In the Wee Small Hours

In the Wee Small Hours by Gil Mcneil. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780747579021.

Life just keeps getting more complicated for Annie Baker. Her sister Lizzies pregnant and wants Annie to be her birth-partner - shes planning an active labour, in water, with lots of candles and music. Her partner Matt isnt too sure, although hes bought some new swimming trunks just in case. Annies friend Leila has got a new man, Tor, and shes getting heavily into yoga, while Kate from the village has somehow ended up having an affair with her own ex-husband. And as for the men in Annies own life, it just gets worse. Her seven-year-old son Charlie is now officially Pagan, and desperate for his own pet pheasant. Boss Barney is building a bit of a reputation for TV commercials involving stunts, so if shes not lurching around the North Sea in a trawler, shes stuck up a crane. Then theres Uncle Monty to keep an eye on, a retired mole-catcher who collects bric-a-brac. Hes eighty-three and a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and has just threatened the Meals on Wheels lady with a shotgun and refuses to leave the farm where hes lived all his life. And as if all that wasnt difficult enough, Mack comes back from New York, just when Annie was beginning to think she might be able to cope without him â ¦ For everyone who fell in love with Annie Baker and her Only Boy for Me, heres what happened next. And for anyone whos ever wondered how to combine motherhood, the country life and a career in town, and why pheasants make that weird clicking noise, this is essential reading.