Pages Reveal for The Deliberations of Isabella M Smugge
September
This morning I woke up at 7.15, rolled over, stretched, wiggled my freshly pedicured toes and said to myself, ‘Isabella, you’re a lucky girl. Fabulous house, delightful children, wonderful friends, a job you love and lots of thrilling new projects.’ Then I shut my eyes for a further blissful half hour and let myself drift into an incredibly satisfying daydream about my ex-husband, Johnnie, being dumped by his girlfriend, Paige, and having to find a job in a drive-through burger restaurant. The sound of banging on my door and an imperious voice shouting, ‘Mum! Where’s our breakfast?’ jerked me back to reality.
That reality, as the UK’s most beloved mumfluencer, is perhaps not quite that of other working single parents. I live in the principal dwelling in my small Suffolk village, a large and gracious Grade II former rectory set in well-manicured grounds, close to all local amenities and with excellent transport links. My gardener, a taciturn man named Ted Ling, mows and rolls the lawn, rakes the gravel drive, attends to the fruit, veg and flowers and keeps everything looking picture perfect. My housekeeper fills my freezer with organic home-cooked meals for those times I’m just too busy to knock up a quick dish of gnocchi with homemade coriander pesto.
My executive assistant, Sofija, does an amazing job of supporting me and we are both doing our best to put the fact that she had a passionate affair with my ex while he was still very much my current behind us. My playground frenemy, the mildly terrifying Liane Bloomfield, cleans my self-contained holiday rental on the second floor while listening to hair metal music, Sue Parkin, my delightful agency nursery nurse, entertains my youngest child three days a week and I retain the services of an excellent manicurist. Apart from that, it’s just me, my children and the cat, since my mother and her second husband moved out of the family room and into a rental on the High Street last month. But more of that later.
‘Mum! What are you doing? Elsie and me are starving and Milo’s running about without any pants on. We’re going to be late!’
My daughter Chloë came bursting through the door, her red-gold hair (so like mine) unbrushed and her uniform thrown on any old how. The sight of her mother languishing in bed is a new one to her. I must get out of the habit.
My three eldest children, Finn, Chloë and Elsie, have just gone into Years Nine, Six and Four respectively. My youngest, Milo, will be three in April and at some point will be leaving me to go to nursery at our local primary school, a prospect which makes my eyes fill with tears every time I think of it. I used to scoff at soft-hearted parents who lamented their babies growing up, but with the unexpected arrival of my youngest child, the result of a bout of vigorous unplanned marital activity with my cheating husband (although I wouldn’t be without my little Milo for anything), Isabella M Smugge has become one of their number. Finn is self-sufficient in the mornings, getting himself, up, dressed and breakfasted and out of the door in time to catch the school bus. Chloë and Elsie, while more than capable of making toast and pouring out their own chilled organic mango and passionfruit juice (packed with the healthful vitamins so vital for the growing child), got out of the habit in the school holidays.
School started three days ago and I am not yet back in the groove. Last night I stayed up late, snuggled up on the sofa with a half bottle of nicely chilled Pouille-Fumé and a cheesy romantic comedy. I was alone, but that was kind of the point. Johnnie would have pooh-poohed any attempt to watch a romcom and I had no one else to share it with. I rolled into bed shortly after one and I do need my eight hours if I am to remain in sparkling form.
As you will know, I rose to fame by doing things that others weren’t, namely writing a series of hugely successful books in the Issy Smugge Says series. When I was still living in London, with Sofija bringing up the children and Johnnie very much on side, it seemed that most of the nation hung on my every word. Party planning, room refreshes, how to throw a show-stopping dinner party – there was no end to my wisdom, it seemed. These days, although I still aim for curated perfection (most of the time), Issy Smugge is not nearly as flawless as once she thought she was.
Sighing, I heaved myself out of bed and headed for my gorgeous en suite five-piece bathroom for the very briefest of showers. I am a devoted mother, always putting my children before myself, and as testament to that, I omitted to apply my leave-in conditioner, eye cream and Mousse Corporelle Hydratante Intense à la Texture Riche pour Femme in an attempt to save time. The children come first, and who cares if my hair is flyaway, my scalp flaky, my under-eye area crepey and my skin dry and peeling?
Not them, as it quickly became apparent.
‘Honestly, Mum! Elsie burnt the toast and we’ve run out of peanut butter. And stupid Milo wiped his nose on my skirt and now it’s covered with snot!’
Glancing at the clock and slipping on my adorable kitten-heeled clogs (so now!) I pointed out that there was a new jar of peanut butter in the pantry and that it was but the work of a minute to insert four more slices of generously seeded organic granary bread into the toaster. I dabbed at Chloë’s skirt with a moistened cloth, put the book bags by the front door, located Elsie’s missing shoe by the ottoman in the family room and managed to get Milo into his pushchair and all of us out of the door just in time for school. #busymum #mumoffour #backtoschool
***
Everyone’s doing podcasts these days. You can’t activate your smart speaker without hearing some chef or actor or stand-up comedian burbling on about their boring hobbies and interests. The key to success is to find a gap in the market. Two Posh Birds was my agent’s original title for the award-winning podcast put out by my mother and myself, later commuted to Smugge Squared. Mummy’s surname isn’t Smugge and I don’t think the maths checks out, but as a title, it’s got alliteration on its side and people seem to love it. Mummy and I chat about interiors, bicker about paint colours and window dressing, interview guests, talk over each other and engage in witty mother-daughter banter.
Naturally, not everyone’s a fan. Lavinia Harcourt, my deadly enemy from school, is one such. Most unfortunately, she’s clawed her way up the greasy pole of success, becoming a top journalist (if you can dignify the acidic tosh she spews out every day by that name) and writing one of Britain’s most-read columns.
We’ve loathed each other since we were schoolgirls and she’s never missed an opportunity to skewer me and my dazzling lifestyle in her stupid paper. You’ve got to accept it when you’re at the top of the tree, as I am. Trolls and keyboard warriors are a part of my life, and I’ve had to learn to ignore the cruel words they hurl at me.
Lavinia’s a bit different. She can write. I will give her that. Even though she wastes her time burbling on about the outfits chosen by duchesses, society spats and politics. All of that said, following an exciting evening in a cocktail bar where our mothers got into a drunken fight with each other, we came to some kind of understanding. We’ll never be friends. We still don’t like each other and that’s fine. However, there is a touch of grudging respect between us.
However, once a journalist, always a journalist, and I appreciate that dishing the dirt (even when it’s largely imaginary) is what sells papers. The podcast award brought out the worst in my old enemy.
The Cliché Queen: Isabella M Smugge Strikes Again
Modern life is full of minor vexations. Poor phone etiquette at the theatre. Sourdough shortages at the farmers’ market. Reality TV. But one can always rely on irritating influencer Issy Smugge to come up with yet more.
Since she and her mother, retired posho interior designer Caroline Neville, barged into the sound booth and seized the wired earphones, unsuspecting listeners have been bombarded with breathless soundbites about curtains, blinds, carpets and furniture from two of the most annoying women in the country.
Do we really need any more so-called experts banging on about window dressing? Who cares about this season’s cushion colours? And why oh why must these entitled bores infest the airwaves with their banal chatter? I say, retire your USB mics and foam windscreens, ladies, and give us all a break.
Mummy was incandescent with rage when she read it.
‘The cheek of the girl! Just wait until I tell her mother!’
Audrey Harcourt, Lavinia’s mother, went to finishing school with Mummy and they have history. As the UK’s premier mumfluencer, I have learned to shrug these irritating pinpricks off. Mummy not so much. #jealous #enemies #backbiting
***
Early September is manna from heaven for the dedicated influencer, a time of abundant foliage, clear, rain-washed skies, the very beginnings of autumn in the air and the chance to really start thinking seriously about winter coats, boots and accessories. However, even with my unrivalled position as the Influencer’s Influencer (according to weighty glossy Ascendancy Magazine in which I recently featured), more than four million devoted followers on all the platforms, my beautiful Grade II listed house, my healthy and attractive children, my extended family and my remarkable tenacity in the face of difficulties, this new term was filling me with a queasy sense of apprehension.
When I first sashayed onto the school playground four years ago, Sofija walking a respectful five paces behind me, I did not make the best of first impressions. I was incorrectly dressed (no one around here wears designer clothes), my hair was too formal (ponytail or claw clip is the rule), I was wearing a full face of make-up and my attitude was all wrong. Looking down my nose at everyone made me no friends except for my lovely Claire, married to our startlingly good-looking vicar, Tom.
These days, I have quite a lot of actual friends and I have learned many lessons. One of the most painful ones is that people can’t be trusted. Former playground mum friend Rebecca Bennet now hates me. The second of her five daughters, Charlotte, behaved appallingly at Elsie’s cake-baking birthday party last year. She’s one of those parents who refuse to believe that their own children could ever do anything wrong, and blames everyone else’s instead. In spite of my attempts to resolve things in an adult fashion, she and her husband have thrown their lot in with my deadly playground enemies Chris and Hayley Robinson, plus others, and are spreading vile rumours about me. This is awkward as some of our children are in the same school years, and Chloë and Liza Bennet attend the same school of dance. I don’t know what to expect when I walk onto the playground and that’s something I’m not at all happy about.
Still, I am permitting the space between where I currently am and where I would like to be to inspire and not terrify me, as I pointed out on Insta the other day, along with a particularly fabulous picture of a shingle beach with a large seagull standing menacingly on it. Trouble is, it’s all very well sitting on my insanely comfortable fluted Art Deco-style navy blue sofa with its hand-tufted cushions in the most heavenly shade of dusky pink and posting this kind of thing, but walking on to the school playground past the poisonous little gang of parents who appear to live to gossip about Isabella M Smugge is quite another matter.
Rebecca Bennet and her husband have produced five daughters. Their eldest two are in Chloë and Elsie’s classes. Hayley and Chris Robinson have a whey-faced son named Lysander (I ask you!) who is also in Year Four with Elsie. Sigh. With catastrophic timing, they were once more fruitful and multiplied around the same time as me. The month before I had my little Milo, young Cressida entered the world and I will be sharing awkward drop-offs and pick-ups with her parents for the next eight years.
I found I was gripping the handle of Milo’s Petites Roues de Joie bespoke pushchair so hard that my perfectly moisturised knuckles had turned white. Even gazing at its many smart features (Bluetooth speaker, phone charger, drink chiller, localised satnav) couldn’t distract me from the sound of Hayley Robinson whinnying with laughter at a bitchy comment whispered by Rebecca Bennet.
Suddenly, a very different kind of voice was in evidence in my immediate vicinity.
‘Oi, oi! Who have we here? It’s the Influencer’s Influencer! What’s going down, Smug?’
When I first moved to the village, I was afraid of Liane Bloomfield for the following reasons:
1. She had a twenty-yard death stare which could freeze a person in her tracks.
2. Her third son, Zach, and my eldest child, Finn, had a number of violent disagreements which resulted in us both being called up to the school.
3. We had a screaming row (she did most of the screaming, to be fair) at Messy Church over a platter of her sausage rolls which I accidentally insulted. In my defence, I didn’t realise she was right behind me as I was doing said insulting.
4. She presented an alarming appearance with her heavily eyelined and mascaraed eyes (generally narrowed in a menacing manner), spiky blonde hair, black leather jacket and a roll-up behind one enthusiastically pierced ear.
I wouldn’t refer to her as a friend, as such. But equally, she is no longer an enemy and all the evidence points to us quite liking each other, most of the time. Sarcastic laughter drifted over from the Robinsons, the Bennets and a couple of other nasty bits of work who had joined them. Liane looked straight at Hayley Robinson and let out a loud and unexpected bark which made me jump.
‘Got that, you snarky cow? Shut it and stop spreading lies about my fr – Smug here. I know where you live.’
She barked again and tapped two fingers over her nose in the universally recognised sign for, ‘I’m watching you.’
And the reason she knows where my enemy lives? Because she recently moved into a brand-new house on the estate next to the Robinsons’ abode. To their utter horror. Which I am afraid to say makes me very happy indeed. #haha #playgrounddrama