Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

  Goodbye, Richard, and thank you for being my own private agony uncle. I wish you luck.

  C x

  Then I turn off my PC, head upstairs to the hall and pull on my jacket. I check my lipstick in the mirror and quickly run a brush through my hair. I think of Sam, waiting for me.

  My heart soars, and I feel as light as dandelion fluff as I set off into the night.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Mummy,’ Lola cries, ‘Travis says he’s the best writer in his class. Is it true?’

  ‘Yes it is,’ I say. ‘Mrs Farnham told me at parents’ evening.’

  She frowns, digesting this, and dips a finger into the mixing bowl on the table. I am attempting to make a Victoria sponge for the guess-the-cake’s-weight stand at the PTA summer fête. Bev assigned the task to me. I fear that my creation will sit all alone and stranded, without the security of all the other cakes and cookies on the home-making stall. Actually, I suspect that she asked me as some kind of sick joke.

  ‘Let me have a go,’ Jake says, marching in from the garden. He grabs the spoon from my grasp. I’m on the verge of telling him to wash his hands first – they’re covered in soil; Bev would have a seizure – but something stops me.

  Eighteen months ago, Jake would scrub his hands raw when they came into contact with soil. I watch him beating vigorously, the mixture becoming pale and light as a cloud. I pour the cake into the tin and slip it into the oven.

  Sam wanders in clutching a slim glass tank – the wormery he and the kids have been making. I’d been so scared about how the kids would react when Sam and Harvey had moved in. Especially Jake. Even though he and Harvey are still best mates, I wasn’t sure he’d be happy about sharing a bedroom after having his own all these years. And, scarier still, how he’d feel about Sam and me being together. A few months ago, I’d asked, ‘D’you feel OK about Sam and Harvey living here?’

  Jake’s eyes had narrowed, and my heart had quickened as I anticipated a growled response. ‘Yeah,’ he said, guardedly, then broke into a grin. ‘We’ve got Sam’s TV now. We don’t have to watch that crappy little portable any more.’

  Travis, too, is delighted with our new, superior TV – and even more so with the vast tub of magnetic letters that Martin gave him for his fifth birthday last week. He is using them to make words on the fridge. And, yes, he probably is the smartest in reception class, although I won’t do a Marcia and suggest that he’s gifted.

  ‘He’s written “Sam”,’ Lola reports. ‘And “sea monkey”. But you’ve spelt it wrong, Travis. It’s S-E-A M-O-N—’

  ‘He’s only five, Lols,’ I chide her.

  ‘Now he’s written “TV”!’ Harvey announces.

  ‘That’s only two letters,’ Jake crows. ‘Anyone could do that.’

  Sam casts me a look and my mouth curls into a smile. It still works, whenever he looks at me; it warms me all over. Cake smells fill the kitchen. I have actually made a real cake, just like Rachel’s – something Proper Mothers do. I only hope that any soily bits merge in.

  A little while later, Sam lifts the cake out of the oven, and it looks pretty damn perfect to me. The table is cluttered with my work things, and Sam’s work things, and he shoves aside a pile of papers for somewhere to put it.

  A letter from Mum’s solicitor flutters to the floor and I stuff it into the drawer beneath my desk. Mum passed away last winter – five months ago now – painlessly and in her sleep, having lost her ability to recognise me or even Helena. I’d feared that she was nearing the end when she’d stopped asking when I was going to find a decent man. Although there’d been a glimmer of something – curiosity, perhaps, or more likely relief – when I’d taken Sam to see her.

  It’s strange, but after losing Mum I felt somehow freer and I wanted Sam and me to start afresh – not to live in the house where I’d been so lonely. I didn’t want Mrs Catchpole gawping over the fence, wondering why Sam wasn’t that nice man who’d built her flat-pack table. I craved a bedroom where Martin had never slept, and where no one had asked me to do pervy things in a Pac-a-Mac.

  Sam’s place is far too small for all of us, so we’re looking for somewhere new, with a bigger garden with plenty of bug-collecting potential, and proper studies for Sam and me.

  Sam and me. It feels so right, and I guess it always has.

  ‘Mum!’ Lola yelps. ‘Travis has written “Harvey”! And he’s spelt it right!’

  ‘Well done, sweetheart,’ I say. Oh, yes. I can picture the pained look on Marcia’s face when Travis collects his Best Writer Award at prize-giving. It’ll take every ounce of my concentration not to explode with pride.

  ‘And now,’ Lola says hesitantly, ‘now he’s writing— Mum! Mum, come and see!’

  ‘What?’ I ask distractedly.

  ‘He’s … he’s made a bad word.’

  Sam studies the fridge door, cocks his head and splutters, ‘Well, um, that’s very creative, Travis.’

  ‘What’s he written?’ I ask, lurching over.

  And there it is, in plastic letters of red, pink and green.

  ‘Travis,’ I say in my most serious voice, ‘this is a swear word. You do know that, don’t you? Who’s been saying it?’

  The grin spreads all over his face. ‘You,’ he says.

  FIONA GIBSON

  Lucky Girl

  Everyone told Stella Moon how lucky she was to have a famous dad. She just wished he was more like everyone else’s. Then when her mum died, and he hid away in his study, she didn’t feel lucky at all.

  Now in her thirties Stella has ensured her calm, orderly existence couldn’t be further from her chaotic upbringing. Then two noisy little girls move in next door, shattering her peace and turning her life upside down.

  At first, Stella feels besieged. The girls hound and stalk her, firing personal questions about her mum, her dad and her excuse for her love-life. But ultimately it’s their friendship that helps her to confront the truth about her own childhood and start living life to the full.

  A beautifully written, moving and uplifting story about growing up, family secrets and allowing new people into your life.

  FIONA GIBSON

  The Fish Finger Years

  What Your Mother Never Told You About Bringing Up Kids

  ‘Raising kids is rather like looking after small, very drunk people’

  If you have an embarrassing child who shouts, ‘Why is that man so fat?’ in the street, or bursts into friends’ houses announcing ‘It stinks in here’, then this book is for you.

  Self-confessed imperfect mum Fiona Gibson blends her own hilarious tales of raising three children with nuggets of advice from fellow parents who admit that they too get things wrong occasionally.

  What to do when your child throws a plank-rigid wobbler in M&S? How to handle a foul-mouthed monster who’s obsessed with the toilet parts of horses? Can parents rekindle their sex life, or is it simpler all round to not bother? Is it okay to uncork the wine before 7 pm?

  Funny and refreshingly honest, The Fish Finger Years offers a welcome reminder that yours is not the only family for whom a simple trip to IKEA results in cushion fights, tears, and a messy encounter with the ketchup dispenser in the hot dog zone.