West Side Honey

ABOUT THE BOOKCleo has a few things going on. Two beautiful kids and a less beautiful ex-husband, a share house arrangement with her long-term bestie Jude (complete with a third child, also beautiful) and an underperforming florist business. Actually, the shop could be beautiful too, it’s just that Cleo hasn’t got time to think about it.Her new week-on week-off custody schedule is about to change all that. She can put her own needs first for once—take a dance class, fix up the shop, even think about dating. Not that she’s looking for anything serious, but she’s open to exploring what she wants.Which, it turns out, is a lot. Maybe too much?But how can you work out what you really, really want unless you try a bit of everything? CONTENTSCOVER PAGEABOUT THE BOOKTITLE PAGEDEDICATIONEPIGRAPH12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364EPILOGUEACKNOWLEDGMENTSABOUT THE AUTHORCOPYRIGHT PAGE For Jacqwho makes me brave.For Rudiwho makes her brave. If you grow through what you go through, you’ll be blooming all along.God, you’re so fucking strong!‘Garden of Growth’ Charly Oakley 1I swirl the ice cubes in my gin and tonic and stare at my chipped blue nail polish. I’ll have time to get them done this week.This thought makes two things happen in quick succession. 1. I feel a micro pulse of excitement; 2. My internal organs crunch together so violently that it triggers a surge of nausea.‘What I like about this,’ Jude says, pushing her wide-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses up her nose and pointing at the TV, ‘is there are now going to be young women all over the world pegging their boyfriends.’ She raises her glass to the TV. ‘And look, that can only do immense good if you ask me.’I haven’t been paying attention to the TV, I’m too preoccupied with tomorrow. The fact that everything changes tomorrow. The new custody arrangement, Sunday to Sunday, starts tomorrow. I have to somehow live whole weeks without my babies, starting tomorrow, and I have to see him tomorrow. And tomorrow is now only…I glance at the time on my phone…two and a half hours away. Tomorrow is too close.‘I feel like this generation are more up for it, though,’ Jude says. Her angular bleach-blonde bob slices the air as she talks.‘What? Butt play?’ I ask, appreciating the momentary distraction.‘Yeah, they’re all awakened and hateful of binaries and raising middle fingers to injustice as they leave the womb.’ Jude makes an approving sort of noise. ‘The other day I was standing at the lights with Perry and I said, “Dude, we have to wait for the green man,” and he looked at me and said, “Mama, how do you know it’s a man?”’I laugh. ‘He’s so brilliant.’‘He’s going to kick my arse forever, you realise, don’t you?’‘Oh, I am fully aware.’ Of course my best friend’s kid turns out to be this passionate, binary-defying political human.Jude grins curiously at me. ‘Did you ever fuck Doug?’‘Doug barely fucked me.’ I lean my head back on the couch and take a breath, trying to ease the uneasiness. Her face shifts to match mine and she looks closer, probably waiting for me to say more.I don’t. I hope she’ll know this means I don’t want to talk about it.‘I hate him so much,’ Jude says, and stands up. In what feels like slow motion, I watch as her heel catches in her satin pyjama pants and she elaborately jump-steps into a basket of dolls, trucks and miscellaneous plastic crap that clatters loudly all over the floorboards. She spins to face me: we stare at each other in horror. Mabel, Jude’s bulldog, is startled awake and barks, and we both shush her. My teeth clench as I shift to the edge of the couch, ears pricked to find out if the primary-coloured cacophony has woken any of the kids. If Andy wakes up…I don’t let myself finish the thought because the idea of having to get him back down after the two-hour battle we already had tonight makes my throat constrict.‘Sorry,’ Jude whispers, and we sit in alert silence for a few moments longer.When I’m sure we’re safe I slide down onto the floor to pick up the toys.‘Do you think he’s teething?’ Jude asks. She’s holding a naked doll frankensteined with a grinning T-rex head.‘I think it’s his molars, which…I just feel sick thinking about Doug dealing with it this week.’‘Dealing with it? You mean parenting his children?’ Jude shakes her head with a grunt. I have seen this exact head movement and heard this exact tone a lot in the last eighteen months.Eighteen months.I can’t quite fathom it—that only eighteen months ago I was pregnant with Andy, listening to Doug slurring: I don’ want any ’f this.Allowing this memory in cues the rest of it to flood in, too. The angry tirade about how I’d tricked him into all of it. Our whole life. The bit where he said he’d never wanted to get married, or buy our house, or have our daughter, Frankie. I see him pointing at my pregnant belly, spitting that he especially didn’t want this baby. Then I hear him yelling, My life is fucked and it’s all your fault, with such spiteful clarity that it’s like he’s standing in the room right now. These highlights have been on a loop in my mind since that night. Thinking about all of it makes my heart hurt—a dull ache that seems to live there permanently now. ‘If it gets too much for him he’ll call you.’‘He’ll call his mum,’ I say.‘And Mary is not an idiot, so she’ll deal with it. She loves your babies. Hell, he loves your babies…in his own stupid way.’I feel cold. Or hot? I feel sweaty. Clammy. I exhale loudly. I know Jude is right and that everything will be okay. But what if it’s not? Sometimes I wish she’d let me just be worried for a while before rationalising it all.Not that I’d ever tell her that. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have gotten through any