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Copyright

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.

I see her trying not to laugh, but that’s not really in her nature, and she cracks eventually. She sighs, and sits next to me, and steals my bottle of cider. That would normally be a strong reason for me to wrestle her to the ground and dribble spit in her face, but I reckon she’s had a shock, so I play nice.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks, her voice quiet and a tiny bit hurt. I glance at her, shielding my eyes from the sun, and see that she is in fact hurt. I’d never considered that. When we were young, we weren’t close – in fact we were sworn enemies, forced to share a bedroom, where we re-enacted global conflicts every single day despite our lentil-loving mama urging us towards peace, love and understanding.

Now, though, as adults – bonded over Lynnie and the fact that we each have our own room these days – we’re closer. Almost friends, in fact. The fact that I’ve kept this from her has dented her feelings, and I’m sad about that.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, patting her knee. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I think I just kind of … decided to forget about it. I realise that sounds insane, and it probably is, but it was in a different time. A different life. A long time ago, in a galaxy … well, at least a few hundred miles away.’

‘Well now you’ve remembered, tell me about it. I can’t believe you’re married! Does Van know? Does Finn know?’

‘Nobody here knows. Like I said, I chose to bury it. I barely knew myself. If it wasn’t for Becca and her Groucho glasses, I might have chosen to bury it forever. But … well. Here we are. Me, an old married woman, and you, my spinster sister. Sitting in the sunshine. Sharing a bottle of cider in a fair and equitable manner.’

I reach out to grab it back, but she’s too fast, and holds it on the far side of her body so I can’t get to it without falling off the table. I shrug, and pull my cigarettes out of my jeans pocket instead. She crinkles her nose up in advance, and I say: ‘If you want to hear this story, you’ll have to tolerate the second-hand nicotine, okay?’

I’ve been trying to stop smoking ever since I moved back to Budbury, our tiny corner of the Dorset coast. I’ve tried vaping, and patches, and exercise, but ultimately never seem quite able to shake off the habit. I’ll manage for a while, but then as soon as something vaguely stressful happens – like stubbing my toe, or discovering my mother has cancer, or pretty much everything in between – I start again.I’m a little bit broken, and the ciggies are an external sign, I suppose.

I light up, and soothe myself with that first lovely inhale. I take two puffs, then stub it out on the tiny tin I carry around to use as a combined ashtray and butt collector. Nobody likes a litterbug.

‘That was quick,’ she says, blinking in surprise.

‘It’s my latest health kick,’ I reply, stashing the tin. ‘I only smoke a third of it. Expensive, admittedly – but you can’t put a price on good health, can you?’

Willow rolls her eyes in a way that says she knows I’m stalling, and folds her arms across her chest. Very negative body language, that.

‘Okay, okay …’ I say, realising that she’s tucking her hands away to stop herself throttling me. ‘Well, it was genuinely a long time ago. Eight years ago, in fact, when I was young and carefree and often off my head on various pharmaceutical products. It was when I was living in Barcelona, before I came to London to do my studies and became a productive member of society.’

‘Is he Spanish?’ she asks, not unreasonably.

‘His mother is. His dad’s English. He’s called Seb – Sebastian, which in Spanish is almost the same, but kind of like “say-bass-ti-ann”.’

‘Okay. Say-bass-tian,’ Willow replies, trying it out for size. ‘So I know his name, and how to pronounce it. That’s a start. What about the rest – how did you meet him? Why did you marry him? Why didn’t it work?’

I spot movement from inside the café, and have the feeling that everyone is trying to lip-read our conversation without appearing nosy. The downside of our cosy and close-knit community is that everyone is supremely interested in everyone else’s life. It’s like an interactive soap opera, with a lot of cream teas.

‘Erm … well, look, Willow, it’s complicated. I was younger. I was … wilder, remember? I left home when I was young. I spent years in South America and Asia. I was the Queen of the Backpacking Tribe. And that had its consequences – this may come as a surprise, but I have something of an addictive personality you know …’

She snorts in amusement, and I shoot her a mock-angry look. Mock because I’ve just smoked a cigarette and have drunk approximately seventeen martinis and half a bottle of cider. The boat of normality has well and truly sailed.

‘And?’ she prompts, passing me the cider. Attagirl.

‘And … I suppose I became addicted to Seb as well. I was living in a tiny apartment above a restaurant in the Gothic quarter, working in a bar, and never seeing daylight. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. And when I wasn’t drinking, I was clubbing. And when I wasn’t clubbing, I was sitting on the roof of the building, smoking dope. And when I wasn’t smoking dope, I was … well, you get the picture. I’d been on the road for so long, I think I’d forgotten how to live like a normal human being.’

‘Those who knew you when you were younger,’ Willow says gently, ‘might say that you never learned in the first place.’

‘You’re right,’ I reply, nodding. ‘That’s fair. I was always a little on the savage end of the spectrum. And for sure, spending so long living out of a rucksack and dossing down in hostels and only knowing people who were as transient as me didn’t help. I only ended up in Barcelona because I could speak some Spanish, and because I was trying – in my own messed up way – to get home. I’d been in Ghana – don’t ask – and someone offered me a lift all the way to Morocco. And from there I got a ferry to mainland Spain, and then Barcelona. Have you ever been?’

She gives me a sideways glance that tells me that’s a silly question, and I nod.

‘No. I suppose you’ve been busy,’ I say. She’s younger than me, and stayed at home, and became the One Who Looked After Her Mother. Not that the rest of us had any choice – we had no idea Lynnie was ill, and as soon as we did, Van and I returned to help out. All the same, I do feel slightly guilty about it.

‘So. You’re living the life of a twenty-four-hour party person in Spain,’ she says, recapping the narrative. ‘How does that end up with you being married? Were you drunk?’

‘A lot of the time, yes – but not when we got married, no. There was a lot of paperwork, it was actually quite a long, drawn-out process to make it all legal. Kind of wish I’d skipped it now, but such is life – if you’re going to make a hideous, life-altering mistake, you might as well do it properly …’

‘Why was it such a mistake?’ she asks, and Iknowthat her over-active imagination is working hard to fill in the gaps with all kinds of terrors.

‘He didn’t sell me into slavery or keep me chained up in a cellar, don’t worry,’ I reply quickly. ‘Bad things happened, but nothing like that. I met Seb in the bar where I worked. He’d come in every night, and we’d flirt and chat and he’d buy me drinks. I’d drink the drinks. Then eventually he started staying after closing time, helping me clear up, and drink more drinks, and then we’d go dancing, and we’d take some pills, and then … well, I suppose it was a relationship based on lust and highs. The problem with highs is that there has to be a low at some point.’

‘What happened, Auburn?’

‘Shit happened, Willow,’ I snap back. I hadn’t been prepared for this when I woke up this morning, and I hadn’t been lying when I said I’d buried it all. It’s an episode of my life that was so crazy, so out of control, that I can’t really cope with revisiting it.

‘Okay,’ she replies quickly, reaching out and slipping her hand into mine, squeezing my fingers as she senses my genuine anguish. ‘It’s all right. Is it why you came back? Why you went back to college?’

I gaze off at bay, and chew my lip, and squeeze her fingers in return.

‘That’s over-simplifying it, but in a way, yes. When things fell apart between us – pretty spectacularly, as you’d imagine – it made me think about my life. It made me think I’d made a mess of it. That I needed to change. That I needed less excitement and less highs and less lows. I needed a plateau. So I ran away, back to London, where I dossed around for a while before I decided to go and study. The rest, you know. And I think that’s it for now … please don’t nag me for more, and please don’t feel hurt. I’m not talking about it because I can’t, not because I want to keep secrets from you, okay?’

‘Okay. I get it. That’s fine. You can talk to me about it when you’re ready. Just one more question …’

I nod, giving her permission to ask, and already knowing what the question is going to be.

‘Why,’ she says, calmly, ‘if it’s all over, and you haven’t seen him for years, and it’s all in the past … why haven’t you divorced him?’

I was indeed right. That was the question I’d been expecting. And to be fair it’s one I’ve asked myself hundreds of times over the years. One I’ve never been able to answer. It’s complicated, and many-layered, and fraught with emotional and practical potholes. I could explain all of this to her, but I can’t bring myself to go there. Not yet. I need to keep it simple, for both our sakes.

‘I think,’ I say, eventually. ‘it’s because I’m a bit of a knob, sis.’

‘Ah,’ she replies, wisely. ‘The bit of a knob defence. Well … I can’t argue with you on that one …’

Chapter 3

Willow eventually rejoins the ladies inside the café, and I decide not to. I feel shaken and stirred, much like my martinis, and can’t face the thought of them all looking at me in that concerned and curious way. I feel like enough of a freak as it is, without parading it in front of the cake collective.

None of them would judge, or push too hard, or be anything other than kind and understanding. They’ve all had complicated lives, with ex husbands and dead husbands and imaginary husbands and loss and pain and damage, and they’ve all managed to somehow rebuild. Here, in Budbury, where the rebuilding of shattered lives seems to be something of a regional speciality.

I know that if I fell, they’d spread their arms out and catch me like a big fluffy mattress. I care about them, and I like them, and I trust them. I’m just not 100 per cent sure I feel the same way about myself, at least not all the time. I’m trying to be a better person – staying rooted, staying with a family that needs me, doing a job that matters. Trying not to flake out and run. Trying to be my best self, as they might say on an American panel show.

But my best self is feeling somewhat battered right now, and wants to sneak away. In the Olden Days, I’d have snuck away to another continent – but my life is here. Lynnie is here. Willow is here. Finn is here.

I’ve been sitting on the table, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine on my face in that way you do when it first comes back after winter, wondering what to do next. The pharmacy is closed for the day in honour of Laura’s party. Lynnie’s away. I don’t want to go back inside. I have a very rare free afternoon ahead of me, and until I think about Finn, have no idea what to fill it with.

As soon as I do think about Finn, I smile. This is a strange new feeling for me – the very thought of a man making me grin. Not just in a ‘phwoar, he’d get it’ kind of way – though that’s there as well. But also because he’s funny and kind and patient and strong in all manner of ways. Physically, yes – he’s a bear of a man – but also in subtler ways. He’s one of those people everyone pays attention to, even though he never raises his voice. A natural leader, I suppose, who might in an alternative reality have been some big cheese in the army, or elected as Boss of the Entire World.

In this reality, he runs Briarwood, Tom’s school for grown-up brainiacs. It only opened last year, and initially he tried running it himself, but there were too many problems – like the fact that supremely clever people are sometimes also supremely stupid. There were fires, and meltdowns, and minor explosions, and crises involving re-enactments of famous Jedi battles using real glass light tubes.

Eventually, Tom – who is silly rich because he invents things I don’t understand and have no interest in – decided to get someone in to manage the place. And the people who lived there.

I was involved in the interviewing process, mainly because I insisted, and Finn got the job. That was months ago, and we’ve been together for two of them. Two whole months, and so far, not a single crack has started to show – which is all the proof you need that Finn Jensen is indeed some kind of superior life form. If he’s put up with me for this long, he’s possibly eligible for sainthood.

I set off on what I know will be a long walk – Briarwood is outside the village, at the top of a hill, surrounded by the kind of wilderness Bear Grylls would find a challenge. I can’t drive though, due to my alcohol intake, and anyway the trek will do me good.

I repeat this to myself over and over again during the next half an hour, as the warm sunshine gets warmer, and the booze wears off, and I start to yearn for a glass of cold water. By the time I finally arrive at Briarwood, I’m hot and bothered and also starting to realise something: I have to tell Finn about Seb.

I should have told him about Seb ages ago, but I didn’t tell anyone about Seb. Now the cat is not only out of the bag but probably having kittens back at the café – it’ll only be a matter of time before someone else casually mentions it to him, which would be unfair and crap and also embarrassing for both of us.

I bypass the main room of the building, which is vibrating with death metal music as I approach. Them crazy kids sure do like their death metal. I glance at the big bay windows, and see them at work: skinny jeans, bright hair, rock T-shirts, piercings, glasses, a life-size replica of ET. That’s a new one, and it makes me smile as I walk through the entrance into the hallway.

The house itself is probably Victorian, and was once the home of local landed gentry who fell on hard times. It later became a children’s home – a kind of posh private orphanage – where Tom himself spent a few key years after his parents died. That’s where he first met Willow, when we were all kids – Lynnie, in her pre-Alzheimer days, used to work here, doing yoga and art workshops with the young people.

It fell into disrepair after that, until Tom came back and did CPR on it. Now it’s lively and loud and full of energy and that makes me so happy. I walk down to Finn’s office, where he also has living quarters, and where he will also have one of those lovely water coolers that make that nice glugging sound as it fills your glass. Bliss.

I pause outside his door, and quickly swipe some of my hair out of my face. My hair is long and straight and deep red, which is where I got my name. All of us siblings got given names that suited our appearance when we were born – Willow long and lean; Van with a funny ear; Angel a little cherub.

It’s also, right now, a bit sticky and glued to my cheeks. Not a good look. Once I’m satisfied that I’m as tidy as I’m going to get, I knock on the door to warn him and go inside.

Finn is sitting behind his desk, looking god-like. He’s tall and big and broad and thanks to his Danish grandfather, has silky blond hair that he keeps a bit long, crystal blue eyes, and today, like most days, golden stubble. His face is dominated by high, wide cheekbones, and a slightly crooked nose, and, the minute he sees me, a smile that immediately sends a tingle down my spine.

‘God dag, Mein Herr,’ I say, blending Danish and German on purpose because I know it exasperates him.

‘Guten morgen, mon petit chou-fleur,’ he replies quickly, leaning back in his chair.

‘I love it when you call me a vegetable,’ I say, perching myself on the corner of the desk and looking around the room. I spy some weird booty in the corner, with the word ACME scrawled on the side in marker pen, and ask: ‘Is that a box full of dynamite?’

‘Almost. It’s a box full of fireworks. Confiscated from a particularly explosive member of the brains trust.’

This kind of thing happens a lot here. It’s one of the reasons Finn was brought in in the first place. Fireworks. Huh. How stupid. How juvenile.

‘What time does it get dark these days?’ I ask, my mind filling with Catherine wheels and rockets.

‘No,’ he says simply, grinning at me. ‘You can’t have them. You’re explosive enough without the fireworks. What are you doing here? Not that it isn’t lovely to see you, but I thought you were at Laura’s do?’

He pauses, looks me up and down, and says sadly: ‘I can’t believe you were at a party at the café and didn’t bring me any cake.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and I genuinely am. It’s kind of a sin, that, coming back empty-handed from a visit to Comfort Food heaven. Cherie has done her usual trick of figuring out his particular favourite – some mad Danish rice pudding with almonds and cherry sauce – and serves it up to him so often he should be the size of a sumo wrestler.

He’s not, though. He’s just about perfect, especially today. He does a lot of rugged things like surfing and sailing and hiking, and it’s not an enormous stretch to imagine him at the helm of a longboat planning a raid on the unsuspecting turnip farmers. As a result of all this outdoorsy-ness, he has one of those year-round touch-of-gold tans that makes his eyes pop and his stubble glow. Yowsers.

He’s sitting there, wearing a white shirt with the top few buttons open, which always gets me going. There’s no dress code at Briarwood, but he wears these semi-formal shirts when he’s working, saying it differentiates him from the others and makes them treat him more like a grown-up.

He definitely looks like a grown-up, and I’m already wondering if he has time for a quick trip into the adjoining boudoir for some adult time. I remind myself of why I’m here, and shake it off. Almost.

He’s holding a letter which he’s obviously been reading, and I stall for time by asking: ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s an invitation. To a conference.’

‘Oooh! A conference! How exciting – can I come? Will there be a swanky hotel suite and rude movies? Will there be free pastries and name tags so I can pretend I’m someone else? What’s it about? I love conferences!’

He quirks one eyebrow, amused, and replies very deliberately: ‘It’s about Institutional Financial Processes for Non-Accountancy Qualified Managers, and I’m staying in a Travelodge.’

‘Oh … maybe not then. I think I’ll leave you to it. When is it?’

‘Few weeks away. Are you all right?

‘Sort of. I’ve been better. Okay,’ I say, rallying my thoughts. ‘I kind of have something important to tell you. Not bad, but important. But I also kind of really fancy you right now, and am hoping that I can get you naked some time very soon. So the choice is yours – talk or sex?’

He taps his long fingers on the desk surface, and gives me a feralgrin that does nothing at all to help me calm my reckless libido.

‘Well, that sounds intriguing,’ he says, and I can tell from the readjustment of his sitting position that I’ve definitely piqued his interest in more ways than one.

‘On the one hand,’ he continues, ‘I’m a man, so every instinct I have says sex first, talk later.’

I’m hoping he goes for that option, but something tells me he won’t. He’s too darned clever to fall into my evil trap like that.

‘On the other … I might feel cheap if I let you have your wicked way with me, and then you tell me something unpleasant afterwards. So, reluctantly, I have to go for talk first. And, depending on what it is you want to talk about, maybe sex later.’

I nod my head, and bite my lip, and realise that there isn’t a simple way to do this – other than to just do it.

‘Right. Well. The thing is, I should have told you this earlier, I realise that, but the thing is …’

He sits, still and silent, his blue gaze steady and calm and irritatingly unyielding. I could probably crack that cool exterior if I whipped my bra off and jiggled my boobies in his face – that’s always worked before –but I know I shouldn’t. I know he’s right.

‘The thing is, I’m kind of married.’

I stare first at my knees, which are bopping up and down nervously without me even giving them permission, and then up at him.

He still looks steady, but not quite as calm. He glances away from me, at the window, for a few seconds, before turning back in my direction.

‘You’re married?’ he repeats, his voice low and an awfully lot less playful than it was a few minutes ago. Which I suppose is understandable.

‘Yep!’

‘But you’re not with him?’

‘No! God no!’ I say, emphatically. I have the sudden realisation that he was perhaps thinking this is all a lot worse than it is. My fault, for not explaining myself properly.

‘No,’ I say again, grabbing hold of one of his hands and holding it in mine. ‘It’s not like that. It’s not like one of those stories you read on the internet where I have a secret life, and a husband and triplets waiting for me on the Isle of Wight or whatever. Nothing like that, honestly. I got married, years ago, when I was much younger and much stupider and living in Spain, and we split up. I came back home, and I’ve not seen him or spoken to him in years. Years! He literally doesn’t exist in my life at all, apart from on paper. It’s completely over, and has been for so long, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, and …’

I trail off at this point, because I can’t think of anything else to add. He notices that I’ve stopped, and I see him churning it all over in his mind.

‘So,’ he says, slowly, ‘to recap – you got married to a man I don’t know. The relationship broke down years ago. You’ve not seen him since. I wasn’t at all part of the reason for it not working?’

Finn, I should have twigged earlier, was bound to worry about that. He is the product of a supremely messy divorce – his dad had an affair, and it turned into one of those lovely scenarios where two grown-ups decide to use a child as a bargaining chip. As a result, he’s fairly straightforward on the whole subject. He would never, ever forgive himself if he’d contributed to the collapse of a marriage.

‘I absolutely 100 per cent promise you that you were not.’

‘And I’m working on the assumption that now you’ve told me part of it, you’ll tell me the rest at some point?’

‘Of course I will,’ I reply. I’m going to owe this story to a lot of people.

Finn nods once, firmly, and stands up.

‘All right,’ he announces, walking from behind his desk, grabbing my hands, and pulling me into his arms.‘Then I see no reason why we shouldn’t proceed directly to the sex.’

Chapter 4

We do in fact proceed directly to the sex, passing ‘go’ several times. It’s all pretty spectacular, which it usually is with Finn – but even more so this time. I suppose it’s the hint of drama, making it all feel more real and more special.

We’ve never even had an argument, so this is the closest we’ve got to make-up sex, and I find myself feeling quite emotional when I’m lying in his arms afterwards. His little flat is getting dim, the spring sunshine fading to a dusky evening, the last rays filtering through the closed curtains as we hold each other close.

There had been a moment there – when I’d told him, and he was all strong and silent on me – that I’d felt such a rush of panic. Panic that I’d lost him. Panic that this would all be over before it even properly began. I hadn’t even noticed how much I was starting to like this man until then – but I suppose I’m not the most self-aware of women, being the sort who can persuade herself to forget she’s actually someone else’s wife.

I run my hands over the silky fair hair on his chest – he’s not one for manscaping, I’m glad to say – and sigh into his skin. He has me bundled up tight against him, and is grinning the grin of a chap who knows he’s just shown a lady an especially good time.

‘I really am sorry I didn’t tell you,’ I say, quietly, running the risk of ruining the moment. ‘If it’s any consolation I didn’t tell anybody.’

‘Not even Willow, or Katie?’

‘Not even. And then today, at Laura’s bash, it all kind of came tumbling out. It was a race against time to get here and tell you myself before one of them told one of the menfolk, and you found out by accident and ended up hating me.’

‘I could never hate you, Auburn, you pillock,’ he says, sounding as romantic as it’s possible to sound with a sentence involving the word ‘pillock’.

‘You might say that now,’ I reply, semi-serious, ‘but you should give me some time on that front … Anyway, I am sorry. It was all so long ago, and feels a bit like a dream sequence or a flashback in a film. Like something that happened to a different person – my crazy alter-ego or my evil twin sister.’

He laughs, and twines his fingers into my hair, and I feel him holding strands of it up so the sun can fall through it. He’s fascinated with my hair, the weirdo.

‘I suppose it does perhaps lead us on to the bigger conversation, though, doesn’t it?’ he says. I feel him tensing ever so slightly beneath my palms – so subtle I barely notice it, but in Finn world a major event. He’s usually Mr Cucumber.

Of course, I get what he means, but I don’t have to like it – even if he is right.

‘Does it have to?’ I ask, sounding like a teenaged girl whining about doing homework when she wants to watch Love Island. ‘I like things just the way they are. You, me, naked, in bed on a work day. That’s pretty perfect.’

‘It is,’ he agrees, turning my face up so we’re looking into each other’s eyes. ‘Pretty perfect. And it’s not like I’m going to go all demanding on you – I know this is new. I know we’re both taking baby steps, that we both have our issues. But it’s also not … casual, is it?’

I remember my panic earlier, when I thought I was losing him. I remember how I smile whenever I hear his name. I remember the fact that this man blows my mind in bed. No, this isn’t casual – but I’m not quite sure what it is, either.

‘No,’ I reply, stroking his face, running my finger over the bump in his nose and kissing its tip. ‘Not casual. I really like you, Finn. I’m happy when I’m with you – even when you have clothes on. But my life is … complicated. Actually, that’s a cop-out – it’s not my life, it’s me that’s complicated. I’m a work in progress, but I can’t promise I’ll ever be simple.’

‘The fact that you’ve told me you’re married to another man kind of tipped me off to that – as has knowing you for the last few months. What makes you think I want simple, anyway? Maybe I like complicated. Maybe I’d be bored if you were straightforward. Maybe I’m an emotional masochist who likes getting involved with savage redheads.’

I think about it, and shrug. Maybe he is. Or maybe he’ll reach the point where I drive him mad enough for him to jump back into his longboat, and sail across the North Sea to escape my savagery.

‘You’re not simple either,’ I say, prodding him in the ribs. Offence is the best form of defence. ‘You do this whole cool, inscrutable Nordic thing, and you might fool everyone else – but I know there’s more to you. You’re not just saunas and A-Ha.’

‘They were Norwegian, you philistine,’ he replies in mock horror. Of course I knew that – but I enjoy winding him up a bit.

‘All the same to me. Anyway … as for the bigger conversation, I suppose my half of it goes something like this: I like you. I don’t want this to end. And if I think about it all too deeply, I’ll do my usual thing of tying myself up in knots and convincing myself there’s a disaster looming on the horizon. So, can we carry on getting to know each other, and feeling our way through this?’

He runs a hand down my side, over my hip, and onto my naked backside, which he squeezes.

‘Like this?’ he asks.

‘Well, it’s not quite what I meant, but I’m not complaining.’

He leaves his hand there, and kisses the top of my head.

‘Yes,’ he says, after a few moments. ‘We can carry on doing that. I like getting to know you. It’s fun. But I didn’t like getting a shock like that one, so could we avoid that in future please? I don’t mind you being complicated, Auburn – but I do mind being kept in the dark. As long as we’re honest with each other, I think we’ll be all right.’

I throw one leg over his hips in lieu of replying, because I found that last statement a bit scary. I mean, it’s not like I go around lying all the time … no, actually, I do. I’m renowned for my tremendous fib-telling capacity. But that’s just jokey stuff, like claiming I couldn’t buy a round in because I’d left my wallet in the ladies’ loos at Hogwarts – stuff nobody believes anyway.

That stuff doesn’t matter. But the bigger stuff – like the fact that I’m secretly married, and why the marriage went horribly wrong, and big lost chunks of my life that I’m ashamed of and never talk about – matters. Not telling him might not technically be lying, but I can’t imagine he’d see it that way.

I need to woman up, and make some changes.

Chapter 5

Laura is half-sitting, half-lying, all groaning, on the couch in the Budbury Pharmacy. The shop opened last year, and scarily I’m the person in charge. That fact never ceases to amaze me. I even have keys to a big cupboard full of some seriously heavy-duty drugs – not that we have much call for it in our village.

My average customer tends to need the odd asthma inhaler or some diabetes meds or antibiotics. Nobody’s breaking bad, and most of my regulars are in fairly decent health. That might not be good for business, but it’s definitely good for morale.

To make things work, we also sell a lot of extra stuff – toiletries and gifts and suncare and baby things and my personal favourite, the sugary whistle pops that you can both suck on and make music with. Multi-tasking at its finest.

Sometimes we’re super busy – by Budbury standards – and sometimes we’re not. Today is definitely a ‘not’ day. Katie is off at her son Saul’s school for a parent–teacher thing, and I’ve been bored all day. That’s never good for me, being bored – I tend to start planning world domination, or smoke sixty fags, or bite my nails down to my knuckles.

I was delighted when Laura wobbled her big round self into the store, as soon as I’d determined that she wasn’t here because of any health problems. She’s doing well, Laura, cooking two whole human beings in her tummy – but she is an older mum, and she was already a teensy bit overweight (in the way of all good cooks), and twins is always a shade more complicated.

She waved off my questions about her health, and slumped down onto the sofa, huffing and puffing and muttering something about how I should get a crane installed to help pregnant ladies get around.

The sofa is quite low, so I see her point. It’s also bright red velvet, designed in the shape of a giant pair of lips – a gift from Cherie Moon when we opened up.

I get busy making Laura some tea – herbal – and some coffee – black and strong – for me, and join her, pulling up the stool so I can sit across from her rather than next to her, in case she spreads even further and squashes me.

‘I had nowhere else to go,’ she says dramatically. ‘Becca’s working. Zoe’s working. The kids are in school and I get a bit worried about being all the way out in the cottages on my own. What a wuss.’

She’s not a wuss. Laura, her partner Matt, and her two kids Lizzie and Nate live in a big house at The Rockery, Cherie’s holiday-let complex a few miles out of the village. Laura’s not keen on driving at the moment, which I can understand as she’s already starting to struggle to fit her belly behind the steering column.

‘That’s not being a wuss,’ I say, sipping my coffee. ‘That’s being sensible. Did Matt bring you in to work this morning?’

‘He did – but they kicked me out, Auburn – can you believe it? Kicked out of the Comfort Food Café! That’s got to be a first!’

‘It might be – but I’m sure they had their reasons. Were you behaving yourself?’

She’s been under strict instructions not to do too much, and to concentrate on the baby-growing business. I can only imagine how boring that must be, and she’s not adapting well.

‘Yes … no … a bit? But I’m allowed to be there in the mornings, we all agreed that! I’m allowed to bake the bread and make the cakes and get the sandwiches ready – it’s not like it’s hard!’

‘Speak for yourself,’ I reply, remembering the time I tried to microwave a ready meal in a tin foil container and blew the machine up. One of my more impressive culinary adventures.

‘So why did they kick you out, then?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t you supposed to help with the kitchen work, get them set up for lunch, and then … chillax?’

She looks a little sheepish, and strokes the rounded mound of her tummy as she pulls an aggrieved face.

‘Well. Yes. But there were a lot of people in because the weather’s nice. And the tables needed clearing. And then the coffee machine broke again and needed fixing. And …’

‘And you started waddling around like a very slow blue-arsed fly, waiting on, cleaning up, and carrying bin bags full of rubbish around?’

‘Kind of,’ she admits quietly. ‘A bit.’

‘Well, there you have it – mystery solved. You do realise they’re only being like this because they care about you, don’t you? There are worse crimes.’

‘I do … yes, I realise that … but … God, I’m so bored, Auburn. And I feel so bloody useless all the time! Matt never says it, but I know he’s always worried about me. The kids mainly laugh at me, which is fair enough as they’re teenagers and their mum has turned into an airship. And now Willow and Cherie and even Edie are always keeping an eye on me, making sure I don’t do anything too strenuous … I mean, Edie? She’s a ninety-three-year-old woman for goodness’ sake, and even she’s more active than I am!’

I can’t come up with an argument to counter that. I’d feel exactly the same, if Mother Nature was ever deluded enough to throw a pregnancy in my direction. I’d go crazy having to sit still and behave myself all the time. I pass her a Whistle Pop in consolation and sisterhood, and she’s halfway through unwrapping it when she lobs it ferociously across the room. It’s at that point that I remember – bad pharmacist alert – that she’s also been told to keep an eye on her blood sugar level because of the risk of gestational diabetes.

‘I can’t even eat a bloody lollipop!’ she yells, her eyes swimming with tears. She swipes them away angrily, frustrated with herself, with the pregnancy, and possibly with the whole wide world.

I stand up and head towards our simply stunning selection of diabetic treats. By stunning, I mean two varieties of boiled sweets. I choose a raspberry-flavoured one, and pass the bag to Laura.

‘Sugar-free,’ I say wisely. ‘But don’t have too many or it’ll give you the trots.’ It’s that kind of gem that I went to college for.

She gratefully accepts the sweets, and pops one in her mouth. It might only be fake sugar, but it does seem to calm her down a bit. We sit in silence for a few moments, and then finally she laughs out loud.

‘I’m sorry!’ she says, chortling around the words. ‘I shouldn’t have taken it out on you – and I shouldn’t moan. I’m really lucky and I’m really happy, most of the time. After David – Lizzie and Nate’s dad – died, I never thought I’d be happy again. Then I moved here and the kids settled and I started working at the café, and met Matt and all the wonderful people here … and now I’m going to be a mum again. I’m so very, very lucky, and I shouldn’t whinge about it …’

‘That’s okay,’ I reply, opening a fake sweet for myself to keep her company. ‘Speaking as a trained and qualified health-care professional, I’m confident in the diagnosis of the fact that you’re human. Humans aren’t perfect. You can come here and blow off steam any time you like. It’ll be like Vegas – we’ll never speak of it outside the sacred walls of the Budbury Pharmacy.’

She nods, and reaches out over her stomach to pat my knee in thanks.

‘I’m grateful. Thank you, Auburn. I think I’m mainly just a bit sick of myself, to be honest. I have babies on the way, and the wedding, and so much is changing and happening around me, while I’m forced to sit still and be a good little pregnant girl. I’m thrilled I’m getting married, but I am starting to wonder what possessed us to do it before the twins arrived … anyway. Enough. I’m bored with it all. Please, please, please – talk to me about something that isn’t related to my uterus or my wedding!’

I suck the sweet into one corner of my mouth, and ponder that one.

‘World politics?’ I suggest. ‘The economic crisis in Asia?’

‘Is there an economic crisis in Asia?’

‘I have no idea. Probably. Football? Brexit? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?’

She goes a little bit gooey-eyed at the last one, and I remember how much she’d cried during the wedding service. Cherie rigged up a big screen at the café, and we all drank Pimms and ate cucumber sandwiches and oohed and aahed at the stars and the frocks.

‘Well, I do love to chat about those two,’ she confesses, ‘and of course I’m fascinated by global economics. But … no. Tell me about you. What’s going on with you? How’s Lynnie? How are things with Finn? He’s delicious …’

She gazes off into the middle distance, and lapses into what I can only assume is some kind of trance-like state inspired by the sheer beauty of my boyfriend. Not that her Matt is any slouch – he’s gorgeous in a young Harrison Ford kind of way, and I’ve seen them snogging up a storm on the dancefloor before now.

‘Is it … you know, good? The private stuff?’

She blushes as she asks this, and the very fact that she calls it ‘private stuff’ but goes ahead and asks anyway is very typical Laura behaviour. Her nosiness overrides her better judgement, bless her. She’s probably not feeling at her most agile or sexy or attractive right now, and a bit of vicarious pleasure never did any of us any harm.

I’ve noticed that Laura always appreciates a good-looking man. I mean, we all do – but with her it’s only window shopping. From what I’ve gathered, there have only been two men in her whole life, and both were marriage material. She’s the opposite of me – I’ve had lots of men in my life, and none of them have been marriage material. Even the one I married.

‘It is good, yes,’ I reply, before she can explode with embarrassment and make a mess all over the sofa. ‘A bit wowzers in fact. But it’s also good in the not private stuff. It’s good just hanging out with him too. And he … well, he puts up with me. What more could I want?’

‘Nothing!’ she replies enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely nothing! People take this for granted all the time – the way you can meet someone, and how exciting that is. Falling in love, and staying in love, growing together … they don’t seem to realise that it’s a kind of small miracle. So if that’s what you’ve found, Auburn, then grab hold of it as hard as you can – because life has a way of sneaking up on and messing things up when you least expect it.’

I know that’s what happened to Laura. David died after a fall off a ladder in their garden. A mundane death for the man who had been, until Matt, the love of her life. We’ve all seen my mum’s former self and former life smashed to pieces by illness. Zoe moved to Budbury with Martha because Martha’s mum, Zoe’s best friend, passed away from breast cancer. Life can, indeed, be a bastard.

I also know this, and am aware of how smooth things are at the moment. I have a job I enjoy, friends I love, family, good physical health despite my best efforts, and a wonderful man.

Because of the way my brain seems to be hard-wired, though, a list like that doesn’t make me count my blessings and do a little jig – it makes me anxious. The fact I have such a lot right now means there is a lot that can be taken away from me.

When I was younger, I used to keep diaries. I found them again when I moved home, hidden behind a piece of the skirting board I’d carved out of the bedroom wall. There was a pattern in those diaries, as well as a lot of Younger Self whinging. The pattern seemed to be that whenever I allowed myself to feel content, things went wrong.

Like, I was going out with Jason Llewellyn, after mooning over him for months. I was nervous and twitchy, convinced that he’d find some girl he liked better and break my heart. Then right after Valentine’s Day, when he gave me one of those lockets with one part of a love heart on them, I started to relax and plan our wedding.

Two days after that, I found him behind the bike sheds with his tongue down Lynette McCreedy’s throat. This was a pattern that repeated itself over and over again – about school, about friendships, about the bonkers state of my family. Every time I dared to let myself feel happy, something went wrong. I even had a name for it – ‘Diary Irony’.

I know now, as an adult, that it’s silly – but I can’t quite shake it off. I have too much. I don’t deserve it. Some disaster is looming on the horizon. And it’s kind of exhausting, feeling that way.

I realise that Laura is staring at me as I gaze into space, and drag myself back into the present.

‘I always feel like life is about to sneak up on me,’ I say quietly. ‘Which very often gets in the way of living it.’

She sucks her sweet, ponders this, and replies: ‘I know what you mean. If you have some bad stuff happen to you, it can be crippling. It makes you so anxious you lose your ability to breathe. I was like that, the first summer I was here. I was halfway back to Manchester, willing to give it all up – Budbury, the café, Matt – because I was so scared of giving it a go.’

‘What changed your mind?’

‘My kids,’ she says, shrugging. ‘They were far more sensible than I was, and convinced me to turn the car around. Best decision I ever made, though I might not admit that when I’m on my way to the loo for the fiftieth time in a day. What are you worried about? Is it Finn?’

‘Kind of,’ I admit, nodding. ‘All of it, really. Living here, feeling so settled. Being back with my family, even though the circumstances aren’t ideal. And yes, Finn. You heard what I said in the café the other day, about being married …’

‘I think I vaguely remember something along those lines,’ she replies, smiling.

‘Well, it’s a complicated story, and not one I’m getting into now – but it’s stuff like that. Things I need to talk to people about, even though I don’t want to. For years I’ve lived alone, and none of it mattered. Now, I have people who matter to me – people who deserve some honesty.’

‘Surely it’s not that bad, though?’ she asks, eyebrows raised. ‘I mean, Finn doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would judge you, or walk away from this without good reason. He’s too … what’s the phrase? Emotionally intelligent! And if you switch roles with him, is there much he could tell you about his past that would upset you enough to finish things?’

Finn, of course, does have a past. A very messy relationship. Conflict with his parents. Screwing up his career aspirations because of all of that. It’s not like he arrived at my doorstep fresh out of the box, free from hang-ups. The difference is that he always seems very self-aware about it– he’s a much more evolved human being than me, I suppose.

‘You’re right,’ I say, eventually. ‘And none of this is his fault. I’m just a disaster area.’

‘I suspect he knows that already, Auburn. So, whatever it is, you should talk to him about it. And if there’s a problem, you should try and fix it. Show him that you’re serious about making things work.’

I wonder how I could do that. Maybe I could get him one of those love heart lockets. Or dress up like a French maid. Or write him a poem.

‘You could always,’ says Laura, interrupting my flow of thought, ‘do something practical.’

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘Like get a divorce?’

Chapter 6

I’m not the best at being sensible, or doing paperwork, or generally behaving like a grown-up. Whatever elements of those things I do possess, I need to use for my work, and for my mum. For those two, I have to be good – I have to keep up to date on appointments, and qualifications, and news, and fill in forms, and respond to queries.

In my own life, though, there is something of a more relaxed attitude. Like I have no idea where my birth certificate is, and I don’t have a lawyer, and I’m not registered with a dentist, and I keep all my important papers crammed into a plastic carrier bag so old it’s starting to disintegrate. I’ve even let my passport expire – although I think that might be accidentally on purpose, to remove the temptation to ever do a runner.

None of this helps when attempting to navigate a tricky legal situation involving ending a marriage carried out in a foreign country. Luckily, what I do have is Tom – Willow’s boyf and the owner of Briarwood.

Tom is a tech geek, and it was him who tracked me and Van down last year so Willow could tell us about Lynnie’s situation. He’s quiet and shy until you know him, super clever, and absolutely 100 per cent the shizz when it comes to stuff like this.

With his help, I take the first steps towards doing something I should have done years ago – getting out of a long-dead marriage. He helps me find out what I need to do, and he sets me up with a solicitor to help me do it, and he basically stands over me until I’ve started the first raft of paperwork.

When it’s done – when those first tentative steps are taken – I feel really weird. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d buried the whole thing. I’d trained myself not to give it much head space – because, given half a chance, Seb and my time with him would sneak right into that head space, and take it over, like some evil alien virus in a space station lab.

Don’t get me wrong, I think about him every day. But I’ve developed the astonishing ability to derail that particular train of thought every single time it appears on the tracks. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so twitchy all the time – I’m never still, and I know it drives people mad. I’m always biting my nails or tapping my toes or smoking or waving my hands or moving around in some way.

It’s like I’m entirely made of nervous tics and mental self-defence mechanisms that allow me to function, and the way they show up to the outside world is through this constant jigging about.

After Tom has helped me, after I’m forced to re-engage with the whole thing, I feel some kind of strange meltdown going on inside me. It’s like all my internal organs and my brain start to liquefy. I can barely move, or think, or do anything other than lie on my bed in the cottage I share with Lynnie and Willow and Van, and stare at the ceiling.

I don’t suppose it helps that I’m staring at a ceiling I’m already familiar with, in the cottage where I spent most of my childhood. It’s like I’ve come full circle, and everything in between leaving here in my late teens and being back in my early thirties never happened. Like there’s this whole part of my life that I maybe dreamt, or imagined, or read in a book.

After almost an hour of tossing and turning and kicking the duvet and running a marathon while stationary, I glance at my phone, and see that it’s just after 8p.m. Not late enough to go to sleep, even if I was capable of shutting down my brain long enough for that to happen.

I chew my lip for a minute to fill in time, and allow myself a moment to rethink, before calling Finn. When he answers, I can hear whooping and cheering in the background.

‘What happened?’ I ask, genuinely interested. The boffins at Briarwood are working on all kinds of interesting projects. ‘Did they invent a new kind of jet engine? Cure for cancer? Phone that doesn’t let you dial when drunk?’

‘No,’ he replies, sounding amused. ‘They built a whack-a-mole where Star Wars characters pop up out of the holes. They’re busy smashing Darth Vader up with mallets.’

‘Oh,’ I reply, slightly disappointed.

‘Well, to be fair, the whack-a-mole heads are interchangeable – so you could have Marvel, or Disney, or whatever, depending on what licensing you could get. The marketing plan is to sell them as customised – so you could buy one with the faces of your enemies on, like your boss or your ex or your little brother.’

‘That could definitely work,’ I say. ‘The possibilities are endless. It could be a very useful tool in anger-management classes, don’t you think? They should pitch it to psychiatrists. And head teachers! I bet it’d be a great thing to have in a school for letting out some pent-up rage.’

‘I’ll pass on your very valid suggestions to the team. There’s a long way to go yet, they need to check if they can patent it or if anyone else already has, that kind of thing. Anyway. What can I do for you, my tiny pickled herring?’

‘Erm … I’m not sure. Some stuff’s happened. Feel a bit weird. Feel a bit trapped in the cottage. Just wanted to talk to someone in the outside world to prove it still exists.’

‘You do sound weird. Weirder than usual. Have you had anything to eat today?’ ‘Yes, of course!’ I reply, outraged but also doing a silent recount of my calorific intake and finding it lacking.

‘Anything other than a whistle pop?’

‘Well … not much more, to be honest. Lynnie insisted on cooking tonight, and made a lentil pie with sugar instead of salt. We all had to pretend to like it and secretly throw it away afterwards. Except Van – I think he actually liked it, the freak.’

The background noise has died down, and I can tell he’s walked outside. I picture him standing there, by the fountain outside the main house, in the rapidly fading light.

‘I’ll come and get you,’ he says, ‘in about an hour. I’ll make sure the kids are all right, and I’ll see you then. Wrap up warm.’

I agree, blow some kisses down the phone, and flop back down onto the bed. Obviously, being the very definition of contrary, my body decides that it’s now very very tired, and would quite like to go to sleep.

I drag myself up, and into the shower, and into jeans and a T-shirt and a thick fluffy jumper with red and black horizontal stripes on it. It makes me look like a bumblebee that’s gone over to the dark side.

When I wander through to the living room, Mum and Willow are both crashed out watching Wizards of Waverley Place. Mum’s developed this strange taste for teen TV shows since she’s been ill, and sadly she’s sucked us all into her evil world of cute kids who live on boats and sweetly dysfunctional families and cheerleaders and nerds.

Lynnie looks up at me as I enter, and I see the quick momentary confusion flicker across her face. I reach up and touch my hair, pretending I’m tucking it behind my ears, and tonight at least, it’s enough. She sees and registers the red hair. She smiles, her eyes lighting up as she recognises me. It’s heartbreaking and lovely at the same time.

‘You look like Dennis the Menace, Auburn,’ she says, pointing at my sweater. ‘If he was transgender.’

‘Why thank you, Mother,’ I reply, giving her a little twirl. ‘That’s exactly what I was aiming for. I’m popping out for a bit with Finn, is that okay with you two?’

Of course, what I actually mean is ‘Is that okay with you, Willow’, as she’ll be the one left with Mum. Van’s outside, in the VW camper van man-cave he calls home, so she’ll have help if she needs it – but it’s polite to ask. See how hard I’m working on being a good girl?

Willow grins at me and nods. She looks bushed after a long day at the café, her slender limbs sprawled over both arms of the floral-printed chair, her pink hair gusting around her face. Bella Swan, her Border terrier, is curled up in a small wiry ball on her lap.

‘As long as you’re home before midnight,’ she says, stifling a yawn. ‘In case you turn into a pumpkin.’

‘Terrible story, that,’ interjects Lynnie, frowning in contempt. ‘Completely anti-feminist. What kind of a message does it send out to young girls, telling them they need a Prince Charming to rescue them, and that their sisters are ugly and evil? Patriarchal nonsense …’

Willow and I share an amused look, and nod. Every now and then, the old Lynnie pops up and gives us a rant, the kind we grew up listening to, and it’s somehow very comforting. Our bedtime stories were never the bedtime stories that other little girls listened to.

There’s a knock on the door, and I feel a quick surge in my heart rate. I’m like a giddy schoolgirl, which Lynnie wouldn’t approve of.

She looks a bit surprised at the sound – visitors can be unnerving for her – and Willow quickly says: ‘Auburn, that must be Finn. Your poor boyfriend. Off you go, have fun!’

We’ve got used to doing these subtle recaps for Lynnie’s benefit, finding ways to gently remind of her what’s happening around her so she doesn’t get frightened, without making her feel stupid.

‘Yes, have fun!’she adds, reassured that the knock on the door doesn’t represent any kind of threat to her or her loved ones. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’

As Lynnie has spent most of her life living on various artists’ communes, having affairs with much younger men, and raising three kids on her own, she’s something of a rule-breaker. I’m not sure there’s much I could do that Lynnie hasn’t done already.

I sprint to the front door and unlock it. We have to keep everything locked in case Lynnie goes walkabout, which she did last year and almost died. It’s a pain, but not as much of a pain as searching the clifftops at four o’clock in the morning, looking for your mother.

Finn is standing in the porch, all tall and gorgeous, and I fight to keep down a little squeal. Mine, all mine. Just seeing him knocks some of the strangeness of the day out of me, and makes me feel more human again.

He’s wearing jeans and a black chunky-knit sweater, and looks like he could throw me in his longboat and take me away for a good ravishing and a smorgasbord.

‘Your carriage awaits,’ he says, pointing at his four-wheel drive. Huh. Weird – it’s almost as though he heard us earlier.

‘Patriarchal nonsense …’ I mutter, leaning up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘Nope,’ he replies, evenly, ‘a Toyota Land Cruiser.’

I climb in and buckle up as he sits beside me and starts the engine.

‘Everything okay at home?’ he asks, glancing at me through his mirrors. Lynnie, when she knows who he is, adores Finn. She calls him her Angel of Light, and clearly imbues him with all kinds of spiritual goodness. When she doesn’t know him, though, it’s a different matter entirely.

‘Yes, fine,’ I reply quickly to reassure him. ‘I needed an escape route, that’s all. Thank you, Star Lord.’

Star Lord was Tom’s nickname for the person he was recruiting to manage Briarwood, and it’s kind of stuck.

‘You do know, don’t you,’ I say, as he pulls out onto the road and heads off to destination unknown, ‘that you only got the job because of your name?’

‘What? Being called Finn was part of the job description, was it?’

‘No. I mean you got your job because your name has one syllable. Only men whose names have one syllable are allowed to live in Budbury.’

I see him running through the men he knows here – Joe, Matt, Cal, Sam, Tom – and realising that it’s true.

‘But some of their names are shortened versions,’ he points out. ‘Wasn’t the other guy shortlisted called Simon? He could have been called Si.’

‘Ah yes, but you’re missing one very important point – I couldn’t have given the job to someone I had to call Si.’

‘Why’s that?’ he asks, his smile telling me he knows he has fallen into an evil trap but he doesn’t mind.

‘Because every time I was in a room with him, I’d have to dance around Gangam Style …’

He pauses, then replies: ‘You do know that’s spelled P-S-Y, don’t you?’

Huh. I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Bastard.

‘Thank you, Admiral of the Pedantic Fleet,’ I say, in a minor huff with myself for my lack of pop culture spelling knowledge. ‘Where are we off to, anyway?’

‘The cliffs near Durdle Door,’ he says. ‘For a picnic.’

‘Did you bring whistle pops?’

‘No. I brought salad.’

‘Uggh. Why would you do that to me?’

‘Because I’m me,’ he says, grinning. ‘And your body’s a temple. If it’s any consolation, I also brought Scotch eggs and blueberry muffins from the café.’

‘That’s all right then,’ I answer, already figuring out ways to pretend to eat salad without actually eating it.

As it turns out, the salad was also from the café – Finn had been there earlier in the day and brought home some treats – and therefore it was delicious as well as healthy. Chunks of feta cheese and lots of olive oil and pine nuts make everything taste better.

He’s spread out two zipped together sleeping bags on the ground, and laid various items of bodily sustenance across them. He’s found a spot a mile or so away from the famous Durdle, and the view is amazing. It’s properly dark now, the sky studded with stars, the only sound that of the sea rolling across the sand and the occasional rummaging of wildlife around us.

We eat, and chat, and all seems well with the world. I feel blessed to live in such a beautiful place, and to be with such a beautiful man, and to eat such beautiful muffins.

After we’ve had the picnic, he clears up, and we climb into the sleeping bags. It’s been another warm day, but it’s still spring and the night-time temperatures are not as friendly as they could be. I don’t mind – I’m only human and, aware as I am of patriarchal nonsense, being crammed into a sleeping bag with Finn is not my idea of oppression.

He wraps me up in his arms, my head resting on his chest, and strokes my hair as we gaze up at the night sky.

‘This is nice,’ I say, burrowing into him even more. ‘We’re snuggling.’

He laughs, and replies: ‘Snuggling. That’s not a word I associate with you, Auburn.’

‘Me neither! I don’t think I’ve ever used it before in a non-ironic way. Maybe I’ve used it to incorrectly describe the illegal activities of those who import goods while also bypassing customs tax …’

‘Would you call those trunks Daniel Craig wears in Casino Royale budgie snugglers then?’

‘I’d call them heavenly. You should get some. We could role-play Bond together. I could be your Pussy Galore.’

He’s silent for a moment, and I know he’s thinking it through.

‘Yes,’ he says eventually. ‘I’d definitely be up for that. I’ve got a tux. We could flirt and drink martinis. Could I persuade you to be a sexy secretary with your hair up and glasses on, and call you Miss Moneypenny?’

‘Of course you could. I always thought she was very under-rated, Miss Moneypenny …’

‘Good. Now we’ve planned that out, how about you tell your very own 007 what’s bothering you? You sounded really off on the phone.’

‘Ah,’ I say, taking a deep breath and preparing to bare all. ‘That’s because I asked Tom to help me start divorce proceedings. Hopefully, I’ll soon be a single woman again. Well, not a married woman with a boyfriend, anyway. So, not single, but half as much more single again …’

He stays silent when I say this, possibly waiting until I run out of steam, and I try not to freak out and over-react. It’s a big thing, and I know the way Finn works – he’ll process it before he speaks. He’s the anti-me.

I feel his arms tighten around me, and he says: ‘That’s good. I’m pleased. Not just for me, but … for you. It seems like something you should do. You can’t leave the past behind if you’re still legally married to it.’

‘That’s exactly right. Plus, then you can start shopping for diamonds for me … kidding!’

‘I know you’re kidding. I wouldn’t get diamonds anyway. I’d get something unusual, like an emerald. If I was, in fact, planning on getting you anything at all.’

We’re both feeling our way through this, keeping it light, both making the effort not to put a foot wrong. I kind of preferred it when we were snuggling and staring at the stars, but I had to tell him. It was stupid of me to hide the fact that I was married from him in the first place – and it’d be even stupider to hide the fact that I’m now in the process of becoming unmarried.

‘I’m glad you told me,’ he says, kissing the top of my head. ‘Are you ready to tell me about him? About what happened? Because I’m not thick, Auburn – you go pale and shaky every time the subject comes up, so I can see it still affects you. Maybe it’d be good to talk about it.’

I’m not all together sure he’s right. I’ve survived perfectly well without talking about it for years now. Or … okay, not well. Kind of unwell, in many ways. It’s only this last year that I’ve started to feel okay again – thanks to Finn, and Willow, and the Budbury crew. Even though the reason for me coming home was a sad one, turns out it’s had some pretty good side effects.

‘I’ll try,’ I say, deciding that he is right after all. As usual. ‘But I might get lost halfway through, okay?’

‘Okay,’ he replies firmly. ‘Whatever you want. No pressure.’

‘Okay,’ I repeat, feeling him wrap one of his legs over me. ‘Well … I met Seb in a bar, which is not an unusual thing, I suppose. I mean, lots of people meet their partners in a bar, don’t they? But the difference with us was that we never left the bar. That bar, or other bars, or nightclubs, or parties. We were … wild. It felt like fun at the time – until it didn’t. Until I realised that all we did was drink, or go mad, or sleep. Literally everything we did together involved some kind of booze or stimulant, or a hangover. There was no in between. No normal.’

‘Right. I’ve had flings like that. Where once the adrenaline wears off, there’s not much left.’

‘You whack-a-moled the nail on the head there. Except this wasn’t a fling – I was married to him, and living with him, and we were really, really bad for each other. I mean, I think living like that even on your own would be bad. But if you had an other half who saw that, and helped you rein it in, or occasionally suggested going to the cinema instead of a rave, maybe it would level out. But with us, there was no levelling out – we were living 100 per cent switched on, all the time.’

‘So when did that start being a problem?’ he asks, gently. ‘Because I assume it did.’

My mind is time-travelling me back to a time and a place I don’t want to go to: to Barcelona, all those years ago. To the time when I found out he was doing more than ecstasy and cocaine, and had started on heroin. To the time he locked me out of the flat for two days because he had friends around and forgot I existed. To the time his mother called me, saying he’d been taken to hospital with a suspected overdose. To the time – times, plural – he promised to clean up his act, always so convincing, but never managed.

To all the highs and lows and big losses and tiny paper cuts of disappointment, and the slow, dripping erosion of respect – for him, and for myself.

‘Well, it was a lot of things,’ I tell Finn. ‘Lots and lots of things that happened. Bad things. He needed someone who wasn’t me in his life – someone more mature, less insane. Someone who could have helped him with his problems. But I was a borderline basket case myself – I was never as into drugs as he was, but let’s say I never went anywhere without an emergency hip flask of vodka, just in case.

‘I don’t blame him entirely. He was basically a nice guy with a lot of demons. He needed me to be his exorcist, and I was too busy trying to stop my own head from spinning around. So, things got worse and worse and worse … complete recklessness, punctuated by these cycles of attempts to live well. Except in our case, living well meant drinking our vodka with orange juice instead of straight. His parents hated me because they thought I was dragging him down … and maybe I was. Maybe he needed another mother, not a wife. He certainly didn’t need me. I did him no good at all.’

I pause for a breather, and realise that I’m crying. Crying real tears of wetness, which is something I rarely do.

‘I don’t know why I’m crying!’ I say, frustrated with myself. ‘It was years ago, and it’s all over now!’

Finn wipes away the tears, and replies: ‘Because it’s emotional. Because it still makes you feel sad, no matter how long ago it was. There’s no sell-by date on sadness.’

It sounds so simple when he says it – and maybe it is. Maybe I should allow myself to be sad. For me, for Seb, for everything that happened.

‘No, there isn’t. And it does make me sad. It’s why I pretended it never happened, I’m such a coward. So, anyway … we were trapped in this spiral for ages. Then, I don’t know why, I started to notice that I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy with my life, with my husband, with the whole messy thing. I’ve always liked messy – but this was too much, even for me. So I started to try and control myself a bit. Now, this isn’t a Hollywood movie, so it’s not like I went along to AA and met some inspirational bloke who would’ve been played by Tom Hanks in the film or anything. I just … cut down on the drinking.

‘Of course, the less drunk I was, the more messy things looked. It’s like when you’re the designated driver on a night out. By the end of it, it’s quite funny watching all the drunk people repeating themselves and slurring their words and trying to pretend they’re sober.’

‘Oh yes. I know it well. And it is funny – every now and then.’

‘Right. Every now and then. Except this was all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. And the less I joined in with our usual games, the more annoyed he got – I think maybe I wasn’t as much fun, but also it was a bit like holding up a mirror to him. He didn’t like what he saw, and it made him feel bad about himself, and feeling bad about himself made him drink more and do more drugs and look for even more ways to escape.’

‘So you recovering made him worse?’

‘Yep – really healthy relationship, wasn’t it? And then …’

I pause, not wanting to carry on – but compelled to. Not only because he wants to know, but because I need to get some of this out of my system. Maybe it’s been silently poisoning me for all these years, strangling me from the inside out.

So I breathe deep, and I tell him, in fits and starts and snuffles. Eventually, I get to the part where things crashed out of control. I tell him about the weekend that everything changed for good.

I’d managed to persuade Seb, with the help of his mother, to come away with me. To get out of the city, away from his so-called friends and his easy supplies and his barfly life. To come with me down to the coast, to spend some time together. Together, without the ever-present third parties.

It started well. He seemed to accept that what I was saying to him made sense – he seemed to mean it when he said he wanted to change. Then again, he always was convincing. His mum lent us her car, and we took off to a little village in the Costa Brava.

It was a beautiful place, all rocky coves and small sandy bays – not completely unlike home. We stayed in a small guesthouse, away from any tourists or commercial zones, and at the beginning I was hopeful. We ate good food. We took long walks. We talked and talked and talked.

I’d say it was like going back to the beginning of our courtship, but it wasn’t – it was like two people meeting each other for the first time, because we were both sober. I was excited by that – by the potential to discover my husband all over again, to start afresh. We even talked about maybe starting a family one day, and although I knew there was a long way to go until we could consider doing something so reckless, I didn’t rule it out. I even, in a fantasy future kind of way, liked the thought of it.

On the third night, though, things started to go wrong. We were out for dinner, and he seemed brighter than usual. More animated. He was talking too quickly, his hands were waving with every word, he was laughing at things that weren’t funny, he was treating the waiting staff like they were long-lost friends.

I suppose part of me knew what was going on. Part of me spotted the signs, and understood that the previous days had been an illusion. We’d both been play-acting. None of it was real – we’d never live happily ever after. We’d never move to a new life by the sea. We’d never have a baby together.

But I ignored that part of me – I just wasn’t ready to give up. I wasn’t ready to abandon him, and us, and our future. I wanted to cling onto that hope for a few more hours, to give the seeds a chance to grow. He was so beautiful, Seb – dark like his mother, but with the vivid hazel eyes of his father. He was like a sculpture, all hard planes and angles. I wanted to hang on to the fiction for a while longer.

That’s why I got into the car with him. That’s why I let him drive. That’s why we ended up crashing straight into the back of a parked van as we drove to the guest house.

Nobody was hurt, thank God – I’d never have forgiven myself if they had been. The van was empty, and we had our seat belts on, and all we suffered was a few bumps and scrapes and in his case a couple of broken ribs and a concussion.

His injuries didn’t stop him jumping out of the car as soon as we regained our senses, though, yelling at me to get into the driver’s seat before anybody came. We could see the lights coming on in the houses nearby, and the sounds of doors opening and people calling out to us, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the police were called.

And if the police were called, and he was caught driving, he’d be in a world of hurt. They’d find the cocaine in his system, and he’d be arrested.

Maybe I was an idiot, but I agreed – I pretended I’d been the one driving. My breath was clear, my blood was clean. Everything else about me, though, felt dirty – soiled and used and squalid. I sat beside him in the ambulance that had been called, holding his hand and telling him he’d be okay, but all the time I was on the edge of a meltdown.

I called his mum, and his parents drove straight down to meet us there. By the time they arrived, he was enjoying a morphine buzz, I’d been questioned by the police, and his mother and father were furious. With me.

From their perspective, I’d been my usual crazy self – crashed a car while carrying their precious son in the passenger seat. I suppose that was the last straw – getting blamed in his mother’s rapid-fire Catalan, the words pinging towards me like bullets, his dad laying one hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down.

I can’t blame them for thinking the worst. I’d not exactly been the model wife, and I’m guessing they were as disappointed as I was – like me, they’d seen this trip as some kind of fresh start. Now, in their eyes, I’d messed it all up, and almost killed Seb in the process.

I didn’t have the energy to argue, or defend myself, or tell them what had really happened. My own self-esteem was in the toilet by that stage in my life anyway – I’d wasted years, made so many mistakes, let Seb reach this stage of self-destruction. I hated myself, and I was past caring whether they hated me too. There was plenty of room in that lifeboat.

So I let them rant and rave and take out all their anxieties and fears on me – it seemed easier than stopping them. I also knew that it might be the last kind thing I could do for them – because there was no way I could stick around and carry on living this life. There was no way I could get straight if I was around him, and no way I could trust him any more.

I stayed for the rest of the night, to make sure he was definitely all right and there wouldn’t be any complications, and then I left. I didn’t tell any of them – I just went to the police station to make sure it was okay and then got the first train back to the city.

I packed my bags, such as they were, and decided to leave. It’s not like a minor crash into the back of a van was going to result in Interpol being alerted, and I’d given the police my details – the insurance would cover the damage. To the van at least.

The damage to me was a bit more serious. I sat there in our flat, and saw it for what it was – nothing more than a squat. The cheap art posters tacked to the wall that I’d once thought were bohemian and charming now looked yellow and faded. The unmade bed we’d shared looked like a rat’s nest. The empty bottles from Seb’s last party with his pals were littering the room, making the whole place smell like tequila.

Everything I cared about fitted into my backpack – the same backpack I’d left England with all those years earlier. Over a decade of travelling and living; so many different countries, so many different friends and jobs and even a marriage – and I could still cram everything I needed into a backpack.

I left on the next flight to London, and that was the beginning of what I like to think of as my new life. I barely spoke on that flight, and I desperately wanted to buy every single one of those little bottles of booze the ladies with the trolleys wheel around. But I didn’t, which is maybe what saved me – I wasn’t an alcoholic in the physical sense, but I was addicted to using it as a crutch. If I’d turned to it then, I might never have stopped.

‘And what happened when you got back to the UK?’ Finn asks, his voice a whisper, barely heard over the clamour of all these memories.

‘I bummed around for a bit. Stayed on sofas, worked crappy jobs. Eventually got my shit together enough to decide to go back to college.’

‘And you never saw him again, after that?’

‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Although I briefly spoke to his dad, a few months later, to make sure he was alive and all right. His dad was quite English about it all, didn’t scream or shout or anything – I suspect he knew the truth, and didn’t want to push me into telling him more than he wanted to know.

‘Once I was studying, things changed – life calmed down. I had something to do, and a reason for doing it, and I started to live again. I knew I’d got enough balance to go on a night out, to go and see a band, to have a few glasses of wine – I started to trust myself again, I suppose.’

‘What about now? Do you trust yourself now?’

‘Up to a point,’ I say, looking up to meet his eyes. ‘If we’re doing this whole honesty thing, I trust myself up to a point. I’m happy here. I’m happy with you. I’m happy I can have a drink and a laugh and for it to enhance my life rather than rule it. But … well, I’m probably never going to be entirely normal, Finn.’

He leans down to kiss me softly, and replies: ‘I think we’ve had this conversation before, Miss Moneypenny. I never signed on for normal. I signed on for you, in all your crazy glory.’

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