A Mumsnet story....add a part

[StephanieSpeilberg]

I’m bored home alone and have tidied enough to impress my mother. Please entertain me.

Opening:

Our main character Susan, who has twins and is wearing a jigsaw dress, pulls into her local supermarket for a naice ham and a chicken to last 10 meals.

As she pulls into the car park, she notices a man in a van parking in a child and parent bay with no child to be seen. Susan contemplates whether she would be unreasonable to roll her window down and tell him straight, but instead she parks in a different space whilst muttering profanities under her breath. She knows her friends would call her a pushover, but she hasn’t the confidence of Alice, who would have jumped him with an umbrella and called him a cockwomble.

Now add your part....

lighthearted

an Ocado delivery van, which would now not be finishing its rounds and depriving several shielding families of their fortnightly food order.

"Oops," said Susan, "did I forget the handbrake, or

was it deliberatly tampered with!!!
Just then her mobile rang it was

her best friend (the one who was coughing before lockdown).

"Susan!" she said "I have something you really need to know about your husband!"

I saw him yesterday on the High Street. He was

Having a coffee with his female work colleague...

...you know, the one with the bum implants and long, straight dark hair and pencilled-in eyebrows."

Susan reflected on this information. Things were now starting to stack up. Her mother had been right all along. Her next move must be to...

Go straight to Mumsnet AIBU and ask if she should LTB.

The overwhelming majority thought...

…that her friend should mind her own business - nosey cah…

The majority thought there was nothing wrong with a male and female having a coffee as friends however one particular poster suggested ordering a mini tracking device to stick to her husbands brief case and so off she went and logged into her Amazon Prime account until she noticed something very bizarre in her recent orders...

Seven different orders of computers, all sent to an address in New Zealand. Susan knew MIL didn't have her password, so did this mean increasingly less D H was planning ...

To keep in touch with mil when she emigrated? Because she wouldn't stand for that. She'd been an interfering old bag from the start, expecting to be invited to the wedding, wanting to meet her gc before their first bday etc. After years of trying to convince dh to go no contact, she couldn't have mil thinking it acceptable to keep in touch with her son and gc. Susan knew she had to act fast

ANd cut all ties. She would have to pick up the twins from the police station and make a run for it. Back to Cornwall, she supposed, due to the current situation. She wondered if the goat would enjoy it there or if ...

would the goat draw more attention to them. Also is goats milk allowed on Susan's current diet. Susan decided

that more attention on her was usually a good thing, but possibly not ideal right now.

Maybe it would be better to call on the services of her old friend

Penelope, the actuary who worked for Deighton, Leigh & Penfold in the city and who had once appeared on Eggheads (accidentally as she entered the wrong studio). If there was one thing Penny was good at, it was holding an egg-whisk while

… simultaneously milking a goat and answering a multiple choice question. Susan questioned whether she actually needed a lawyer however, as she had once sat next to a solicitor - why did that word always make her giggle and blush?! - at a country supper. Since then, Susan had felt fully qualified to offer advice on the mumsnet legal threads and frequently did so, much to the chagrin of several mnetters who claimed to be 'experienced family lawyers' - a likely story. Susan knew they were just prime examples of the thread police who wanted us all to live in a nanny goat state, never more evident than in these times of Corvid-19. Susan clutched her pearls. Oh how she wished others would use the correct terminology, just like her...

Suddenly Susan noticed that she was all alone in the house. Her PIL and DH had disappeared! They must have stolen a march on her to go and pick up the DC from the police station.

Now was obviously the time to call a locksmith and take control of the house, Susan thought,

...'Yes, I must get all my goats and crows in a row'...

However she couldn't find them, and strangely all the furniture had gone too. Most curious of all, was the 'sold' sign in the front garden. Susan headed for the phone she always referred to as being kept in the morning room, intent on screaming at someone because the sign was made of the usual plastic/ card, not the hand carved imported natural resource that she'd expect for a naice middle class home. As she picked up the phone from her large under stair cupboard, she noticed a letter addressed to her in dh's writing, opening it

She found the divorce paperwork and a letter stating that her about to e ex and the children would be staying with the in laws in Northumberland. The house was under offer, so she would have to go back to Cornwall, until that too was sold.

Susan let out a shriek Of rage. How dare he!

But a brilliant idea came into her mind She could

Find a man with children, move in quickly, and then start numerous threads moaning about his dc intruding on her relationship and the cost of them being inconvenient. Of course she would get harsh replies, but knew that even if she posted in step parenting she could just accuse everyone of having no idea or being in the first wives club. There was just one thing she needed to clear up first,

how on earth was she going to get to Cornwall when the Range Rover was, well, crumpled? Maybe ...

...maybe.....Susan pondered. Then suddenly into her head popped the advertising jingle "Maybe it's Maybelline" from the distant 1990s. What was the point of that strap-line she mused? Then it came to her. Skin is only beauty-product deep. Or something like that. There were two choices. Susan could either ring her friends David and Victoria, currently isolating in the Cotswolds and ask if she could borrow of of their many SUVs or...well the other option was, quite frankly, not really a runner. Nevertheless, just a few hours later, wearing a pair of makeshift overalls fashioned from pillow-cases, Susan had managed to panel-beat her Range Rover back into a driveable form. It wasn't pretty, but this was not a time for such ethereal concerns.

Susan lent back against the wall in the sun and

succumbed to self pity for a moment.

Then she poured herself a gin and rang the estate agent. To her horror, it turned out that the person who had bought the house ...

Was a single mother. Susan was horrified, surely the woman didn't believe Susan's lovely mc house in a naice area was suitable for her type. And no doubt buying it with her single parent benefits. As a sahm Susan objected to her taxes paying for single parents, all of whom were lazy scroungers. Just then