Chapters (52)
- COVER PAGE
- DEDICATION
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- PART TWO
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHORS
8. Take advantage of young, fast metabolism (see point 6). In fact, scratch that. Get the word out about the body positivity movement. Screw diet culture!
Evie scanned the list a few more times, jotting down more notes and ideas. Then she completely rearranged her room, removing all the crap from her desk so it was more conducive to study and creativity. As she begrudgingly placed her lava lamp and sixth form notes in the bin, she had a niggling feeling she had missed something important. The sound of her parents arguing in their bedroom washed over her like white noise. When realisation dawned on her, she picked up her pen, scribbling down something that was so obvious, so utterly under her nose, she couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first thing she’d thought of.
13. Fix Mum and Dad’s relationship.
TWELVE
Twelve
As well as never quite reconciling herself to moving to England, one of Anna’s bugbears—like half the world’s female population, Evie guessed—was that she took on all the mental load, the invisible labour of managing a household and raising two complicated daughters. On top of her teaching job, Anna did the majority of the cleaning and cooking, and carried a neverending to-do list in her head. Once, during an argument, Evie’s father had made the mistake of saying how lucky Anna was to work from nine till three—the implication being she had an extra three or so hours in the day to spare for home-related things. Her mum had gone ballistic, lecturing him at the top of her voice about how much time teachers were required to work outside school hours.
After that, every time there was a blow up about housework, Peter would promise to help out more, which he did for about three days before things returned to the status quo.
Evie was sure she could do more to mitigate her parents’ stress and tension. Retrospectively, Evie could see all the signs leading up to her parents’ divorce (not that they were all that subtle about it). And now that she was living in the retrospective, she would do her darndest to prevent it all from happening again. If she helped out more, she might be able keep them together. She knew how miserable they had been when they split in the future.
Evie would do a lot more housework, packing the dishwasher and getting the kitchen into order after dinner; cleaning the bathroom she and Meg used, and making some simple meals once or twice a week. She’d been a shite cook before she’d moved out and had been forced to learn so she didn’t starve or die of malnutrition. She still wasn’t great—sticking to basics like vegetarian spag bol, pesto pasta and her speciality: two-ingredient nachos (Doritos with cheese)—but Ben had really helped on the few occasions she’d wanted to make something special for a dinner party.