Blurb
Together
since their teens, Molly and Jake have four children, a house in a
sleepy village and jobs that bore them to distraction. Their marriage
is an accident waiting to happen. When Nick arrives in Mayfield,
young, disturbed and in desperate need of mother-love, Molly doesn’t
realise that he will be the catalyst that blows everything apart. Add
a headmaster whose wife doesn’t understand him and Molly’s
unpredictable, frustrated best friend to the mix, and the blue touch
paper has been well and truly lit.
Excerpt
‘But
who’s going to do our lunch if Mum’s staying in bed?’ asks Max.
‘If
people need things putting in boxes, they’ll have to find them and
put them in themselves for once,’ says Jake through gritted teeth,
as he tries to make toast, unload the dishwasher, find clean socks
for Hattie’s netball match and avoid the small pile of cat-sick by
the table leg. He sighs and mops up the squelchy mess on the floor
before Theo spreads it around the kitchen with her big boots.
It’s
only the third day of term so the foolproof system for school
mornings hasn’t kicked in yet. Even the two kittens look offended,
meowing around Theo’s feet as she rifles through her schoolbag for
her lost homework.
Jake
feels as if he’s dropped into some alien, much less relaxing world.
His early morning routine usually involves sitting at the kitchen
table drinking strong coffee and keeping some kind of order while
Molly dashes around serving up milky tea, bacon sandwiches, and
muesli. As she cling-films sandwiches, throws yogurts and chocolate
biscuits into plastic bags and sorts out last-minute crises, she
talks him through the day ahead. She likes him to know what’s going
on.
Theo
still hasn’t found her homework. Jake and Molly’s eldest daughter
is reasonably chilled, as a rule, but today she’s in a filthy mood.
Her form tutor has given a final warning that if anyone else comes to
school with purple streaks in their hair, he’ll make them wear his
grey woolly hat to lessons. Theo’s managed to cover the offending
bit of her fringe with black poster paint, having run out of dye, but
she knows if it rains things could go badly wrong.
Jake
can hear Theo muttering as she abandons the homework search and opens
a tin of food for the yowling kittens, gashing her finger in the
process, and bleeding all over Sam’s newly-made tuna sandwiches.
She spits out all the rudest words she knows, and so does Sam, which
makes Hattie run round the table screaming, ‘He said the “F”
word, Dad, and she said “bugger”.’
Jake’s
patience, never his strong point, runs out. ‘At your age,’ he
thunders, ‘me and my little brother did all the chores for our mum
before breakfast, went to school without moaning, and then came back
and did our paper rounds. We weren’t spoiled like you lot –
you’re all an absolute disgrace.’
Theo
pulls herself up to her full five feet four inches. She hasn’t been
allowed to have a paper round due to Molly’s fear of possible
rapists and muggers on the loose. It’s a peaceful village normally,
but there’s a first for everything.
Author
Bio
Celia
J Anderson loves cake, champagne and her family, although not in that
order. Moondancing is the first book she ever completed but it needed
a couple of years relaxing in the cupboard before it was ready to be
revamped to follow Sweet Proposal, Little Boxes and Living the Dream
out into the world.
One
eighth of the Romaniacs, to be found at
https://theromaniacgroup.wordpress.com,
Celia regularly blogs with this sparkling group of writers who
support each other through the journey to publishing and beyond. Her
ultimate aims are to spend less time on Facebook, have a few less
chins and to walk five miles a day - she feels the three may be
connected...
1 comment:
Welcome to Beyond Romance, Celia!
This family feels so real.
Good luck with this book.
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