Lessons For A Sunday Father

Calman Claire

Description

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO GROW UP...

This is the story of

SCOTT, who finds his belongings outside in a bin bag one day and realises he may have made a Big Mistake

GAIL, who wishes her husband were under guarantee so she could send him back and get a refund

NAT, who discovers that growing up isn't all it's cracked up to be

ROSIE, who just wants her Dad back - or if not, then at least some new glitter nail polish.

Four lives, one story: love, loss and learning to be a grown-up.

What readers are saying about Lessons for a Sunday Father:

'This is the third Claire Calman book I’ve read, and I’ve loved every one of them.'

'This is sexy, funny and just a little bit good!!!'

'Enjoyed it from start to finish.'

Sujets

• Romance contemporaine
• Fiction
• Romance
• Family Life
• General
• The Women
• Woman
• General officer
• Sibling
• Romantic Comedy
• Friendship
• Coming of Age
• Women
• Humorous
• Siblings
• Mashups

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800489189
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lessons For A Sunday Father


Claire Calman
For my parents – who separated, for the sake of the children
Contents



Lesson One


Scott

Gail

Scott

Nat

Gail

Rosie

Scott

Gail

Scott

Rosie

Gail

Scott

Rosie

Nat

Scott

Gail

Scott

Rosie

Nat

Gail

Scott

Lesson Two

Scott

Rosie

Gail

Scott

Nat

Scott

Rosie

Gai

Scott

Nat

Scott

Gail

Nat

Scott

Rosie

Scott

Gail

Scott

Nat

Rosie

Scott

Nat

Rosie

Nat

Scott

Lesson Three

Scott

Nat

Gail

Rosie

Scott

Nat

Gail

Nat

Scott

Gail

Nat

Gail

Scott

Rosie

Scott

Nat

Rosie

Scott

Gail

Nat

Gail

Scott

Nat

Scott

Gail

Scott

Lesson Four

Rosie

Gail

Nat

Scott

Gail

Scott

Nat

Rosie

Scott

Gail

Rosie

Scott

Rosie

Scott

Gail

Scott

Nat

Scott

Rosie

Scott

Nat

Gail

Scott


More from Claire Calman

About the Author

Also by Claire Calman

About Boldwood Books
Lesson One
Scott

Last night, I had precisely nil hours’, nil minutes’ and nil seconds’ sleep. Take a tip from me – if you ever have a major ding-dong with your wife, girlfriend, cohabiting-type person, don’t do it after midnight. If you’re in the wrong, and believe me, you’re bound to be – when was it ever her fault? – skip the excuses, skip the justifications and cut straight to the grovelling. Least that way you might get to kip on the settee. After a night like I just had, you’d be grateful for it. It’s always like that on the telly, isn’t it? There’s a row and then the man, always the man, is dossing down in the front room – notice the woman never ends up on the bloody couch – and if he’s lucky she’ll chuck a pillow and a blanket at him. Cheers, I love you too.
Obviously, Gail’s never paid enough attention or she’d have known that’s how it goes. I should have filled her in: 'No, Gail, this is where you banish me to the front room and you stomp upstairs and slam the bedroom door.’ Then it’d be cut to corny close-up of our wedding photo falling off the mantelpiece. But by that time I’m already on the wrong side of the front door, wishing I’d got my jacket and my mobile rather than a sodding tea-towel which doesn’t look like it’s going to be much use in saving me from freezing to death.
Thoughts whirled round my head like water going down a plughole, desperate thoughts and crazy thoughts and weird thoughts one after the other. I would have called my mate Colin, but it was after half-twelve by then and I could just picture his wife Yvonne standing there in her pink dressing-gown, nightie done up to the top button, saying it’s no trouble, none at all, she just has to get out the step-ladder and fetch down another quilt from the loft, and offering me a coffee, not to worry she can unload everything from the dishwasher for a clean mug and they usually like to open the fresh pint first thing in the morning but she may as well open it now seeing as it’s – goodness – already morning. I always feel I should give myself a good shake like a wet dog before I go in their house; she has this way of looking at you like she wants to put down a bit of plastic sheeting before you get too near her furniture.
I considered checking in at the Holiday Inn, but they know me there after we had that do just before Christmas. Especially after the unfortunate mishap that occurred with the sort-of accidental hurling of mince pies across the Churchill Banqueting Suite. Toyed with the idea of breaking into the MFI showroom on the ring road so’s I could kip in one of their room sets. I even thought about ringing up a monastery to tell them I’d had the call from God and would be right round: 'I’ve spoken to Him Upstairs and He said you’re to let me stay, but that I can skip all that praying, silence and head-shaving stuff, OK?’
No way could I stay at my parents’. I’d sooner have slept on a park bench. I’d sooner have slept on a park bench with a bag lady, come to that. Make that two bag ladies and a wino. And a dog with an itch. This is the point where Gail normally says, 'Oh, come on, Scott, stop exaggerating. They’re not that bad.’ Not that bad? I’d rather suck my way through a bumper size pack of frozen fish fingers than have a meal with those two. I’d rather eat school dinners for the rest of my life, soggy greens and all. I’d rather – oh, forget it. All I’m saying is, if Competitive Moaning was included in the Olympics and they signed up the parents, then Great Britain’s gold medal count could be in for a stratospheric rise. My dad’s specialist areas are, in no particular order: other drivers, foreigners – which of course includes people whose grandparents came here fifty years ago and, in fact, anyone who lives further away than Folkestone – appliances of all kinds because nothing’s made properly any more nowadays – 'they do it deliberate so’s you ’ave to keep buying new ones ev’ry free weeks’ – the government, the neighbours – oh, yes, and me. Mum’s faves are the weather, the Russians (current affairs have kind of passed her by really), Gail’s family, people with body piercings – 'I don’t know what they can be thinking of a metal stud right through her tongue it’s not hygienic is it they must all be perverts they want a good smacking’, the ever decreasing size of Mr Kiplid’s exceediddly small cakes, the neighbours and – surprise, surprise – me again. In fact, as far as I can see, the only thing that’s kept her and him together all these years – that’s together as in not actually divorced and as in living under the same roof, not together as in this is the person they love and want to spend time with – is their shared paranoia about the neighbours and their disappointment in me.
Not exactly top of my list when it comes to looking for a cosy bed and a warm welcome on the spur of the moment then. I’d have been better off getting myself arrested so the police would lock me up for the night. I’d have had some sort of bed and maybe got Gail to feel guilty into the bargain, might be worth it. Then I told myself it’d all blow over and I’d only be embarrassing myself and I’d have looked like a total pillock for nothing.
So I went to work. I’m usually first in anyway, but it was very different arriving at night. Weird. Majorly bizarre. Bizarre with a capital 'B’, as Nat would say. I let myself in, fumbling for the light switches, hearing the familiar beep-beep, rushing to the alarm to tap in the code. There’s a small reception area – just the counter where we take the orders and a couple of crap square chairs covered in scratchy dark brown cloth and, on the other side, a coffee table which is a pathetic apology for a piece of furniture and only has the right to call itself a coffee table because over the years it’s become marked with overlapping coffee rings, so many of them now, they almost look like they’re meant to be there and are having a go at being a pattern. Plus there’s three plastic seats, the moulded ones you can stack. We have them ’cause most of our customers turn up covered in paint and plaster dust and we don’t want them buggering up the so-called good seats for the occasional non-trade person who comes in for a special order or something. I know, I’m sounding like Yvonne, but it’s not up to me.
I poke my head round the door of the workroom, checking everything’s OK, then go into the office and sit at my desk, thinking maybe I should phone Gail to see if she’s cooled down yet and knowing she’d hang up on me. I phone anyway.
'It’s me.’
She hangs up.
I make myself a coffee, over-filling the kettle so’s it would take longer to boil. At least it gives me something to do, standing there in the squashed corner by the sink, trying to think and trying not to think. Then I lay down on the brown seats. They’re pushed together but I still can’t scrunch all of my body on and it’s bloody cold too. I switch on the fan heater, but it gives out more noise than heat, so I have a hunt round for something to cover myself with. Take a dekko in the workroom. There’s a few old blankets and dustsheets dumped in one corner, as there always are, but they’ll all have fragments of flaming glass embedded in them and I’d rather be freezing than slashed to ribbons, thank you. It makes me think of them Indian blokes who lay on a bed of nails. Gail would love that, thinking about me alone and shivering, every bit of me pricked and pierced by millions of tiny pieces of glass.
On the back of the office door, there’s my mac that I left there about two months ago and keep meaning to take home. I curl up on the seats again, shivering under the mac, thinking about what I said and what she said and what I could do to make it all right and worrying in case I do drop off and the lads find me in the morning and what the hell I would say and how was I going to get a shave between now and then and I should have gone to the bloody Holiday Inn and so what if they did recognize me, bollocks to the lot of them. Then I get up again, put the mac on and go and sit in my chair and rest my head on my desk. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. You are a grade A stupid twat, I tell myself. Now what are you going to do?
I open the desk drawer and have a poke round as if the answer might be written on a yellow stickie, but it’s just the usual collection of loose paperclips and stray staples, the spare scissors that don’t cut properly, a grimy rubber that leaves smudges and a couple of highlighter pens that are running out of juice. Anyway, after one hour and twenty minutes spent pretending to tidy my desk – I know because I take a look at my watch about every three minutes to see if the time can possibly be passing as slowly as I think it is – I get up and wander round the office, sliding the filing