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Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2013
Copyright © Victoria Connelly 2013
Cover photographs © Getty Images & Trevillion
Cover design © Lucy Stephens 2013
Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847562838
Ebook Edition © May 2013 ISBN: 9780007443239
Version 2018-07-23
To Bob and Anne with love
Contents
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
One Year Later
Acknowledgements
Backads
About the Author
Also by Victoria Connelly
About the Publisher
Prologue
On a tiny Greek island in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea sits the Villa Argenti, clinging precariously to a cliff that plummets into the aquamarine waters far below. It’s a strange, rambling, tumbling sort of a building. Parts of it date back to the fourteenth century and it’s been added to and extended by successive generations which have included one Italian prince, two Greek tycoons and three rock stars. There are towers and turrets, great wooden doors, and windows that would look more at home gracing a Venetian palace. The overall effect is slightly bemusing but very pleasing.
But it isn’t the villa people come to see but the gardens. It is said that they are the most beautiful in the whole of the Mediterranean. Perhaps it’s because they are so unexpected. They don’t scream and shout their presence like some tourist destinations – rather, they whisper enticingly and people find them through serendipity or word of mouth.
Have you seen the gardens at the Villa Argenti? You haven’t? Then you must. You really must!
There are long, shady avenues, sun-drenched terraces and lush green lawns. There are stone temples and urns spilling over with bright flowers, and fountains which cool the air in a musical mist. But it is most famous for the Goddess Garden where beautiful statues are placed at respectful intervals, enticing the visitor to walk amongst them in venerable silence. There, beside a cypress tree, stands Artemis, goddess of the hunt, with two faithful hounds by her feet. Overlooking a pond is Demeter, goddess of the harvest, carrying a sheaf of wheat. And there are Athena, Hera and Iris too.
But it isn’t until you reach the end of the garden that you find the most popular of the goddesses. In full sunlight, surrounded by roses, is Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty.
There is something special about this statue – something that marks it out from the thousands of other statues of Aphrodite that can be found all over Greece. It’s hard to spot at first because she looks very like the others with her curls tumbling down her back and the finest of silken garments only just covering her curves as her arms reach up to lift her hair away from her face. She holds the attention. She’s mesmeric and, some even say, magical. Her eyes might be sightless but she seems to see so much and she appears to be smiling as if she can see into the future and knows what’s going to happen.
Perhaps she does.
Chapter 1
Alice Archer would be the first to admit that she wasn’t beautiful. Sweet, perhaps. But never beautiful. Beauty was a word far more at home describing somebody like her sister, Stella, with her blonde hair, sharp cheekbones and hourglass figure. Next to her sister, Alice faded away into the background. She was Alice the Gooseberry. Second-fiddle Alice. Alice – sister of Stella. She’d never been Alice in her own right. Not that she was complaining. She’d never really wanted to be the centre of attention. She was far happier just to watch life happen to other people.
So that’s what makes what happened to her so hard to understand.
It all began on a perfectly ordinary day in February. Well, it was an ordinary day for Alice – Valentine’s Day always was. She awoke in her tiny terraced cottage, shivering because the boiler had broken yet again, and got ready for work.
I will not look on the doormat, she told herself as she walked through to the kitchen for breakfast. There won’t be any Valentine’s cards there and I will not let it bother me.
Still, she couldn’t help a sly little spy and, sure enough, the mat lay bare of all declarations of secret admiration and unrequited love.
It’s wasn’t that Alice didn’t get to meet many men because she did. In fact, she was surrounded by men. But it was the kind of men she was surrounded by that was the problem and she couldn’t help thinking about this as she left the house and saw Wilfred the postman ambling up the driveway as if he had all the time in the world and posting his letters was the last thing on his mind. He was in his mid-fifties and had the hairiest face Alice had ever seen, with great thick sideburns giving him a furry quality. He always reminded her of a half-metamorphosed werewolf.
‘Morning, Wilfred,’ Alice said with the brightest smile she could muster on a Monday.
‘Morning, Alice. Just bills today,’ he said. ‘Gas and credit card.’
‘Great,’ she said. She didn’t really mind that Wilfred knew all about her private business. If she was a postman, she’d probably make it her business to know too. It was one of the perks of the job, wasn’t it?
‘No Valentine’s cards for you then?’ he said.
‘Well, I wasn’t really expecting any.’
‘Third year in a row now, isn’t it?’
Alice sighed. Wilfred’s memory was far too sharp sometimes. He stopped on the pavement for a moment, blocking Alice’s way, and she knew she was in trouble.
‘That cough of mine’s back,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Alice said, knowing all about Wilfred’s cough.
‘Went to the doctor’s again. Complete waste of time.’
‘Oh, dear.’
Wilfred coughed loudly. ‘Hear that?’ he said. ‘That rattle?’
Alice nodded.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Can’t be right.’
Alice didn’t like to point out that Wilfred’s twenty cigarettes a day might not be helping matters because she knew he wouldn’t listen.
‘Oh, well. No rest for the wicked,’ he said, and mooched on. ‘Oh, look,’ he added, ‘a second red bill for Mrs Bates at number twenty-two. And a lingerie catalogue too. Bit old for that, isn’t she?’
Alice rolled her eyes.
Wilfred was usually Alice’s first male encounter of the day. The second one was Bruce at the bus stop and he was standing there in a long dark trench coat, his briefcase in his hand. She nodded to him and he nodded back. That was it, really. Alice had gone to school with Bruce but that was never worth talking about because they’d only ever nodded to each other there too. He was quite good-looking, she supposed, with short fair hair and hazel eyes. He had that mean and moody thing going on which had never really attracted Alice.
She turned the collar up on her winter coat and shivered. The Norfolk village of West Carleton was one of the prettiest places in summer. Surrounded by emerald fields, deep cool woods and more round-towered flint churches than you could shake a vicar at, it was like something out of a fairy tale but, in the depths of winter when the wind howled in from the coast across the great expanses of fields, it was a miserable place to be and Alice would wish that she hadn’t had to sell her car and endure the bone-crippling conditions of February at the bus stop.
A half-hour bus ride took her into the centre of Norwich and to her job in the Human Resources department of a building society. She didn’t enjoy her job but it did have its compensations for somebody who was as inquisitive as she was. Nobody suspected her of being nosy, of course. She was hard-working and quietly-spoken. In other words – completely above suspicion. Alice would often smile at the secrets she was privy to.
‘Ah, Alice. Can you bring me Martin Kasky’s file?’ Alice’s boss, Larry Baxter, asked as soon as she’d walked into the office. He was fifty-four, lived just off the Newmarket Road at the posh end of town, had had three sick days off last year and was a Sagittarius. That was one of the perks of working in Human Resources. Alice had all sorts of useful information at her fingertips.
‘I’ll just do a bit of filing,’ she’d tell her colleagues when she wanted to find something out about a guy. Like last year when Philip Brady asked her out to dinner. He worked in the New Business department, had jet-black hair and was very charming. Before the date, Alice looked him up quickly in between filing jobs. She noticed he was on a very good salary, had had two jobs before taking this one and had nine GCSEs at grade A. What she forgot to look at, though, were his self-certified sick notes. If she had, she would have seen that he’d taken six separate days off for irritable bowel syndrome and that might have prepared her for the night ahead and the number of times Alice was left alone at the restaurant table.
She fetched Martin Kasky’s file and handed it to her boss. He didn’t bother to look up at her as he took it but Alice was used to that.
‘We’re still waiting for his references,’ Larry said. ‘Chase them up with a phone call.’ He handed the file back to Alice without so much as an acknowledging smile or thank you and Alice returned it to its shelf and went to sit – invisibly – at her desk in the corner of the open-plan office.
It was then that Ben Alexander came in. He was the Accounts Manager and Alice didn’t exist in his world although he did make some sort of an effort to acknowledge her.
‘Hello, Anna,’ he said without even looking at her. She didn’t bother to correct his mistake. It wasn’t as though he would ever remember her real name.
As Ben approached her boss’s desk, she watched him from behind her computer. He had dark red hair and slate-grey eyes. He was wearing a navy shirt today which made his eyes seem even brighter than usual and Alice felt her heart do a little dance. She’d had a crush on him for longer than she could remember which was ridiculous because he’d never look at a girl like her. He went out with building society royalty like Pippa Danes who had platinum-blonde hair and catwalk legs. Still, there was no harm in dreaming, was there?
Actually, there was. Alice had lost count of the number of times she’d allowed herself to believe that maybe once – just once – a handsome man would turn round and look at her – really look at her. They’d see beyond the shyness and the plainness. They’d see her.
But Ben didn’t see her even when he stared right at her to hand her a member of staff’s sick note to file.
‘Thanks, Anna,’ he said before leaving the office.
Alice got up and walked through to the ladies’ toilet. She’d just shut the cubicle door when two giggling members of staff came in.
‘Did you see Alice Archer this morning?’ one of them said.
‘No – why?’ the other replied.
‘She was wearing that awful grey cardigan again.’
‘Oh, no! Not the one with the bobbles on the front?’
‘Yes! Classic Alice!’
They both shrieked with laughter.
‘I like that old brown thing she wears with the funny belt.’
‘The one that looks like a bear has died on top of her?’
They shrieked again, flushed toilets, ran some taps and left.
Alice waited a few moments before leaving the safety of her cubicle. She was very attached to her grey cardigan. It was a good practical one with a lot of wear in it yet but she had to admit that it probably wasn’t the most attractive look for a young woman of twenty-eight with its overlong sleeves and baggy middle.
She looked at herself in the mirror above the sink. Her face was pale and her brown hair fell straight down to her shoulders, neat and unremarkable. Her blue eyes were the only feature really worth any notice but she never drew attention to them, choosing to hide them behind large dark-framed glasses when she was in the office and never bothering with the likes of eyeliner or mascara.
She often wondered what she would look like with a makeover. She liked to watch that programme on the television where they take a hopeless case with a terrible haircut and a baggy jumper and turned them into a glamour queen. She would probably qualify for that show, she thought, looking at the bobbly grey cardigan and her sensible, flat shoes.
As she returned to her desk, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be one of those women who knew what clothes to wear and how to have their hair. What was it like to have the ability to turn heads and make a man fall in love with you?
Alice sighed. Once – just once – she’d love to know what it felt like to be beautiful.
Chapter 2
‘You know what your trouble is, Alice?’
Alice wasn’t sure that she wanted to know but she was quite sure that Stella was going to tell her.
‘You just don’t make an effort. I mean look at you!’ her sister said, pointing an admonishing finger at Alice’s ensemble. ‘Grey!’ She spat the word out as if it left a nasty taste in her mouth.
‘There’s nothing wrong with grey. It’s very fashionable at the moment.’
‘Not like that it isn’t!’
Alice self-consciously pulled at her bobbly cardigan and watched as Stella flopped onto the sofa opposite her and stuck her spoon into a carton of ice cream.
‘Anyway,’ Stella continued through a mouthful of double chocolate chip, ‘what are you doing here?’
Alice took a deep breath, knowing how the following conversation was likely to go.
‘It’s Dad’s birthday in a couple of weeks and I wondered—’
‘His birthday? Oh, I completely forgot!’ Stella said.
‘You forgot last year too.’
‘I was busy.’
‘And the year before that.’
‘Don’t be a bore, Alice. God, you’re worse than a mother.’
For a moment, the two sisters sat in silence, remembering the mother who had been so cruelly taken away from them when Alice had been just twelve years old and Stella only eight.
‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s all right,’ Alice said. ‘I shouldn’t really nag you like that.’ Stella stuck her spoon into the carton of ice cream again, thinking she’d got away with it, but Alice wasn’t going to let her off so easily.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Alice asked.
‘About what?’
‘About Dad’s birthday!’
Stella shrugged and kept her eyes down, resolutely refusing to meet Alice’s.
‘We have to do something. It’s not every day that you’re seventy,’ Alice pressed.
‘God, it’s so disgusting having a seventy-year-old father,’ Stella said. ‘What was Mum thinking of?’
‘She was in love with him,’ Alice said, ‘and it’s just as well for us that she was or we wouldn’t have been born, and he wasn’t that old when he had us. Not for a man, at least.’
‘I think it’s horrible how men can go on having babies until they’re ancient.’
‘But Dad was only in his forties when he had us. That’s not old these days and neither is seventy any more.’ Alice paused and took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I was thinking we could visit him.’
‘Oh, Alice!’ Stella said. ‘You know I hate that horrible place! It smells of disinfectant and old people.’
‘You’ll smell like that one day too,’ Alice said.
‘Don’t be foul!’
‘Anyway, we needn’t be at the home for long because I was thinking of taking him out somewhere.’
‘Taking him out? What, in public?’ Stella said, a look of shock on her face.
‘He’s still able to enjoy a day out by the sea and an ice cream. He’s not dead yet, you know!’
‘He might as well be. He’s brain dead.’
‘No, he’s not!’
‘Well, he is whenever I visit,’ Stella said.
‘And when did you last visit?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t keep a written record like you obviously do. You always were the favourite, anyway.’
‘How can you say that? You’re the one with the house!’ Alice pointed out, looking up at the lofty ceiling of the Victorian semi’s living room.
‘Oh, you’re begrudging me the house, are you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I thought you said you wanted your own place.’
‘I do want my own place, Stella. I just want you to see Dad once in a while. I thought we could take him to the seaside. He always loved the sea.’ For a moment, Alice remembered the endless bucket and spade holidays they used to go on as a family. From Great Yarmouth to Blackpool, from Skegness to Brighton, they would laugh their way round the coastline of Britain, making wonky castles in the sand and eating mountains of candy floss. ‘It really is the least we can do for him.’
‘But it’ll be so cold,’ Stella said with a theatrical shiver.
‘So, we’ll wrap up!’
‘How are you going to get there?’
‘Well, Sam at the home has offered to drive us to the station.’
‘The train station? With his chair?’
‘Of course with his chair. He can’t walk very far these days.’
‘Oh, God! I really don’t fancy it!’ Stella said.
‘I know you don’t but can’t you think beyond yourself for once?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I mean, can’t you think about Dad for a change and how much he’d love to see us both together and spend a day with us – a day away from the home?’
Stella wrinkled her nose.
‘We really could use your car, actually,’ Alice said. ‘Dad did say we could share it, after all.’
‘Oh, Alice! When are you going to get another car of your own? You really should, you know. You can’t rely on other people to bail you out of awkward situations all the time.’
Alice baulked at the implication that their father was an awkward situation. ‘When was the last time I asked you for your car?’
‘I’m just saying that you should get your own.’
‘I can’t afford another car. I’m only just keeping my head above water as it is with the rent and bills.’
‘I don’t know what you do with your money, Alice, I really don’t.’
Alice bit her tongue. If Stella had had to go out and find herself full-time employment and hadn’t had everything handed to her by their father, she might realise how tough it was in the real world.
‘It is Dad’s car after all,’ Alice reminded her.
‘Yes, I know, and it’s an old banger. He really should have bought me a new one. I can’t believe he didn’t think of that before he went into that home.’
‘Buying his daughter a brand new car wasn’t exactly at the forefront of his mind when he was in the process of losing it.’
‘Well, what about going in Celia’s car? She’s got one of those big four by fours, hasn’t she?’ Stella said, thinking of Alice’s oldest best friend.
‘Yes, and it’s always filled with her kids,’ Alice pointed out. ‘I hardly see her these days. She’s always so busy running her boys around. Anyway, Dad wouldn’t want to see Celia – he’d want to see you!’
They were quiet for a moment, their words hanging heavily in the air between them.
‘Look,’ Alice said at last, ‘I didn’t come round here to argue.’
‘Good, because I’m not in the mood. I’ve had a horrible day, if you must know,’ Stella said with a pout.
Alice looked at her sister. She was selfish and infuriating but she also looked a little paler than usual and Alice’s sisterly genes kicked in.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
Almost immediately, tears welled up in Stella’s big blue eyes. ‘It’s Joe!’ she cried.
‘What about him?’
‘He broke up with me!’
‘Oh, Stella!’ Alice said, leaning towards her on the sofa and squeezing her shoulder. ‘What happened?’
‘He said I was too high-maintenance. What does that mean, anyway?’
‘It means you spend a lot of time—’
‘I know what it means! But I’m not high-maintenance! I haven’t been to the hairdresser’s for two weeks. Two whole weeks! And look at my nails!’
Alice looked at the immaculate scarlet talons her sister sported.
‘Chipped and scuffed but I’m making do until tomorrow before getting them done. I ask you – is that “high-maintenance”?’
‘Well—’
‘And he said I didn’t like the simple things in life just because I didn’t want to go on some crumby camping holiday. I mean, what girl in her right mind would want ‘to sleep in a tent? On the ground?’
Alice thought of Joe. He was the outdoors type with rock-climber’s arms and an athletic build. She could think of any number of girls who’d give anything to spend a night in a tent with him. Not her sister, though. Nothing but a five-star hotel would do for her.
‘He’s a scumbag,’ Stella said.
Alice sighed. Joe was most definitely not a scumbag. Alice actually quite liked him but she could guess what had happened. He’d probably grown tired of Stella’s little ways as well as her constant flirting. For a start, Alice couldn’t help noticing that there were no less than five Valentine’s cards lined up on the mantelpiece. Five! Who were they all from? Alice was guessing that Stella had flirted with every single one of the senders.