33: Debbie
Chapter 34: The Summer Party
Chapter 35: Neighbourhood Watch
Chapter 36: Live TV
Chapter 37: New Beginnings
Chapter 38: Chakra Cleanse
Chapter 39: Full Circle
Chapter 40: Bride of Chucky
Chapter 41: Norman’s Wisdom
Chapter 42: Blood Ties
Chapter 43: Double Dumping
Chapter 44: Nick
Chapter 45: The Penny Drops
Chapter 46: Norman
Epilogue: The East Dulwich Forum
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Become an Aria Addict
For everyone in the Mews.
Thank you for being a real-life inspiration! You all rock.
And for my husband, Neil, who’s always my inspiration.
Map
Map key
1 – Jo Lawson
2 – Samantha Crosby
3 – Norman Francis
4 – Nick Whitehead
5 – Francesca Hainsworth
6 – Debbie Stewart
7 – Elinor Ritherdon and Ali Jackson
8 – Carl Campbell
Main Cast List
Carl Campbell
Charming and handsome alcoholic photographer who lives next-door to Ali
Lila Chan
X Factor winner and Ali’s co-host of Clothes My Daughter Steals
Samantha Crosby
Flamboyant talent agent who lives on the opposite side of the Mews to Ali. She has two grown up sons, Billy and Scott
Norman Francis
‘Nosy Norman’ who lives in between Samantha and Nick
Freya Gately
Jim’s teenage daughter from his marriage to his second wife, Diane
Hattie Gately
Jim’s third wife and the woman he left Ali for
Jim Gately
Ali’s unconscionable ex-fiancé and father of Grace
Francesca Hainsworth
A Beardy Weirdy shaman, who lives on the corner plot of the Mews. She’s in a ‘relationship’ with Ian
Ariel and Tia Hainsworth-Oliver
Francesca and Ian’s daughters (sixteen and thirteen).
Charlie Heywood-Taylor
Isabelle Heywood-Taylor
Debbie and Matthew’s fourteen-year-old son
Studious sixteen-year-old daughter to Debbie and Matthew
Alison (Ali) Jackson
Fashion stylist and single mum to Grace
Anne Jackson
Alison’s sixty-nine-year-old mum
Grace Jackson-Gately
Five-year-old daughter to Ali and Jim, she has a very close bond with her mum
Jo Lawson
Self-appointed leader of the Mews, Jo lives opposite Ali and next-door to Samantha
David O’Donnell
British TV stalwart and co-host of Good Morning with David and Mina on Channel Five. David is married to Trisha Templeton
Ian Oliver
Quiet unassuming partner to Francesca, who owns half of Lordship Lane
Mina Prajapati
David O’Donnell’s co-host on Good Morning with David and Mina
Elinor Ritherdon
Ali’s next-door neighbour, a divorcee in her late sixties. Her daughter, Karen, lives nearby with her children, Princess and Tinkerbell
Ursula Simpson
Ali’s oldest university friend and fellow party girl
Jacqui Snowden
An original member of the Single Mums’ Mansion with Ali and Amanda. Jacqui emigrated to Australia to live with her kids, Joe and Neve, and new partner, Mark
Debbie Stewart
Immunology professor and single mum, lives in between Francesca and Elinor
Trisha Templeton
David O’Donnell’s wife, a former Miss Great Britain, LGBT supporter and Loose Women panellist
Linda Whitehead
Nick’s gregarious mum who visits him once a week
Nick Whitehead
Lives in the Mews and is known as ‘The Spy’ because he keeps himself completely to himself
Amanda Wilkie
Ali’s former landlady and fellow member of the Single Mums’ Mansion. Amanda still lives in the ‘mansion’ with her three children, Isla, Meg and Sonny, but is now happily remarried to Chris
Ifan Wynne-Jones
Ali’s boyfriend before she moves to the Mews
Prologue
The East Dulwich Forum
26 July 2014
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Fiwith2dogs 10.58 p.m.
Can anyone else hear the hideous party coming from behind Terry’s Tool Hire? WTF is it? Someone’s singing fucking reggae on a PA system at eleven at night. People need to sleep.
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Neighbour12 11.05 p.m.
It’s those annoying people in the Mews behind the
tool hire place. Call the noise police. Shut those idiots down. They’re always celebrating for no reason. Number seven is usually to blame.
27 July 2014
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Linzicatlady64 12.04 a.m.
It’s still going and I can hear it down by the Plough. I’ve called the noise police. Cannot believe people are so selfish.
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by Fiwith2dogs 12.11 a.m.
As much as I want those fuckers to get in trouble, I don’t think you can hear it from the Plough. That’s too far. You’re obviously caught in the crossfire of another party.
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Frankymews66 11.05 a.m.
Hello everyone. Very sorry if you were disturbed by the annual Mews summer party. We did tell everyone in the immediate area, invited all the neighbours and we switched off the PA system at eleven thirty, all in all not causing outrageous noise pollution. When the noise police arrived they were totally happy with the sound level coming from an iPod dock at midnight. Also, if you don’t live in the Mews, how would you even know what number was hosting the music? If you can’t stand the heat, Neighbour12 get out from behind your kitchen curtains. Everyone always welcome to join in!
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Janemakescakes 11.15 a.m.
My baby was up screaming all night because of the noise, whatevs to you switching the PA off, we could still hear singalongs to shitting Oasis (torture) and lots of shouting into the small hours. What makes you people above the law?
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Frankymews66 11.32 a.m.
Very sorry your baby was up all night, but probably would have been up all night anyway. Babies usually sleep through most things. Hope you have a better night tonight. Light and love x
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Oldskoolraver 11.46 a.m.
Janemakescakes, you were probably just jealous you weren’t at the party and stuck at home with a baby!
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Janemakescakes 12.03 p.m.
Fuck you, Oldskoolraver.
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Fiwith2dogs 12.34 p.m.
Joining in with a load of selfish knob-heads is the last thing I want to do. Next time I hear anything, I’m calling the police. Be warned.
Re: Loud House Party near Terry’s Tool Hire
Posted by: Oldskoolraver 12.55 p.m.
I bet the Mews are quaking in their party shoes, Fiwith2dogs. Ignore the haters, Mews people. Party on!
1
I Do
Here comes the bride, sixty inches wide… Ali, you bloody heifer, why did you eat so much at Christmas? I silently fumed. My embonpoint was bursting out of my prom-style bridesmaid’s dress, causing mild upper thorax asphyxiation and creating a fleshy shelf upon which I could probably rest a round of drinks. An irksome label was irritating my back; it hadn’t been there when I’d tried the dress on in Coast months ago. I was like a dog chasing its tail, unable to reach the label without shedding the entire outfit. I couldn’t face wrestling my boobs back into the dress so I left it as it was.
Jacqui, in a better-fitting version of my dress, her hair a stunning blond Farrah Fawcett bouffant, zipped a jittery Amanda into her striking grey chiffon ball gown.
‘Five minutes, girls,’ I warned Amanda’s daughters, Isla and Meg.
They nodded, dressed in their identical dusky-pink John Lewis bridesmaids’ dresses, delicate fresh gypsophila flower crowns adorning both their heads like angelic halos. Sonny, Amanda’s little boy, was the ring-bearer, waiting with Chris at the town hall in a mini-me dark grey suit, a picture-perfect box-fresh family. Amanda’s dad, suited and booted, sat on the over-stuffed blue velvet armchair by the door, looking like he was recounting his speech in his head. I felt a sharp pain below my ribs; Dad was never going to make a speech or walk me down the aisle in the vintage cream lace dress I’d always imagined myself in, even if I actually got that far. My latest boyfriend, Ifan, had spouted all sorts of romantic shit when we’d first met a year ago in Kebab and Stab after Jacqui’s leaving drinks. He’d recited Dylan Thomas to me in bed and said he couldn’t wait for me to have his babies, but as soon as he moved in three months later, real life tightened the drawstring on the blissful honeymoon period.
‘He’s so handsome!’ Jacqui had swooned after I’d sent her a picture. ‘You finally got the rock-star boy you always wanted.’
Ifan worked in an achingly trendy men’s clothes shop in Covent Garden and had aspirations of becoming a model after posing for a few moody Instagram photo shoots for the store. He was certainly pretty enough and young enough (eight years my junior at thirty-three) and an improvement on all the hideous men I’d encountered in my recent dating past. We had spent the first week together tucked up in bed incessantly shagging – he was a veritable Clit Eastwood – until I was struck down with killer cystitis, weeing razor blades every time I went to the loo. I had to sneak him out under cover of darkness before my five-year-old daughter, Grace, surfaced. She slept in my bed so Ifan and I had appropriated the spare room as our shagging palace, a broom cupboard with a narrow single bed armed with a sagging mattress rammed against one wall like a coffin awaiting a corpse. I had earmarked it for Grace when we moved in, but the damp was now so tenacious that her clothes in the wardrobe had started growing mould on them, and I couldn’t afford anywhere else, even with housing benefit. I wanted to be near my friends, Amanda and Ursula, but flats in East Dulwich were so out of my league.
The housing situation hadn’t always been this dire. A few years ago I’d had it all – the roomy Victorian semi near Amanda with the ubiquitous stripped wooden floors and a free-standing Habitat kitchen (something of great beauty in the noughties). Added to that, I’d had a mad chocolate Labrador called Max, a stepdaughter, and a fiancé who also happened to be my agent. I kept having to pinch myself when I finally fell pregnant – all my life goals were real and happening in vivid Technicolor. Until my now ex-fiancé, Jim, had left me holding a newborn baby and sold our perfect house from under my feet to move in with Hattie (now his wife). Completely heartbroken and homeless with baby Grace, I had ended up moving in with Amanda for a few years while Grace metamorphosed from a baby into a strong-willed toddler. During our time in the house we affectionately called the Single Mums’ Mansion, we became a patchwork family, along with Jacqui, another single mum. We spent Christmases together, hosted crazy parties, snogged unreliable men and helped each other through such an emotionally corrosive time that we formed an unbreakable bond. These women were like my family.
On the other hand, it gradually dawned on me that living in Amanda’s attic with Grace, as if we were a couple of students, wasn’t conducive to finding a much-wanted long-term partner. Grace and I needed our own space once she’d reached three, and we had to let Amanda move on with her life after she’d met Chris. Realising this had been a huge blow, but I knew it made sense. Leaving the safety net of the Single Mums’ Mansion to forge my new life had felt like losing a limb. In the first few weeks away from the house, I’d continually questioned my sanity on the matter. I desperately missed the cosy warmth of the attic and the nightly catch-ups in the kitchen over a glass of red. I’d found myself crying at the sink when washing up, and Grace had wailed for the entire first week: ‘Mummy, I want go home. I miss ’Manda.’ My heart broke for her – the Single Mums’ Mansion had been the only home she had ever known and Amanda was her other mummy. But every time anxiety swamped me, I heard Mini Amanda give me a pep talk inside my head: This is your life, own it, live it, accept it. What will be will be…
Mum had moved round the corner in Penge for a few months once her house in Spain had sold. Just having her there acted as a buffer against
the low-level grey fug I couldn’t shake off since leaving Amanda’s. I’d been so excited about spending more time with Mum after she’d lived abroad for years, and Grace now had a granny she could see all the time. Dan and Alex, my brothers, were both married and had hectic family lives, and with Dad dying so suddenly four years ago it had felt all the more important that Mum lived near me.
However, after only six months it had been obvious that she was unhappy. I’d thought it was just because she didn’t like Penge. I didn’t blame her for that: every time I said ‘Penge’ out loud the word ‘minge’ reverberated in my head. I had suggested we club together to find a place in East Dulwich, but she’d been adamant. ‘I’ve missed my chance at London, love. It’s too busy, too impersonal. You and Grace are here and I love that, you know I do, but I can’t live your life. I have to live my own.’
Mum headed for the south coast to be near Uncle Graham. I’d balled my eyes out as I’d driven off, leaving her in the cute little cottage in the centre of Whitstable, but I could see she was thrilled. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy, we can always visit. Granny Annie said so,’ Grace wisely told me from the back seat. ‘Don’t be sad.’ But it wouldn’t be the same. I’d loved having that local family connection even if it had been only for a short while. It had made me feel cosseted, just like my time in the Single Mums’ Mansion. Grace and I were alone once more…
Left to my own devices my life started to go completely off the rails with no grown-ups to rein me in. I’d lost count of the number of times I would say on a Sunday night after a particularly wonky weekend: ‘Monday is the start of a whole new me!’, but it must have been quite a few because Jacqui had threatened to get it printed on a T-shirt. By Thursday I would be climbing the walls and, in the weeks that Grace was off to her dad’s, the bar-hopping treadmill would restart, more often than not dragging along terminally single Ursula, one of my uni mates, Jacqui, or Amanda. Not even the lure of my latest discovery, Radio Four, could keep the ants in my pants at bay. But my love of it did seem to mark my inevitable slide into middle age, especially when combined with a sudden interest in garden centres (I didn’t have a garden) and a new appreciation for the benefits of flossing one’s teeth in the knowledge that preserving your own set was essential with time ticking.
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