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About the author

Janet Hoggarth has worked on a chicken farm, as a bookseller, children’s book editor and DJ with her best friend (under the name of Whitney and Britney). She has published several children’s books, the most recent ones written under the pseudonym of Jess Bright. Her first adult novel, The Single Mums’ Mansion is based on her experiences of living communally as a single parent.

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About the book

For all fans of Motherland, Allison Pearson and Hurrah for Gin.

Amanda Wilkie unexpectedly finds herself alone with three children under five in a rambling Victorian house in London, after her husband walks leaves them claiming he’s just ‘lost the love’, like one might carelessly lose a glove.

A few months later, Amanda’s heavily pregnant friend, Ali, crashes into her kitchen announcing her partner is also about to abscond. Once Ali's baby Grace is born, Amanda encourages them to move in. When Jacqui, a long-lost friend and fellow single mum, starts dropping by daily, the household is complete.

Getting divorced is no walk in the park, but the three friends refuse to be defined by it. And, as they slowly emerge out of the wreckage like a trio of sequin-clad Gloria Gaynors singing ‘I Will Survive’, they realise that anything is possible. Even loving again…

Buy links:

Amazon: mybook.to/SingleMumsMansion

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2Is5n62

iBooks: https://apple.co/2L9PK49

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2IZOcxg

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EXTRACT

A month before Sam left, I visited Mel down in deepest Sussex. She still lived in Bingham, the tiny South Downs market town where we grew up. Bingham was pretty in that quintessential English way, cobbles, wisteria, higgledy-piggledy architectural styles ranging from Tudor right though to eighties facsimile Georgian cul-de-sacs. Mel, her husband, Colin, and daughter, Imogen, had gone to live in Dubai for two years when Imo was six months old, because of Colin’s work. Mel hated it and was lonely, but they knew it was just for two years and would pay off their mortgage in Bingham. She had not returned to work in recruitment, instead becoming a stay-at-home mum, something she struggled with. I went out to Dubai before I had the children and found her addicted to day-time soaps and gin. She would have her first drink at eleven thirty in the morning.

‘Just to take the edge off. Everyone does it here.’ By the time they came home and she was pregnant with Ashley, she had stopped drinking altogether and the Shelf of Self-Help appeared in the downstairs toilet.

‘I scared myself. I actually had one day where I could not tell you what I did because I was so out of it.’ It didn’t make sense – she was always so level headed.

‘Post-natal depression doesn’t make sense, though,’ she said when I had questioned her. ‘Here you are with this baby that you desperately wanted, and Mother Nature decides to turn you mad as some sort of punishment for bringing another human being into the world via your vagina. It’s shit!’ Yes, it was, as I found out for myself when a year after Meg was born I woke up feeling normal, having had no inkling I had behaved like a hormonal hag for twelve months.

Sonny was installed at my feet chewing a Matchbox car in Mel’s living room, and the girls were scouring through the vast collection of Lego that Imogen and Ashley had spilled out for them. Mel’s kids were older than mine, with Ashley now frequenting our former senior school. We had been chatting aimlessly about nothing in particular when out of the blue I blurted: ‘I think Sam’s having an affair.’ It just impulsively shot out. I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror and tears instantly filled my eyes.

‘What on earth makes you say that?’ Mel had hissed, clearly shocked. ‘Surely not Sam, he of the perfect marriage and saintly husband status.’

‘I don’t know,’ I had squeaked, wanting to punch my eyes to stop them leaking.

‘Well, you must have some sort of idea. You’ve never ever mentioned this to me before.’

I took my hands away from my face, wishing I could snatch back the words.

‘Think back, Amanda, what sparked this?’

‘Oh God.’

‘What?’

‘It’s his eyes. They’re not here. They haven’t been here for years, not since Meg was born.’

‘That’s three and a half years ago!’

‘I think I just accepted it’s what it’s like when you have small kids. You lose your way a bit.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. I was a complete nut job when mine were little. But that doesn’t mean he’s having an affair.’

‘I know. Just lately we’ve lost our connection completely and it’s getting worse. I find myself saying the most awful things, just to get a reaction. I’ve become such a moany bitch. He isn’t there at all and it’s hideous. It’s like he’s checked out. And he’s changed his aftershave. The one I love has been banished to the back of the bathroom cabinet. He’s got this new one I’ve never even heard of or seen before. He’s worn the same thing for over ten years – why the change?’

‘I think you’re reading too much into it. Your subconscious will have dragged up that scenario as a way to make sense. There could be another explanation?’ Mel was always the more sensible of the two of us. Whenever I saw a disaster, she would always pragmatically see the other side, and she loved playing devil’s advocate. We were completely different in so many ways and not just physically, with our different hair colours (Mel was blonde to my raven) and body shapes (Mel had tits and arse, I just had arse). I was always a bit on the wild side at school, getting drunk at fourteen, different boys, parties galore; whereas she would be the one cleaning up the vomit from behind the sofa so the parents didn’t find out. Even now she was more grounded than me, the proof being she possessed a salad spinner. Only real grown-ups bother with one of those.