Best Laid Plans

As a middle-aged English teacher, Lucy never expected to be arrested for kerb-crawling. But her autistic son Merlin is desperate to lose his virginity before he turns twenty-one, and a prostitute seemed like his only option to get laid before he burst with curiosity and loneliness. Let off with a suspended sentence, Lucy resigns herself to the fact that her son will never have sex, let alone find love. Then Merlin miraculously does find a girlfriend . . . but Lucy’s worries aren’t over. Kayleigh might just be using Merlin for the money his grandmother left him. And Lucy’s snake of an ex-husband is back on the scene too, angling for custody. Will Lucy ever be able to let her son go and start to live her own life? And will the quirky and quixotic Merlin ever find real love? Kathy Lette’s riotous yet heartrending novel of a mother raising an autistic son tackles the taboo subject of sex for the ‘differently abled’ – and shows us that when it comes to love, we all have special needs . . .