the mum commune

When my ex left in May 2008, Lilla was almost five, Teya was three and Danny was just one. I felt like he had died and that I would never feel ‘normal’ ever again. Initially, most days I survived on adrenaline and two hours’ sleep. I barely ate and lost so much weight that my clothes were hanging off. It was a dark time and it was quite a few months before I stopped feeling constantly sick. I stayed in our marital home so was constantly surrounded by memories and photographs of our wedding that I gradually took down when I realised he wasn’t coming back.

Vicki’s partner left when Daisy was four days old. Vicki and I had been friends for years; we lived round the corner from each other and used to go on holiday with my kids and her step-kids from her partner’s previous marriage. I had already been a single mum for six months when she was abandoned. At first, she stayed in the family home, but then they had to sell the house because of the split. In September 2009 I suggested she move in with me for three months while the house sale went ahead and she awaited equity from it. She had nowhere to go until the finances had been sorted. When she did eventually get some money back, I suggested she just stay and save her money to find somewhere else when Daisy was a bit older. It seemed the sensible thing to do, and the thought of her all alone in a flat with a baby, feeling rubbish, wasn’t very nice.

Nicola didn’t technically live with us; she lived up the road. I knew her from a music group when our eldest daughters had been babies. In January 2009 I bumped into her after not seeing her for about eight months, and we both realised we were single mums and that it had happened at