The Single Mums' Mansion: The bestselling feel-good, laugh out loud rom com

by Janet Hoggarth

  My boobs were throbbing and my mouth tasted like a filthy toilet. Welcome to pregnancy. Only this time dread was heavily layered beneath the nausea, and excitement and expectation were conspicuous by their absence. Only Mel and Jacqui knew where I was today. Chug was at nursery. In two days’ time I had to meet my lawyer in town and sign some legal papers for the decree nisi to go through.

  The children had already visited their brother in hospital. Carrie had had to stay in because there had been so many complications and Jaimie had had the cord wrapped round his neck and was massive so she had torn quite badly and lost a lot of blood. I did not gloat.

  I’ve never been so scared in my life,

  Sam had texted when he relayed the news.

  I thought he wasn’t going to come out when they said the cord was twice round his neck.

  Oh, ye of small memory, I had wanted to text back. Sonny had the cord twisted twice round his neck and you didn’t know because you had been downstairs scoffing Pringles when you were supposed to be getting the camera. Instead of delivering a slap-down, I texted back:

  I hope Carrie recovers soon and you can all go home. You need to ring and tell the kids and arrange for them to visit.

  I did hope she recovered soon, because she was going to need to with four kids in the house…

  ‘What was the baby like?’ I asked Isla when they returned from visiting in the evening, wondering when pictures of Carrie cradling her precious bundle would emerge on the internet, confirming Sam’s apparent joy to the world. Though, if I remembered rightly, he hated the tiny baby phase, the nutty wife phase and the no sleep phase. Good luck this time round! You only know her as Carrie the Sexy Chef. How about Carrie the hormonal harridan with leaky tits and a butchered vagina who issues orders while you have to parent three other kids, and keep her satisfied at the same time?

  ‘Oh, he’s so cute. I held him! He has massive cheeks like a chipmunk!’

  ‘I kissed him, Mummy,’ Meg told me, cuddling the cat. ‘But I didn’t like the hospital. It smelled funny. I just wanted to come home and see Ginger.’

  ‘Baby,’ Sonny said, and surprised us all.

  ‘He said that coming home in the car,’ Isla informed me. ‘Daddy cried when he said it.’ I picked him up and squeezed him and he punched me in the chest.

  ‘Sonny! No!’ I thought my boob was going to explode and I dropped him to the floor. ‘Don’t hit!’

  ‘Dad!’ He burst into tears and flung himself at my feet and attempted to climb up me like a cat.

  ‘You hurt me!’ I accused him in a wounded manner.

  ‘Dad! Dad! Dad!’

  ‘Mummy, cuddle him!’ Isla cried. Her maternal side burned so fiercely I sometimes thought she was here to nurture me. ‘He didn’t mean it.’ I didn’t want to cuddle him as my chest pulsated where he had struck me, but I knew Isla was right. I sat on one of the circular Habitat chairs and pulled him onto my knee where he clung to me sobbing, his breathing jagged and irregular like he had been winded.

  ‘I don’t think he liked Jaimie,’ Meg said quietly, snuffling Ginger’s fur and kissing the top of his head. And so the baton changed hands before me. Meg was able to open up and communicate her thoughts, and Sonny was on lockdown, probably not knowing why he just hit me, but safe in the knowledge that he could because I loved him. The chain of pain continued its caustic journey.

  ‘How do you feel about the baby, now you know about your baby?’ Jacqui asked me the million-dollar question after I returned from the doctor’s for my clinic referral. She had looked after Sonny for me. ‘I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘I feel confused. I don’t want to see him. I couldn’t bear it if he looked like Sonny, but as for not liking him, he’s just a baby, it’s not his fault he was born and might disrupt my children’s lives and cause some major upset.’

  ‘Does it make you want to keep this baby?’ We were sitting in camping deck chairs on the unkempt lawn facing the direction of the sun, the acer tree stretched up behind us in the raised bed, its newly unfurled leaves already reaching for the light like our upturned faces. Sonny was right at the bottom of the garden bouncing on his new birthday present that Sam and I had bought between us: the trampoline. He would eat his meals on it if he could. In fact, it was the best thing I had ever bought for the kids. They all loved it. We refrained from telling Sonny it was exclusively his present because I wanted them all to play nicely. Woody had expertly put it together for me.

  I sighed and sipped scalding tea. ‘The thought that Sam has a new baby that isn’t mine, who is my children’s brother, makes me feel less inclined to be so black and white about having an abortion. Though if I had a baby with Woody, he would have to move in here—’

  ‘Why would he have to move in?’ Jacqui interrupted, turning her head sharply to look at me through her shades so her blond hair bounced in its loose ponytail. ‘Do you want him to?’

  ‘Well, to help with the baby.’

  ‘But do you see a life with him? Ali could help, I could help! You wouldn’t be on your own.’

  ‘I do like Woody, but as for it being permanent, I never thought further than next week. But we have great sex, and do have a laugh. Though recently he has been hinting at doing more stuff “as a family”. I think he likes the idea of being a dad…’

  ‘Then don’t jump the gun. Everything is in its place and you will make the right decision for you and the kids, and the baby. You never know, Woody might run a mile.’

  ‘I know, which is why I want to go on my own to the clinic to see how I really feel.’

  *

  ‘Number thirty-six.’ I looked up from my phone where I had been texting Ali. I was number thirty-six, no names so anonymity was assured. The waiting room was ubiquitous beige with a wall-mounted TV gently rumbling in the background. A leafy fern in a salt-stained terracotta pot had been placed below the window, its dusty compost peeling away from the sides in desperate need of water, and a mangy-looking palm tree stood guard to the left of the TV. The grounds beyond the streaky waiting-room window were impressive and I could make out what looked like a towering Victorian hospital building beyond the large well-tended flowerbeds. I imagined teenage girls tucked-in under starched sheets with pale faces, and worried parents by their sides behind every window. But the reality was not that. Most women at the clinic were either my age or in their twenties. I was an irresponsibly stupid middle-aged woman who had managed to get myself knocked up while off my face.

  ‘This way, please.’ I followed the sonographer to a small room with a hulking ultrasound machine and a bed for me to lie on. After lots of questions about periods and sexual history, the lady put a condom over the dildo scanner (for want of a better word. I think we were a bit late to the party on the condom front).

  ‘We’re going to go through your vagina as I doubt we will see very much through your abdomen. Just try to relax. If you don’t want to look, turn away from the screen.’ But I chose to look at the screen and tried to stay calm. What if there was nothing there? What if there were twins? What if it had already died because it knew I was dithering?

  ‘Oh, wow!’ the doctor gasped. ‘You’re a lot more pregnant than you thought you were. About nine weeks, from the size.’

  ‘But I’ve had periods!’ She studied my face, like she was trying to work me out.

  ‘It may have been breakthrough bleeding.’ On the screen a tiny pulse flashed from a tadpole. My baby. I felt my eyes well up and my heart beat in my throat as I swallowed hard against rogue emotions I failed to find words for.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I shook my head. ‘Would you like a minute?’ I nodded. She slowly withdrew the dildo and left the room so I could slip my knickers back on and straighten my head up. But I couldn’t; it remained bent out of shape. There was a heartbeat inside of me, a complete constellation of stars and a milky way silently brewing.

  Next, I met a different woman in a different office, even more stark and beige than the clinical waiting room.
The man-size box of tissues in the centre of the brown Formica desk was the clue that this room had heard some extremely testing conversations.

  ‘So, you’re about nine weeks. And you initially came here for a possible termination. How do you feel now?’

  ‘I don’t know! I saw a heartbeat!’ I exploded, crying loudly. I grabbed a tissue from the all-seeing box. ‘The father doesn’t even know, and my ex-husband, though we are technically still married, had a baby two days ago and I already have three children and tomorrow have to go and sign off my divorce.’

  ‘Oh, my. That all sounds very upsetting! Well, how do you feel about bringing another baby into the situation? Is this something you can imagine now with everything else you have going on? I’m not here to tell you what to do, just help you see a way forward.’

  ‘I can’t imagine another baby, no. But I also can’t imagine terminating after seeing the heartbeat and how big it was.’

  I had always been pro-choice. I didn’t believe in telling someone what to do or what was right or wrong. A woman’s body is her business. But I had never had to face that choice myself and now, staring down the barrel of the gun, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do. If I had a baby, I entered into a life-long relationship with Woody, not necessarily romantic, but as the baby’s father, he would be part of its existence if he wanted to be. I also knew it was foolish to contemplate keeping it in my current situation.

  ‘Would telling the father help you make a decision, or maybe talking to a family member? You know you don’t have to tell the father to go through with the abortion. It is all entirely your choice.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Maybe I will tell him. It might help me make up my mind.’

  When I walked back to the car, the senior school opposite was emptying out for dinner break, the kids shouting and chasing each other across the playground. Of all those kids, I thought, I wonder if any of them were mistakes? The law of averages must swing towards a resounding yes. Did any of their parents ever regret keeping them? I didn’t know how I could love another baby as much as I loved my three. But then I had thought that each time I had got pregnant. The love always finds a way to divide and multiply, just like the cells inside my womb. I didn’t love this one’s dad like I loved… had loved Sam. Would that make a difference? I unlocked the car and slumped in the driver’s seat. I gripped the steering wheel and bent my head forward until it touched the horn symbol.

  ‘Universe, tell me what to do, please,’ I prayed into my chest. ‘I feel lost.’

  I remained motionless for a few minutes until my phone pinged in my bag. It was Woody.

  I’ll be over by seven. I got paid today so I can treat us to dinner! xx

  22

  Who’s the Daddy?

  ‘I’m just going to say it. I’m pregnant.’ I was resting on the pillows against the wooden slatted headboard watching Woody roughly dry himself after his shower. His bum was so pert and muscly, as were his chiselled back and shoulders, and staring lasciviously at him sent violent electric shocks to my groin. I had forgotten that being permanently horny whilst wanting to vomit were kindred spirits of all my pregnancies. I had yet to experience vomiting mid-orgasm, though I suppose there was a first time for everything.

  Woody slowly brought the towel down from where he had been furiously scrubbing his tangled mop of hair and turned round to face me, totally naked.

  ‘You’re pregnant?’ Woody’s voice cracked like a teenage boy on the verge of becoming a man.

  I nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, we had sex and some of your semen must have fertilised an egg and now a baby is growing inside my womb.’

  ‘I know all that! But we’ve been careful!’

  ‘Not careful enough.’

  He sank down onto the bed next to me. ‘Christ, Mands. What do we do?’ He looked to me for an answer.

  ‘I went to the clinic today to arrange an abortion.’

  ‘What? You weren’t going to tell me?’

  ‘Woody, let me finish! I needed to see how I felt. I saw a heartbeat.’

  ‘Oh.’ This was so absurd having this conversation while he was naked. ‘And how did you feel?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wanted to see what you thought. I had thought I would just want to get rid of it, what with this being what it is. But the heartbeat…’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we’re not in a serious relationship, are we?’ The words clanged together like heavy-bottomed pots. Woody visibly flinched as if I had kicked him.

  ‘If that’s how you feel.’

  ‘Woody, I’m sorry…’ He stood up and walked over to the rocking chair, the very same chair that I had fed all three babies in before bed. His clothes were draped neatly over the arm. He was very tidy for someone who looked dishevelled a lot of the time. ‘Look, I—’

  ‘Don’t, Amanda. I need to get dressed if we’re to have this conversation.’

  I waited while he pulled on clothes, and I felt so torn. His physicality was what drew me to him, and I assumed this ‘relationship’ would burn itself out in time. We’d never discussed what ‘we’ might be but I’d guessed we were dating in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

  Once dressed, he perched on the chair, squashing the row of teddies that had been squatting there for years, lined up like in The Usual Suspects. I found it excruciating to meet his gaze but I knew I owed it to him so I looked up.

  ‘Amanda, I think I love you.’

  Ambushed by tears I hurriedly brushed them away, totally stunned by his choice of words.

  ‘I haven’t said anything because I know you don’t feel the same way. I know you still love Sam, and I get it – he’s the kids’ dad. But I can’t help how I feel and I don’t want to sway you in any way. I can’t say this news isn’t a total shock…’ He paused and looked at his hands as if they could somehow prompt his ensuing words. ‘Look, I’m a simple man with simple needs and I never thought I would ever face this moment in my life. But if you’re waiting for me to tell you what to do, I won’t.’

  ‘But what do you want?’ I asked him tearfully.

  He sighed heavily and cradled his head in his hands very gently, like he didn’t want to disturb any thoughts.

  ‘I want you.’

  ‘So, what would you do if I said let’s have a baby and stay together? I’m not saying that’s what I want, I just want to see what you want.’

  ‘I would do it.’

  ‘But would you… move in?’

  ‘How else would we make it work? I wouldn’t be much help living at Mum’s, would I?’

  ‘But what about work?’

  ‘I could commute.’

  ‘To Essex?’

  I hadn’t even considered Ali and Grace. They lived here and I didn’t want to turf them out.

  ‘I guess… Or you have the abortion and we carry on as before.’

  That simple sentence, supposed to help bring clarity to this confusing situation, did nothing to draw it to any sensible conclusion. It was almost like my brain refused to hear the word ‘abortion’ and instead swapped the word round to ‘baby’, making the syntax more palatable.

  That’s what I told myself afterwards when I said the fateful: ‘OK, let’s do it.’

  ‘Have the baby?’ Woody’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Yes.’

  He jumped up and enveloped me in his arms, squeezing me so tight I could hardly breathe. ‘Do you mean it?’ he whispered into my hair.

  I nodded though I was paralysed and too frightened to speak because I actually had no idea what I was doing or saying or who I was any more. If someone had asked me would I ever have a love child with a man I had only been dating a few months: who was an ex-hedonistic nutter, who should have gone to rehab but instead was now going to move into my home, where my kids and Ali and her baby lived and become part of the commune, I would have roared, ‘Are you shitting me?’ But I had just watched myself agreeing to do it without a loaded gun to my he
ad.

  23

  Ali’s Dirty Secret

  ‘Are you OK, Mands?’ Jacqui asked as I stared aimlessly out of the grimy peeling sash window in Dara’s flat onto the busy street below, scraping off a few white paint flakes with my thumbnail. It was the day after signing off my almost divorce and I was feeling slightly steamrollered by the amount of life-changing events I was dealing with.

  The Knightsbridge location was at odds with the imagined grandeur of the flat. Tea chests hugged the grubby magnolia walls, and one had been dragged back to the centre of the main living room to be used as a coffee table. A battered mauve sofa that may have once been comfy in a different decade was the only other furniture in the echoing tall-ceilinged room. A gangling parched fern leaned hungrily towards the light from one of the cobwebbed corners. A few ghosts of pictures past left faint dust imprints on the walls and a red wine stain splattered along one of the skirting boards and onto the standard beige frayed rental carpet. Ali had reported back it was a typical bachelor pad when she’d visited, but now it resembled student digs at the end of term, devoid of any personality, though I suspected it had had very little to begin with.

  People milled about smoking out of the half-open windows or drinking cheap wine out of plastic disposable cups. I had no idea who any of them were – most were from the studio at work, I guessed. Ali, being loud and gregarious, was the life and soul of the living room, getting people drinks and emptying fancy Marks and Spencer’s crisps onto foil catering trays. She had been very excited when I’d recounted my surprise news after she’d landed, assuring her at the same time she didn’t have to leave.