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A division of HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2019
Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2019
Cover illustrations © Hannah George/Meiklejohn
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Debbie Johnson 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008258887
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008258894
Version: 2019-06-24
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Epilogue
A Note From Debbie
Extra Material
Other Books
Also by Debbie Johnson
About the Author
About HarperImpulse
About the Publisher
For Charlotte Ledger, editor, friend, and honorary Budbury resident – thank you for everything
Chapter 1
The latest meeting of the Budbury Ladies Coffee and Cake Club is in full swing. We are all present and correct in the café; it’s a Monday and it’s closed for business to actual paying customers.
The gingham-clothed tables are loosely arranged together in the middle of the large room, sunlight streaming in through the picture windows, the sea below shining and shimmering as it rolls into the bay. The various weird mobiles made of old seven-inch vinyl singles and shells and the wooden things you get inside spools of cotton are dangling in and out of the sun, striped in shade and light like golden tigers.
Beneath the dangling mobiles, we sit, gathered around the tables. We are fully equipped with all the necessary items: coffee in its rich variety of lattes and mochas and in some cases – by which I mean mine – espresso martinis. We have wine, and bubbly, and home-made cider. We have cake of every possible type, including tipsy meringue, black forest gateaux, strawberry pudding and a rich sherry trifle with way too much sherry in it. This is a stealth piss-up via the medium of pudding.
Most importantly, we have the Ladies. Or most of them at least. Me, my sister Willow, the café owner Cherie Moon (I always like to use her full name, because it’s so awesome), Katie, Zoe, Edie, Becca and our guest of honour, Laura.
Off to one side is a long trestle table heaving with gifts, contributions from the village for Laura’s baby shower-slash-hen-do. Everyone loves Laura – at least everyone who’s met her. Normally that would be enough to guarantee that I’d at least try and hate her, out of sheer contrariness, but even I can’t manage it. She’s just too bloody lovely, with her crazy curly hair and warm smile and kindness oozing out of every pore.
I notice that she’s staring at my espresso martini with something akin to lust in her eyes, and think that maybe I could learn to hate her – if she lays one fingertip on my glass she’s dead. Or at the very least she’ll get stabbed in the hand with my fork.
Becca, Laura’s little sister, stands up and taps a spoon against the side of her own glass. She clears her throat in an exaggerated ‘master of ceremonies’ way, and gains our attention.
‘Dearly beloved,’ she says seriously, ‘we are gathered here today to celebrate the single life of Laura. Laura who was once Fletcher, who became Walker, and who will shortly be Hunter. Assuming that Matt doesn’t come to his senses and join the Foreign Legion. Pause for laughter.’
She looks up, and we are already obliging. She’s funny, Becca – sharp and sarcastic and stinging. She’s also teetotal, when most of us are at least on our way to being smashed. Being the sober person at a party always leads to some wicked observations. Often about me, as I’m usually the most drunk person at a party.
‘Today, at this solemn occasion,’ she continues, once we’ve stopped giggling, ‘I would like to share with you something from Laura’s past. Something she’s probably forgotten exists. Something that our parents found when they were packing up their house, and thought I might be interested in. I was interested. In fact, I was so interested that I even got it … laminated!’
She waves a sheet of plastic-coated paper in the air dramatically, and we all react as though she’s the villain in a pantomime, revealing the blueprints of a diabolical masterplan.
Everyone is in a good mood. Everyone is the most relaxed I’ve seen them, ever. Part of that is because all of our responsibilities, all the darling burdens we love dearly, have been taken off our hands for the afternoon.
Cal, Zoe’s partner – think rugged Aussie cowboy, Thor on horseback – has taken all of the teenagers away to Oxford for the night to visit the college where his daughter, and Zoe’s kind of step-daughter, will be studying later this year. With him are Lizzie and Nate, Laura’s teenaged kids, freeing them up from worrying that anybody is roaming the village getting pregnant or skateboarding off cliffs.
Katie’s four-year-old, Saul, is off on an adventure with Van, who is my brother and Katie’s man toy. That always makes me a bit sick in my mouth, but they seem happy, so who am I to complain? He’s also taken a mismatched set of two mums with him: Sandra – Katie’s mum – who could create a crisis if she was alone on a desert island talking to a coconut head, and Lynnie – mine and Willow’s mum.
Lynnie has Alzheimer’s, and is recovering from bowel cancer. That sounds horrendously grim, but weirdly isn’t – since we found out about the cancer and she had her op, she’s actually been having an extended good spell. She still has no idea who we are half the time, but the aggressive episodes that had been getting more common have faded. Probably because she’s not in pain any more. Pain will make anyone grumpy.
Me, Willow and Van care for Lynnie between us, and we all love her dearly – but I’d be lying if I said it was easy, and it’s a relief to know she’s off having fun with a responsible adult who isn’t one of us. Plus she’s with Saul, who has no idea what Alzheimer’s is, doesn’t remember Lynnie the way she was before, and simply reacts to everything she does with delight and love. Kids are great – as long they’re someone else’s.
Becca’s baby, Little Edie, who’s not long started toddling, is off with her dad, Sam. Even the dogs – Laura’s Midgebo, an insane black lab, and our beguiling Border Terrier Bella Swan – are taken care of, enjoying the sunshine in the doggy crèche field outside.
This sense of being carefree is unusual for most of us, and adds to the sense of elation inside the café. Nobody is working. Nobody is looking after anybody. Nobody has responsibility for anybody but themselves. Wowzers.
That, plus the fact that we’re half cut, makes us an easy audience for Becca’s speech. She swoops the laminated sheet around for a while, like it’s a magic wand, before putting her glasses on to read it.
They’re not actually glasses with lenses. She’s only in her thirties, and doesn’t usually use specs. These glasses are plastic fancy dress ones complete with a honking great Groucho nose, moustache and eyebrows.
Again, we all find this unutterably hilarious, especially Edie, who laughs so hard that Katie and I share concerned glances in case she has a heart attack or chokes on her own merriment.
Edie is in her nineties, and suffered a nasty bout of pneumonia last year. I’m a pharmacist and Katie’s a nurse, and I think we’re the only ones who realised quite how close we were to losing our much-loved village elder.
She recovers, patting her tummy as she gulps in the air she lost due to Becca’s hilarity, and I give Katie a little thumbs-up sign as the speech continues.
‘This,’ announces Becca once the furore has died down, gazing at us from behind her plastic frames, ‘comes to you directly from the mind of ten-year-old Laura. It starts with these priceless words: My Dream Wedding.’
Laura groans out loud, and we all laugh at her embarrassment. We’re nice like that. Cherie, who is in her seventies but looks like an Amazonian Pocahontas with a fat silver and grey plait hanging over her solid shoulders, nudges her and grins.
‘When I am older, my dream wedding will be all pink,’ Becca reads, glancing at her sister over the Groucho specs to check that she’s suitably mortified. ‘I will have a pink carriage drawn by pink horses and all the guests will wear pink, even the men. My cake will be pink sponge with at least ten layers, and my dress will be pink silk. I will even have a pink dog, and pink ear-rings once Mum lets me get my ears pierced, and pink high heel shoes so big they make me look tall.
‘I don’t know how I’ll get a pink dog or pink horses, but I will. Maybe some pink kittens as well. And I will wear pink lipstick and have pink rose petals thrown on the floor. It will be the pinkest day ever.’
The pinkness of Laura’s Dream Wedding is making me feel a bit sick, and from the looks of it, her too.
I glance across to the other side of the table, and see modern-day Laura. Modern-day Laura is almost forty, and the only thing pink about her is her cheeks. She’s almost seven months pregnant with twins, and the size of a sumo wrestler. Her swollen ankles are propped up on a chair, and her arms are rested over the vast expanse of her baby-carrying belly. She still looks gorgeous – but not in a fantasy wedding kind of way. More of an earth-goddess-needing-a-nap kind of way.
‘Okay, okay – so I liked pink!’ she exclaims, grinning. ‘Someone had to – Becca was already fantasising about her Satanic wedding!’
Becca nods at this, and the Groucho glasses bobble up and down.
‘True that,’ she confirms, in a mock ghetto accent. ‘I was indeed a daughter of darkness. My fantasy wedding involved a vampire groom and cake with worms and goblets of blood. Now, I will pass along the sacred glasses of My Dream Wedding, and we will each share our own story, our hopes, our fantasies, our personal choices of veil and party food …’
I feel a slight twinge of panic at that particular announcement. Obviously, Becca intends this to be a round-robin of fun – but in my case, it accidentally touches a raw nerve, and makes my nostrils flare.
I love all the ladies here present, but discussing My Dream Wedding feels perilously close to facing up to something long hidden. It’s a bit like I’m an archaeological site, and Becca is about to attack me with a trowel to unearth my secrets.
Looking around, and seeing how happy everyone else seems to be doing this, I wonder if perhaps my secrets are even worth keeping any more.
With great ceremony, Becca removes the plastic Grouchos, and walks to place them on Cherie’s face. They’re not big enough, and the arms stretch around Cherie’s wide cheekbones. Cherie stands up, and bows, majestic in a sequinned kaftan straight from the seventies, and begins.
‘My dream wedding, when I was young, probably involved hallucinogenic mushrooms and Marc Bolan. My first wedding did involve hallucinogenic mushrooms, but not Marc Bolan. But my dream wedding … well, that was the one I had right here, a couple of Christmases ago, to my hero Frank.’
We all let out a communal ‘aaaah’ at that. I wasn’t here for that wedding – I was busy perfecting my role as the black sheep of our family, travelling around and screwing up – but I’ve seen the photos.
Cherie and Frank – known universally as Farmer Frank due to his magnificent acreage – married late in life after being widowed. The ceremony was held here at the Comfort Food Café, same as Laura’s will be – but unlike Laura and Matt’s, which will hopefully be sun-drenched and balmy, theirs was a winter wonderland.
Cherie passes the now slightly bent-out-of-shape Groucho specs to Katie, who looks borderline horrified at being thrust into the spotlight. Katie is in her late twenties, petite and blonde and pretty, and manages to combine both being one of the most blunt and honest people I know with being extremely shy. She also has rotten taste in men, clearly, or she wouldn’t be hanging around with my brother. Uggh. Sick in mouth again.
‘Ummm … okay …’ she says quietly, standing up and still barely matching Cherie while she’s sitting down. ‘I’ve never had a wedding. But I suppose when I was little, it maybe involved white dresses and Justin Timberlake. These days, I’d be happy with anything that involved a lie-in.’
She sits down very quickly, and Cherie pats her knee. I get where she’s coming from. Saul is a whirlwind of a child with endless energy and endless questions. I’m pretty high energy myself, but on the few nights he’s had a sleepover at our cottage, I’ve spent the rest of the day staggering around like a zombie. Last time, he jumped into bed with me at half five in the morning quizzing me about my favourite crustacean.
Katie passes the glasses along to Zoe, who inserts them into her masses of ginger curls, and stands up to her five foot nothing height. Us Longvilles are all tall and lean; we are giants amongst midgets.
‘I have never had a dream wedding,’ Zoe announces firmly. ‘As a child I dreamt only of running off with gypsies to travel the world in a brightly painted caravan, cursing unkind villagers and making friends with freaks. I found you lot eventually, so I suppose some of that came true. I still have no dream wedding, and don’t intend on conjuring one up. Thank you very much.’
I realise, as the glasses are passed on to my sister Willow, that it will be my turn next. I feel a churn in my stomach at the prospect – not because I’m shy, or because of the many espresso martinis I’ve consumed, but because this is not a subject I want to discuss. I plan to make a sharp and timely exit to the ladies as soon as Willow nears the end of her talk, or possibly to pretend that I’ve fallen asleep, and sit snoring and drooling in my seat while the glasses of doom pass me by.
Or maybe I won’t. Maybe this is the time. Maybe I should come clean. When I first moved back here, to help Willow with Lynnie, I had no idea how long I’d stay. It could have been days, or weeks, and now it looks like possibly forever. Things are different now – I have a small business, I have friends, I have a super-sexy man in my life. I’m probably not leaving Budbury any time soon.
I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, so I put off making any kind of decision until Willow has finished. I’m sure the right thing will come to me – a bit like when you’re in a restaurant and can’t choose from the menu, and can’t come up with a decision until your waiter is standing right there with his notepad, and suddenly your instincts tell you: ‘Yes! Spaghetti carbonara for me please!’, and all feels well with the world.
Willow has neon pink hair, which would have looked great at Laura’s wedding, and it dangles over the plastic glasses as she stands. It’s been in a kind of bob for a while, but she let it grow over the winter so she could keep her ears warm. Makes perfect sense to me.
‘Growing up as we did with Lynnie,’ she says, nodding towards me, ‘you can imagine that such traditional patriarchal nonsense as dream weddings was not encouraged. It was far more important to find love than to find a husband, and in all honesty I think that’s probably fair. But I also think that if Tom and me were to plan a wedding, it would most likely be at Briarwood, and have a zombie theme.’
There are nods and giggles at this. Tom owns a big old Victorian mansion on a hill at the edge of the village, where he runs a kind of school for eccentric inventor genius types. He also has a dog called Rick Grimes, named after the hero of The Walking Dead, so it’s a fair call. In fact it would be a great wedding. I’m pondering my costume when Willow continues.
‘And now I’d like to pass the sacred Groucho glasses to my darling sister Auburn, who as far as I know is currently enjoying her longest relationship ever with the lovely Finn. Can’t wait to hear about this dream wedding …’
Damn. I’ve been caught out – so busy planning my milky-lens zombie outfit that I didn’t duck out in time. Or maybe I subconsciously sabotaged my own escape plan. Gosh, I’m annoying.
There is a general buzz and shuffle and sounds of interest as she passes the specs along to me. She’s right on one count – I am loved up at the moment. She’s also right that Finn is lovely. I might even, in the dim dark recesses of my primeval girl brain, imagine being married to him one day – but that process would not be a simple one. Frankly, nothing ever is with me.
I scrape my chair back, gulp down the remainder of my espresso martini, and perch the glasses on my nose. I pause while they all refocus their attention. Might as well create a moment – show a bit of style. I’ve trapped myself in this moment, and this is the equivalent of the waiter hovering at my shoulder with his notepad – decision time.
I glance around at the smiling faces, the expressions of warm curiosity, and realise that I actually want to be honest with these people. Friends, family, community – none of it should be built on a lie. And none of this lot are going to judge me – it’s not that kind of place. Deep breath, and in I plunge.
‘Well, ladies and gentlewomen, Willow raises a good point,’ I say. ‘My dream wedding would be an elaborate cathedral of sound and light; a lightning storm in a haunted forest; a shipwreck off the coast of Zanzibar; a magical fairy glade inside a mystical stone circle. All of these things and more.’
I glance around at my audience – they’re hooked, so I decide to hit them with the punchline.
‘Sadly, none of these magnificent feasts for the senses are likely to take place. I won’t be marrying Finn – because I’m already married! Booooom!’
I make a ‘drop the mike’ gesture, pass the glasses to a confused Edie, and give a low bow as they all stare at me – Willow, in particular, has eyes so wide they might break her face in half.
I grab a bottle of cider, and head outside. I really need a ciggie now.
Chapter 2
I find a perch on one of the tables and take a swig from my bottle. It’s been brewed by our friend Scrumpy Joe, who lives up to his name by brewing cider professionally – his parents must have had amazing powers of premonition. Or maybe it’s a nickname, who knows?
The garden of the café is higgledy-piggledy and laid out over uneven ground that makes balancing anything on the tabletops an interesting experience. I like sitting out here sometimes, waiting for people’s milkshakes to start to slip sideways.
The café is on the top of a hill on the top of a cliff on top of the world. Or at least that’s what it feels like, especially on a day like this, when the spring sky is a clear, vivid blue and the sea seems to stretch on for infinity.
The dogs let out a half-hearted woof when they see me, and I raise my bottle in acknowledgement as I count out loud. I’m counting because I’m curious to see how long it takes Willow to make it outside with her thumbscrews and eye-shining torch to interrogate me. I have a bet – with myself, so I’ll definitely win – that it’ll be less than thirty seconds.
Sadly, I’m all the way up to one hundred and eighty before she emerges from the café, pink hair blowing around in the breeze, striding towards me in her spray-painted silver Doc Marten boots. Her hands are on her hips, which tells me she means business.
‘What took you so long?’ I ask, tapping an imaginary watch on my wrist. ‘What time to do you call this?’
‘I had to listen to Edie’s story,’ she says, reaching out to punch me on the shoulder. For no good reason other than we’re sisters. She’s the baby of the family and, if I’m honest, was always the butt of our practical jokes and general twattery when we were growing up. Now she takes every opportunity to prove to herself that she’s not the runt of the litter any more.
The rest of us – me, Van and our other brother Angel – all took off when we were young, and she ended up at home with an ever-declining Lynnie, looking after her on her own until she told us what the situation was. Then two of us came back – and I suspect there’s part of Willow that thinks life was simpler without us.
‘What was that like?’ I ask, frowning up into the sunlight. Edie’s fiancé died during World War II, and she never married. She simply convinced herself he’s still alive, and talks about him in the present tense, and even takes food home for him from the café. I’m not one to judge – we’re all a bit barmy, if we strip away the layers, don’t you think?
‘It involved a swing band and the village hall and nylon stockings she’d been given by an American airman. But anyway … you’re married?’
Her face is all screwed up, and I can tell she’s both intrigued and a bit angry.
‘Yeah. You want to say “WTF”, don’t you? Except you’re too old to use abbreviations, so you want to say the whole thing. I can see the battle raging within you.’
‘The battle raging within me isn’t about saying “fuck”, Auburn – I’m quite happy to say it! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!’
I laugh out loud – because any word, when you say it repeatedly, starts to sound silly, doesn’t it? Especially one that rhymes with duck and muck and yuck and other similarly amusing words.