The Mum Who Got Her Life Back. Fiona Gibson

because they’d gone to a lecture on Hitchcock and the Art of Cinematic Tension instead (on aforementioned partner’s fortieth birthday). Nor had they blown a small inheritance from an uncle by drunkenly bidding on one of the actual suits worn in Reservoir Dogs. Of course it wasn’t just about the suit or the missed meals; it was loads of stuff, piled up year after year.

      Although it was me who finally decided we should split – Danny and I had never married – he didn’t exactly beg me to reconsider. I think we both knew we’d reached the end of the line. And so he moved out, to a rented flat half a mile away, and we both did our best to present our break-up in a non-dramatic manner. ‘We’re still friends who care about each other,’ I told Molly and Alfie – which was actually true.

      A year or so later, Danny started seeing a make-up artist ten years his junior. I was fine with that, truly; Danny and I were managing to get along pretty cordially, and I was enjoying teasing him about his new liaison. ‘So how are things with Kiki Badger?’ I asked during one of our regular chats on the phone.

      I heard him exhale. ‘Nads, why d’you always do this?’

      ‘Do what?’

      ‘You know. Use both of her names.’

      I smirked. ‘It’s one of those names you have to say in full …’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because it sounds like a sex toy. “The batteries in my Kiki Badger have gone flat!”’

      ‘You’re ridiculous,’ he exclaimed, laughing. Then, after a pause: ‘It’s nothing serious, y’know? We’re just … hanging out.’ Yeah, sure. ‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone …’

      ‘You know there isn’t,’ I said quickly.

      ‘No I don’t. You might have someone squirrelled away—’

      ‘Hidden in a cupboard?’

      ‘Maybe,’ he sniggered.

      ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ I retorted, but in truth I wasn’t too interested. It’s not that Alfie and Molly would have kicked off if I’d started seeing someone; at least, I don’t think they would have.

      As it turned out, their dad and Kiki have stuck together over the years, and the kids have always seemed fine with that. However, they lived with me, and perhaps that made me more cautious. I wasn’t prepared to endure some teeth-gritting, ‘Alfie, Molly – this is Colin!’ kind of scenario at breakfast with some bloke I wasn’t particularly serious about. There were a couple of brief flings, conducted when Molly and Alfie were at their dad’s, and a significant one, eighteen months ago; well, it was significant to me. But since then? Precisely nothing.

      It’s fine, honestly. It really is. It’s just slightly galling that the kids have left home and I’m free as a bird – yet I’ve found precisely no one to tempt into my nest.

       Chapter Two

      And yet … celibacy has its advantages. It really does!

      I’m not even saying that in a bitter tone, with my teeth gritted. I can happily wander about with hairy bison legs beneath my jeans, if I want to. I can orgasm perfectly well by myself, and have plenty of friends to knock around with. Corinne and Gus are two of my closest; we’ve all known each other since our art college days in Dundee, and these days we share a studio pretty close to the city centre. As my children grew up, and I managed to establish myself properly, I reached the point where I could finally afford to work outside of the flat. It feels like a luxury sometimes, as now Alfie and Molly have left I can hardly complain about the lack of space at home. But I love working here. Our studio is the top floor of a tatty old warehouse, currently decked out with decorations and a sparkling white tree, as Christmas is approaching.

      ‘So your present to yourself is to get online,’ remarks Gus, as he makes coffee for the three of us.

      ‘I’m not joining a dating site,’ I say firmly.

      ‘Why not just give it a go?’ He glances over from the huge canvas he’s working on.

      ‘I’ve told you, Gus. It’s just not my thing.’

      I turn back to the preliminary sketches that are littered all over my desk. I’m illustrating a series of study guides covering English, maths and history, and possibly more subjects, if the client is happy with the results. As I start to sketch, I’m aware of Gus and Corinne exchanging a look; both of them reckon I have been single for far too long.

      It’s a year and a half since I last slept with someone, and that person happened to be Ryan Tibbles, who was also at art college with us, although I hadn’t known him very well when we were students. I’d just experienced a little frisson whenever I glimpsed him mooching around, with his mop of black, shaggy hair and languid expression, a smouldering roll-up permanently clamped between his sexy lips.

      After we’d graduated, everyone had scattered all over the country in pursuit of work or to further their studies. I returned to Glasgow, to do admin for a small design company, hoping it would lead to greater things. Ryan, who’d been the star of his year, whizzed off to do a post-grad at St Martins in London. I heard nothing from him for all those years until he turned up out of the blue at a party at Corinne’s.

      She hadn’t even invited him; he’d been in Glasgow on some work-related mission, and someone had brought him along. We sat together all night, reminiscing about college and, eventually, indulging in a little furtive hand-holding and kissing. ‘Be good, you two!’ Corinne had chuckled as we left together.

      I took him back to my place where we crept in gingerly at 6.30 a.m. There was no real need to creep – Molly and Alfie were away on a school trip to France – but still, I’d half expected them to jump out from behind the sofa yelling, ‘Ah-a! So here’s our filthy mother, drunk and with a man!’ Even when Ryan and I went to bed, I was still on edge in case they charged in, flung down their rucksacks and clicked on the dazzling overhead light.

      In the four days that followed, it felt as if we were teenagers, getting it on as much as humanly possible before my parents returned. When the kids phoned home, it was an almighty effort to put on a normal voice as I asked about their trips to Parc Astérix and the Camembert factory, which Alfie especially loved (ironic, given that he is now a vegan and regards cheese as the devil’s work: ‘No, I don’t miss it, Mum. Why’s everyone so obsessed with cheese?’ Because it’s heavenly! I always want to retort).

      During that whole time, Ryan and I barely left my flat. We had pizzas delivered – cheese-laden pizzas – and drank wine during the day. We had long, languid baths together, with Ryan graciously occupying the tap end. It was terribly decadent but then, it had marked the end of yet another lengthy sex drought for me. It was as if I’d been on a juice fast – not just a weekend ‘cleanse’, but for two bloody years – and had then been presented with a mountain of profiteroles. I started to think we might have a ‘thing’, albeit of the sporadic, long-distance variety, as Ryan was still based in London. Like an idiot, I pictured him nipping up for weekends, and me standing there – blow-dried, make-up immaculate – at Glasgow Central station, waiting for him.

      Then my kids came back, by which point Ryan had already loped off back to London, where he runs a successful leather accessories company, promising to stay in touch. But his replies to my texts were curt – he was ‘manic with work’, or ‘out of the country’ – then they stopped altogether. Some frantic googling revealed that, for many years, Ryan had been having an on-off thing with a model-stroke-personal-trainer with an ash-blonde pixie cut.

      I felt pretty foolish, I suppose, as he’d claimed he hadn’t been seeing anyone for ages. I’d trusted him; perhaps that’s another reason why I refuse to join a dating site, despite Gus and Corinne badgering me to do so.

      ‘There must be someone you’d