The Mum Who'd Had Enough by Fiona Gibson

Author:Fiona Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008157050
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2018-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Sinead

‘Morning, can I help you with anything?’

‘Just browsing, thanks.’ It’s Monday morning, and my first customer is impeccably groomed, her navy blazer from somewhere like Jaeger or Hobbs, the upper end of the high street that still feels too posh and grown-up for me, even if I could afford to shop there. She is perusing the photo frames I arranged along a wall, strewn with the tissue-paper flowers I made, strung on fine thread. While I might not make intricate silver jewellery these days, there must still be a kernel of creativity lurking somewhere inside me. However, right now I am unpacking fairy lights whilst mentally compiling another list, this time entitled:

Reasons Why I am Not a Monster.

Because only a monster leaves her child, doesn’t she? Never mind Abby insisting repeatedly over the past month that it’s not Flynn I’ve left, I’m still not always there for my son, and these days he doesn’t seem terribly keen to spend time with me.

Of course we’ve hung out together plenty of times. I’ve cooked for him at Abby’s – his favourite lasagnes and cottage pies, hefty wintry meals even though we are well into June. I’ve suggested going to the movies (‘Nothing I really want to see, Mum’), and managed to tempt/bribe him to come on shopping trips to Solworth for new clothes and Xbox games, attempting to assuage my guilt by lavishing money on him (which I can barely afford as I’ll need to scrape together a deposit and rent for a place of my own at some point; I can’t even think about talking to Nate about dividing up our finances just yet). On one such outing, I bought myself a cherry-red jacket, which Flynn blinked at, startled, as I carried it to the till, muttering, ‘You sure about that, Mum? It’s very … bright!’

I want to feel bright, I decided as I jabbed my debit card into the machine, although I suspected it would take more than an outlandish jacket to make that happen.

So, yes, we’ve been doing stuff together, yet each time I’ve suspected that Flynn was eager to escape back home to Nate or, better still, be with his friends. If I were a proper mum – a good one – I’d have stayed with his dad and kept our family intact.

Meanwhile – somewhat shamefully – I have been ‘getting out there’ again, as my friends put it, by which they mean socialising, going out after dark and not just on hasty dashes to the supermarket for wine.

‘You can’t just sit in every night and brood,’ Abby said one evening, not unkindly. So we’ve had a few nights out – just dinner and drinks locally – and, although I’d been on the verge of cancelling, I dolled myself up to meet up with my old art college gang last week. I took the train to Leeds, and the moment I spotted Michelle, Aisha and George, waving from a corner table in our beloved old bar, I knew I’d done the right thing.

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