The Mum Who Got Her Life Back Read online

  The Mum Who Got her Life Back

  FIONA GIBSON

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperColl‌insPublishers 2019

  Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2019

  Cover design © Lisa Horton 2019

  Cover [photograph/illustration] © Shutterstock

  Fiona Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008310967

  Ebook Edition © [month] [year] ISBN: 9780008310974

  Version: 2018-12-20

  For my fabulous friend Miss Jackie Brown

  Queen of Fife

  With thanks …

  To the amazing Jackie B, who manages a Mary’s Meals charity shop and let me spend a day nosing around, talking to volunteers and rummaging in the back room. I couldn’t have written this book without your help, Miss Brown! To Kath Brown and Miranda McMinn at Woman & Home magazine for getting me thinking about Happy Empty Nesters (HENs) and inadvertently inspiring this book. To Jen, Susan, Laura, Wendy and Lisa (Kath, you were missed!) for celebrating with me in Ibiza when this book was done. To Wendy (again) for a detailed description of a certain type of pokey facial, which I used almost verbatim. To my brilliant editor Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks, publicist Sabah Khan and the whole fantastic Avon team. To my super-agent Caroline Sheldon for being the best in the business. Finally, all my love to Jimmy, Sam, Dexter and Erin, my lovely family who put up with me working crazy hours and very often talking to myself.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Things that happen when your kids first leave home

  Chapter One: Nadia

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three: Jack

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six: Nadia

  Chapter Seven: Jack

  Part Two: Sex and the Empty Nester: Things to Know

  Chapter Eight: Nadia

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve: Jack

  Chapter Thirteen: Nadia

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen: Jack

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen: Nadia

  Chapter Eighteen: Jack

  Chapter Nineteen: Nadia

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Jack

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Nadia

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Jack

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Nadia

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Jack

  Chapter Thirty: Nadia

  Chapter Thirty-One: Jack

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Nadia

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Jack

  Part Three: The key to a successful holiday with one’s grown-up child

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Nadia

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Jack

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Nadia

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jack

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Nadia

  Chapter Forty: Jack

  Chapter Forty-One: Nadia

  Chapter Forty-Two: Jack

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four: Nadia

  Chapter Forty-Five: Jack

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty: Nadia

  Chapter Fifty-One: Jack

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Nadia

  Chapter Fifty-Three: Jack

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Iain

  Chapter Fifty-Five : Nadia

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the same author:

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Things that happen when your kids first leave home

  • You keep checking to see if they’ve texted to say they’re managing without you. They haven’t … because you’ve only just moved them into their student halls and are still sitting in your car, in the car park.

  • You realise it’s no longer necessary to buy those two-kilo bags of potatoes. They just go green and start sprouting.

  • You also stop buying The Big Milk and switch to the smallest carton. How tiny you are! you think, the first dozen times you spy it in the fridge.

  • Friends say things like, ‘You might miss them at first. But when they come home on visits they’ll trash the place, and you’ll be relieved when they go back to uni.’ How harsh, you think. I love my kids. I’ll never think of them in that way.

  • You realise you could now have sex in your own home without worrying about the kids overhearing. Or perhaps you’re thinking more along the lines of, Shall I redecorate to mark this new chapter? Perhaps your mindset is less ‘shag pad’, more ‘upgrading of cushions’. Either way, it’s pretty thrilling.

  • Towels remain on the towel rail and the loo roll sits, unmolested, on its holder.

  • The washing machine goes on about twice a week. You start to feel proud of your tiny carbon footprint.

  • No one criticises your home-cooked lasagne. You don’t even have to make lasagne, with all the chopping and stirring it entails. Dinner can be a pot of hummus and a boiled egg if you feel like it.

  • No one crashes in, switching on all the lights and frying things at 3.30 a.m.

  • After a while you stop thinking, My God, this is weird! Where is everyone? You’re not missing the days when it looked as if wildebeest had stampeded through the kitchen, whenever someone made toast. Gradually, you become used to them not being there, and – it almost seems criminal to admit this – you don’t completely hate it.

  This signifies that you have transitioned, relatively painlessly, into being a HEN: a Happy Empty Nester. Yes, you’re still a doting parent, but no longer in the day-to-day sense, which suggests that your new life has begun.

  So, what now?

  Chapter One

  Nadia

  Since my children left home, nothing terrible seems to have happened. There has been no evidence of malnutrition or the taking of shedloads of drugs. No one has phoned me, crying, because they couldn’t get a crumpet out of the toaster. At eighteen years old, my twins Alfie and Molly seem to have coped perfectly well during their first semester at university … which means I’ve done a decent job as a parent, right?

  Naturally, their father, Danny, should take some of the credit. But the moving-out part was
down to me. Danny is an independent film-maker and he was away shooting down south when I took Molly to her student halls. In the seven years since we split, his career has blossomed; he is pretty famous in film circles, and incredibly busy. At least, too busy/famous to drive Molly from our home in Glasgow to her university halls in Edinburgh.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ I remarked with fake jollity as we lugged her possessions into her stark little room.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said casually, tossing back her long dark hair.

  ‘You will be all right, won’t you?’

  ‘’Course I will!’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Any time you need me, I mean if you need anything, I’ll come straight over.’

  ‘Mum, I won’t need—’

  ‘No, I know, but …’ I stopped. My daughter has always given the impression that she rarely needs anything, from anyone.

  ‘I’m not dying,’ she said, smiling. We hugged tightly, and I was immensely proud of myself as I hurtled out of the block, shoving my way past more new arrivals with their stoical parents and desk lamps and mini fridges and, in one instance, a gerbil in a cage, which I was pretty sure wasn’t allowed in halls. Only when I was safely back in my car did I allow the tears to spill out, and had to mop my face on a waterproof umbrella sleeve.

  Two days later, I drove Alfie to his own halls further north, in Aberdeen. The city felt chillier and greyer than it had when we’d come up for the open day (his father had been too busy/famous to go to that too), and I reminded my son several times that he might start wearing a vest.

  ‘You can just leave my stuff here, Mum,’ he said, indicating the floor on the landing.

  ‘Really? Can’t I come in?’ But he’d already scooted into the flat to find his room, and so I stood there, waiting, like a FedEx delivery person.

  Moments later Alfie reappeared, and we fell into a pattern of me fetching stuff in from the car, lugging it up three flights of stairs and handing it over at the designated spot on the landing. He grabbed the final box in which I’d assembled an emergency rations pack of tinned soups, pastas and – rather optimistically – fruit. ‘See you then,’ he mumbled, gazing down at his feet.

  ‘Er … okay, love. Look after yourself, won’t you?’ In truth, I was more worried about him than Molly. He’d always been rather shy and disorganised, and a klutz when it came to practical matters. I wasn’t convinced he’d be up to boiling spaghetti without somehow setting it on fire.

  ‘Of course I will,’ he insisted. I forced a hug on him and left the building, passing a woman carrying an enormous tropical plant (does anyone really need a tree in their uni halls?), and wishing that Danny was here too, but that night he was in London at his wrap party.

  Good for him, I thought. Good for my ex and his girlfriend and those miles of canapés and champagne sloshing everywhere. No, this was all great, I told myself as I drove back to Glasgow, then stepped back into my second-floor flat. Danny is a caring dad – I’ve never disputed that. However, he’s never been too hot on the practical matters of parenting.

  We were thrilled when we found out we were having twins, but from the word go we fell into pretty traditional roles. While Danny toiled all hours to get his career off the ground, I threw myself into the hurly-burly of toddler groups. We’ve been lucky to have always lived in a decent area of Glasgow: a little shabby, but friendly and safe. We stretched ourselves to upgrade to a four-bedroomed flat so the kids could each have their own rooms, and Danny could have a much-needed study.

  For a few years I worked from a desk in our bedroom. I am a freelance illustrator, and had accumulated a small roster of clients before the twins came along. During my early years of motherhood, I’d tackle any commissions after the kids had gone to bed. I also did some occasional life modelling – i.e. with my clothes off – for local art classes, to bring in extra cash. In a weird sort of way, they offered a bit of respite from family life. Reclining nakedly on a sofa was pretty soothing compared to chipping hardened Weetabix off the floorboards – and I assumed the kids would never find out what it really involved. Anyway, I was around so much after nursery and school that Alfie and Molly didn’t actually believe I worked at all. Their primary school teacher laughingly told me that, when she’d asked Molly what her mum did for a living, she’d replied, ‘She colours in.’

  In contrast, Danny did go to work – not in a nine-to-five sense, but for weeks at a time if he was away filming, or to his study at home where he’d hide away to work on edits or scripts.

  ‘Nadia, the kids keep coming in!’ he’d yell.

  ‘They just need to see you for a minute, Danny. Alfie wants to show you something he made at school …’

  ‘Honey, please. Can’t you just keep them at bay?’ he’d say, as if they weren’t his six-year-old children, but wild bears. But then, Danny’s work was all-consuming, and it was my job to thwart the kids’ access to He Who Must Not Be Disturbed.

  ‘Daddy’s busy being Steven Spielberg,’ I’d explain, ushering them away.

  ‘Who’s Steven Spee—’ Alfie would start.

  ‘A very important film man like Dad,’ I’d say. Alfie always needed more reassurance than Molly, and I was conscious of over-compensating for Danny’s unavailability: painting with the kids whenever they demanded it, and indulging Alfie’s lengthy baking craze. The more cakes he made, the more I felt obliged to scoff (‘Sounds like a feeble excuse to me,’ Danny had sniggered), my once-slender body expanding and softening, my skimpy knickers making way for sturdy mummy-pants.

  Meanwhile, Danny remained his gangly, raffishly handsome self, all messy dark hair and stubble. He seemed to experience no guilt whatsoever on turning down one of Alfie’s Krispie cakes: ‘They look great, Alf, but I’m not really into that breakfast-cereal-confectionery hybrid.’ He didn’t intend to be mean, and the kids still adored him. However, Danny had always done whatever he wanted and he didn’t really worry what anyone else thought.

  I’d known, when I got together with a film-maker, that I might be signing up for an unconventional sort of life. However, I also knew that other film-makers – friends of Danny’s – managed to be reasonably functioning adults, able to maintain healthy, happy relationships. To my knowledge they never left their partners stranded in restaurants because they’d gone to a lecture on Hitchcock and the Art of Cinematic Tension instead (on aforementioned partner’s fortieth birthday). Nor had they blown a small inheritance from an uncle by drunkenly bidding on one of the actual suits worn in Reservoir Dogs. Of course it wasn’t just about the suit or the missed meals; it was loads of stuff, piled up year after year.

  Although it was me who finally decided we should split – Danny and I had never married – he didn’t exactly beg me to reconsider. I think we both knew we’d reached the end of the line. And so he moved out, to a rented flat half a mile away, and we both did our best to present our break-up in a non-dramatic manner. ‘We’re still friends who care about each other,’ I told Molly and Alfie – which was actually true.

  A year or so later, Danny started seeing a make-up artist ten years his junior. I was fine with that, truly; Danny and I were managing to get along pretty cordially, and I was enjoying teasing him about his new liaison. ‘So how are things with Kiki Badger?’ I asked during one of our regular chats on the phone.

  I heard him exhale. ‘Nads, why d’you always do this?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know. Use both of her names.’

  I smirked. ‘It’s one of those names you have to say in full …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it sounds like a sex toy. “The batteries in my Kiki Badger have gone flat!”’

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ he exclaimed, laughing. Then, after a pause: ‘It’s nothing serious, y’know? We’re just … hanging out.’ Yeah, sure. ‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone …’

  ‘You know there isn’t,’ I said quickly.

  ‘No I don’t. You might have someone squirrelled away—�
�

  ‘Hidden in a cupboard?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he sniggered.

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ I retorted, but in truth I wasn’t too interested. It’s not that Alfie and Molly would have kicked off if I’d started seeing someone; at least, I don’t think they would have.

  As it turned out, their dad and Kiki have stuck together over the years, and the kids have always seemed fine with that. However, they lived with me, and perhaps that made me more cautious. I wasn’t prepared to endure some teeth-gritting, ‘Alfie, Molly – this is Colin!’ kind of scenario at breakfast with some bloke I wasn’t particularly serious about. There were a couple of brief flings, conducted when Molly and Alfie were at their dad’s, and a significant one, eighteen months ago; well, it was significant to me. But since then? Precisely nothing.

  It’s fine, honestly. It really is. It’s just slightly galling that the kids have left home and I’m free as a bird – yet I’ve found precisely no one to tempt into my nest.

  Chapter Two

  And yet … celibacy has its advantages. It really does!

  I’m not even saying that in a bitter tone, with my teeth gritted. I can happily wander about with hairy bison legs beneath my jeans, if I want to. I can orgasm perfectly well by myself, and have plenty of friends to knock around with. Corinne and Gus are two of my closest; we’ve all known each other since our art college days in Dundee, and these days we share a studio pretty close to the city centre. As my children grew up, and I managed to establish myself properly, I reached the point where I could finally afford to work outside of the flat. It feels like a luxury sometimes, as now Alfie and Molly have left I can hardly complain about the lack of space at home. But I love working here. Our studio is the top floor of a tatty old warehouse, currently decked out with decorations and a sparkling white tree, as Christmas is approaching.