The Mum Who’d Had Enough: A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for fans of Why Mummy Drinks. Fiona Gibson

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       Chapter One

       Nate

      It’s Scout who wakes me by licking my face. Scout, the fox terrier we would only adopt as long as he wasn’t allowed on the furniture, and who is now luxuriating, sultan-like, on the king-sized bed.

      ‘Christ, boy, get off me …’ I flip over to joke with Sinead about waking up being snogged.

      The joke will have to wait. Sinead isn’t lying beside me.

      Strange; it’s unusual for me to not hear my wife getting up, and these days she’s been getting up all times of the night. She is easily disturbed by nocturnal noises – I really should have set those mousetraps last night – and has been suffering from, I don’t know … anxiety, I guess. Often, I wake up at some ungodly hour and she’s lying there with her eyes wide open, looking tense and afraid. Perhaps it’s hormonal? At forty-three, I think she’s a bit young for the menopause – not that I’m any kind of expert.

      I just try to help. Really, I do. I gently suggested she might try herbal supplements – I’d heard Liv at work enthusing about the soothing properties of sage – but Sinead just snapped, ‘I appreciate your handy hints, Nate, but I’m fine, thank-you-very-much!’ Even so, it had been pretty shocking when she announced, a few weeks ago, that she was planning to see a therapist. All I could think of were Woody Allen films and everyone talking about their emotionally abusive mothers, and by all accounts Sinead’s childhood was extremely happy.

      Did that mean she wanted to see a therapist because of me?

      Having manoeuvred Scout to one side, I check the time on my phone: 6.43 a.m. I climb out of bed and pad quietly out of our bedroom and across the landing, past Flynn’s room.

      No need to wake him yet. Our son’s school is on the other side of town and most days Sinead drives him there, even though he can manage the bus no problem and thinks it’s ludicrous that we want to ferry him anywhere at sixteen years old. Flynn has cerebral palsy. While most kids think nothing of it, you get the odd little arsehole who wants to start something, and there were a few bullying incidents on the bus when he was younger. Understandably, his mum still likes to deliver him safely to the door (or at least, around the corner from school, which is the closest he’ll allow). He comes home with his mate Max, who lives two streets away, so that’s fine.

      Of course it’s fine. Flynn is virtually an adult. I need to stop thinking of him as our little boy.

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