Read an excerpt from NO SUCH THING AS MONDAY by Sian Hughes!

Raw, exhilarating, funny and full of heart, No Such Thing as Monday confirms Sian Hughes as a masterful chronicler of life lived on the edge, and people at their most vulnerable.

A horizontal banner featuring a split composition. On the left, a smiling woman (Sian Hughes) with short blonde hair and glasses wears a blue patterned cardigan and a light blue headband, posed outdoors with a blurred green park background. On the right, against a lime green background, is the book cover for "No Such Thing as Monday" by Sian Hughes. The book cover features a black-and-white image of folded fabric with the title in bold white lettering.

Read an excerpt here:

These things were said and not said. They were like the background, the colour of how things went in the house. They were not something you could argue about, so you couldn’t say it made no sense. It’s hard to explain. Imagine someone suddenly starts saying Tuesday comes straight after Sunday. There’s no such thing as Monday. You learn not to mention Monday. Monday is not a thing in your house. At school you might write Monday on your page, but you’d never make that mistake at home. You think when you write it out, what a stupid thing they do at school, making you write out a word that doesn’t exist. You have to have Tuesday twice in your head every week to catch up, but that’s not hard. You skip it over. We skipped over a lot of things in our house.

I didn’t find it hard to skip over the part where I found where my sister was now and told her Dad had died. I thought of finding her and telling her, and I rubbed out that thought as soon as I had it. It must be something I learned to do long ago, to think of her and then wipe that thought, all in one breath. I skipped over the concept of sister, and I skipped over her having any interest in what had just happened. I did wonder about the will, though. About what it might say. But I needn’t have worried. Firstly, because he hadn’t bothered to make a will, and secondly, there was nothing left to leave either of us. He’d borrowed against his pension all those years, for dogs, for fighting birds, for bets on sure things and bets on long shots, and nights at the dogs, and beer at the club, and there was nothing left. I was going to end up paying for the damn funeral. And if I wanted that demented old dog done away with before it savaged someone and landed me in court, it was going to cost me £138 plus VAT. They cost more to kill the heavier they are.

I’m glad the funeral was not calculated by kilo of the body. Dad was a big, square, heavy man, and sitting around all day once his knees and hips gave up had not made him any lighter. I wondered if they’d had trouble getting him out of that chair, if he’d got wedged in it and set hard. I wondered if they’d managed to get him to lie down flat on the stretcher to take him out to the body wagon. I’d find myself worrying about things like that. Like, did they have to break his legs to get him into the coffin? How did they do that?

Then I worried about what clothes he should wear. I hadn’t been there to put out his clothes or give any to the undertaker. I didn’t want him arriving in the afterlife in his braces and jumper with no proper shirt or collar. I woke up worrying about his feet. He’d been waiting to see the foot person the next week. His nails were in a right mess. Did the nails rip the socks when they put them on? Would he live forever with his toes sticking out? I don’t know why I started worrying about these things when I never go to church, and I didn’t know I believed in the afterlife. But it turns out I did, because I kept going round to the undertakers with a different set of clothes and asking about what he should have on his feet and had they brushed his hair.

They were very patient with me. They said, why not go in and see him, put your mind at rest? He’s all decent. We’ve put him in that good shirt you brought, and the V-neck and the jacket. He’s in his best trousers and new black socks. We can’t put shoes on him, because of the furnace. But I wouldn’t go in. I knew I was being a coward. It wasn’t because of seeing him dead. It was because I knew he’d be angry with me for leaving him in the house and going down the road to get drunk, for not being there when they carried him out. I couldn’t look him in the eye, even if they were closed and weighed down with pennies. I had been afraid of him too long to stop now.