The Bad Mother's Handbook Read Online Free PDF

Accountancy at Bristol, followed by a meteoric
career with Touche Ross, marriage at twenty-six, a nice
house in Surrey and two healthy children by the time
you’re thirty (suggested names Annabel and Max).’
    I suppose a normal girl would ask her friends, but I
only have acquaintances, people I hang around with but
never Talk to. Is it geography or psychology? John Donne
wrote, ‘No man is an island’, but he didn’t live in Bank
Top. Lucky bastard.
    Part of the problem is that the village is at the back of
beyond and there’s no one else from my form lives there.
All the other kids from my class at primary school
swarmed off to the Comp, sneering over their shoulders at
me as they went: I see them around but they don’t want
anything much to do with me now I’m officially A Snob.
Most of the people who go to the Grammar live on the
other side of Bolton (in, it’s got to be said, much bigger
houses). I can’t drive – no money for lessons and though
Dad’s promised faithfully to teach me I know this will never happen – and the buses stop running at 10.30.
Mum can’t be ferrying me about because she doesn’t like
to leave Nan unattended for fear of mad accidents. So
here I am. It’s never worried me till now.
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Billy No-mates, I know
where to sit in the Common Room, I go out (and return
early). I just don’t seem to have that need for intimacy
that some girls do. Strolling around the field at lunchtime,
sharing confidences, not my thing. But maybe I’d be
like that wherever I lived. I was always on the outside at
St Mary’s; the one helping Mrs Ainscough in the library
at dinner break rather than playing Scott and Charlene
by the bins. ‘You spend too much time in your own
head,’ my mother once told me during a blazing row
over nothing at all, and I hate to say it, but I think she was
right.
    So where was I going? Here, to this ordinary-looking
modern semi on the outskirts of Bolton, a mere bus ride
away from our house. Behind this front door with its glass
panels of tulips, a figure moved.
    ‘Hang on a sec. I’m trying not to let the cat out.’
The door opened a fraction and a woman’s plump face
appeared, squashed against the crack. ‘Can you – oh
damn.’ A grey shape squeezed past our feet in an oily
movement and was gone. ‘Never mind. Come in.’
    I stepped into a white hallway full of swathed muslin
and stippled walls, church candles and statuettes, Changing
Rooms gone mad.
    ‘Hiya, I’m Jackie. Is it Charlotte? Great. Come
through. Mind the crystals.’
    I dodged the swinging mobiles as she led me along to
a room at the back. This was all black and red and stank
of patchouli. On the walls were pictures of Jackie when
she had been younger (and slimmer) together with framed
testimonials and a poster of a unicorn rearing up under a rainbow. The table was covered with a scarlet chenille
cloth. Jackie lit an incense burner in the corner.
    ‘Now. Take a seat and we’ll start with a palm reading.’
    We sat with the corner of the dining table between us
and she took my hand. The contact made me shiver and
it was all I could do not to pull away.
    ‘Relax,’ she murmured, touching the soft pads of skin
carefully. It felt really freaky. What the hell am I doing
here, I thought. Jackie’s blonde head was bent and I
could see her dark roots. Her nails were immaculately
manicured and her fat fingers full of rings.
    ‘I bet you’re wondering what you’re doing here,’ she
said without looking up.
    Shit shit shit. ‘No, not at all.’ I could feel myself blushing.
‘You were recommended. A girl at school, you told
her not to panic when suitcases appeared in the hall,
and then her dad left home, but he came back again two
weeks later. She was dead impressed. She’s been telling
everyone.’
    ‘Right.’ She shifted her bottom on the chair and
leaned back, scrutinizing my face. ‘Only a lot of people