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MOTHERWHELMED
Anniki Sommerville
One More Chapter an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by One More Chapter 2019
Copyright © Anniki Sommerville 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Anniki Sommerville asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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 e-book 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: 9780008351694
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008351700
Version: 2019-08-22
For Paul, Rae and Greta
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Acknowledgements
Read on for a Q & A with Anniki …
About the Author
About the Publisher
SOME SAY A SIGN that you’re having a breakdown is when you stop sleeping properly. Or get heart palpitations for no reason. Or overreact to something quite minor. The problem is, all these things were quite commonplace in my life, and had been for some time.
From the outside things looked okay. I had a beautiful child and a great husband (okay, our relationship was hard work, but long-term relationships are no walk in the park). I had a job which paid well. I ate a nice lunch most days. I laughed once a week – sometimes these laughs were tinged with hysteria, but that was okay. I cried often but thought this was possibly related to tiredness or the perimenopause.
Besides, did anyone feel happy these days? If I thought of the people I worked with, I’d have described the majority as ‘averagely content’. Others were clearly depressed. It was difficult to gauge. I sensed I wasn’t the only one who woke up in the morning with a feeling of dread. It’s horrible when you realise that the moment you clamber back into bed will be the best part of your day. It was work stress, yes … but it was heavier. A sense of time running out, that I had fewer good years ahead than behind (this wasn’t strictly true because I’d not really had many good years in the first place). Time was speeding past and I felt isolated. I’d fallen out of synch with the school friends that I’d seen every month during my twenties and thirties. They’d all had babies in their early thirties, and these kids were now entering secondary school. So when I had Bella they’d all moved beyond that small children stage. They were FREE and wanted to drink and re-invent themselves and PARTY! South London wasn’t a million miles away from Acton but it felt like it. It was easier to keep a low-level buzz of connection via social media. I could ‘like’ the pictures but didn’t have to listen to all the chat. They were embarking on new careers, getting divorced, or taking up marathon running. What was it with all the marathon running anyway?
And how exactly had I ended up moving from apathy and tiredness to a heart that thudded every morning when Bella screamed from her room because she needed a wee? Well work had been busy (it never wasn’t busy). Work had become a slog, and all slog and no fun makes Rebecca a dull girl. And there was the rub. The moments of pleasure, the tiny positive increments that you needed to experience in life to keep going seemed to have disappeared without me even realizing it. The truth was those old friends had been important. There’d been a sense that we were steadily moving towards some common end point, some positive evolution was happening.
I had Kath. At least I had one true friend but it was weird how much my social circle had shrunk down to nearly nothing. She was my oldest friend and I’d known her since school days – one of the few I’d managed to keep in touch with.
It was weird because in reality, once Bella reached about three, I could feel life was getting easier. Nevertheless, it was as if the fug of the earlier, chaotic days was lifting to reveal a vast, empty terrain. With babies, it’s easy to get lost in the sleeplessness, feeding, panic, angst and then discover that there isn’t much else going on once the mess has cleared. If it wasn’t the thudding in the morning, it was the booming noise in my ears in the middle of the night. The noise of my heart ready to explode. Then the thoughts would start up.
Does Bella’s nursery teacher hate me?
Have I filed the right version of the loo roll presentation for Friday morning?
Why hasn’t the client replied to my last email?
Where have all my tights