Single Mum Quotes

To the most inconsiderate asshole of a friend, I’m writing you this letter because I know that if I say what I have to say to your face I will probably punch you. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t see you anymore. All I get is a quick text or a rushed e-mail from you every few days. I know you are busy and I know you have Bethany, but hello? I’m supposed to be your best friend. You have no idea what this summer has been like. Ever since we were kids we pushed away every single person that could possibly have been our friend. We blocked people until there was only me and you. You probably haven’t noticed, because you have never been in the position I am in now. You have always had someone. You always had me. I always had you. Now you have Bethany and I have no one. Now I feel like those other people that used to try to become our friend, that tried to push their way into our circle but were met by turned backs. I know you’re probably not doing it deliberately just as we never did it deliberately. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone else, it’s just that we didn’t need them. Sadly now it looks like you don’t need me anymore. Anyway I’m not moaning on about how much I hate her, I’m just trying to tell you that I miss you. And that well . . . I’m lonely. Whenever you cancel nights out I end up staying home with Mum and Dad watching TV. It’s so depressing. This was supposed to be our summer of fun. What happened? Can’t you be friends with two people at once? I know you have found someone who is extra special, and I know you both have a special “bond,” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were. So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doingnow; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years! Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex. I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind. Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it? OK I’m going now and I’m ripping these muddled thoughts up. Your friend, Rosie

I worked hard for everything I ever cared about, & nothing I ever cared about cost a single cent." ~ Mum

No one knew. Then Lily’s mum knew, of course. Then Lily knew. And then everyone knew. Everyone. Which changed the whole world in a single day. And he was never going to forgive her for that.

Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.' 'What is it about, then?' I ask. 'It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.' 'I don't know how to get over it, Mum,' I say. 'At this point I'm so tired of myself. I don't know how to let go of her.' 'You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.' 'Does it get easier?' 'Much,' she says.

It takes a tremendous amount of strength to be a single mother. To hold down the forte of a home, a life and your child's entire happiness.

This, really, is the bottom line, the chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads. I’m not going back there again; I’d rather stay in for the rest of my life than attract that kind of attention.

A rotten nut, a reeky pear, A thing the cat left on the stair, And lots of other things as well, Each with a rather horrid smell. These are Veruca's new found friends That she will meet as she descends, And this is the price she has to pay For going so very far astray. But now, my dears, we think you might Be wondering-is it really right That every single bit of blame And all the scolding and the shame Should fall upon Veruca Salt? Is she the only one at fault? For though she's spoiled, and dreadfully so, A girl can't spoil herself, you know. Who spoiled her, then? Ah, who indeed? Who pandered to her every need? Who turned her into such a brat? Who are the culprits? Who did that? Alas! You needn't look so far To find out who these sinners are. They are (and this is very sad) Her loving parents, Mum and Dad. And that is why we're glad they fell Into the garbage chute as well.

It's worth remembering that [having a baby] is not of vital use to you as a woman. Yes, you could learn thousands of interesting things about love, strength, faith, fear, human relationships, genetic loyalty, and the effect of apricots on an immune digestive system. But I don't think there's a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn't be learned elsewhere. If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then-in truth-it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whiskey with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in the winter; growing foxgloves, peas, and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a minute that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume, Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.

But mum was tough. No matter how fancily she dressed, she couldn't hide her true nature. Everyone at school was scared of her. Especially the other mums. She once knocked out a man with a single punch when he barged her trolley in Sainsbury's.

How did you get in here?" He opened up his arms. "Easy. I jumped from a plane onto your roof, disengaged the security grid in your basement, crawled into your house through an air vent, cut the security wires on your wall screens, crawled back outside, unlocked a sky window, slid through, and here I am." I raised a single eyebrow. "I knocked on the door and your mum let me in. Crazy, right?

By attempting to kill you, Voldemort himself singled out the remarkable person who sits here in front of me, and gave him the tools for the job! It is Voldemort's fault that you were able to see into his thoughts, his ambitions, that you even understand the snakelike language in which he gives orders, and yet, Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!" "Of course I haven't!" said Harry indignantly. "He killed my mum and dad!" "You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!" said Dumbledore loudly. "The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort's! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Harry, have you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what he was dealing with, but he did not!

It had just been a friendship, normal as anything. But then his mum's "little talk" had happened, and what came next was simple, really, and sudden. No one knew. Then Lily's mum knew, of course. Then Lily knew. And then everyone knew. Everyone. Which changed the whole world in a single day. And he was never going to forgive her for that.

This year something else is the terror. The road edging away and then dropping from sight, the judder judder judder as we move from tarmac to dirt. Is Mum crying? I don’t know. Should we ask? No answer to that and, anyway, the house is there now and no time to go back or try again or do things over. This the year we are houses, lights on in every window, doors that won’t quite shut. When one of us speaks we both feel the words moving on our tongues. When one of us eats we both feel the food slipping down our gullets. It would have surprised neither of us to have found, slit open, that we shared organs, that one’s lungs breathed for the both, that a single heart beat a doubling, feverish pulse.

Grief also makes you mental. You can’t try and outrun it: it always catches you in the end.

about time I stopped thinking life will feel better when this happens or that happens or when I meet someone. Life is happening now.

Single parenthood: Where you bite every bullet Suck up spells of pouring rain And wake with open wounds Still dripping with the liquid of yesterday's pain The objective being to simply get up, withstand, endure Fight an inch harder, love a little more And draw a smile on your face Tie a ribbon of calm around your racing heart For the one(s) that you so beautifully adore

I understand, intellectually, that the death of a parent is a natural, acceptable part of life. Nobody would call the death of a very sick eighty-year-old woman a tragedy. There was soft weeping at her funeral and red watery eyes. No wrenching sobs. Now I think that I should have let myself sob. I should have wailed and beaten my chest and thrown myself over her coffin. I read a poem. A pretty, touching poem I thought she would have liked. I should have used my own words. I should have said: No one will ever love me as fiercely as my mother did. I should have said: You all think you’re at the funeral of a sweet little old lady, but you’re at the funeral of a girl called Clara, who had long blond hair in a heavy thick plait down to her waist, who fell in love with a shy man who worked on the railways, and they spent years and years trying to have a baby, and when Clara finally got pregnant, they danced around the living room but very slowly, so as not to hurt the baby, and the first two years of her little girl’s life were the happiest of Clara’s life, except then her husband died, and she had to bring up the little girl on her own, before there was a single mother’s pension, before the words “single mother” even existed. I should have told them about how when I was at school, if the day became unexpectedly cold, Mum would turn up in the school yard with a jacket for me. I should have told them that she hated broccoli with such a passion she couldn’t even look at it, and that she was in love with the main character on the English television series Judge John Deed. I should have told them that she loved to read and she was a terrible cook, because she’d try to cook and read her latest library book at the same time, and the dinner always got burned and the library book always got food spatters on it, and then she’d spend ages trying to dab them away with the wet corner of a tea towel. I should have told them that my mum thought of Jack as her own grandchild, and how she made him a special racing car quilt he adored. I should have talked and talked and grabbed both sides of the lectern and said: She was not just a little old lady. She was Clara. She was my mother. She was wonderful.

Homophobia and the closet are allies. Like an unhealthy co-dependent relationship they need each other to survive. One plays the victim living in fear and shame while the other plays the persecutor policing what is ‘normal’. The only way to dismantle homophobia is for every gay man and lesbian in the world to come out and live authentic lives. Once they realise how normal we are and see themselves in us….the controversy is over. It is interesting to think what would happen though....on a particularly pre-determined day that every single gay man and lesbian came out. Imagine the impact when, on that day, people all around the world suddenly discovered their bosses, mums, dads, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, doctors, neighbours, colleagues, politicians, their favourite actors, celebrities and sports heroes, the people they loved and respected......were indeed gay. All stereotypes would immediately be broken.....just by the same single act of millions of people…..and at last there would no longer be need for secrecy. The closet would become the lounge room. How much healthier would we be emotionally and psychologically when we could all be ourselves doing life without the internal and societal negatives that have been attached to our sexual orientation.

How was she meant to let go ? Sometimes, instead of having a single daughter, it felt as if she were grieving the loss of hundreds. The baby that clung to her little finger. The toddler who squealed with delight at her first steps. The small girl who said "I love you" for the first time with no ceremony and without realising it almost broke Maggie's heart with joy. The teenager who broke down when she needed Mum one last time. It was like her daughter disappeared over and over again. All those incredible people who Maggie would never meet again, some of whom were remembered only by her. And she felt colossal loneliness at the realisation.

But to keep thinking things will get better when this happens or that happens isn’t helpful. You’ll spend your entire life waiting for the next thing to make you happy. This is your life: whether it’s what you planned or not, it’s where you are right now. It won’t always be good, but it won’t always be this shit. Life is hard and then sometimes it isn’t.

Philips was setting up a new ‘underground’ label called Vertigo when we were looking for a deal. We were a perfect fit. But the funny thing was that Vertigo wasn’t even up and running in time for our first single, ‘Evil Woman’, so it was originally released on another Philips label, Fontana, before being reissued on Vertigo a few weeks later. Not that it made any f**king difference: the song went down like a concrete turd both times. But we didn’t care, because the BBC played it on Radio 1. Once. At six o’clock in the morning. I was so nervous, I got up at five and drank about eight cups of tea. ‘They won’t play it,’ I kept telling myself, ‘They won’t play it...’ But then: BLAM...BLAM... Dow-doww... BLAM... Dow-dow-d-d-dow, dooooow... D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d DUH-DA! Do-doo-do DUH-DA! Do-doo-do... It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to hear yourself on Radio 1 for the first time. It was magic, squared. I ran around the house screaming, ‘I’m on the radio! I’m on the f**king radio!’ until my mum stomped downstairs in her nightie and told me to shut up.

Hello, little man,’ I said and kissed his cheek. ‘Urgh.’ He wiped the kiss off. ‘I hate lipstick.’ I laughed as if he were joking and kissed him again. ‘You’ll love it when you’re older.’ ‘When I’m older,’ he asked, ‘will you be dead?’ Though there was nothing in his tone but interest, the question floored me completely. Stunned, I opened my mouth to reply, but could think of nothing to say. ‘The mum of one of the kids in Ben’s class is dead,’ Red said, his tone neutral. ‘Ever since he found out, he’s been obsessed.’ ‘Will you?’ Ben pressed. ‘Mummy will die when she’s old,’ his father answered, and I had to bite my tongue, because I knew better than anyone that death did not pre-book appointments decades in advance. Its approach was random, based on whimsy, often violent. I came from a line of women who bore a single child and were dead before its eighteenth birthday. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Red said.

Just don’t say anything at all, Hennessy told herself, but she’d never been good at listening to advice, even her own. “Dear old mum. What did she teach me? Mmm…Don’t leave cigarettes burning on the piano, never mix pills on a school night, stay single, die young.” Machkowsky’s mouth hardened; she didn’t look up from the art. She said, “I always wondered what it must have been like to be her daughter. So she was no different at home, then?” Hennessy hesitated. “I had hoped her behavior was more of an act,” Machkowsky said. “Performance art. I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.” It was unexpectedly jarring to be seen. Hennessy had not come here to be known. She had not come here for sympathy from a stranger, especially not for a childhood she’d thought only looked appalling from the inside. Did it matter, to know that someone had thought about her in her youthful suffering? She would have liked the answer to be no. It was simpler. But the way her breath felt all tangled up in her throat told her the answer was yes. It mattered.

So, what did you want to watch?’ ‘Thought we might play a game instead,’ he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. ‘Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won’t froth like that.’ Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she’d got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. ‘The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I’ll totally kick your arse.’ Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You’re gonna kick my arse?’ ‘Until it’s black and blue and you won’t be able to sit down for a week.’ That sounded very arrogant. ‘Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.’ ‘Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it’s logic and tactics,’ Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake. For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get Max back for that snide little speech, but he just licked the back of the spoon thoughtfully. ‘This is surprisingly more-ish, do you want some?’ ‘I think I’ll pass.’ ‘Well, you’re not getting out of Scrabble that easily.’ Max leaned back against the cushions, the mug cradled to his chest, and propped his feet up on the table so he could poke the Scrabble box nearer to Neve. ‘Come on, set ’em up. Unless you’re too scared.’ ‘Max, I have all the two-letter words memorised, and as for Carol Vorderman – well, she might be good at maths but there was a reason why she wasn’t in Dictionary Corner on Countdown so I’m not surprised you beat her at Scrabble.’ ‘Fighting talk.’ Max rapped his knuckles gently against Neve’s head, which made her furious. ‘I’ll remind you of that little speech once I’m done making you eat every single one of those high-scoring words you seem to think you’re so good at.’ ‘Right, that does it.’ Neve snatched up the box and practically tore off the lid, so she could bang the board down on the coffee table. ‘You can’t be that good at Scrabble if you keep your letters in a crumpled paper bag,’ Max noted, actually daring to nudge her arm with his foot. Neve knew he was only doing it to get a rise out of her, but God, it was working. ‘Game on, Pancake Boy,’ she snarled, throwing a letter rack at Max, which just made him laugh. ‘And don’t think I’m going to let you win just because it’s your birthday.’ It was the most fun Neve had ever had playing Scrabble. It might even have been the most fun she had ever had. For every obscure word she tried to play in the highest scoring place, Max would put down three tiles to make three different words and block off huge sections of the board. Every time she tried to flounce or throw a strop because ‘you’re going against the whole spirit of the game’, Max would pop another Quality Street into her mouth because, as he said, ‘It is Treat Sunday and you only had one roast potato.’ When there were no more Quality Street left and they’d drunk all the champagne, he stopped each one of her snits with a slow, devastating kiss so there were long pauses between each round. It was a point of honour to Neve that she won in the most satisfying way possible; finally getting to use her ‘q’ on a triple word score by turning Max’s ‘hogs’ into ‘quahogs’ and waving the Oxford English Dictionary in his face when he dared to challenge her.

Oh, Mum,’ Rosie said softly. ‘I missed you. Every single day. I have missed you so much.

You’re joking. I’m a single mum, love, I’m permanently boracic.

It’s not how much money you have that matters, it’s what you do with it. That’s how to become really rich. Let me give you an example of someone who is ridiculously rich, in every sense of the word. Let me introduce you to Dave. This is how Dave works: whenever he comes across great, everyday people, whoever they are - whether it’s a shy 17-year-old just leaving school with a longing to visit his absent father who now lives in Canada; or a plumber who has worked beyond the call of duty, been respectful and diligent, but who rarely gets to see his kids as he works so hard; or a single mother, a friend of a friend, who is struggling to balance a million things and multiple jobs and wishes she could treat her kids to something nice - Dave steps in. A bit like Superman! You see, Dave has worked hard in his life, and been rewarded with great wealth, but through it all he has learnt something far greater: that great wealth doesn’t make you rich unless you do great things with it. So Dave will secretly help people out in some special way. Maybe he pays for the young man’s plane fare to Canada to see his dad, or for the plumber to take his family on holiday, or the single mum to get a car. Anything that is beyond the norm, out of the ordinary - he does it. And you know what? It blows people away! Not only does Dave have the most loyal army of everyday people who would go to the ends of the Earth for him (and it is not because of the money he gave them, by the way, it is because he did something so far beyond the norm for them), but Dave is also the happiest man I have ever met. Why? Because it is impossible to live like this and not be ridiculously happy! It is in the giving that a person becomes rich. And that can start today, whatever point we are along the road of our goals. So don’t waste a chance to get rich quick by getting busy giving. Then stand back and watch the happiness unfold…

All a child needs to flourish is one person to love it.

Sade Adu: I was pretty much one of the lads, but I was an old soul even when I was a child. I grew up on a council estate in a village [in Essex]. It was the epitome of the English village. Our family was accepted really well. I had an older brother who was always very protective of me. My mum was a single parent, which was pretty unusual back then. Even more unusual was that she had two black kids, and the village was pure white as the driven snow. But we were accepted and there were no problems, no questions or conflicts because we were different.

Now aged 32, here I am a single mum with two young sons. I have no man, no job and no savings.        What I do have though, is a dream.

But until then, I’ll remain nostalgic, remembering every single moment spent by your side, every single time you made me smile and I hope you remember those memories in the light they deserve. I’ll remain thankful, to you, to the flaws you showed me of myself, the ways you changed me for the better, the experiences, the lesson I’ve learnt and for your Mum’s amazing Shepherd’s Pie. I hope you look back at the beginning and I hope you look back at the end and allow love to fill the gaps because when I look at you, I look at you with love and appreciation and although for such a long time I believed I had found a soul mate, sometimes the people you love must remain only inside of your heart and not within your life.

Peninsula Freeway, and another off Penzance Beach Road, which wound in a dizzying climb high above sea level. She slowed for an intersection, the light green. She should make a right turn here, but that meant giving way to the oncoming traffic, which was streaming indifferently towards her, and what if some maniac failed to stop before she completed the turn? She tried to swallow. Her mouth was very dry. Someone sounded their horn at her. She continued through the intersection without turning. All those people there last Saturday, as close as bodies can get to one another, yet Janine hadn’t expected, sought or found any kind of togetherness. She knew from past experience that the other couples would look out for each other, the wives watching out for their husbands, always with a smile, a kiss, a comforting or loving caress, ‘Just checking that you’re happy’ kind of thing, and the husbands checking on how their wives were doing, ‘Are you okay? Love you’ kind of thing, even stopping to have sex with them before moving on to another play area. But that wasn’t Robert’s style. He would never so much as say ‘Enjoy yourself’ but go after the single women and younger wives, a glint of grasping need in his eyes, and last Saturday hadn’t been any different. He’d kept her there until three in the morning, long after most of the others had gone home. ‘Mum?’ ‘What?’ ‘Can I have a Happy Meal for lunch?’ ‘We’ll see.’ Beside her, Georgia began to sing. It had taken her husband about three months to wear her down. When he’d first proposed attending one of the parties, late last year, Janine had thought he was joking, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t. She’d felt vaguely discomfited, more from the tawdriness and risk of exposure than realising he probably didn’t want her sexually any more. ‘Why do you want to have sex with other women besides me?’ she’d asked, putting on a bit of a quiver. ‘But

I'm on the spectrum," I say with a jolt. "Derek and Jack were right." "They were not." Artemis scowls. "That's a euphemism. They don't want to say autistic because they think it's rude. It is not rude." "It's not?" I say distantly, observing my brain shift again. "Nope. People think autism is some kind of error, and it's not. You're not broken or 'disordered,' or whatever they say on their little bits of paper. That just means 'not exactly like me.' Which--" Artemis points at the folder "--I think you'll see is one of the many things Mum wrote in the margins, along with the words go to hell, highlighted in pink. Autism is just a different wiring. You're built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up. Every single part of you. And it's..." "Colorful and loud?" I guess, and Artemis laughs. "I was going to say brilliant," she says. "But, yeah, I'd imagine that too. Although I don't know why anyone is surprised at how the world treats you. This has never really been a planet that embraces difference.

On a good day, if you asked me to describe myself, I’d say I’m a thirty-six-year-old, happily married mum of three, and I’d stand by that, that’s a nice description, right? On a bad day, I’d say I’m an emotionally exhausted mess of a woman, who is hanging on by a thin thread every single day trying to be a good mother, wife, friend, daughter and colleague with a social life of her own, a successful career and a body that I most definitely have ‘let go’.

You know what Mum said to me before she died?” Penny asked, and I shook my head. “She told me to make sure you found someone to love you because she couldn’t stand to think of you alone. She said you’d be stubborn, but when the time came, she told me to tell you to snap out of it or else.” “Or else what?” I asked, surprised that I had never heard this story. “She would haunt the kettle until it broke and every single kettle after that until you couldn’t make a cup of tea again.” Penny burst into sobbing laughter. “She said that…”—she gasped for air—“with a straight face!

Sure,’ Mary said, putting on a smile. ‘I have to get back. But please, feel free to look around as much as you’d like.’ Roper gave her a look that said, we don’t need your permission for that, but Jamie thanked her anyway and let her walk off.  He sucked on his teeth the way he did when he wanted a cigarette, and watched Mary go out of earshot. ‘Find anything?’ he asked, turning to Jamie. She let out a long breath. ‘Don’t know yet. Looks like Grace wasn’t as faithful to Ollie as she made out.’ ‘Lover’s tiff?’ ‘Could be.’ Jamie thought about it. ‘Spurned ex, maybe. Maybe it’s the drugs. Maybe something else entirely.’ She rubbed her eyes. It’d been a long morning and she needed to eat. ‘Come on. Let’s head back to HQ, get this written up. We’ll come back when Grace shows her face.’ Roper nodded without a word and headed for the door, already reaching for his cigarettes. Chapter 6 Jamie zipped up her jacket and dug her hands into her pockets, following Roper out the door. He’d sped on ahead so that he could light up before Jamie told him not to. She didn’t like that fresh stink in her car, and she definitely wouldn’t let him smoke in there anyway. And he definitely wasn’t above running out and doing it before she had time to protest. Her effort to make him quit by forcing him to stand in the cold obviously wasn’t working. He was a seasoned smoker and spent most nights standing outside pubs, come rain or shine, sucking down smoke.  That and the fact that he was far too stubborn to give in to such a weak ploy. It was like those goats that stand on the side of damns to lick the salt off. One missed step and it was guaranteed death. But they were single minded. And so was Roper. If she cared more she might have tried harder, but she knew from experience that when guys like Roper made a decision, they’d stick to it forever. As far as he was concerned, the drinking and the smoking was as much a part of him as his belly button was. It couldn’t be changed, and trying would only invite self-loathing. Guys like him had to hit rock bottom. Only then could they start coming back up. But sometimes they just stayed there, scraping the ground until they gouged a hole deep enough to die in.  She should call her mum. It had been a while. Outside, Roper was already two drags in by the time she reached the steps. A couple of the people outside had moved on and the guy in the sleeping bag had woken up and headed inside, though the urine stain that had seeped into the stone under him still remained. Jamie tried not to breathe through her nose as she hopped down the steps, her shin still throbbing from the morning’s bout with Cake.  She opened her mouth to tell Roper to hurry up when she almost got knocked over. A guy in his forties with an expensive suit and a long lambswool coat was rushing by, his head turned towards the steps. ‘Filthy fucking cretins,’ he almost yelled at the three homeless people still perched on the steps, before colliding with Jamie. He stumbled sideways, down into the roadway, shoving Jamie backwards.  ‘Get off!’ he shouted, flapping his arms. Jamie steadied herself and stared at him. Roper even stopped smoking his cigarette and came forward. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘You’re not having any!’ the man yelled again, striding forward away from the shelter. ‘You should all be drowned. Wash this goddamn city clean!

call him Dad and it felt like the worst kind of betrayal.’ ‘How old were you?’ I ask. ‘Seven, when he died. Probably eight when Tony came on the scene. And he had this daughter, Lou, who was a couple of years older than me. His wife had died, too, so they were both single parents. I can understand, now, that they took comfort from each other, but at the time, I was so angry. It felt like Mum was choosing him over me, and over Dad. Plus he wasn’t very nice to me, never wanted to get involved with anything I was doing. I’ve just… never really been able to forgive them for it.’ ‘So once you were grown up, you cut them out of your life?’ ‘There was never a conscious decision to do that. But while Lou lived with them until she was in her early twenties, I went to university and never moved back. I’d see them now and again, but Tony and I just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and every time I’d see them, it was like Mum had moved slightly more towards his way of thinking. We just didn’t seem to have much in common

What possessed you to become a surgeon, I don’t know. I always thought you’d be a great paediatrician. Lots of single dads out there.” I inwardly sighed. In one sentence, Mum had prescribed me unmarried and childless. Her solution? Find one man who would give it to me in one go. Terrific.

When I was a kid, I used to feel sorry for Dad. We all did; and sadly, Mum knew this and that must have been painful. Dad's preference for fence-sitting has been a near-constant source of frustration for Mum. As a child I couldn't at all comprehend why, but now, as an adult, I can see the immense pressure she must have been under. Essentially, when it came to emotional labor and decision-making, Mum was operating as a single mother of six (five children and one adult man). But whenever things went wrong, which they frequently did, Mum would suddenly be married again and having the anatomy of her mistakes explained back to her by the very man who'd refused to help in the first place.

Despite the easily available knowledge about Oxy and the Sacklers, MarketWorld embraced the family’s do-gooding and kept mum about the harm. The most common single-word descriptor for members of the family became “philanthropist.

could have written more, but in the end, there’s really only two pieces of wisdom worth leaving behind. I worked hard for everything I ever cared about. And nothing I ever cared about cost a single cent. Mum

Jamie got back to her apartment in nineteen minutes and forty-nine seconds.  It wasn’t a personal best for a five-kilometre run, but it was still fast.  She showered and dressed, pulled on her boots, and was out the door in seventeen minutes flat. Which probably was close to a personal best.  She was wearing jeans she picked up from a supermarket. She liked them because they had a three percent lycra content woven into the denim, which stretched a little and meant that she could more easily crouch, walk, and kick someone in the side of the head if the situation called for it. It hadn’t yet, but she had a long career ahead of herself, she hoped.  She jumped into her car — a small and economical hybrid hatchback which squeezed around the city easily — and headed north towards the Lea.  It took nearly forty minutes to get there in rush hour traffic, and by the time she pulled up, Roper was leaning against the bonnet of his ten-year-old Volvo saloon, smoking a cigarette. He was tall with thinning, short hair, and a face that looked like he was always squinting into a stiff wind.  His long black coat was pinned to his right leg in the breeze and his shirt looked like it’d been pulled out of the laundry hamper rather than a clean drawer. He was perpetually single, and it showed. There was no one to hold him accountable when he decided it was okay to skip a morning shower for an extra ten minutes sleeping off his hangover. What she hated most about him, beyond the cigarette stink and the pissed-at-life attitude, was that she always had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t her father.  Her mother had dragged her away from him in Sweden, and now, she’d been thrown together with a guy who seemingly had inherited all his bad habits. Her mum said it was because all detectives were like it if they did the job long enough. They saw too much and didn’t talk about it enough. Which led inevitably to drink, and drugs, and other women. She’d spoken from experience of course. And Jamie knew she hadn’t exaggerated.  Though moving them both to Britain seemed like a bit of a dramatic reaction. But then again, her father had given her mother gonorrhoea and couldn’t say which woman he’d gotten it from. So Jamie figured it was reasonable.  He would have turned sixty-one this year. Roper pushed off the Volvo and ground out his cigarette under the heel of his battered Chelsea boot. Jamie looked at it, stopping short of his odour-radius. ‘You gonna just leave that there?’ He looked between his feet, rolling onto the outsides of them as he inspected the flattened butt. ‘It’ll wash away in the rain.’ ‘Into the ocean, yeah, where some poor fish is going to eat it,’ Jamie growled, coming to a stop in front of him.

For everything.” He waved an arm to take in their surroundings. “Being a single mum. Working too much when I was a kid. Not being able to bloody feed me properly.

Every single bloody interview with a successful woman who also has kids asks her a patronising question about how she ‘juggles’ being a ‘working mum’ with her career. No one asks successful men that. Ever!

For billions of years since the outset of time Every single one of your ancestors has survived Every single person on your mum and dad's side Successfully looked after and passed on to you life.

When her mum died three months before the wedding Nora's grief was immense. Though she had suggested that the date should be put back, it somehow never was, and Nora's grief fused with depression and anxiety and the feeling that her life was out of her own control. The wedding seemed such a symptom of this chaotic feeling, that she felt tied to a train track, and the only way she could loosen the ropes and free herself was to pull out of the wedding. Though, in reality, staying in Bedford and being single, and letting Izzy down about their Australia plans, and starting work at String Theory, and getting a cat, had all felt like the opposite of freedom.