#BookExcerpt The Wrong’un by Catherine Evans
#BookExcerpt The Wrong’un by Catherine Evans
#giveaway #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources @fiction_junkies
The Wrong’un
by Catherine Evans
Meet the Newells, a big family of good lookers and hard grafters. From their sleepy working class backwater, the siblings break into Oxford academia, London’s high life, the glossy world of magazine publishing and the stratospheric riches of New York’s hedge funds.
Then there’s Paddy, the wrong’un in their midst, who prefers life’s underbelly.
As things fall apart around his sister Bea, is Paddy behind it all? And why does matriarch Edie turn a blind eye to her son’s malevolence? Will she stand by and watch while he wrecks the lives of her other children? Just how much is she willing to sacrifice to protect her son?
Purchase Links
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wrongun-Catherine-Evans-ebook/dp/B09YQC4656
US – https://www.amazon.com/Wrongun-Catherine-Evans-ebook/dp/B09YQC4656
Excerpt
This excerpt is near the beginning. Edie’s family is now grown up, and she is looking back on the early days of her marriage. She has given birth to six boys, then finally has a daughter, Bea. Most onlookers would suppose that a woman who finally has a daughter after six sons would be delighted, but Edie has a difficult relationship with Bea right from the start.
The boys were so easy. They’d all latched on in a heartbeat. Each of them had fused with me, and I’d rock back and forth and hum to them while they fed. And it wasn’t just me feeding them. They fed something deep within me, that couldn’t be reached any other way. But Bea. She wouldn’t settle. It was a battle to get her comfortable and the two of us would go through a kind of wrestling match filled with vexed frustration all for a piddling result, as what she finally got down her wouldn’t feed a slimming sparrow.
Finally I threw in the towel and borrowed a pump from the midwife. No shortage of takers wanting to feed her. George had that baby glued to him. The boys fought for the privilege. Smothered with love and affection, she was. Not from Paddy, I grant you. I didn’t express for long. It all seemed to dry up. I suppose I just couldn’t produce in the same way for a machine, but no one can say I didn’t try. I switched her to powder.
As for sleeping – the boys fretted in the night from time to time. There was the odd wet bed and sometimes a nightmare. Especially Will. Imagination comes at a price, poor lamb. But Bea… where she found the energy to bellyache the way she did on the rations she took in, I’ll never know. With the boys I’d get up and sort them out. Change the bed, give them a cuddle, whatever they needed. But with Bea, somehow George started to do it. He’d get up for Bea in the middle of the night. Even if he’d worked late or had to get up at stupid o’clock. He never did that for the boys. He’d sleep through all their fussing, and I’d get to them before he even woke up. But with her, it was like he was tuned in to the frequency of her crying. Funny, isn’t it?
We were going to call the new baby Albert, after my grandad. In my head he’d become Bertie. It sounds daft, but I had to get used to not having my Bertie with me. Fancy missing a baby that didn’t even exist. We didn’t have any girls’ names ready.
George was shaving one morning before work. He was still at Jebsen’s. I was in bed trying to feed Bea. She’d been home from the hospital five or six days and we were still calling her ‘the baby’. Sonny was reading Peter Rabbit to Colin at the foot of the bed. Suddenly he stopped.
‘What’s the baby’s name?’ he asked.
George laughed. ‘Good question, my lad,’ he said. ‘What are we going to call her? Alberta?’
I was silent. Your brain doesn’t work right after you’ve had a baby. I didn’t want to give Bertie’s name away.
‘What do you reckon, Princess?’ he asked me again.
‘I’m thinking,’ I said.
‘What about Beatrix?’ Sonny asked.
George and me looked at each other. ‘Beatrix,’ he said, trying it for sound. ‘Not many Beatrixes around, that’s for certain. I like it.’ He looked at me.
‘Why not?’ I said.
George chucked his razor in the sink and ruffled Sonny’s hair. ‘Nice one, Sonny,’ he said. He kissed me, leaving a bit of foam on my cheek. He cupped the baby’s head with his palm. ‘Little Beatrix,’ he said and bent over to kiss her too.
Colin stood up on the bed. He was still tiny, dressed in red pyjamas, his hair tousled from his bed, looking delicious as a plum. He could normally put a smile on my face. He jumped into George’s arms. The three of them giggled like halfwits.
‘George, you’ll be late for work,’ I said. The baby started crying. ‘That’s torn it! Sonny, go and get ready for school. Take Colin with you.’
‘But he doesn’t go to school.’
‘Just get him out of here. Clear off, both of you.’
The cry was a particularly pathetic kind of mewling.
‘That was a bit harsh, Princess,’ said George. ‘They were only having a bit of fun.’
A flash of heat surged in my chest. I was just about to mouth off, when I got a hold of myself. He was right, but I was the more livid for it. I looked down at the baby, and I longed for Bertie. Like I said, your brain isn’t the same after a pregnancy. George quietly turned back to the bathroom and pulled the plug on the water in the sink, no doubt leaving it flecked with foam and stubble as per usual.
Author Bio –
Catherine Evans is the author of The Wrong’un, and Editor of fictionjunkies, which publishes book and short stories online by authors around the world. She’s a trustee of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival, and lives in Oxfordshire. She’s married with a daughter and three stepdaughters.
Social Media Links –
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catxevans/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catxevans
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fiction_junkies
Website: www.cathyevans.com
Giveaway to Win 5 paperback copies of the book for a Book Club group (Open to UK Only)
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