The Mother And Daughter Diaries. Clare Shaw

      CLARE SHAW trained and worked as a speech and language therapist before discovering that she preferred writing to talking. So she became a freelance writer, contributing to parents’ magazines and writing five books offering advice to parents, including Prepare Your Child for School and Help Your Child Be Confident. Clare then produced two daughters so that she could put her own advice into practice. This proved impossible, so she returned to speech therapy and started to talk to people again. But the call of the word processor was loud, and The Mother and Daughter Diaries is the result.

      Behind every woman writer is a man bringing her cups of tea, and John boils her kettle at their home in Essex, with help from their two daughters, Emma and Jessica.

      Further information can be found at

      www.mirabooks.co.uk/clareshaw or www.clareshaw.com.

       The Mother and Daughter Diaries

      Clare Shaw

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      To Abigail

       Acknowledgements

      My thanks to the families of Essex and Suffolk, who shared their stories of daughters and food with me. Thanks to agent extraordinaire, Judith Murdoch, and to Catherine Burke and everyone at MIRA for their hard work and enthusiasm. Also to Robyn Karney for her precision editing. Special thanks to John, Emma and Jessica for their endless support and encouragement. And to Mike Harwood for kickstarting me into this strange world of fiction.

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

      Acknowledgements

       Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

       SIX

       SEVEN

       EIGHT

       NINE

       TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE

       THIRTEEN

       FOURTEEN

       FIFTEEN

       SIXTEEN

       SEVENTEEN

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       TWENTY

       TWENTY-ONE

       TWENTY-TWO

       TWENTY-THREE

       TWENTY-FOUR

       Copyright

       Read all about it…

       MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

       Questions for your reading group

       Inspiration

       Sources of help and information

       MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       Author biography

       Q&A on writing

       A writer’s life

       Top ten books

       A day in the life

       WE RECOMMEND

       Clare Shaw’s future projects

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       ONE

      SOMETIMES I look back and try and work out when I first started to worry about Jo, as if that’s when it all started to go wrong. But that’s a bit like asking yourself when you first fell in love or when you first grew up. These things tend to creep up on you slowly and one day you just notice them, notice something that has always been hovering there, waiting to be recognised. Perhaps I’ve always been worried about Jo—after all, I’m a mother and anxiety is on the job description. It all starts before your child