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Acknowledgements

A big thanks to, my wonderful agents Araminta Whitley and Peta Nightingale for your hard work, enthusiasm and support in guiding me through this book, and thanks to Sophie Hughes, Jennifer Hunt and all at LAW.

Another big thanks to writer/editor/llama farmer Stephanie Dagg for your help, advice, and friendship through the early drafts, and for knowing more about Coco Pinchard’s world than I do. Thanks to Eva Reid for sharing your birth story, and the countless other generous ladies who have answered my questions. Thanks to Dan Bramall for another great cover.

Big hugs to Team Bryndza, Ján, Vierka, Ricky and Lola, I love you so much. And as ever, thanks to my readers for your support. It blows me away every time I hear just how much you’ve taken my books into your hearts. There are lots more to come and I hope you all stay with me for the ride.

For Ján, you changed my life

January 2012

Sunday 1st
January

I’ve decided to write a diary. So much has happened in the last few years, and I feel I must document everything. It’s true, I like to jabber away via email, but where are those emails now? Where are the texts, and occasional tweets?

Adam just poked his head over my shoulder and said. ‘They’re all on your laptop and phone, you twit.’

‘What if someone pulls the plug on the internet? What if there is a nuclear war?’ I asked.

‘Coco, if there
is
a nuclear war I doubt that WH Smith exercise book would survive.’ He pointed at my diary and then continued trying to locate his pedometer. We’ve just moved back into my house, and the removal guys dumped everything in the empty living room, piling all the boxes we’ve had in storage up to the ceiling. We can’t quite motivate ourselves to unpack, so we’re sleeping on two sofas pushed together and using the boxes as a coffee table, and a place to pile books and magazines.

I watched Adam from my spot on the sofa, heaving and shifting boxes in faded jeans and a white t-shirt, all lithe and muscular. He is one of those annoying people who are naturally athletic – but still works out.

I noticed a very small hole in the left buttock of his jeans (he’s going commando, underpants are in another box somewhere). The tiny piece of his bare flesh poking through is quite thrilling. It reminds me of that scene in ‘The Piano’ when Holly Hunter has a hole in her tights, and Harvey Keitel gets all excited. Well, it’s completely different. I’m not a deaf mute from Scotland, and this is London. Nor do I have Holly Hunter’s willowy bone structure. And Adam is far more blessed downstairs than Harvey Keitel.

I gave a little sigh of happiness at my new hot husband. You could crack a walnut between his buttocks. Which is good because since we’ve moved I can’t find the nutcrackers either.

‘Yes!’ Said Adam finally locating his pedometer. ‘So we start running tomorrow, yes?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I lied rooting around in the Quality Street tin for something that wasn’t coconut.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, my social documenting. I read somewhere that there will be no record of us in the future because we’ll all have frittered it away, tweeting videos of fat ladies pole dancing.

So here is my diary. Hopefully I’ll make it past mid-January, where all other diaries have ground to a halt in the past.

Monday 2nd January

I’m very sad the festive season is now officially over. It’s been our first Christmas as newly-weds, and it was wonderful. Just simple and romantic. We’ve had no stress, no fuss, no television, no hectic round of parties with people we barely know, and no in-laws. I know I must sound horribly anti-social but I’m far from it. I worked out that in my forty-four years on this earth I’ve hosted twenty-two Christmas lunches in this house! Every year my ex-husband’s family would descend for ten days, yes
ten days.
My mother-in-law Ethel criticised the way I cooked all twenty-two turkeys, there were more than twenty-two arguments over custody of the remote control, and twenty-two hideously competitive games of Monopoly were played.

I did miss my son Rosencrantz this year. He’s been on holiday with his housemates in Ibiza. He hasn’t phoned, but he’s been very busy on Instagram, posting sun-soaked pictures of party mayhem – all with a 1970s tinge.

Back here in London it’s been freezing. A row of icicles have been a permanent fixture on the bare branches of the pear tree in the garden, but we’ve been warm inside, cuddled up on the sofa with Rocco, our little dog, curled up on our feet. He is an excellent foot warmer with his fluffy white fur.

Adam lugged in wood from the shed, built huge fires, and we watched them roar. We dined by candlelight, and spent hours watching snow fall past the French windows onto the terrace. Bliss.

We’ve only left the house to walk Rocco. Marylebone looks beautiful in the snow. The posh houses all have Christmas trees twinkling in the bay windows, wreaths of holly on their shiny black front doors, and the whimsical little independent shops on the high street have Christmas displays.

This morning Adam went out and bought us breakfast from the caff on Baker Street.

‘Is this to cheer me up, now Christmas is over?’ I asked when he came back with a pile of bacon sandwiches.

‘Yes, and we’re carbo-loading, we’re going on that run, remember?’

After stuffing our faces, I scrambled around in the unpacked boxes to locate something I could wear for a run. It was slim pickings. We left the house and ran towards Regent’s Park.

Adam looked hot and athletic in his fancy shiny Adidas trackies, and I plodded along behind in a baggy fleecy thing I should have chucked away years ago. (The only choice I’d had was this or a shell suit circa 1987).

We were only a little way round Regent’s Park when I started to feel faint. I stopped outside my friend Chris’s house and sat down on the wall.

‘It looks so empty,’ I said, trying to catch my breath.

‘That’s because it is empty,’ said Adam jogging on the spot. The front windows stared back like two vacant eye sockets. I looked at my watch.

‘It’s three in the morning in Los Angeles. He’ll be asleep,’ I said.

‘Nah, he’ll be out partying,’ said Adam. ‘Here, you need to keep your fluids up.’ He offered me some of his sports drink but I suddenly felt like I was going to be sick. I pulled away and leaned over the wall of Chris’s garden where I threw up over some snowdrops just peeping through the soil. I sat back as a family jogged past, the parents in fancy running gear and their five year old too, but nausea rolled over me and I was sick again.

‘Eeeuw, Mummy, that lady is doing a puke!’ said the little boy stopping.

‘Keep away Eustace, she may be contagious,’ shrilled the woman. I heaved and chundered a third time.

‘Is it a woman? It might be a tramp,
do
come away Eustace!’ shouted the man in the direction of my bottom poking up in the air. I fumbled for a tissue, wiped my mouth and turned, ready to defend my honour, but they’d jogged off around the outer circle.

‘Are you okay?’ said Adam.

‘Yes, you could have told them I was a woman!’

‘That didn’t seem important… You were so sick.’

‘It’s
more
important. I don’t want to be mistaken for some fat-arsed man tramp! I told you this tracksuit looked horrible.’ I smoothed my hair and straightened my jacket.

‘You don’t look like a man-tramp, nor do you have a fat arse,’ he added quickly. ‘Are you okay? We didn’t drink much last night, did we?’

‘No, we were quite restrained… it must be something I ate.’

‘Do you think it was the bacon sandwiches? Do you think I’ll be sick too?’ asked Adam going into hypochondriac mode.

‘Do you feel sick?’

‘No.’

‘Then probably not.’

When the nausea had eased, we walked home and had a shower. When I came down in my dressing gown, Adam had lit a fire. He stood bathed in the glow of the flames. He was wearing just a pair of briefs, and the flames played over the rest of his taut, muscled body. I slid my arms round his waist.

‘Hey you, feeling better?’ he said.

‘Yeah. It went as soon as it came…’

He turned to me and we kissed. I ran my fingers down his tight abs, and his hands found their way inside my dressing gown.

‘Ow!’ I shrieked.

‘What?’ he said pulling his hand away.

‘I’ve suddenly got
really
sore boobs… It can’t be my time of the month?’

‘No. You’ve been pretty normal…’ his voice tailed off.

‘What do you mean, normal?’ I said gingerly doing up my dressing gown.

‘Not that you’re not normal all the time, but you can be quite… stressed, emotional around your time of the month.’

My phone began to ring.

‘Saved by the bell,’ I said. I grabbed it off a packing box. ‘Ooh it’s Marika,’

‘What about?’ he asked.

‘That can wait for twenty minutes, she’s calling from Slovakia.’

Adam sighed, adjusted his briefs and went to the kitchen.

‘Hello?’ shouted Marika on the other end of the line. ‘Hello, Coco?’

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m on the balcony; it’s the only place I get reception in my mother’s bloody flat. There’s a huge blizzard! What are you up to?’

‘I was about to have sex with Adam.’

‘Oh I’m sorry, I’ll call back.’

‘No! No, don’t. People seem to have left us alone since the wedding.

‘Talk to me. How was Christmas with your mother?’ I asked.

‘Awful. My sister and her husband went to his parents, my step dad was in the pub, so I was alone with Mum. Well, not completely alone. There were twelve giant statues of Jesus dotted around the house,’ sighed Marika.

‘Did you tell her about Milan?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing. She went to the kitchen cupboard, pulled out a scrap of paper, and wrote his name on it.’

‘That’s nice? So she doesn’t forget?’

‘No. It was to shame me, Coco. The piece of paper had the name of every boyfriend I’ve introduced to her. Fifteen names.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s loads, isn’t it? I can tell by your voice,’ she said.

‘No! No. Not loads, that’s what? One a year… For a girl who lives in London, that makes you lucky in love!’

‘Ha ha, Coco…’

‘Marika, Milan seems lovely, he’s sexy and kind. He’s Slovak, like you…’

‘Then my mother conned me into going to confession,’ interrupted Marika.

‘How?’

‘I was a bit tipsy after midnight mass. She steered me towards the confession box, which I thought was the way out.’

‘What did you confess?’

‘Nothing. I recognised the priest through the lattice. We were at school together. He and another boy used to snog each other behind the canteen. I told him he didn’t have any right to cast judgement, when he’d been up to all sorts during the lunch hour.’

‘What did your mother say?’

‘She was listening outside with her friend Hedwiga. They yanked me out of the confession box, told me I was wicked and haven’t spoken to me since… I’ve screwed up my life Coco.’

(Last year Marika jacked in her job as a secondary school teacher, and is now a dog walker).

Adam appeared in the doorway and waved a bottle of gin and a bottle of vodka. I put my thumbs up to the gin.

‘You haven’t screwed up your life Marika,’ I said, reassuring her.

‘I have I’m just going round in circles. I wish I was like you and Adam. Settled. Happy.’

I heard Marika’s phone beep.

‘Oh that’s Milan on call waiting. I promised him a bit of Christmas phone sex.’

‘Well be careful out there on that balcony, you don’t want frost bite.’