The Misadventures of a Playground Mother Read online

  The Misadventures of a Playground Mother

  Christie Barlow

  For my family, Christian, Emily, Jack, Ruby, Tilly, Mum and Dad.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, a huge thank you and much love to my family, Christian, Emily, Jack, Ruby and Tilly (Mop) for all your patience and support while I’ve been locked away for hours writing in my cave. Woody, my best friend, my life is complete with you in it. You are all simply the best.

  Many people have helped in the writing of this book, my heartfelt thanks to my agent Madeleine Milburn for her faith in me and I am beyond blessed to be working with such a fantastic team at Bookouture. Kim Nash who is everyone’s Fairy Godmother, I simply adore her. Claire Bord, Olly Rhodes and all the fantastic editors are incredible people who have turned my stories into books; I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am both proud and honoured to be called a Bookouture author and everyone’s encouragement and enthusiasm for my writing is heartening.

  Huge love to all of the Bookouture authors for their warm welcome to the Bookouture family. The support from all of you has been truly amazing.

  A special mention to my wonderful friends, Anita Redfern, Lucy Davey, Chantal Chatfield, Nicola Rickus, Catherine Snook, Louise Speight, Suzanne Toner, Sue Stevens, Alison Smithies, Sarah Lees and Bev Smith, Sarah Yeats and Ilona Hampson who have always been on hand in person or at the end of a telephone listening to plot dilemmas. Their everyday support has not gone unnoticed. Thank you.

  Many thanks to Sue France, Sarah Pickles and Susan Miller who are genuinely some of the loveliest people I know.

  Finally to some very special people, all the wonderful readers, book bloggers and followers who’s tireless cheering, retweeting, sharing of posts and continuous excitement for my books have enabled me to get this far. You have all kept a smile of my face throughout my whole journey and I couldn’t have done it without you, big love to Lisa Smith, Janet Baldwin, Allison Marsh, Deborah Turner, Claire Hall, Michelle Dobson and Sarah Ansell, You have made Twitter a joy and one day I am sure we will meet! I hope you all enjoy The Misadventures of a Playground Mother.

  Dreams can come true.

  Warmest wishes,

  Christie x

  Introduction

  My sleep was unceremoniously interrupted as the bedroom door was flung open and three loud pops erupted to sound the start of a new day – the unmistakable sound of party poppers! The kids had clearly managed to lay their hands on some left- over mini pyrotechnics from the previous night and after letting them off within a foot of my left ear, they simultaneously shouted, ‘Happy birthday’! This could only mean one thing – it was my birthday – my thirty-fifth birthday!

  I bolted up and tried to create a gap between my upper and lower eyelids in a vain attempt to loosen the grip of the mascara holding them together. As I began to recover from the shock of the artillery barrage going off in my bedroom, I felt a relentless throbbing in my head. It was as if the cast of Riverdance, the band of the Coldstream Guards, and that noise-making stage act that made a living kicking bin-lids and banging other metal paraphernalia with hammers were all shamelessly trying to win the Making-the-most-noise-at-a-stupid-time-on-New-Year’s-Day award.

  I assumed it was a stupid time; I still hadn't managed to open my eyes wide enough to read the display on the clock radio. My tongue felt like a pharaoh’s sock so I fumbled around looking for the glass of water that routinely sits on my bedside table but I was unable to locate it. The vivid red numbers on the digital display finally reached my retina and my brain slowly interpreted the image. It was 6.17 a.m.!

  I muttered something – probably unpleasant – at the kids and they gave me a hug and began to filter out of the bedroom. Samuel, my son, offered to make me a cup of tea, at which point Matt – who would be able to hear the offer of a brew from the other side of the country – finally began to stir and added his name to the tea round before climbing out of bed.

  I allowed my body to sink back down towards the bed, every fragile movement causing my head to throb even more. Finally, it touched the pillow and I detected the distinctive smell of stale alcohol and a hint of mint. Mint! Why on earth would my pillow smell of mint? A little dribble of saliva – probably the only liquid left in my body – evacuated my mouth at the corner so I quickly licked it up in a hopeless attempt to rehydrate my tongue. Curiously, my taste buds also detected a hint of mint so I licked my lips again and before you could say ‘Miss Marple’, the mint mystery was solved; I must have climbed into bed with toothpaste smeared around my mouth, which had now dried into a crusty film. On the plus side though, at least it proved I had brushed my teeth before I passed out.

  Samuel aged eight appeared with my mug of tea. He looked as if he had slept well with his mass of curly blonde hair sticking up like a mad professor. I sat up again and took a small sip, but as the hot liquid hit my stomach, I immediately began to feel sick. I spotted a bucket at the side of the bed. A bucket that Matt must have strategically placed next to the bed, knowing full well I would need to be sick.

  I mustered up every ounce of energy to heave myself out of bed and made my way tentatively towards the bathroom. I reminded myself that I was a mother of four and not a teenager, and partying to the early hours always took it out of me.

  1

  There was no doubt whatsoever that this birthday would be spent in exactly the same way as so many previous birthdays – with my hair tied back and my head permanently positioned over the toilet. I tried to recollect more memories from the night before but everything seemed to have been erased from my memory. Apparently, it’s called selective amnesia – in my case another year older but certainly not another year wiser.

  My phone started to beep – no doubt Facebook messages wishing me a happy birthday - but I wasn’t quite sure what was happy about it so far. After reading numerous birthday wishes on my profile page I flicked to the newsfeed and immediately began to feel even more nauseous; the profile picture of a mother from school, Botox Bernie, was gawping back at me. She appeared as though she was in the middle of a mid-life crisis with her push-up bra catapulting her artificially enhanced chest so high above her low cut top that it was hitting her chin. On a positive note however, her forehead was wrinkle free, she was still living up to her Playground nickname of Botox Bernie.

  Facebook hadn’t improved my mood so I gingerly made my way over to the window, trying desperately to keep my head still to avoid triggering the motion-sensitive organs in my ear, which would make me feel even dizzier. I parted the curtains to view the rest of the world; the sky was grey and white flakes were falling thick and fast. I stared out of the window at a spectacular sight. A fresh blanket of snow covered the fields that spanned for miles and miles, with not a single tyre mark or footprint to be seen. There were a few cottages either side of us but I could tell no one had ventured out yet as the snow that lay on their gardens was undisturbed.

  Matt had ushered the children downstairs and had fed them. I could hear the television blaring from the playroom, which would suggest he had kindly sat them down to watch a DVD. I could hear conversations filtering from downstairs. Jane, Mark, and their daughter Poppy had stayed over and joined in our New Year celebrations. They were our good friends from up north. The scraping of the kitchen chairs across the stone floor and the banging of the cupboard doors suggested breakfast was being prepared. The clatter of knives and forks and plates crashed onto the table, the sound amplifying all around me.

  I slowly made my way downstairs, carefully stepping over the carnage from the night before – empty beer cans, party poppers, streamers, and leftover sausage rolls that had been trodden
into the carpet – when my eyes fell upon a most unexpected sight. There at the foot of the stairs lay a pair of shoes; not just any pair of shoes but shoes belonging to one Rupert Kensington, the philanderer of a husband married to Penelope Kensington.

  I peered inside the cloakroom cupboard, looking for further evidence that Rupert Kensington was alive and well and had not been driven over the edge of a cliff in my make-believe bus. Every month I would allocate a seat on my pretend bus to particular people; all those that boarded would hopefully never cross my path again, but his coat was still there, hanging on his own personal peg, the peg to the left, was vacant. That left Penelope’s name clearly visible on the sticky label Matt had fashioned when we thought we were going to be joined by a full complement of Kensington lodgers after a relentless run of Saturday night get-togethers. Penelope and Rupert had never been good at taking no for an answer and had no qualms about taking up all of our Saturday evenings. We had given up trying to fob them off because it simply did not work.

  My mind drifted back to the game we had amused ourselves with, the previous evening, as midnight approached; the game that revealed Rupert’s drunken desire to marry the lovely Annie and avoid his wife at all costs. Annie was Penelope’s friend; well ex-friend now; Rupert had fallen in love with her but had dutifully stayed with Penelope due to the two children they shared, Little Jonny and Annabel. Shortly afterwards, my friend Jane, from the north, was brave enough to secure Rupert in a vice-like grip planted an over-zealous New Year’s kiss directly on his lips. This had understandably pushed Penelope to breaking point; she was last seen bounding out of the lounge, knocking me off the settee, in her hurry to leave the room. No one could blame Penelope for storming out of the room, she must have been sick to the back teeth of Rupert and his Lothario tendencies.

  I opened the kitchen door forcing an insincere smile on my face.

  ‘Happy New Year everyone; hope the hangover isn’t too appalling,’ I announced.

  Matt, Jane, Mark and Rupert peered at me as I placed my backside firmly on a chair and slid my legs under the table. I needed to sit still to stop the motion that was trying to convince my body I was bobbing around in a rowing boat in the middle of the ocean. Matt pressed another cuppa in my hand and placed a bacon sandwich on the table in front of me. I took a slurp of my tea as he moved forward and planted a kiss on my forehead.

  ‘Take these,’ he commanded, and forced headache tablets into the palm of my sweaty hands, ‘and Happy Birthday, sweetheart!’

  I glanced over at Jane and Mark who somehow appeared as fresh as daisies; they were showered, dressed and quite happily tucking into sausage and bacon muffins. Due to the weather conditions, they wanted to leave as early as possible to avoid any hazards on the motorway. The kitchen was invitingly warm, but to me it smelled far from delicious. Rupert was hugging a mug of tea too, as if his life depended on it – well I suppose it did – at some point he would need to return home to face Penelope. Death Row would probably seem more appealing to him right now.

  I was convinced Rupert would provide another Oscar-winning performance to win back Penelope.

  His current predicament made me think of all the characters from the Wizard of Oz rolled into one; in the film, Glinda the good witch tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. On her way, she meets and befriends the Scarecrow who wants a brain, the Tin Man who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion who is in need of courage. Rupert would need lots of courage, like the Cowardly Lion, to face Penelope, and he certainly needed a brain to have even contemplated his revelations of the night before, and surely he lacked a heart, as his numerous dalliances, which had almost destroyed his family had been entirely influenced by the goings-on in his trousers. Still dressed in his New Year’s Eve ensemble, he looked full of misery and very bedraggled. His shirt was stained with beer and sweat patches. An unpleasant smell left nothing to the imagination.

  Rupert was probably praying that this year would be better than his last. During the past year, his various affairs had been uncovered; his double life with Charlotte had been busted, and his love for Annie revealed. Rupert’s short stay in rehab for his obvious sex addiction had humiliated Penelope. The year ahead potentially offered Rupert a fresh start.

  Jane and Mark started to pack up their belongings and round up their daughter Poppy for the long journey back up to Cheshire. Jane was still breaking into fits of giggles, clearly amused that Penelope, Rupert‘s long-suffering wife had knocked me off the sofa just as I was about to give the air guitar performance of a lifetime to Queen’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’.

  ‘It was the moment when you heard the taxi beeping, and were convinced your make-believe bus had arrived to take them out of your life forever,’ she chuckled.

  In that split second I remembered receiving a drunken text from my best mate Fay wishing me a happy birthday along with the bad news that the bus had been delayed due to bad weather. ‘I’m really sorry,’ it read, ‘you will have to go on holiday with the Kensington’s after all.’ The holiday with the Kensingtons was something I wasn’t looking forward to this coming year. Last November, they’d invited us round to share a meal on their anniversary and like the Spanish Inquisition had interrogated us on our holiday plans for the following year. Before we knew it the laptop had been whipped out, plugged in and they were booked on the same flights as us. They’d only invited themselves to stay at our villa.

  That the ‘bus had been delayed’ was apparent since Rupert was sitting in my kitchen, larger than life and on my birthday too! That surely meant that all the other people I’d allocated a seat to on my make-believe bus were also still breathing and more than likely nursing their own hangovers on this snowy New Year’s Day.

  Suddenly, the shrill of a siren cut through the atmosphere and the kitchen was bathed for a moment in blue swirling lights. Samuel rushed into the kitchen, waving his arms wildly.

  ‘There’s something going on at Mr. Fletcher-Parker’s house,’ he yelled. 'There’s an ambulance parked outside and a woman wearing a tatty fur coat and high-heels is standing there wailing.’ Mr Fletcher-Parker for the last year had been my pensioner stalker; he was my very own geriatric ninja who Matt and I had named Frisky Pensioner due to his energetic frolicsome tendencies.

  Jane bolted to the window followed by Matt, Mark and Rupert as though they were in an Olympic 100-metre race. Jostling for position and standing on their tiptoes, they strained their necks for an improved view. The window was rather crowded and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Still in a very delicate state, I headed gingerly towards the front door. Grabbing my coat, I stepped outside, and instantly the freezing air blasted colour into my dehydrated hung-over skin. The rest of the household – spotting my obvious vantage point – put on their coats and shoes and crunched their way through the snow to the bottom of the drive, and peered around the hedge in a vain attempt to appear inconspicuous.

  Standing together at the bottom of the driveway, we could hear the wailing woman. Other neighbours had started to gather in the street, agog to discover the reason for all the commotion.

  I surveyed the area, looking for the source of the wailing. When my eyes finally fell upon the woman in the fur coat, my jaw nearly hit the ground. She was standing in white stiletto heels, not classy by any stretch of the imagination. They looked scuffed and had certainly seen better days; they were the ubiquitous hooker heels, the kind you would see adorning the feet of the less-than-glamorous lead female in a typical low-budget porn film. They were certainly not the proper footwear for this type of weather – whatever was this woman thinking?

  My eyes now focussed on the fur coat, which looked more like a flea-ridden chinchilla. It was difficult to be absolutely certain but she didn’t seem to be wearing a great deal under the fur coat – the plunging neck line revealed her ample and not unfamiliar cleavage. Surely not! I immediately turned my attention to her face and for the second time today, I was confronted by the face of Botox Bern
ie. It was one thing lording it around on the school playground every day, as she did, but BB (Botox Bernie) was now standing in the street being just as vocal as she was in the playground.

  Her expression didn’t falter – which was no great surprise as her face had been injected full of poisonous fillers – but as the volume of her howls increased, I could hear the dog beginning to whine from inside the house. The onlookers were beginning to mutter; clearly still unsure as to why there was an ambulance parked outside Frisky’s house and why BB was dressed like a hooker. We had plenty of time to find out though; It was too icy and slippery to move anywhere at speed, so we were not going anywhere in a hurry.

  BB suddenly dropped to her knees and her moan reached new intensity levels. A wry smile began to spread across Rupert’s face and his face was flushed with embarrassment. I concluded from his reaction that this was not the first time he had witnessed her in this position. My hangover was still hanging onto me for dear life, and as she sat there on her haunches, I tried to stop my mind running wild with thoughts of what she may or may not be wearing under the flea-ridden chinchilla. One thing was certain, if she didn’t rise back onto those unclassy heels soon, there would be a beaver with a severe case of frostbite.

  At that moment, two men dressed in paramedics’ uniforms emerged through Frisky Pensioner’s front door. The gathered crowd were straining their necks trying to establish whether they were the real deal or leftover visitors from a fancy dress New Year’s Party. Any doubt as to their integrity was soon dispelled as the two men wheeled out a stretcher, its cargo completely covered by a blanket. It looked like a dead body, but because it was covered in a blanket, it was difficult to work out who it was. That puzzle was soon solved though when BB began sobbing, ‘It’s the end, it’s the end. I’m so sorry Mr Fletcher-Parker.’