The vote was unanimous - GH's reader panel made up of VIP Members all agreed thatWe All Live Here by Jojo Moyes should be the Winner of the Good Books May Collection.
The panel adored this heartfelt family drama about newly divorced Lila, who’s juggling her career, a ramshackle house, two rebellious daughters and a grieving stepdad. Then her estranged dad turns up…
‘I was hooked by the end of the first chapter,’ said one GH VIP reviewer.
Read an extract here...
Lila walks to the school. It is the first week back after the long holidays and Bill had offered to go, but she needs to up her step count (she is haunted daily by Marja’s endless legs, her still-defined waist). Besides, she has to leave the house to pick up Violet, which means she can stave off the guilt that comes with not having done any writing again.
They both know the reason Bill offers: Lila hates the afternoon school run. Mornings are fine: everyone is in a hurry, she can drop and run. But this is too painful: her acute toe-curling visibility as she gathers with the other mothers at the school gates. There had been a whole month of head tilt after it first happened – You’re kidding me. God, how awful, I’m so sorry – or perhaps, behind her back, You couldn’t really blame him, though, could you? And, of course, there had been the awful cosmic joke of the timing of it all: just two weeks after The Rebuild had been published, alongside a slew of her promotional interviews talking about how best to repair a marriage that had grown stale amid the demands of work and children.
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Two days after he had left, she had walked grimly up to the playground and three of the other mothers, heads bowed together, had been reading a copy of the Elle article, helpfully titled How I Made My Marriage Watertight. Philippa Graham – that over-Botoxed witch – had hurriedly shoved it behind her when she saw Lila and blinked hard with pantomime innocence, and her two acolytes, whose names Lila could never remember, had actually corpsed with suppressed giggles. I hope your husbands are right this minute contracting an antibiotic-resistant venereal disease from underage rent boys, she had thought, and pasted on a smile ready for Violet to traipse out, schoolbag dragging behind her.
For weeks she had felt the murmur of appalled fascination follow her around the playground, the faint turning of heads and gossip exchanged from the corners of mouths. She had held up her head, skin prickling, jaw aching with the rigid faint smile she had plastered, like a kind of permafrost, across her face. Her mother had taken over play-date duty, explaining to the girls and their friends’ mothers when she drove her little Citroën to pick them up that Lila was busy working and she would see them next time. But her mother wasn’t here any more.
Feeling the familiar clench of her stomach, Lila pulls her collar around her ears and positions herself at the far edge of the scattered groups of mothers, nannies and the odd lone father, studying her phone intently, and pretends to be engrossed in a Really Important Email. It is her standard procedure, these days. That or bringing Truant, who barks hysterically if anyone comes within twenty yards.
Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow there will be no interruptions. I will sit down at my desk at 9.15 a.m. when I get back from dropping Violet, and I will not move until I have written two thousand words. She decides not to think about the fact that she has made this exact promise to herself at least three times a week for the past six months.
‘I knew it!’
There is a shriek of delight from a group of the mothers near the rainbow-painted bench by the swings. She sees Marja among them, leaning forward, Philippa squeezing her arm and beaming. Marja is wearing a long camel cashmere-type coat and trainers, her blonde hair pulled loosely and artfully into a huge tortoiseshell clip. ‘Well, you weren’t drinking at Nina’s, were you? I have a Spidey-sense for these things!’ Philippa laughs. She is just placing her hand on Marja’s stomach when she glances over, sees Lila and turns away theatrically. She mouths, ‘Oh, God. Sorry.’
Marja turns, following Philippa’s gaze. She flushes.
Lila understands in her bones what has happened before her brain has a chance to register. She stares, unseeing, at the screen of her phone, her heart racing. No. No. It can’t be. Not after everything Dan had said. He couldn’t do this to us. But any doubt has been removed by the colour flooding Marja’s cheeks.
Lila feels sick. She feels dizzy. She cannot think what to do. She has an overwhelming urge to slump against the tree a few feet away but she doesn’t want the other mothers to see her do that. She can feel the hot pressure of their gaze so presses her phone to her ear and hurriedly pretends to have a conversation. ‘Yes! Yes, it is! How lovely to hear from you! That’s great. How are you?’ She talks on, not knowing what is coming out of her mouth, turning so that she can no longer see anyone, her brain humming.
She jumps as Violet tugs at her hand.
‘Darling!’ She drops the phone from her ear, registers Mrs Tugendhat standing beside her daughter. ‘Everything okay?’ she says brightly, her voice too high, too loud.
‘Why are you talking when there’s nobody on your phone?’ says Violet, frowning at the screen.
