Tiny Acts of Love ~ A Funny Romantic Novel
Published by Black & White Publishing on 6th March 2014
Surviving motherhood? It's all about having the right support network.
Lawyer and new mum Cassie has a husband who converses mainly through jokes, a best friend on the other side of the world, and a taskforce of Babycraft mothers who make her feel she has about as much maternal aptitude as a jellyfish.
Husband Jonathan dismisses Cassie’s maternal anxieties, but is he really paying attention to his struggling wife? He’s started sleep talking and it seems there’s more on his mind than he’s letting on. Then sexy, swaggering ex-boyfriend Malkie saunters into Cassie’s life again.
Unlike Jonathan, he ‘gets’ her. He’d like to get her into bed again, too…
And on top of all her emotional turmoil, she also finds herself advising a funeral director on ghost protocol and becomes involved in an act of hotel spa fraud, never mind hiding cans of wasp spray all over the house to deal with the stalker who seems to be lurking everywhere she looks. Marriage and motherhood isn’t the fairytale Cassie thought it would be. Will her strange new world fall apart around her or will tiny acts of love be enough to get her through?
Funny, perceptive and real, Tiny Acts of Love portrays the rawness of motherhood, the flipside of love and the powerful lure of paths not taken.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
I’d been awake for eighty-six hours when I realised what my husband had done. We’d just got home from the hospital and he was upstairs holding Sophie so that I could make myself a cup of tea and possibly have a nap.
But by the time I’d inched my way to the kitchen, tea-making seemed too daunting a task – something I’d been used to doing in a previous life, but not now. From the fridge magnets and the Isle of Skye tea towel to the strand of spaghetti dried onto the hob, everything seemed familiar but distant, as though I’d returned to a house I’d lived in a long time ago.
My eye caught the laptop, open on the kitchen table. People were bound to have heard about the birth by now – maybe I should check my emails. Perhaps some words of congratulation would flick a switch, jump-start me, and shake me out of this jittery, twilight world.
To my surprise, I had a hundred and four unread emails, all with identical subject descriptions. I opened up my sent box, a terrible suspicion forming in my mind. The offending communication was right there at the top.
Subject: 48 Stitches Later!
Attachment: sophiebreastfeeding.jpg
She has arrived! Sophie Louise Carlisle, a bouncing baby girl 7lb 5oz. Cassie’s waters broke on Monday afternoon (at work!) and we rushed up to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in a taxi (taxi driver NOT happy). However, she wasn’t dilated enough, so we were sent home. Contractions started overnight, and when we went back the next morning, we were rushed up to the delivery suite where the midwife decided . . .
Unable to read any more, I opened the attachment. It was a photograph of my top half, naked and white against hospital sheets. I was frowning in concentration as I tried to coax my nipple into Sophie’s mouth.
It had been sent to every name in my contacts list, including the following recipients:
1. David Galbraith, Senior Partner, Everfield Chase, London office. He’d been the lawyer acting on the other side of a multi-million pound joint venture called Project Vertigo. I’d been advising on transfer of employment issues and for some reason got involved in some late-night emailing from my home computer.
2. Everyone else from Everfield Chase who had ever worked on Project Vertigo. This ran to dozens of people, including: Nadeem Madaan (employment law), Bill Harkness (banking), Julie MacDonald (tax), Benjamin Trent (property), and Ashley Green (night typing secretary).
3. Doreen King of HM Revenue & Customs – provider of guidance in relation to a tax issue that had arisen in another corporate transaction.
4. Elliot McCabe, Manager of Braid Hills Funeral Home – correspondence concerning Great Auntie Judith’s funeral.
5. Renato Di Rollo, Reservations desk, Hotel San Romano. Holiday booking.
6. Malkie Hamilton. Ex-boyfriend. Oh my God.
‘Jonathan!’
He eventually appeared, carrying Sophie snug against him on one forearm, supporting her head in his palm.
‘Is it time for your paracetamol?’ he asked with a bright smile.
‘What . . . is this?’ I whispered, my hand pointing somewhere in the direction of the screen. The effort of twisting my head to look up at him had dissolved my vision into a field of black swirls.
‘What? Let me see.’ He peered in closer. ‘It’s the email I wrote in the hospital – remember, the one I showed you?’
‘What? I’ve never seen this before in my life!’
He paused for a moment, frowning while he considered his response. ‘Well, maybe you were a bit . . . out of it . . . at the time . . .’
Scenes from the birth, fragmented and disconnected, surfaced in my mind: Jonathan fiddling with his BlackBerry during the pushing stage, at around the point where I’d reached a calm acceptance that I would never get out of that room alive; Jonathan taking pictures as the midwife hauled a purple, blood-stained Sophie onto my chest for skin-to-skin contact; Jonathan waving the BlackBerry in my face just as the haemorrhaging started . . .
‘You needn’t look like that, Cassie. You said it was okay.’
‘I might very well have done. But I was not of sound mind at the time.’
This lawyerly pronouncement didn’t seem to make much of an impression on him. He merely bent his head and kissed Sophie’s nose six times. Her arms flew out in a startle reflex. It occurred to me that we’d have to take off the hospital bracelet that still encircled her thin, translucent wrist; she was ours now. I could scarcely believe they’d let us take her home.
‘And anyway.’ I glared at Jonathan again. ‘Then you decided to email it to half the lawyers in the UK?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve managed to send it to all my contacts, which seems to include everybody I’ve ever sent an email to since I got this account.’
He was quiet for a moment, taking this in. ‘Hmmm. You’ll need to change your default settings.’
‘So it’s my fault now?’ Rage was bubbling up in the pit of my stomach, but somehow it wasn’t reaching as far as my voice, or the part of my brain that formed words. I sat back with a big shuddering sigh.
‘Don’t you think you might be overreacting? And besides,’ he said, narrowing his eyes, ‘you’re not supposed to do work emails from a personal email account. You know that, Cassie.’
‘There were other people on that list too.’ I scanned through it again. ‘The damp proofing guy, the fish deliverer . . . people who are now going to think I’m mad.’
‘So? I hardly think that matters. If you like, I’ll send out another email saying it was my fault, and that it wasn’t intended to reach them.’
Before I could reply, the doorbell rang, and Jonathan rushed off to answer it. He came back beaming, an enormous bouquet of flowers in his non-Sophie arm.
The cellophane screeched as I tore off the card, making Sophie startle again.
‘Congratulations! With best wishes from the Joint Ventures Team at Everfield Chase.’
With a squeal, I tossed the bouquet onto the table. ‘For God’s sake! It’s from bloody Everfield Chase!’
Jonathan seemed delighted. ‘You see, Cassie, everyone is going to be happy for you. I hope there were some clients on the list too. It’s quite an original marketing tool – you’ll certainly stand out in their memories, look at it that way.’
‘Yes, I should think the mental image of their employment lawyer naked and breastfeeding in the delivery room will be quite hard to erase.’
‘I’m sorry, Cassie-Lassie.’ He came over and folded me into a hug with his spare arm. I detached myself and took Sophie from him – a process that took several moments as I eased my hands around her back, working my fingers upwards to support the back of her head. She felt more like a kitten than a baby; a pliant bag of bones. She curled into an upright position against me, nose nodding into my shoulder as she tried to move her head, sensing milk nearby. I stroked the nape of her neck with one finger, lost in the utter softness of her skin.
‘Our very own joint venture, Cassie,’ said Jonathan, curling his palm around the back of Sophie’s head, his eyes looking moist.
And although it was a terrible line, it did make me smile. Because it was his way of saying that Sophie had been born out of our love, because of our love, and would grow up in our love like a little bud unfurling its petals towards the sun.
About the Author
Lucy Lawrie was born in Edinburgh, and gained an honours degree in English Literature from Durham University before going on to study law. She worked as a lawyer in Edinburgh for several years, specialising in Employment and Pensions law. When Lucy was on maternity leave with her first baby, she unearthed a primary two homework book in which she’d stated, in very wobbly handwriting: ‘I want to be an AUTHOR when I grow up.’ To appease her six-year old self, she began writing her first novel.
Author Links
My Review:
This was funny. There were times when the mother was so tired and her hubby was totally clueless, that I had to laugh. Her husband had his own issues and as the book progresses the reader finds out why. Then when Cassie's mom comes to visit it is like Erma Brombeck is in town. Her mum is so strict and more worried about her daughters posture then rather or not she has postpartum depression. Then her mother hears her husband yelling in his sleep. I felt for Cassie and have seen how a new baby can keep you up all night, and this is an honest look about what really goes on. It is done in a way that other moms can relate and relax with a good laugh. I am giving this book a 4/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own. Also on a side note, I am blocking my email from my hubby before I go in the hospital. lol
Fab review Vicky. Glad you enjoyed Tiny Acts of Love.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being a part of Lucy's tour.
Shaz
Thanks for sharing your review, I like the sound of this one.
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