Missing Nancy (ebook)

Argumento de Missing Nancy (ebook)

A stunning debut novel about living, loving and family life

Nancy may have died but her fractured family still turns to her for guidance. When ex-daughter-in-law and single mum, Nina, takes her two boys camping in France, her plan is to ‘find herself’. Her journey is one many readers will relate to and they may find they learn as much about themselves as the very varied and lively characters that Carolyn Lewis has created.

Jonathan knows that his mum's relaxed attitude to mothering infuriates Frank, his granddad, and he tries to be the buffer between them. But Nina’s problems with Frank go deeper, she knows the true state of Frank and Nancy’s marriage before she died.

Determined to make sense of what she’s doing with her life, Nina embarks on a spur of the moment camping holiday in France, which makes Frank more convinced than ever that she is incapable of looking after his grandson. Throughout the holiday, Jonathan telephones his granddad to tell him of their exploits, except for the one fateful evening when he goes missing.

Nina, Frank and Jonathan continue to talk to Nancy. She remains at the centre of their lives, and, instinctively, they know what she expects of them.

No one knows I talk to my dead grandmother. It’s not the sort of thing you say to people. She always said that she’d keep an eye on me and I prefer that to the way Mum says she’s watching me. Even when Mum’s reading a book, she says she can still see what I’m doing.

Grandad’s not dead and, although I’d told him that we were going on holiday, I wanted Grandma to know too. I thought if they both knew, that would be double the protection. A sort of extra insurance.

I guess Grandma was keeping an eye on us because the holiday started off OK. Mum got the car on the ferry, she didn’t get us lost or join the wrong queue or any of those things that can go wrong but I just knew the holiday would be rubbish. For a start we looked different, other cars had roof-racks, they had bikes on proper carriers on the backs of their cars; we had nothing like that, we didn’t even have a GB sticker. We didn’t have the right camping gear either although Mum had scrounged a Camping Gaz stove and some tatty old saucepans from a neighbour. She had bought new tents, though. They’d been marked down in price because the man said they were last year’s stock.

‘Even a child could put these up,’ the salesman told her. He wasn’t looking at me when he said it, he was looking at Mum. She didn’t notice, she just stood there twiddling with her hair, sucking at the ends of it.

My brother, he’s only a baby, was in his pushchair. He didn’t know why we were in that camping showroom listening to the rain thundering down on the corrugated roof. I did, I knew. I knew why we were buying two out-of-season tents. My mother, her name’s Nina, she was taking us to France. Taking me and my brother. She was going there to find herself. That’s what she said; she kept on saying it too.

‘I need to find myself, I’m lost in all this somehow.’

I didn’t think she was lost, I could always find her, but she does seem to have lost a lot. First of all my dad left, he left a long time ago when I was four, just a kid really. I’m nearly twelve now. Then there was another bloke, Steven something, but he left her too. Then after him Dan came to stay with us. Daniel, he had long hair and a Volkswagen Beetle. He’s the baby’s father and it was his idea to call the kid Sebastian.

Mum lost Daniel too. He came back from the pub one Saturday and told Mum he was leaving. He said that she was ‘too bogged down with things, useless things’.0