Cover

About the Book

What do you do when you’re told you’ve got terminal cancer at 50? Take up crochet, get religion and bow out gracefully? Or upend your life and spend every remaining minute exploring new pleasures?

Ruby has always been the generous mediator among her friends, family and colleagues, which is why they have all turned up to celebrate her 50th birthday. But after a few too many glasses of champers, Ruby’s speech doesn’t exactly go to plan. Instead of delivering the witty and warm words her guests are expecting, Ruby takes her moment in the spotlight to reveal what she really thinks of every one of them. She also accuses her husband, Harry, of having an affair.

Saving the best barbs till last, Ruby lambasts her octogenarian mother for a lifetime of playing her three daughters against each other. It’s blisteringly brutal. As the stunned gathering gawks at Ruby, the birthday girl concludes her bravura monologue with the throwaway comment that she has terminal cancer. She has cashed in her life savings and plans on taking her two sisters cruising into the sunset for a dose of Husband Replacement Therapy. Courageous? Or ruthlessly selfish?

But, do they even want to go with her now that she’s cast herself off into social Siberia?

Title Page

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my witty, warm and wonderful sisters, Jenny, Liz and Cara, whose unbridled love, loyalty and joie de vivre light up my life.
And to the lovely man who finds us funny, Michael Brian O’Doherty.

All names in this story have been changed to protect the desperate, the hilarious, the deranged, the fabulous and the not-so-innocent.

1

Once upon a time there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person . . . That’s me, by the way. I’m going to tell you a story about three months that upended my life. And you are not going to like me. You may even hate me – honestly, I hated myself at times. You’re going to think I’m a conniving, duplicitous, selfish monster. You’re going to think I’m the worst sister, mother, daughter, wife and friend in the whole wide world. But, believe me, there were pretty extenuating circumstances. Once I’ve explained it all to you – and no doubt been hospitalised for chronic gravel rash on the knees from grovelling – well, I’m hoping I can change your mind.

It started on my fiftieth birthday. I was standing on a beachside balcony peering back through the glass doors at my birthday shindig. I’ve watched the video of what came next a gazillion times through mortified fingers, so I can give you a blow-by-blow account of the day my life went tits-up.

Hello, everyone! Thank you for coming to celebrate my Fuck it, I’m Fifty birthday bash!