In the wee small hours

Life just keeps getting more complicated for Annie Baker. Her sister Lizzie's pregnant and wants Annie to be her birth-partner, her friend Leila's got a new man, Tor, and she's getting heavily into yoga, and Kate from the village has somehow ended up having an affair with her own ex-husband. And as for the men in Annie's own life, it just gets worse. Charlie, her six-year-old, is now officially pagan, and deseperate for his own pet pheasant. Her boss Barney is bulding a bit of a reputation for TV commercials involving stunts, so if she's not lurching around the North Sea in a trawler, she's stuck up a crane. And then there's Uncle Monty to keep an eye on. A retired mole-catcher who collects bric-a-brac, he's eighty-two and a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And as if all that wasn't difficult enough, Mack comes back from New-York, just when Annie was beginning to think she might be able to cope without him... For everyone who fell in love with Annie Baker and her Only Boy for Me, here s what happened next. And for anyone who's 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.