The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill

Author:Fiona Neill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humour, Family, Chick-Lit, Fiction, Motherhood, Comedy, Women's Fiction
ISBN: 9781448106271
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-07-13T23:00:00+00:00

13

‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’

BACK IN LONDON, New Year comes and goes. Drifting by. I find that there is never much to cling to at this time of year and make a few resolutions to give some structure to the uncertainty that stretches before me. I can never understand why people want to celebrate the beginning of another year. How can they be so sure that what lies ahead will be better than what has passed? Beyond the age of thirty, it takes some bravado to assume that the future holds more promise than the past. Surely there is more that can go wrong than can go right? By the end of the year, there will be more global warming. More chance of a bird flu pandemic. More dead in Iraq. More chance that I will have an affair with Robert Bass, thus irrevocably harming my marriage and giving my children a lifetime of blame and therapists’ bills to heap on me.

In order to combat all this, I have decided that this must be the year in which I finally inspire gravitas. This will help me overcome the feelings that possess me and impose order upon my life. By the end of the year, credit card debt, mould in the car, and anything else that speaks of domestic sluttery will be a distant memory.

When I woke at five o’clock this morning, despite all my good intentions, I felt heady with the anticipation of seeing Robert Bass again, after the three-week hiatus over the Christmas holidays. I ran through what I might wear on the school run, a catwalk involving jeans with tops in various shades, knowing that I would inevitably end up dressed in the same outfit that I had on yesterday, because a wardrobe crisis is an impossible luxury on a school morning.

I indulged in a couple of my favourite fantasies, involving mostly clothed fumbles against walls on dark streets somewhere close to Greek Street, promising that this would be the last time I allowed my mind to wander so far, and justifying my intemperance with the thought that it will soon be too light in the evening for anything like this to actually happen. In the interests of gravitas, I also forced myself to think up neutral subjects for conversation, should the need arise, starting with the disappearance of Greenland and ending with the relative benefits of Polish au pairs over other nationalities. Not that we have room for an au pair, but it is a good subject to master.

Then when Tom woke up, he offered to take the children to school. I fought hard to hide my disappointment.

‘I thought you would be really pleased,’ he said.

‘That’s great, a real help,’ I said unconvincingly.

‘Honestly, sometimes women are incomprehensible,’ he said, pulling himself out of bed, eyeing the piles of clothes on the floor suspiciously. ‘Dressing up for the school run?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Are you turning into a yummy mummy? Or is there someone you’re trying to impress?’

‘I am becoming a mother with gravitas,’ I said.

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