My son my sun, are you on the way home?

Why did the Foca have to say he'd bring our son back at 5 today?
Five not seven because he's going abroad for work.
The tension in my chest
It doesn't help
I loathe waiting.
I don't usually send a text until my son's an hour late
I must remain calm
Perhaps not read the book I'm currently reading:

Whatever you love
... can be taken away
by Louise Doughty (not free but £2.99 with The Times the other day)

Ooh my, I'm half way through. A divorced mother's daughter has been killed in a hit and run and the back bumph says she takes revenge into her own hands with devastating consequences, but I haven't got to that part yet.

Like Melody Browne, this book goes back and forth, but this time "Before" and "After"
It's disturbing, the death of a child is not something you want to imagine and reading it I still can't, don't want to but the book also works on another level - Laura's relationship with her daughter's father and the subsequent break up of their relationship (I'm back on a "before" chapter so will find out just how)

Her husband has set up home with another woman and they've had a baby. She sees this family play happy families with a boy, her son. This frankness, I feel a pain in that, I'm sure many a single mother would.

There is nothing particularly subtle about the prose but as a thriller it is: it's compelling. We do not get how another married mother in the book deals with her grief, only Laura's assumptions while wrapped in her own. Her perceptions of mother communities are on the nail. How many of us recognise ourselves or people we know?

The Sunday Telegraph describes the book as:
"Like Zoe Heller, Doughy is masterful at combining the texture of ordinary, smugly middle-class contemporary life with the hidden cliff edges of violence and hatred."

Annie, who was here earlier for a cup of tea laughed and said: "It sounds just like your afternoon in the park!"

I'm not sure I would recommend this book, or rather, I'm not sure who I would recommend it to. If you like prose that makes you recoil with its honesty, a story that is psychologically tense, then this one's for you.

Me, I'm going to send myself into a psychological headspin by reading it while waiting for my boy to come home. I'm hoping I'll be able to concentrate. I actually came to blogspot because I'd read the same paragraph about three times as I wondered if the doorbell would ring. Blogspot is better at taking my mind off things.

He will come home.

The Foca hasn't answered my text asking "Are you on your way?" but my son is on his way.

Note to you: Don't read this book if your child has gone away. Read it when your child is with you.

OK? Good! Have a happy evening!