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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Eve Devon 2017

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Eve Devon asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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.

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ISBN: 9780008211042

Ebook Edition © March 2017

Version 2020-01-23

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1: Accidental Selfie Hell

Chapter 2: Logos and Gossip

Chapter 3: Within the Sound of Silence

Chapter 4: Boys and Their Toys

Chapter 5: Back – From Outer Space

Chapter 6 : Voice of the Beehive

Chapter 7: Then I Saw Her Face, Now I’m A Belieber!

Chapter 8: The Whirling Dervish in the Wild Wellies

Chapter 9: Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Chapter 10: And the Cats Just Keep on Coming…

Chapter 11: Birdsong, Baskets and Business Plans

Chapter 12: It’s All in the Timing, Mr Wolf

Chapter 13: The Clock House Challenge

Chapter 14: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Chapter 15: Let the Right One In

Chapter 16: A Lot Like Losing a Locket and Finding a Pebble

Chapter 17: Support Groups

Chapter 18: Breaking Bread

Chapter 19: A ‘Fete’ Accompli

Chapter 20: Let Them Eat Cake

Chapter 21: Sun Tzu and the Offside Rule

Chapter 22: Juliet and Oscar Standing by a Tree, A-R-G-U-I-N-G

Chapter 23: Is That a Presentation in Your Pocket?

Chapter 24: All the World’s a Stage and Now I Get Stage-Fright?

Chapter 25: Queensberry Rules

Chapter 26: Parallel Universes

Chapter 27: Conversation Starters For One

Chapter 28: Past Tense, Present Tense, Totes Tense

Chapter 29: The Girl Next Door

Chapter 30: Life Isn’t Like in the Movies

Chapter 31: By The Light of the Silvery Moon

Chapter 32: Nocturnal Habits

Chapter 33: Money, Money, Money – It’s So Funny…

Chapter 34: You’ve Got To Be In It To Win It

Chapter 35: The Curious Incident of the Plan in the Night-time

Chapter 36: Thanks For Nothing, Mr Tumnus

Chapter 37: Going Once, Going Twice… Sold

Chapter 38: How to Lose a Guy in Zero Dates

Chapter 39: Out of the Barbecue, Into the Fire

Chapter 40: Gonna Swing From the Chandelier

Chapter 41: Red Sky at Night

Chapter 42: Sign of the Times

Chapter 43: All For One and One For All

Chapter 44: The Writing on The Clock House Wall

Chapter 45: On That Fete-ful Day

Chapter 46: Fete-fully Yours

Chapter 47: Clocking Off

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

For anyone who ever brought a dream back up to the surface,

dusted it off and made it come true

‘Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.’

Emily Dickinson

Chapter 1
Accidental Selfie Hell
Kate

Jiminy Cricket! It was hotter than Hades in the shade. Kate didn’t think Tobago was ever supposed to get this hot. Arching her neck, she held the water bottle she’d been eking out for the last quarter of a mile to her skin and rolled it back and forth in the hope of teasing out the last condensation-filled cooling properties.

Honestly, how couples even – you know – coupled in this heat she had no idea. Not that she was here for coupling, which was probably why she was attracting attention and almost certainly what was making her job reviewing the luxury resort’s facilities so difficult.

Was there anywhere on earth more guaranteed to make you stick out like a sore thumb than at a couples-only resort when you weren’t part of a couple?

If she’d still been seeing Marco, she could have invited him along. But she wasn’t. And besides, Marco would have hated it. He was more Rough Guide than Forbes list. Weirdly, all the time she was with him she would have sworn she was the same, enjoying reporting on some of the more out-of-the-way and definitely cheaper destinations for the holidaying masses. But now, despite the fact that she was a singleton in couple-land, she couldn’t help remembering how she’d used to subscribe to the notion that a little luxury in everyday life was no bad thing.

‘Are we nearly there, yet?’ her body whined at her brain as she walked back from the local markets. She’d had it in mind to write an article for a travel blog she freelanced for, but as the sun had beat down all she’d been able to think about was that thing about frogs being slowly boiled alive.

When the road became familiar landscaped gardens and she realised main reception and more bottles of water, together with blissful air-conditioning wasn’t far away, she celebrated by opening the bottle she was carrying, peeling the neckline of her t-shirt away from her hot skin and chucking a generous amount of the liquid down inside her top.

The water splashed down her front and had a cooling effect for about a nano-second. With her free hand she slipped her phone from her shorts pocket. At 2pm there was a cocktail-making lesson with her name on it. Squinting against the glare from the sun dancing merrily across the screen, Kate held the phone aloft, twisting and turning, trying to find the right angle to read the display, pouting with impatience when she couldn’t and splashing more water in the direction of her now transparent t-shirt.

‘Oh my goodness, Richard, look – I think that’s that Kardashian selfie-woman.’

At the not-so-sotto-voce comment, Kate looked up, eager to catch a glimpse of her. Instead she found a couple in their sixties walking towards her, the man with a friendly grin on his face, the woman with the kind of disapproving frown that suggested she was the Kardashian in this little scenario.

Kate followed the woman’s pointed stare at her chest. Oops! She lowered her phone back to her side at the realisation that she was doing a good impression of a selfie-obsessed wet t-shirt entry in a club 18–30 holiday instead of a guest at a seven-star complex. Timing never had been – probably never would be – her strong suit.

Still. Kate felt herself bristle.

Did the woman really have to look at her like she’d been put on this path to corrupt all men?

She offered up a smile, yet more heat blooming across her décolletage, creeping blotchily up her neck and landing prominently on her cheeks when the woman didn’t appear interested in accepting it. Fabulous, Kate thought, feeling foolish under the disapproving regard.

#SneeringWoman’s inability to give her the benefit of the doubt had Kate wanting to lean towards the man, drench the both of them with the rest of the water, and go all Pretty Woman on them with a, ‘Fifty bucks, Grandpa – for seventy-five, the wife can watch.’

But by the power of Greyskull, she managed to rein herself in.

Just.

Because while she might have an impulsive streak running a mile wide through her, adding grist to the mill was almost certainly going to land her in even more hot water, and right now she was hot enough, thank you very much.

Lifting the heavy swathe of mahogany hair off her shoulders, Kate twisted it up into a knot on top of her head, slightly worried someone from staff was going to pop out from behind a palm tree and accuse her of trying to make a mini-porn phone video. In public. On their premises.

She stepped off the path in order to let the couple pass and when the woman protectively manoeuvred herself between them, Kate glanced down to double-check that her clothes hadn’t somehow magically melted away. Nope. Her cleavage might be rocking the Flashdance drenched look, but she was still wearing ninety per cent more than anyone on the beach… and had she mentioned how hot it was?

As if those last words had formed on her lips instead of inside her head, the couple glanced back and Kate couldn’t help herself – she lowered her oversize shades, gave an exaggerated wink, and, yes, finished off with a bit of a shoulder-chest shimmie. The look she received from both of them as they left her – presumably on the highway to hell – was priceless and went a little way to restoring her sense of humour.

She headed along the curving trail through the tropical gardens. Even the geckos were trying to avoid the direct heat of the sun, their little splayed feet barely seeming to touch the concrete as they scurried off the path, through the bougainvilleas, and straight for the shade of the palm trees.

Kate squinted down at her phone. The time said that she was due at the largest of the resort’s five poolside bars in thirty minutes, which left her plenty of time to check for messages at reception, and then nip back to her room for a quick shower and a change into her bikini.

The thought of alcohol in this heat had her fingers tightening around the now empty water bottle. She’d ask to make mocktails instead.

It occurred to her she couldn’t remember the last time she’d held a mug of tea in her hands or felt the comforting sting of a strong, sweet brew against her tongue and palate.

A strange little pang hit beneath her breastbone, surprising her. Who in their right mind would swap sherbet coloured drinks, in happy bulbous shaped glasses, complete with cute little umbrellas rammed in at jaunty angles, for mugs of builder’s tea?

At the main building she walked into reception, the piercing bright sunshine of the day immediately giving way to the darker, cooler tones of the interior.

The blast of air-conditioning had her shivering in delight; the man-made chill wrapping itself around her and freezing that unsettling pang for home in its tracks.

Shoving her sunglasses high into her hair, Kate made her way across the huge expanse of marble flooring to reception and smiled. ‘Hi, any messages for 103?’

The receptionist glanced briefly at the transparency of Kate’s top before adopting a neutral expression and turned to check a wall of numbered pigeon-holes. Kate wished she had the same kind of game-face that the staff at the resort had, but unfortunately emotion tended to use her face like it was under spotlights and centre stage in a one-woman show. With a mortified look down at her top, she pulled the material so that it wasn’t plastered to her curves and rested her forearms against the polished surface of the desk. Her fingers tapped out a silent tune. Her left foot came out of her flip-flop to rub against her calf. She chewed the inside of her cheek.

She was fidgety.

Restless.

Which was disconcerting because since when did the prospect of checking out a hotel’s facilities make her fidgety? Granted, she didn’t usually get offered the honeymoon destinations, but after four years’ reviewing all kinds of venues, she was up to the challenge. Plenty of people would love to have her job. If she hadn’t found it quite so fulfilling lately, well, she was almost certain she could avoid dwelling on that this evening, with the aid of a Planter’s Punch and a good book.

Popping her foot back into its flip-flop she forced her hands to still on the countertop. Beside her was a stack of glossy white leaflets advertising the hotel spa services. She had a handful of them already tucked in a folder back in her room. She even knew which treatments she was scheduled to have the next day. But concentrating on reading the leaflet would stop her fidgeting. Maybe halt the whisper of anxiety accompanying the restlessness – the loneliness. Definitely stop that pang for home from darting unexpectedly through her again.

‘Here you go, Ms Somersby,’ the receptionist said with a broad grin as he held out the hotel’s blush-pink letterhead paper containing a reminder that the fire-alarms would be tested at 11am the following day, together with a postcard.

A postcard? Wasn’t the sending of postcards supposed to be the other way around?

Kate smiled her thanks and looked down at the picture of quintessential rolling English countryside. With shaking hands she turned the card over.

Kate’s sunglasses slipped back down her head as she stared at her cousin’s handwriting.

Old Man Isaac was selling…?

A horrible tilting sensation had her reaching out to grab a hold of the edge of the reception desk.

Wow.

Okay.

And Juliet thought she needed to know because…?

Before memories could swirl into focus and the charming old brick building could fully form in her mind, Kate shoved the postcard into the darkest, deepest recess of her bag and headed off in the direction of her room, one clear thought making its way to the top of the jumble in her head: she was absolutely, positively, going to ask the bartender how to make the most alcoholic cocktail on the bar’s menu. And then she was going to drink it. Stat.

Chapter 2
Logos and Gossip
Kate

In the cramped window seat of the plane, Kate was oblivious to the fact that if she looked out of the window, past the thin layer of cloud, she’d be able to make out the Atlantic Ocean below. Instead, she was completely focused on her laptop screen. Using the tracker-pad, she dropped the image of the little friendly looking bee over the letter ‘e’ in the word ‘Beauty’.

Hmmm.

It didn’t look quite right.

Maybe she should change the word ‘at’ for the ‘at’ sign?

Making the change, she tipped her head to the side and re-read: Beauty @ The Clock House.

That looked much better. Simple and contemporary. Although… maybe she should work on a tagline to explain the bees?

‘Clever,’ declared the passenger in the seat beside her. ‘Do you design logos for a living, then?’

Dragged from her state of intense concentration, Kate turned towards the woman sitting next to her. ‘I’m sorry?’

The woman nodded her head towards Kate’s laptop screen and turning a little red, said, ‘It’s me who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have been looking.’

Kate swung her gaze back to her laptop screen.

Caught red-handed.

Darn it!

She was supposed to be working. On coming up with the last three points of her ‘Travel Hacks’ article for The World’s Your Oyster travel blog. She certainly wasn’t supposed to be designing logos for a pipe dream she’d thought she’d successfully buried four years before.

It was all Juliet’s fault.

Six weeks after receiving the first postcard, she’d received another.

Two postcards in and Kate had an inkling these things were going to find her wherever she was. Honest to goodness, it was like being on the Dursley end of receiving owl post.

After the first one, she’d emailed Juliet and explained she wasn’t interested in hearing about the clock house, but clearly her words had been lost in translation. Admittedly they’d been shoved into the middle paragraphs about how beautiful Tobago was and all about the stunning humming-birds and the tranquillity of the rainforest areas and this gorgeous callaloo soup she’d tried because obviously she didn’t want to appear too weirded-out about The Clock House being up for sale.

But maybe she was going to have to stop sending Juliet postcards, e-cards or any other kind of card that kept her in touch with where she was and how she was, if this was the sort of payback she was going to receive.

Her cousin was the only person from Whispers Wood who Kate kept in loose contact with and the thought of not checking in with her every now and then… the thought of severing that connection with the place she used to call home, made that stupid pang that had been hitting her at the oddest of times of late, press into her breastbone again.

‘I could claim to be politely interested,’ Kate’s new travel companion stated, ‘instead of appearing downright nosy, but to be perfectly honest with you, I fall very comfortably into the nosy camp. Plus, I hate flying and I thought this book,’ she held up her paperback for Kate’s attention, ‘would hold my interest, but alas… not.’

Kate stared at the front cover of the proffered paperback. It depicted a woman in sky-scraper heels holding a whip and standing over a man lying on a bed. Kate grinned. Who didn’t love gawping at what other people were reading? ‘Too much whipping action?’ she sympathised.

‘Not enough,’ the woman said, making Kate’s smile grow wider. ‘So much for the “What to read after 50 Shades” list, but don’t mind me. If you’re not in the mood to talk… or if what you’re working on is confidential…’

‘No, it’s all right,’ Kate reassured, glad of the interruption, because what if, after she’d finished designing logos for a business she didn’t have, in premises she has absolutely no intention of owning, she’d actually moved on to designing the packaging too? ‘What you saw,’ she gently closed her laptop, ‘well, that wasn’t work. I was just–’ Getting carried away? Testing myself? ‘Doodling,’ she finished lamely.

‘I see,’ said the woman, with a look that clearly said she didn’t and as Kate hardly understood it either, she couldn’t really blame her.

For the thousandth time Kate told herself that just because Old Man Isaac was finally selling The Clock House, didn’t mean she should be the one to buy it…

Yes, she might, technically, have the funds sitting in a bank, largely untouched for four years, and, yes, she might have the idea.

But, and as buts go, this one was a doozy… the person she was supposed to implement the idea with, wasn’t here any more.

Her hand moved unconsciously to rub at her sternum and encountered the filigree-silver locket watch she never took off.

There were some wounds that time couldn’t heal, so to be even contemplating going home to Whispers Wood and buying The Clock House was madness.

Determined to shake off the melancholy, Kate turned more fully to her new-found friend and asked, ‘Have you been to La Rochelle, before, then?’

Her companion shook her head. ‘My son-in-law is French, and he and my daughter moved back two years ago now. We Skype and all that business, but I haven’t been to see them because I hate flying so much. But–’ The woman pulled out her phone. ‘I decided the arrival of one’s first granddaughter merits a change in attitude and so here I am. Prepare yourself, this is where I now bore you with photos.’

Kate stared dutifully down at the slide show on the woman’s phone, right into the eyes of a cherubic newborn swaddled in baby-pink waffle-textured blanket. ‘She’s so sweet. And tiny! Looks as if Granny’s in for a lovely visit.’

‘Doesn’t it? When my daughter first told me they were moving I was determined to be happy for them. It was a bit of a shock. We’d only lost my husband two years before.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’ Kate watched the grief flash in the woman’s eyes before acceptance remembered to make its appearance and, without even thinking about it, Kate reached out to squeeze her hand.

The woman stared into Kate’s eyes and after a moment squeezed back and heaved in a breath. ‘Anyway, it was hard, but I had work and my friends and I knew I’d be okay. And then, oh, I don’t know, you go about your daily routine, being okay and you think that okay is fine. Okay is good. And then, out of the blue, you get some news and suddenly you’re realising things can be better than okay. And such joy floods in,’ the woman shot Kate a look. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Oh, completely,’ replied Kate, lying through her teeth, because compared with before, her life being ‘okay’ was already more. Except… maybe when she’d received that first postcard from Juliet… Mixed in with that gravity-shifting experience – before she’d tamped it down so forcefully – had been a feeling of joy. Joy at the possibility of a second chance. Joy at the possibility of more.

‘So what about you?’ the woman asked, stroking a finger over the photo on the screen before sliding the phone back into her bag. ‘Meeting someone the other end?’ The woman glanced down at her book and grinned. ‘Ooh, tell me you’re jetting over oceans to meet your lover?’

Kate grinned back. ‘Where I will naturally whip him into shape?’

‘Naturally,’ the woman laughed.

‘Sadly,’ Kate answered, ‘I’m just going to be working.’

She wasn’t sure why she’d accepted the job, really. Possibly to prove something to herself? She would really rather not have realised that every flight she took of late seemed to bring her closer to England. And this was the first trip back to La Rochelle where she wouldn’t grab a taxi and whiz through the port’s busy harbour streets to meet Marco. There would be no falling into bed with him. No late-night stroll down the Rue Saint Pierre afterwards, holding hands and chatting about their latest work assignments before stopping in at his favourite bar and, after a drink or four, going back to his tiny apartment to fall back into bed again.

She tested a breath and found that it wasn’t lodged too deeply in her throat after all. The last few months had eased the ego-crushing aftershock of her last visit, when Marco had sat her down and gently told her that he’d met someone. Someone who wanted to be with him. Wanted to live with him.

Wanted to commit to him.

She’d been stunned. He’d never once intimated he’d wanted more and hot on the heels of the shock had been an automatic need to tell him she was sure she could commit to him too – especially now that she knew that was what he was looking for.

Big mistake.

Huge.

The realisation that the gravel-laced reverence in his voice when he talked about Clara was definitely not, and indeed, had never been, present in his voice when he’d talked to her, coupled with the excruciatingly gentle manner he’d used to explain why it was never going to be her, had had her salvaging her pride and high-tailing it out of there.

She’d gone down the tried-and-tested route when she’d left on that jet plane, completely certain she wouldn’t be back again. Throwing herself into work she’d crossed so many time zones she hadn’t even bothered unpacking. Not that she usually unpacked. That was her ultimate life-hack, but Kate knew that didn’t look great, so she kept it to herself.

‘Work?’ said the woman disappointedly. ‘So the doodling…?’

‘Was for someone else.’ Another her. A different her. A lifetime ago. ‘My job involves travelling and reviewing for airlines, tourist boards, resort owners, etc. It’s a tough job…’

‘But somebody has to do it,’ her new friend replied, with a generous smile. ‘You get to travel. Experience new things. Share them with others. I like it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re probably too young to settle down anyway.’

Exactly.

‘So where is home for you?’ the woman asked.

Kate’s heart missed a beat. ‘Oh, you won’t have heard of it. It’s a small village in West Sussex.’ Determinedly she reached out in front of her, opened up her laptop and, with only a moment’s hesitation, hit the delete key on the logos she’d been tinkering with.

Home was where the other her had lived. The different her. A lifetime ago.

Opening up the blog article, she took a deep breath and glad to have this lovely person sitting next to her, a person more than capable of distracting her from pipedreams, Kate put her fingers on the keyboard and asked, ‘Hey, what’s your top tip for travelling?’

Chapter 3
Within the Sound of Silence
Kate

Kate sat cross-legged staring out to sea, Juliet’s latest postcard tucked away in her over-the-shoulder bag. Out of sight. And weighing on her mind and tempting her as if it was gold and ring-shaped and called ‘The Precious’.

No matter how she turned it all in her head, she couldn’t come up with a way of getting her mindset to return to life before the postcards.

The third postcard, a.k.a, The Precious, was succinct, to say the least:

She had read between the lines. She’d read above the lines and below the lines and the actual lines themselves.

Over and over and over.

And now her head was so full of possibility she could barely breathe.

She tried to remember exactly when had been the last time she’d felt this wealth of ideas rushing forward, this sense of future slotting quietly into place?

Her fingers flexed involuntarily as her heart clutched against the memory.

It had been the 9th October 2013.

Kate squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head helplessly.

She wasn’t going there.

And yet if she did this, if she went home and looked into buying The Clock House, she was definitely going to have to ‘go there’.

Be there.

Back in Whispers Wood.

Without Bea.

The sister who’d dreamed up that future right alongside her.

Kate stared hard at the wide ocean in front of her.

Bea was gone and was never coming back and Kate missed her every blessed day.

And every day she tried to get okay with missing her.

If she returned to Whispers Wood, Kate would be saying that she could deal with being back without Bea.

Or, at the very least, she would be saying she was going to try.

Again.

Because it wasn’t like she hadn’t gone home before. Over the years since Bea’s death, she’d made plenty of duty visits to see her mum. Visits where the only view was that of watching her mum exist silently on the fringes of life – not ready to re-engage – not able to re-engage. Well, not with Kate, anyway.

‘Okay. Not plenty of visits,’ Kate admitted, imagining Bea’s snort of laughter floating to her on the sea breeze. ‘But I’ve been back a few times. Enough times,’ she ended with.

But each visit she’d avoided the village green and The Clock House.

She was too fanciful. Too sentimental. Too scared that in looking up at it she’d imagine it winking back at her – stirring everything up.

Dazzling her.

Kate blew out a breath.

It was silly to be even considering returning to Whispers Wood on a more permanent basis and yet all she’d done since she’d received the latest postcard from Juliet was consider just that.

How could what she had always thought of as her last option, suddenly seem like her only true option?

‘What do you think, Bea?’ Kate whispered into the sea breeze. ‘Should I go back?’

Silence.

Kate’s ears strained past the sound of the ocean waves lapping against the shore and past the odd cry from a seagull. Not one sound that could magically be made into her sister’s voice giving her approval.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

As much as she still felt the gaping chasm Bea’s passing had left behind, she knew something had to change. She’d spent four years expecting, hoping, needing to hear Bea’s voice telling her what to do. Never once had she received an answer.

Kate swiped a hand under her nose and sniffed.

She had to make a decision on her own. End this stupid purgatory with the postcards.

She tried to think of how she’d feel if Old Man Isaac sold to someone else? Or even of how she’d feel if Juliet mentioned in casual conversation, during one of her visits home, that The Clock House had been sold. But it was as if those reactions and emotions were protectively inaccessible. All she had to base her decision on was the spark that Juliet’s postcards had struck inside of her.

And all the hours of regret that had walked doggedly beside her for four years.

‘So make a decision, already,’ Kate muttered, looking around at the pebbles scattered across the sand. She leant over slightly and picked one up. It was mauve in colour with a white vein running across one side.

Perfect.

‘White vein I go back. Plain I go on.’

She tossed the pebble up into the air and tracked its plummet back to the ground.

As it lay motionless on the sand before her, there, in between the beats of her heart, she stared at her answer, and then, with a wry, ‘Sod it, then,’ she picked up the pebble and slipped it into her pocket.

Chapter 4
Boys and Their Toys
Daniel

As Daniel sped around the leafy lanes with the top down on his absolute pride and joy, Monroe – a Triumph Spitfire in phantom grey, it finally occurred to him why his face was aching.

He was smiling.

Had been for maybe the last fifteen miles or so.

Happy days, he thought. As improvements to his state of mind went, smiling had to be right up there with that first gulp of an IPA beer at the start of a hot summer’s evening.

He shifted gears, pressing down on the accelerator, the dappled sunlight creating fast-moving reflections of the tree-lined country roads in his Wayfarers.

Two hours before, when he’d been grabbing clothes from a cheap freestanding clothes-rail in his studio apartment and shoving them into a leather holdall, he definitely hadn’t been smiling.

He’d been swearing.

Profusely.

He’d actually managed to shock himself at being able to string so many different swear words together. Granted, the sentences had been neither grammatically correct, nor, he was pretty sure, anatomically possible, but the flow of them had brought a certain sense of surprising satisfaction.

Don’t get me wrong – Daniel Westlake wasn’t some advocate for anti-profanity. But when he swore it was usually short and succinct and relating to a mild frustration that he determined to quickly get past – and did.

It had been a really crap year, though.

The crappiest, in fact.

At first, he’d dismissed that sly prickle of awareness… that amorphous inkling, that something at his accountancy firm, West and Westlake, was wrong.

The clients had to be satisfied, the way they kept introducing more business to the firm. The money was coming in and the projections for the following year were great. And he was working sixty/seventy-hour weeks, week in, week out.

Any real time to pause over a feeling, a premonition, a sense of impending doom, whatever you wanted to call it, was nil. Tinkering-with-Monroe time had dwindled to maybe one afternoon a quarter and the only time available to focus on anything other than his accounts was when he was out running.

Daniel loved running. Loved the discipline. Loved the rhythm.

But it had been on one of those early-morning runs – you know, the ones where the sun is just breaking through and the roads are that kind of pre-zombie-apocalypse eerie-quiet, and your mind flits and floats as your feet pound the pavement, that the worry that everything was a little too good at West and Westlake had stretched and yawned, and this time, refused to lie back down, dormant.

Another mile in and the awakening had become a nasty, sweat-inducing growing suspicion that had had him circling back in the direction of his offices at 5am on a Sunday, letting himself in, downloading every single set of accounts, and back at his three-bed penthouse at 2:17am the following morning, had led him to the very conclusive and very shitty discovery that, yes, his scumbag partner, was, to put it bluntly, cooking the books.

The betrayal had felt like a herd of elephants doing Buddha-spins on his chest.

Not least because Daniel and his business partner, Hugo West, had been friends since school.

Good friends. Even though, to be fair, Hugo had always been a bit of a dick.

He was that friend, who, growing up, always had to do everything first. First to climb the tree, first to crack the crass joke in class. First to ace a test. First to get fall-down drunk. First to lose his virginity. First to come up with an idea.

But he had also been the only friend to stand up for, and to stand beside, Daniel, when Daniel’s life had imploded at nineteen.

It was hard to discount that kind of loyalty and then there was the fact that Hugo teamed playing hard with working hard. The hardest. Maybe he’d had to. That need of his to be ahead in everything, probably. But Daniel had always admired his friend’s drive and determination and, in the beginning, where Daniel might have given up on their fledgling accountancy firm, it had been Hugo’s grit that had seen them through that crucial first two years. Hugo who had the guts to go for the big clients straight off. Hugo who helped the company fly so high.

So high and, seemingly, so successfully that Daniel had completely forgotten Hugo’s dick-like tendencies. That was on him – and lesson learned. He’d never make the same mistake.

After the bloody awful court case and the dissolution of their business partnership, Daniel had one priority and one priority only: starting afresh.

The swear-fest, record-breaking packing-gig had been a result of reconfirming that decision after the letter had plopped onto his doormat that morning.

Postmarked from Ford open prison, Hugo obviously hadn’t lasted two weeks into his sentence before ‘reaching out’.

Daniel couldn’t imagine what there was left to say and although opening it would have relieved his curiosity, the letter had sat sealed on the sparse kitchen breakfast bar while he’d consumed bland instant coffee and stared at the offending article, conflicted.

Swallowing down the last gulp of coffee it had met the choking anger rising up, making Daniel realise there was no room for misplaced loyalty. After what Hugo had done, he was now in the category of forever-dead-to-him dick.

End of.

So after the swearing and the packing, Daniel had written ‘Not at this address’ across the front of the letter and tossed it into the first postbox he’d come across after leaving London.

Driving with no particular destination in mind had eased that grinding knot in his stomach, but now, as he down-shifted to hit an approaching bend in the road, Daniel realised he could hear a grinding noise above the roar of the engine. The smile on his face disappeared. That noise wasn’t a grinding stomach-ulcer noise. That noise was Monroe-speak for ‘Um, Houston, we have a problem’.

He nursed the car around the corner and felt the engine slow even as he tried to accelerate out of it. ‘Come on Monroe – you can’t fail me now, not in the middle of–’ he twisted his head to try and catch what the signpost he had driven past had read, but was too late. ‘Nowhere,’ he said, not too upset to discover he had no idea where he was.

It had been the whole point.

Get in the car and drive.

Get away from London.

Away from the last year.

And end up somewhere where he could think.

But thinking of any sort was put on hold the instant he saw the woman with the long, incredible legs, hauling a suitcase out of the back of a taxi.

You didn’t see a soul for miles and then, POW, some Diana Prince goddess was standing at the side of the road in front of a row of stone cottages.

The thought of stopping and offering help – of getting a chance to meet this gorgeous woman was enough to put the smile back on his face. He was just starting to slow when Monroe chose to emit a put-put-puttering noise.

‘Christ, Monroe – not cool,’ he muttered and got an over-way-too-quickly impression of huge eyes as Wonder Woman’s head popped out from the boot of the taxi to check on the strange noise.

Time slowed. But not in a hero-walking-down-the-road-slow-mo-movie way – more in a let’s-get-a-full-look-at-the-idiot-who-doesn’t-know-how-to-drive-a-classic-car kind of a way.

Daniel actually found himself hunkering down in his seat as he brought his arm up to rest on the window frame so that his hand could shield his face from her inquisitive gaze.

Bunny-hopping past a beautiful woman in his beloved Triumph Spitfire was definitely not how he’d imagined his fresh start beginning.

Neither was sounding like he couldn’t find a gear if his life depended on it.

All ability to appear cool having disappeared out of Monroe’s exhaust pipe, Daniel opted not to stop after all. Wonder Woman looked like she had everything under control and he… didn’t.

His gaze shifted to his rear-view mirror, where he allowed himself one last look at her, before concentrating on not driving into the hedge.

Thankfully a few yards further and the narrow country lane opened out so that on his right was a large village green with some sort of stately-home affair at the end of it and on his left were yet more stone cottages, this time with roses rambling up them.

As he sputtered through the picture-postcard-perfect village a few choice words came to mind. Should’ve checked the oil before leaving London, shouldn’t he? He usually did, but today he’d done what he assumed all people did when attempting an impromptu getaway from life in their classic car. He’d glanced dutifully up at the sky, noted the lack of rain clouds, chucked his holdall onto the passenger seat of the car, hopped in and revved the engine. Tearing out of London as fast as the speed limit permitted.

Giving up before he did irreparable damage, Daniel steered safely towards the thick hedgerow on the other side of the green. He cut the engine and hopped out of the car. At the edge of the green a proud wrought-iron sign twisted into the form of a row of trees read: Welcome to Whispers Wood.

He’d never heard of it. With a sigh he wandered back up the road in the opposite direction from which he’d come until he found another signpost which read: Whispers Wood 1/4 mile, Whispers Ford 2 miles.

He hadn’t heard of Whispers Ford either and now wished he’d been paying attention when he’d driven through the last town.

Which village would have a garage?

A cow mooed, making him jump. Daniel turned around and looked at the field of cows beyond the hedgerow. One of the cows had its head poking over what he considered to be – although he wasn’t exactly an expert – an insubstantial fence-line, considering how big cows were close-up. The cow was looking at him like it had initiated conversation. Daniel found himself holding his hands up to placate as he backed carefully away a couple of steps. The cow watched him with a sort of doleful look on its face before it mooed again.

Since the cow was so talkative Daniel held his hands back out. ‘Garage?’ he asked. ‘That way,’ he pointed left. ‘Or,’ he pointed right, ‘That way?’

Damned if the cow didn’t bow its head as if to say, yes there was a garage, before it then swung its head to the left before turning around and ignoring him.

Countryfile hadn’t exactly been part of Daniel’s ‘on demand’ viewing schedule so he had no idea whether it was possible to get pied by a cow, but just in case he was going to take cow-conversing with a giant pinch of salt.

Of course, he could always wander back through the village, to where he’d seen Wonder Woman, and ask her if there was a garage and mechanic he could trust Monroe to, but let’s face it, being that asking for directions wasn’t part of a man’s make-up, he was never going to ask a human who could actually judge him.

He took out his phone and Googled.

Bingo.

It looked as if a garage was one of the few facilities Whispers Wood did have.

With a last glance to check the cow was on the right side of the fence, or at least the one the other side of him, Daniel strode off down the lane to try and locate Ted’s Garage.

‘So, when you say it could be the gearbox or the transmission…?’ Daniel asked.

‘I mean it could be the gearbox or the transmission,’ Ted, the portly overall-wearing, mechanic, repeated. ‘Won’t know until I look at it proper. Need me to tow it in for you?’

Daniel wasn’t sure. The tow truck parked up on the verge looked as if it had seen better days. Monroe would probably take one look at it and refuse.

‘No, don’t worry,’ Daniel replied. ‘I think I can get it here without doing too much more damage.’ It could only be three hundred yards or so up the gentle incline to the garage. If he put it to Monroe nicely, he was pretty sure she’d oblige instead of suffering the indignity of a tow.

Twenty minutes later, Ted was staring at the car appreciatively. ‘Well, now, it’s not every day I get to see one of these.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to find out what the problem is?’

‘I reckon it’ll be a pleasure. If it is the gearbox, though, I’m going to need to order the part special. Not going to be cheap. Might take a few days.’

This past year anger seemed to have top dog status in Daniel’s emotional repertoire and now he waited for it to pipe up. He was a lot relieved and a little surprised when it failed to rise up to bite.

Must be the country air.

‘I don’t suppose there’s anywhere to stay in Whispers Wood?’ he asked.

‘There is,’ Ted answered, giving Daniel an assessing look. ‘Have to say, you look like you’d be more comfortable in the posh hotel in Whispers Ford.’

‘I’m happy to stay here in the village.’

‘Yeah?’

Ted didn’t look convinced, but Daniel was hardly going to tell a stranger about to get intimate with Monroe that despite the shirt on his back being a slim fit, double-cuff from Burberry he was pretty much broke, bar his seed money for starting again. ‘Well, then,’ Ted continued, ‘you should try Sheila Somersby’s B&B. It’s about a ten minute walk, on the outskirts of the village, but I know she has a couple of vacancies at the moment.’

‘Thanks. What’s her number? I’ll phone her now while you’re looking Monroe over.’

‘Monroe?’ Ted turned in the direction of Daniel’s stare, his expression suddenly clearing and becoming warm. ‘As in Marilyn?’

‘Hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud,’ Daniel admitted. Not that there was anything wrong with naming your car. Just, maybe, not out loud! And maybe not Marilyn if you ever wanted to get girls into it.

‘Don’t you worry, Mr…?’

Daniel hesitated and hated himself for doing so. He’d worked hard for years to be able to give his surname without worrying. Telling himself he wasn’t going to let Hugo take that from him as well, he cleared his throat and held out his hand, ‘Westlake. Daniel Westlake.’

‘Well, don’t you worry, Mr Westlake,’ Ted said shaking his hand. ‘I’ll take care of your Marilyn Monroe. I’ll even warm my hands up first,’ he added with a wink.

Daniel smiled. He got out his phone to ring the woman who owned the B&B and ten minutes later he had a room booked and a promise from Ted he’d phone as soon as he knew what was wrong with the car.

Following the lane back down to the village, Daniel stopped, his gaze taking in the lush green grass surrounded by a foot-high chain link fence, with a building at one end and the stone cottages at the other. To the left was what looked like woods and to the right a small parade of shops.

So this was Whispers Wood.

It looked nice.

Pleasant.

Soothing.

A good enough place to hole up and think about where the hell he went from here.

Chapter 5
Back – From Outer Space
Kate

Kate winced as her Aunt Cheryl skewered her scalp with what was surely bobby-pin number one hundred and one. After the first couple of eye-widening stares into the mirror, Kate had decided it was probably best to avoid the reflective surface and simply allow Aunt Cheryl’s ‘Prom Look No. 3’ to develop into all it was meant to be.

How she’d ended up as the practice hair model for Wood View High’s prom, she wasn’t quite sure. Although having said that, she had just sat down with a cuppa, and her mum’s sister was famous for turning dead time into ‘doings’ time.

‘So how long are you back for?’ Aunt Cheryl asked, sectioning off the front of Kate’s hair and proceeding to back-comb it to within an inch of its life.

Back.

Home.

Ignoring the fact that they were both four-letter words, Kate concentrated on answering truthfully. Confidently. Brook-no-argument-ly. ‘I was thinking… permanently?’ She winced as she heard herself. Okay, so she still had a little work to do on sounding convinced.

You could hear a pin drop.

Literally, because the one in Aunt Cheryl’s mouth fell out as her jaw dropped open and it made a tiny ping as it hit the floorboards Juliet had painted white in an effort to make the room appear bigger.

As her aunt bent down to retrieve the pin, Kate’s panicked eyes sought out Juliet’s in the mirror and she was grateful for the double thumbs-up of encouragement, before her cousin tactfully went back to the crafting magazine she’d been leafing through.

‘Back permanently?’ Aunt Cheryl asked, reclaiming the pin and shoving it back into her mouth along with a few others. ‘As in you’ve come home, home?’

‘Mmmn,’ Kate fixed her smile into place. The one she’d practised all the way over on the plane. Back two days and already she was discovering that, apparently, Kate Somersby coming back to Whispers Wood permanently had been one of those beyond-the-realms-of-possibility things.

‘And have you let your mum know?’ Aunt Cheryl wanted to know.

Kate shifted uncomfortably on the chair she was perched upon and avoiding the question, put a hand up to her hair. ‘I thought this year prom hair was sort of romantic half-up, half-down affairs?’

‘And, see,’ Aunt Cheryl nudged Kate’s shoulder until she was looking in the mirror again, ‘isn’t that what I’m doing?’

Kate stared at the half-up, half-down beehive that had some sort of fishtail plait going on at the back. Apparently, Look No.3 was a party-in-the-front and party-in-the-back affair.

It wouldn’t be fair to describe Aunt Cheryl as a novice when it came to hair. She was a perfectly acceptable and qualified mobile hairdresser, who for the last twenty-five years had been dispensing opinions she’d gained from her first-class honours degree in sear-you-to-your-bones honesty along with a good set and blow-dry. If you were a certain age, you really had no complaints. If you were from this millennia, though, you knew to ask Juliet to do your hair.

Juliet was amazing with hair and, privately, Kate always wondered if it was loyalty to her mum or shyness that stopped Juliet from striking out on her own.

‘So have you, then? Seen your mother, that is,’ Aunt Cheryl repeated.

Kate began singing Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ under her breath as once again her gaze sought her cousin’s in the mirror.

Fortunately Juliet spoke ‘awkward’ and with a gentle smile, stood up and crossed the room to pass her mother the hairspray. ‘Give it a rest, Mum. She’s only been back a couple of days.’

‘Well, she can’t hide out with you forever, can she? Where’s she sleeping? You can’t even swing a cat in here, although God knows, you’ve got enough of them.’

‘It won’t be for forever. Although,’ Juliet turned and put a reassuring hand on Kate’s shoulder, ‘You know the sofa’s yours for as long as you want it. I love having you here.’

‘Thanks, lovely,’ Kate said.

‘Because, honestly,’ Aunt Cheryl demanded as if neither had spoken, ‘What’s Sheila going to say if she bumps into you?’

That was actually a tough one.

Kate had been worrying more about if her mum was going to react, rather than how.

‘Is she going to bump into me, though? I mean, does she actually leave the house now, then? Other than to pop out for something one of her beloved guest’s might need, I mean?’

‘Kate,’ her aunt reproved.

‘Sorry. Sorry. Habit.’

‘A bad habit.’

‘Yes,’ Kate whispered. ‘Bad habit.’

Kate wanted to add that it was a habit she hadn’t wanted to learn, but now that she had it was one she seemed incapable of unlearning. But if she was back to stay she was going to have to. Being back meant seeing Sheila Somersby. Talking to Sheila Somersby. Trying to have a relationship with Sheila Somersby.

At least she was pretty sure it did. In the quagmire of grief after Bea dying, Kate had begun to refer to her mum as The Shell because when Bea died she’d, rather unhelpfully, in Kate’s humble opinion, taken their mum with her, leaving behind only a hulled-out shell of skin and bone. Any energy her mum was able to drum up was spent on keeping her B&B guests comfortable.

In the moments Kate could apply perspective, she got that – she really did. Her mum had a business she needed to keep going. A business she’d started after Kate and Bea’s dad had upped and left. A business that had enabled Sheila Somersby to block out the humiliation of his leaving and operate under a super-polished veneer of stoicism.

Back then, Kate and Bea had had each other to soften the fallout and share their concerns their mum would never rekindle the sharp wit and curiosity for life that she’d used to share with her sister, Cheryl.

But after Bea had died…

Well, there was just Sheila.

And there was just Kate.

Separated by a wall of grief Kate wasn’t sure could ever be knocked down. Wasn’t even sure her mother thought either of them was entitled to.

‘I do understand, you know,’ Cheryl said gently. ‘But think about it from her point of view. How would you like it, the whole village knowing your daughter was back and you the only one not to have been told.’

‘Has she… Is she–?’ She shook her head to silence the questions threatening escape and marvelled slightly at the fact that not one hair on her head moved as she did.

‘You’ll never know if you don’t go and see her, will you? I think you’ll be surprised by what you find. Good surprised.’

Hope took a breath.

Fear that she’d be responsible for setting her mother back extinguished it.

She couldn’t do it.

Not yet.

She had another visit she had to make first.

‘Maybe I’ll go now,’ she said, shooting to her feet the moment Aunt Cheryl reached for the next can of hairspray.

‘Oh, but I haven’t–’ but as if she could sense Kate’s wings threatening to take flight, Aunt Cheryl nodded her head. Reaching out she pulled some of Kate’s long brown hair over her shoulder and tipped her head to the side in consideration. ‘Yes. I think this look will be received well at Wood View High.’

‘I’d say definitely if your motivation is to help curb teenage pregnancy,’ Kate said, thinking no one in their right mind would find this look attractive.

Cheryl winked. ‘With great talent comes great responsibility. Give your mum my love and tell her I’ll pop over on Friday, usual time, to take her to bridge.’

Juliet waylaid her as she was sticking her feet into Juliet’s bright, happy, purple-skulls-and-orange-daisy covered festival wellies. Kate hadn’t exactly unpacked, yet. Not that there was much room to in Wren Cottage. At least, that was her excuse.

‘Sorry,’ Juliet muttered, pulling the front door shut behind her. ‘She just wants the two of you to–’

‘It’s okay,’ Kate answered, cutting her off with a, ‘And I know. Your mum’s been completely Switzerland about all of this, which I know must be hard. It’ll get better. I’ll get better at dealing with it.’

‘You’re going to have to if you’re staying.’

‘I know. I just–’

Juliet gave a brief nod of understanding. ‘Didn’t need this all in your face from the moment you walked through the door? I’m sorry I haven’t been around since you’ve got back. It’s wedding season and I’ve been flat out. But I promise we’ll talk tonight. Hey,’ she looked down, her red hair falling over her shoulder as she noticed Kate’s foot attire for the first time. ‘It’s a little hot for boots – you want to borrow something else and take the car?’

‘No. The walk will do me good. And where I’m going I don’t need to dress up.’ Kate’s denim cut-offs, buttercup-yellow gypsy top and festival wellies would be perfectly acceptable for where she was going.

‘You’re not going to visit your mum?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then, where – oh,’ Juliet flushed scarlet. ‘You’re going to see Oscar?’

‘Nope. God, Juliet, if I can’t pluck up the courage to see mum, you can be damn certain I haven’t got the balls to see my brother-in-law, yet.’

‘Right. But, well, you’ll have to see him eventually. Tell him you’re back and what you’re planning to do.’

‘Why?’ Kate asked, her bottom lip poking out sulkily.

‘What do you mean, why? Don’t you think he’s going to notice if you buy The Clock House and open it up as a spa?’

‘No… yes…’ Kate looked around for something handy to hang her subject-change on and looked right into Juliet’s flushed face. ‘What’s with the red face?’

‘What?’ Juliet swallowed.

‘You,’ Kate answered, waving her hand in her cousin’s face, ‘and the blushing thing you’ve got going on.’

‘Hello?’ Juliet pointed to her ginger hair. ‘Daily occurrence, with this mop, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose,’ Kate said, not sure whether to delve deeper or leave Juliet to her poor excuse.

‘So, if you’re not going to meet Oscar, where are you going then? Oh–’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Nope. And don’t look so worried. This madness was your idea, remember?’

‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ Juliet ran her hands down the front of her pretty white embroidery anglaise dress and gave Kate a rueful look. ‘Well, yes, I do know what I was thinking. It had a kind of two-birds-with-one-stone sort of symmetry.’

Should’ve delved deeper, Kate realised. ‘When I get back we’ll have a cuppa and you can tell me all about the birds and the stones, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Juliet said, sounding not okay, at all.

Leaning over, Kate gave her cousin a quick reassuring kiss on the cheek. ‘Hey, it’s going to be fine. Promise.’ And before Juliet could say something else heartfelt that would stop her from getting her first look at the whole reason she’d come back, she waved cheerio.

Turning left, she walked down the path that would take her to the cut-through into Whispers Wood and allow her to emerge onto the village green. In a bid to settle the butterflies she took a deep breath and inhaled a lungful of freshly mown grass and early summer flowers.

The scent helped her feel happier. Less weighted-down. Until she started thinking about how she’d have to walk past the little parade of shops on the other side of the village green. Well, she said parade – there were five units and two of them were permanently empty these days. The other three consisted of the Post Office, a dentist and Big Kev’s corner shop.

Should she pop in and say ‘Hi’ while she was out and about? Casually mention that she had re-entered the Whispers Wood atmosphere and had touched down permanently?

Her pace automatically slowed at the thought.

She was such a coward.

It was only going to get more difficult if she kept letting herself off the hook, wasn’t it? Maybe if the first person she’d bumped into as she was heaving her rucksack and wheelie-case out of the taxi after it had pulled up outside Wren Cottage hadn’t been Sandeep, the postman. And maybe if he hadn’t looked agog at her when she’d told him she was back to stay…

And maybe if she wasn’t secretly smarting from every one of the staggered-disbelief expressions she encountered when she went all ‘full-disclosure’ she could keep it up.

As she entered the woods she exchanged the scent of freshly cut grass, with its hint of creeping roses and honeysuckle for the smell of dry, dusty, musty earth and trees. Here, she automatically followed the well-beaten dirt track right through the centre and noticed that street lamps had been installed either end since she’d last used the cut-through.

She wondered how long the village meeting about street lamps versus the existing wildlife’s quality of life had gone on for, because she was betting Whispers Woods’ unofficial ‘mayor’, Crispin Harlow, had called a meeting to discuss the issue.

Crispin Harlow had become the unofficial village head-honcho ten years ago, when he’d moved in, promptly formed the Whispers Wood Residents’ Association, and Aunt Cheryl and Aunt Cheryl’s best friend, Trudie McTravers, had used the AOB section at one of his meetings to present him with ‘robes’ they’d run up from leftover material from the nativity play Trudie had helped put on at the local primary school. Crispin didn’t really do irony and, you know that Shakespeare saying: ‘clothes maketh the man’? As far as Kate was aware he’d been unstoppable ever since.

If Old Man Isaac still allowed Crispin to use The Clock House for ‘all things village-related’ meetings, Kate wondered how she’d deal with Crispin when it was time to tell him she owned the building and meetings would need to be booked through her.

Kate stopped mid-stride.

She mustn’t start thinking of it as hers.

Not yet.

Chapter 6
Voice of the Beehive
Kate

Kate emerged from the cut-through into brilliant sunlight and couldn’t understand why there was a lot of shouting going on. As her eyes adjusted, there, under the shade of the oak trees lining the right hand side of the green was her answer… Someone had gone and let the army in to train on the green.

Her first thought was, did Crispin know about this?

Her second thought, as she looked closer, was that the army would probably be full of fitter, younger individuals, who wouldn’t give away their position by training in varying eye-watering shades of neon Lycra.

So the noughties had truly arrived in Whispers Wood. Prior to this, outdoor exercise in the village was usually of the T’ai Chi pace, rather than full-on, cardiac-arrest-inducing (by the looks of some of the participants), sergeant-major-style-y circuit-training.

‘Kate? Kate Somersby? Sweetie, is that you?’

Kate looked over in the direction of the voice, a smile breaking out over her face. ‘Hi, Trudie – looking good.’

‘Oh, thanks, sweetie. Trying to lose these last fifteen pounds is killer,’ she puffed out as she lunged not so much gracefully as disgracefully across the green towards her.

‘I see that,’ Kate replied.

Kate always thought of Trudie McTravers as the Eddie to Aunt Cheryl’s Pats because whenever they got together and alcohol was involved, mayhem wasn’t usually far behind.

Wonderfully larger-than-life and the self-appointed creative director of the local Whispers Wood am-dram society, rumour had it that during the eighties Trudie had starred in several Alan Ayckbourn plays in the West End.

Rumour also had it that before quiet and reserved bank manager, Nigel, had snapped her up she’d also starred in several films of an adult nature. Trudie never confirmed nor denied the rumours and as her Twitter ID was: @AFlairForT‌heDramatic, Kate suspected she wasn’t only the star of such rumours but the source as well.

‘You just get back?’ Trudie puffed out.

Kate nodded. ‘A couple of days ago.’

Trudie’s gaze strayed to Kate’s ‘do’ and grinned. ‘Cheryl?’

‘Cheryl,’ Kate confirmed.

‘How long are you back for?’

‘Oh, this time I was thinking,’ she leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, ‘of forever’.

Trudie’s laugh took on a braying quality before she brought herself under control. ‘Okay, but actually, that’s got me thinking… How long are you back for really, because we’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream again, and you always made a fabulous Titania.’

Kate winced at the disbelieving laugh and determined not to gently remind Trudie that it had been Bea, not her, who had played Titania, to everyone’s delight.

Some years Trudie ‘encouraged’ (begged and bribed) so many of the Whispers Wood inhabitants into her production that she had to rope in the residents of Whispers Ford to make up an audience. But the year Bea had played Titania and Oscar Matthews had played Bottom, everyone had agreed it had been Trudie’s most inspired production yet. Of course, that was the year that Bea had finally got Oscar Matthews to notice her, so…

‘McTravers, are you chatting or exercising?’

Kate glanced over in the direction of the booming voice. ‘Oops,’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth to Trudie, ‘I don’t think Private Benjamin is allowed to talk.’

‘I’m a woman,’ Trudie shouted back at the fitness instructor, ‘I can talk and exercise.’

‘Prove it,’ ordered Mr Sergeant Major, ‘and give me fifteen star jumps while you’re standing around chatting the day away.’

‘Is he for real?’ Kate asked in equal parts scared and impressed as Trudie duly obliged.

‘Trust me, he is definitely for real,’ Trudie puffed out. ‘Last week, he caught Crispin chatting to Sandeep and made him drop and give him twenty.’

‘No! And Crispin did it?’

‘Managed twelve before he passed out.’

‘Oh my God, that’s barbaric.’ Although, darn, because she would have loved to have seen that.

She looked over at the rest of the class, hanging out in the shade of the trees, doing burpees. Burpees! On Whispers Wood green. It defied all village logic. Or maybe she’d been away too long. ‘Trudie, are you sure this guy isn’t violating your civil rights or something?’

‘Sweetie, I can’t afford to care if I want to lose the fifteen pounds. Besides,’ she gasped mid star-jump. ‘Have you seen the way his butt looks in those shorts?’

Kate couldn’t help it – she looked over at the fitness instructor and, yes, checked out his butt encased in the kind of white shorts last seen in an eighties Wimbledon final. ‘Wow. Um. Very Magnum P.I.’

‘Such a shame that the face was made for radio.’

‘Trudie,’ Kate admonished.

‘At least I get to spend one hour three mornings a week doing a little butt-staring,’ Trudie wriggled her eyebrows appreciatively.

‘And what does Nigel have to say about this new hobby of yours?’

‘Oh he’s far too busy reaping the rewards to complain.’

Kate screwed up her face. ‘Euw! T.M.I.’

‘What can you possibly mean,’ Trudie said, adopting an innocent expression. ‘I’m talking about having the stamina to help Nigel out in the garden – what are you talking about?’

Kate laughed.

‘Now all I have to do,’ Trudie added, her attention on the fitness instructor, ‘is to convince Mr Butt that after helping out backstage at the summer play, he really wants to be in the Christmas one.’

‘Playing what? The back end of the pantomime horse?’

‘Trudie McTravers, do not make me come over there,’ came the voice from the other end of the green.

‘Help,’ Trudie said, not very convincingly.

‘Run!’ Kate advised. ‘Run like the wind.’

Trudie finished her star-jumps and turned to give Kate a mock salute. ‘Back for forever, you say?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Kate murmured, saluting back, convinced she heard Trudie mutter a, ‘well, just when you think you’ve heard it all,’ under her breath as she sort of yomped back to the rest of the class.

Kate’s smile faltered when she realised she had nothing left to distract her from what she’d come to see.

She blew out a breath to prepare for her first proper glance… and turned to face The Clock House.

There it stood.

Rising up from the far end of the village green. Strong and straight and true.

Her gaze roamed greedily over it.

The three-storeys-high, Georgian red-brick building with the ornate clock perched proudly on top was finished off with a lead dome and brass weathervane.

The sash windows still had their white trim, and the matching double doors, gleaming in the sunshine, looked as if they’d only recently been re-painted. In the brick space between the second and third floors, simple, no-fuss, wrought-iron lettering spelled out ‘The Clock House’.

Her gaze sought out the face of the clock.

Without even being conscious of it, her hand moved to stroke over the locket watch she wore.

All this time, and, incredibly, a part of her had still expected the time on The Clock House clock to state 1:23pm.

She squeezed against the cool metal in her palm, the chain cutting into her neck slightly.

So selfish to think that here time would have stood still for four years.

Bold roman numerals in the same material as the signage, reigned stately over the white face of the clock and the fact that after more than a hundred years it kept good time at all was a testament to Old Man Isaac’s family of clock-makers.

Kate stared and breathed.

Deeply and evenly.

Right up until she clapped eyes on the For Sale sign staked to the low brick wall in front of the building. For the second time in twenty-eight years her little world came to a grinding stop.

So this was how it felt to be blown apart that the building she’d grown up loving was up for sale.

Thank goodness that pebble had landed vein-side up.

Because maybe she really wanted this building… maybe she really needed this building… She took a shaky step forward, and then another, and then another, so that by the time she’d hopped over the low brick wall and stepped onto the gravel drive, her heart was pounding clear out of her chest.

She hesitated and then rallied. She’d come this far, hadn’t she? Silly to turn away now.

With trembling hands she reached out to the key-safe Old Man Isaac had fitted years ago. Everyone in Whispers Wood knew the combination because everyone used the building for village events. Flipping open the cover to expose the keypad, she entered the code her mother used before she had started the B&B, when she’d been responsible for cleaning the building, and prayed it hadn’t been altered.

Seconds later and the key-safe opened to reveal a set of brass keys.

In for a penny in for a pound.

Kate put the largest of the keys in the lock, turned it, pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.

The shouting from the exercise group was drowned out by the whooshing in her ears as mine after mine dropped into her field of memory and exploded. Too quick for her to check for injury – too sharp to doubt she would escape unscathed.

The Somersby Sisters.

Bea and Kate.

Five years old and wearing summer school dresses of green and white check. White ankle socks with frills and scuffed black shoes. Chasing each other round the building. Screeching with glee as they cartwheeled across the parquet flooring. Collapsing in a fit of giggles when they were told off for being too loud, too happy, too exuberant.

The Somersby Sisters.

Bea and Kate.

Fifteen years old. Their school uniform skirts rolled up short, their long socks rolled down. School ties shoved into their bags. Lying in the gardens behind The Clock House, bitching about Gloria Pavey and whispering about boys.

The Somersby Sisters.

Bea and Kate.

Twenty. In the main foyer, clearing up after Bea and Oscar’s engagement party. A little drunk and talking nineteen to the dozen about how, one day, they were going to open their own business – a little day spa that would use only the best organic treatments and would be set in the most perfect premises. Premises as perfect as The Clock House.

A Somersby Sister, 15th October 2013.

Kate.

Twenty-four and staring up at The Clock House.

Dressed in black.

Blind with tears.

Filled with rage.

And completely and utterly finished with dreams.

The sound of a door closing brought Kate back to life. She whirled around, the echoes of memory so strong she half expected to see a replay of a five-year-old Bea disappearing around a corner. But there was no movement. No sound. Nothing.

Heaving in a breath she realised she’d been so caught up she’d been moving through the building by rote and now she was standing in the largest of the main rooms on the ground floor – the one that Trudie used for productions because you could erect a stage at one end and still have space for at least twenty rows of seating for the audience.

Kate’s gaze wandered from the soothing eau de nil paint on the walls, up to the high white painted ceiling with its ornate coving and now-naked ceiling-rose. At one time there’d been a Phantom-of-the-Opera-worthy chandelier hanging from the rose. Kate had seen photographs of it from when the building had belonged to Old Man Isaac’s great-grandfather – a famous clockmaker who’d settled in the village and built this place. If she did get to open this place as a spa she was determined to bring back a little of that opulence for customers to appreciate.

It was sad Old Man Isaac didn’t have anyone left in his family to pass the building on to, but given the chance, she’d make him proud with what she wanted to turn it into.

With the memories she’d been so worried about facing starting to fade, Kate walked back through the large open foyer and into the next main room. This room was slightly smaller because of the kitchenette. Kate knew that contained within the Formica cabinets were topsy-turvy towers of teacups with matching saucers and plates in what she was fairly certain Farrow and Ball would name ‘Catering Crockery in Hospital Blue’.

In the far corner of the room there was a lonely spinner of leaflets, their print faded with time and the sunlight that poured in through the floor-to-ceiling double doors. Soft-play mats in primary colours were stacked in the corner. Evidence that the local nursery still used the room.

Kate was going to need to work out how to zone the areas so that there was still plenty of space for village functions. Her mind drifted to thoughts of building regulations. What if there was some sort of covenant on the land that meant you couldn’t use the building for a commercial enterprise?

She thought of Bea’s box files. Ever since Kate had come up with the hare-brained scheme to open a day spa one day, Bea had got fixated on opening it in The Clock House. Not that they ever envisaged having the funds to buy the building. But still. The dreams had had to be corralled somehow and so Bea had collated files of research and made business plan after business plan.

If Kate was going to do this, she’d need to ask Oscar if he’d kept all of Bea’s files.

If she did this?

It hit her then how big a thing this was to do. And who was she, with her zero experience, to have a go?

The doubt she’d managed to bat away the moment she’d put that pebble in her pocket gathered and swooped, to peck at her.

What on earth had she been thinking? Had she even been thinking? If she really wanted to resurrect past dreams, she should do it in a place that didn’t know her. Somewhere where if she failed, that failure wouldn’t strike at the heart of those she loved.

Needing air, she unlocked one of the patio doors and stepped out into the walled garden. She walked towards the intricately carved wrought-iron moon-gate in the wall, overwhelmed with feeling.

She hadn’t realised how much she yearned for the opportunity to settle and build something. Something that would end all the regret and the running.

She’d toyed with this future like a cat toys with a mouse too many times to count and now she wasn’t sure she’d ever believe she deserved it.

How had she managed to convince herself that Old Man Isaac selling and Juliet sending her the postcards were signs from Bea? Now that she was actually here, standing in front of the moon-gate, and faced with the reality of what running a business would entail…

She should let it go.

It would find lovely owners. Old Man Isaac would make certain of that, she was sure.

And maybe whoever owned it next would turn it back into a house.

A home.

And on her visits back to Whispers Wood, she’d be able to walk past it without feeling so divided.

Without feeling.

With her heart heavy in her chest she opened the moon-gate and walked through, thinking she’d take one last look and then explain to Juliet that she was very sorry, but she wasn’t the right person to take over the place.

She stopped to take in the scene before her.

Oh my.

So ironic that here time had absolutely stood still, she thought, as she looked around.

It always looked best in spring and summer. The wild meadow on the other side of the moon-gate. Where tall grass vied for space with poppies, cornflowers and buttercups.

And there, tucked away amongst the large shrubs of buddleia, was what Kate had been unconsciously looking for since opening the main door of the building.

As she stared at the roofs of the white painted hives, the tears finally spilled from Kate’s brown eyes.

She’d found Bea’s bees.

Chapter 7
Then I Saw Her Face, Now I’m A Belieber!
Daniel

Daniel was finishing his cool-down when the lady with the crazy energy from the exercise class approached.

Impish blue eyes, fire-engine-red lips and dressed from head to toe in a pink so bright it hurt his eyes, she bounced up and greeted him with a ‘Cooee,’ and a hand-wave.

‘Morning,’ he replied cautiously.

‘I don’t think we’ve seen you around here before, have we, sweetie? I’m guessing it’s you that owns that beautiful car that Ted is working on?’

Daniel tried to remember that outside London it was perfectly acceptable to talk to complete strangers. ‘That’s right.’

‘So, I suppose you’ll be with us until Ted fixes you up?’

‘I guess so,’ Daniel agreed, although, truth to tell, he’d enjoyed the last couple of days enough to have thought about staying on. He hadn’t had a holiday in years and the change of pace had reminded him that not everyone in the world was caught up in that ‘concrete jungle where dreams are made of’, mentality.

When Ted had intimated that Daniel would rather be in a five-star hotel than the local village B&B, he hadn’t been that far off the mark. He’d hot-footed it out of London with his only thought being to get away, but if Monroe hadn’t broken down, it wouldn’t have occurred to Daniel to stop in a village, or even small town. He’d have carried on driving until he’d hit the next major city and paid a lot of money to stay in an impersonal hotel.

He’d really lucked out at the B&B, though, because in addition to the fabulous breakfasts and scrumptious cream teas, he would swear his host had instantly picked up on his need for anonymity. Other than some quiet and polite greetings, he’d been left to his own devices. Kicking back and mulling things over had been something he’d needed to do for weeks.

‘What a shame you’re not staying the summer, at least,’ the woman in front of him said and Daniel felt her gaze slide interestingly over him from head to toe. He took an awkward step backwards. Was she… hitting on him? Surely not. She was at least twice his age.

‘I guess you probably don’t get a lot of newcomers to the village?’ he asked, attempting to stretch the conversation and prove he wasn’t feeling the pressure of small talk.

‘Too true, sweetie. But you mustn’t mind me – I’m always on the lookout, that’s all.’

The lookout? He was just wondering if there was any tactful way of telling her he wasn’t interested but that he could show her how to set up a Tinder account when he saw her.

It was the third time he’d spotted her in two days.

The first time, she’d been hauling case out of the back of that taxi and Monroe hadn’t exactly shown herself in her best light. The second time, she’d been pacing back and forth across the small front garden of the cottage the taxi had pulled up outside of. The last time he’d seen her had been a few moments before – talking to the woman now standing in front of him. He’d spotted the boots first before lifting his gaze to notice the legs were out again. By the time he’d reached the daisy-dukes he’d been so distracted he’d nearly run into a tree. Righting himself and concerned he might end up doing something else embarrassing, like tripping over a leaf and face-planting right in front of her, he’d elected to pretend he hadn’t seen her and concentrate on getting the rest of his run in.

‘I have to be on the lookout,’ the woman in pink told him, ‘I’m casting for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and really want us in rehearsals by the end of this month.’

Daniel wasn’t listening. He was too interested in watching the gorgeous brunette with the dynamite legs hop over the low brick wall in front of the building at the end of the village green and… wait, had she just kicked that For Sale sign?

He grinned as he watched her give it a second kick before she disappeared into the building.

‘…and I’m always on the lookout for fresh talent. I don’t suppose you can act, sing or dance as well as you look?’

Daniel whipped his attention back to the woman in front of him. ‘I’m sorry, cast members?’

‘Oh, sweetie, don’t worry, I can see your mind is elsewhere,’ she said, with a chuckle, as she turned in the direction of his gaze.

She wasn’t wrong. With a nod of his head towards the building in front of them, he found himself asking, ‘Is The Clock House a private residence?’ Maybe she kicked the sign because she lived there and didn’t want to move.

‘I guess technically it is. Old Man Isaac – that’s the owner, moved out a few years ago when he turned eighty. Got a bit much for him,’ the woman confided. ‘Moved into one of the cottages opposite,’ she explained, pointing in the direction of the charming stone cottages at the other end of the green. ‘He never did get married nor have any children, so he sort of keeps the building open for the village to use it. You know, for toddler groups and the local flower-arranging class, that sort of thing. It’s a fabulous space. My am-dram group meets there every week.’

‘I see. So if the door was open I would be free to go in and take a look around?’

‘Of course. On a Thursday morning it should be empty. I’m going to need your name, though.’

‘My name?’

‘And a few other details,’ she said, grinning from ear to ear.

Oh, she was good. He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Daniel Westlake. And you already know I’m in the village because my car broke down and I’m waiting for Ted to get the part he needs and then fit it.’

‘And where are you staying while you’re here?’

‘At the little B&B on the other side of the village. Sheila Somersby’s place?’

‘I know it. Sheila has a lovely place.’ And apparently deciding he was harmless, she finished with, ‘Well, Daniel Westlake, it’s been lovely to meet you. Enjoy your visit at The Clock House. I’m Trudie McTravers. It’s a small place, so no doubt we’ll run into each other again.’

‘Don’t forget to stretch and cool-down properly before you leave the green.’

She smiled and in a flurry of pink and red, jogged back across the green.

Daniel walked towards The Clock House and bypassing hopping over the wall, opted for the perfectly accessible gated entrance. Three strides across the gravel and he was poking his head inside the front doors.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he muttered as he stepped across the threshold into the large foyer that was so much more grand than he had been expecting.

He turned in a circle, blowing out a long whistle when he saw the beautiful sweeping staircase which curved up to the next floor. The stick balusters were painted in thick creamy gloss, and the handrail and stair-treads had been left in their original dark wood, though stained with a clear protective varnish. All the walls were painted in a watery green, right up to the cornicing, which was painted in simple white.

Daniel couldn’t believe the owner, this Old Man Isaac fellow, had let the village use such a stately place for meetings and what-not. Or that the villagers had kept it so lovingly maintained. Said something about the people of Whispers Wood, didn’t it?

As he crossed the parquet floor he wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a house like this one. He’d spent most of his childhood in a crowded semi in Stevenage with his mum, his aunt and uncle, and their two kids, because his father was away such a lot. It hadn’t been a bad upbringing, but he’d rather have been on the road with his dad. At least in those early years, Daniel reflected, before automatically shutting his thoughts down.

Taken with the welcoming ambience, he stole up the staircase to explore, forgetting he was supposed to be looking out for a glimpse of his ‘wonder woman’.

He guessed once upon a time the rooms on the second floor would have been one-room deep, in keeping with the traditional Georgian layout. Reaching out, he knocked against one of the walls in the same way he’d seen the woman with all the scarves do in that property programme – and concluded that most of the walls were partition. If it was up to him he’d keep some of them divided and open some out.

To use as what, though?

And that’s when it hit him.

If it was him he’d open this place up as office space… conference facilities… something that would bring people who worked in isolation together.

Within minutes, the creative side of his brain, held in check for far too long, was firing like a Nerf gun at a seven-year-olds birthday party. Inspiration flexed back to life like an old and wasted muscle and as he continued his tour he focused on the fact that the place was for sale and how he needed something to do.

What would it be like to get to come to work in a space like this every day?

Hadn’t he been looking for a fresh start?

Maybe Monroe breaking down was fate. Daniel came to a sudden halt halfway back down the stairs to the ground floor. He wasn’t sure he believed in fate. Believing in fate would surely render the last year as being unavoidable and Daniel couldn’t accept that. He was too certain that if he’d been paying proper attention – been looking at the whole picture – he would have spotted what Hugo had been up to earlier.

By the time he’d made it back down to the foyer Daniel had all but totally convinced himself that one weird flight of fancy was allowed after everything that had happened lately. To truly consider buying this place when he already had one failed business under his belt was career suicide.

Except… he couldn’t imagine working for someone else. Couldn’t think how to transition from accountancy to anything else without having to explain this whole sorry year and as soon as anyone discovered what had happened at West and Westlake, it wouldn’t matter that he was the innocent party. He’d be considered a risk.

Trudie McTravers had said the village used this place for functions. All he’d be doing, if he bought it, would be guaranteeing that even more people could use it. He remembered all those fruitless hours searching for affordable business premises when he and Hugo had located to London. For the first eight months, they’d had to run West and Westlake from a combination of Hugo’s front room and the Starbucks down the road.

There must be people in the surrounding villages who worked from home. Sole business owners having to ask their kids to keep the noise down because they were working. Or people trying to find a place to hold a meeting. Setting up this place as a pop-up and pop-in work premises would make the perfect small business.

A business where the only faith he’d have to have would be in himself.

He wandered into a room with a small kitchenette, thinking that he was crazy.

A business like he was thinking of wasn’t about numbers. It wasn’t accountancy.

It was… sexier.

More appealing.

But who swapped numbers, facts and assurances for a creative small business that would depend on getting people in to turn a profit?

Straight-down-the-line Daniel Westlake certainly wouldn’t. Would he?

Shoving a hand through his nut brown hair in frustration, he sighed. He probably couldn’t afford it anyway.

There was something about this place, though. He’d only been in it for a few moments.

Only been in the village for a handful more.

Crazy.

Yet he had his phone in his hand with half a mind to check house prices in the area before he realised that it was actually ringing.

‘Hello?’ he said, answering the call, grateful for the interruption because there was working out what to do next business-wise and there was getting completely carried away without doing a shred of research into a field he knew nothing about.

‘Mr Westlake? It’s Ted… said I’d ring you when–’

Daniel couldn’t hear a thing over the music playing in the background. ‘Sorry? What? I can’t hear you.’

‘…I just wanted to let you know that it’s going to take a few more days to fit it.’

‘So, what exactly was the problem with her, then?’ Daniel shouted. ‘Sorry – can you turn the music down your end? I can’t make out – oomph–’

Daniel felt a sudden impact against his back.

‘What the–’ he stopped mid-sentence because then there was softness pressed up against him.

Instinctively he turned, his arms coming protectively out and around the warmth that had ploughed into him.

The fall was so unexpected he didn’t have time to twist and soften the other person’s landing.

His breath whooshed out of him as he landed and then didn’t quite make it all the way back into his lungs because that was when he registered that the person on the hard parquet floor with him, was her.

Outstanding!

Because falling on her was so much better than falling down in front of her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he finally managed, growing concerned when she didn’t move or make any kind of sound as she lay under him. ‘Hey?’ he whispered, leaning forward to check for signs of life, his heart speeding up when she didn’t respond. ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ he repeated, each word getting a little louder and more panicky when she continued to lie silent under him.

His hand came out to gently sweep across her cheekbone and without giving him any time to prepare, her huge, sparkling brown eyes suddenly flashed open to stare up at him.

Daniel swallowed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen such big, such beautiful, such emotive brown eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure.’ She lifted a hand to the back of her head and groaned. ‘I think I might be dead.’ She blinked a couple of times and then frowned. ‘Although I have to say it’s a huge surprise if I am – I mean, I always thought there’d be harp music or bells in heaven… I definitely didn’t figure on The Big Man being a Justin Bieber fan.’

Chapter 8
The Whirling Dervish in the Wild Wellies
Daniel

‘A “what” fan?’ Daniel asked, unsure she was making sense. Maybe he’d really hurt her when he’d landed on top of her.

‘You can’t hear music?’ she asked, wincing slightly as she moved her head to the side, as if to check she could hear properly.

Over the sound of his thumping heart, Daniel suddenly registered a voice singing the words, ‘Is It Too Late For Me To Say Sorry Now’, and in a smooth, and let’s face it, basic accountancy move, put two and two together. ‘Oh, hell. The music you can hear is coming from my phone. Hold tight,’ he said and with one hand anchoring her to him, he reached out to grab the phone that had fallen from his hand when they’d hit the ground. ‘Ted? I’m sorry, I’m going to have to call you back, okay?’ and without waiting for a reply, he ended the call.

‘So, I’m not in heaven, then?’ she asked.

‘I hope that’s not too disappointing for you.’

An almost sorrowful expression that he couldn’t hope to decipher the meaning behind flitted briefly into her eyes before she chased it away with a determined, ‘Nah, I’m a glass half-full kind of gal.’

He smiled and wondered how long he could leave it before mentioning her long legs clamped around his hips.

Giving in to the urge to touch her again, he reached out and repeated the stroke of his thumb gently across her cheekbone. Her skin was like velvet and was it his imagination or did she tremble under him? ‘So.’ He blew out a soft breath. ‘You’re really real.’

‘As opposed to…?’

‘I’ve been wondering if you were a ghost,’ he admitted.

She looked intrigued. ‘Are we talking about the “Don’t Cross the Streams” kind, or the standing behind a pottery wheel, kind?’

‘The second one, I think,’ he answered.

She nodded. ‘Right, because who doesn’t love clay?’ And then that same haunting expression of earlier came back before she closed her eyes briefly, as if to smother it. When her eyelids fluttered open again, she said quietly, ‘It’s this place. It’ll do that to you. Bring back ghosts.’

He wondered what ghosts she’d been running from when she’d hurled herself through the open door and into him and he wanted to lift the heaviness from her words. ‘Ah, but when I first saw you, you weren’t in here.’

‘I wasn’t? Where did you first see me, then?’ Her expression took on an exaggerated thoughtful pose before she suddenly snapped her fingers, ‘Oh wait… was it… in your dreams?’

A laugh rumbled out of him. ‘You never say what’s expected, do you?’

‘And you do, I suppose?’

‘Plus, you have really weird hair,’ he replied, without missing a beat.

She sniffed. ‘I’ll have you know that my current deconstructed/reconstructed Amy Winehouse do is all the rage. At least, it will be for prom,’ she added, as if that explained everything.

It really didn’t, but being as he was lying on the floor in a building he’d just decided to buy, with a girl averse to talking in normal sentences, he was so far past surreal it would be silly to care.

Hell, maybe the knock had rendered him unconscious and he was the one hallucinating. As if to double-check the woman lying under him was indeed really real, he stared back down at her. That was when he noticed the tear tracks.

‘You’ve been crying,’ he accused.

The fun that had come back into her eyes left again.

‘Hey, your hair isn’t that bad,’ he added, trying to soften his claim about her crying.

Her full lips twitched. ‘It really is, but it was made with love, so I had to go with it. Are you going to let me up, then?’

‘Thinking about it,’ he replied, trying to come up with an excuse that meant he didn’t have to. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’

She gave him a look that said, not entirely, which he took as encouragement.

Fine by him to stay on the floor with her.

‘So are you going to tell me why you’ve been crying?’ he prodded, wanting to know what it was that had sent her whirling into his arms.

Immediately the shields came up. He shouldn’t have pressed it. He felt bad for landing on top of her, though – wanted to make sure he hadn’t put some of the sting in her eyes.

‘It’s fine. I’m fine,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘Let me up, will you?’

‘Or, we could do the Snow Patrol thing and let me lie with you and just forget the world.’

‘So tempting. And yet…’ This time there was a note of steel in her voice that had him holding his hands up in surrender.

‘Okay, letting you up now… Although I feel obliged to mention, that in order for me to let you up, you’re going to have to unwrap those gorgeous long legs of yours from around me first.’

For a second, she looked like she didn’t really want to and he really liked how that made him feel, so much so that when, a few moments later, he felt her legs loosen their hold around him, disappointment punched him in the gut.

Rising to his feet, he pulled her with him.

‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’ he asked. ‘No wooziness? No sprains? No serious damage done?’

She smoothed her hands over her torso and then down her long, long legs, making him completely lose his train of thought. ‘I think I’m good. You okay?’

‘Me? Oh, I’ll live. Had a perfect landing, didn’t I?’

‘I guess it’s not every day you get taken down by a whirling dervish in wild wellies. Sorry about that, by the way.’

‘Apology most definitely accepted. Daniel,’ he said, by way of introduction, taking her hand to make a formal handshake.

‘Daniel,’ she said, as if testing out the feel of his name on her tongue. She shook his hand firmly and then, with a tip of her head, queried, ‘Not Dan? Danny?’

Daniel went from being super-aware of the sound of his name on her lips to being on the back foot. He never went by Dan and certainly never Danny. Danny Westlake was his father. ‘Just Daniel,’ he reiterated, waiting to see what she made of that.

She hesitated, as if she could tell there was a story behind his insistence, and then seemed to accept that it wasn’t her right to know that story. It only made him like her more.

‘Okay, Just Daniel. I’m Kate.’

‘As in, Kiss me, Kate?’ he rallied, determined to settle his heart-rate back to a more normal rhythm. Unless he had the worst luck in the world and Kate was a racing-car fan, he doubted she’d have put the name Danny and the name Westlake together and come to a confirmation that meant their budding acquaintance was over before it had really begun.

‘As in, just Kate,’ she answered, although he could swear she was holding back a smile.

‘So, Just Kate, are you the owner of this beautiful building?’

‘I am. Well, what I mean is that I’m going to be.’

‘You’re interested in buying it?’ He tried to hide the disappointment, worried he could feel so let down at the news when he’d only been in the building less than thirty minutes.

‘I’m going to buy it,’ she said, with complete confidence.

She couldn’t be more than mid-to-late twenties. He wasn’t much older than that. His gaze slid over her attire. She didn’t look like the horse-and-hound set, who came from money, were schooled privately and then lived in Chelsea for a few years before moving back home to add to the country pile, so how could she possibly afford it?

‘Sounds like you have some sort of special advantage,’ he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘I guess you’d call it a home advantage.’

Daniel frowned. ‘Is that what the current owner is looking for? Someone who knows the area? I’d have thought they’d be more interested making as much money from the sale as possible.’

She shook her head. ‘The owner of this particular building isn’t like that. At least, I’m banking on that being the case,’ she admitted.

So maybe she didn’t have the funds and was getting a little ahead of herself? Daniel let the prospect sink in. If the owner wasn’t looking for top market value – just wanted to get shot of the property as quickly as possible, he was probably still in with a chance of buying it himself. His inner-sensible did a double-take. Buying a building because someone else was implying he couldn’t was even crazier than wanting to buy it in the first place. ‘Maybe the owners are more interested in someone being able to make something of this place,’ he said, almost to himself as excitement in his business idea notched up a gear.

‘That’s what I intend to do. Make something of it, I mean,’ Kate declared, sliding her hands into the frayed pockets of her exquisitely short shorts.

She looked so wonderfully brave and naively defiant standing in front of him that he found a grin starting at the corners of his mouth and spreading.

‘Well, this is going to make life interesting,’ he told her, ‘because so do I.’

Her jaw dropped open. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I intend to make something of this place too. Soon as I walked in, I knew,’ he said, making himself ignore the shock streaking naked through her eyes. Telling himself that business was business and if he’d been more assertive with West and Westlake then he might have stopped everything from turning out like it had. ‘This place is perfect.’

‘Perfect for what?’

‘For me.’

‘For you? You’re seriously interested in buying The Clock House?’

‘I’m seriously intending to buy The Clock House.’

‘But you can’t,’ she spluttered.

‘Why not?’

‘Because…’

‘Because?’ For a moment he was worried those lovely chocolate brown orbs were going to fill with water and he’d be lost, but after a few seconds a fire sparked the amber flecks reminding him of a phoenix bursting into life again.

‘Because I know the owner. And I know he’ll sell to me.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ she answered.

‘You’re convinced then that you can get together the capital needed to buy a place of this size?’

She smiled.

No, grinned.

Like a Cheshire cat.

And he should not find that sexy!

He began to revisit his theory that she was some sort of multi-millionairess. Maybe this is what she did – went about playing at businesses, trying to find one that took her fancy. Well, not this time, sweetheart, he thought, as resolve settled in his guts.

‘You should probably start looking at other properties,’ she said, her tone consoling.

‘But I like this one.’

‘I’m quite sure that there are other fabulous properties all over the country.’

‘And I wish you luck in finding one,’ he said, grinning.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You know, it occurs to me we haven’t bumped into each other before today. Exactly how long have you lived in Whispers Wood?’

His grin slipped a little. ‘Technically, I guess it would be fair to say I don’t actually live here.’

‘Really? Well, good luck. I hope you know how to deal with disappointment.’

‘Disappointment’s not something I’ve really had to get used to in life,’ Daniel lied as the last year flashed before him in ego-smashing 4-D detail. ‘Disappointment’ didn’t even begin to cover this last year… and yet he’d come out the other side eventually, hadn’t he? And now he felt the fight lift him. ‘So, I certainly hope you won’t be too upset with me when I buy this place.’

‘You’re really that sure that you will?’

‘You’re really that sure that you will?’ he countered.

Again, that super-sexy smile transformed her face, making her button-brown eyes sparkle with delight.

‘I guess this is “Game-On”?’

‘I guess it is,’ she said. She moved towards the front doors, almost as if she knew he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to watch those hypnotic hips swaying as she walked out on him.

When she turned and found him staring she gave him a cheeky smile. ‘Oh, in case I forgot to say it already, welcome to Whispers Wood.’

Daniel tipped his head in a thank you, his eyes glued to her as she turned and walked out of The Clock House. He stared after her for a couple of seconds after the door shut and then, with a shake of his head and a huge smile on his face, he got out his phone and punched in the number on the front of the For Sale sign. He hadn’t felt this upbeat and optimistic about things in ages. When he got through to the independent estate agents he was told that if he wanted to discuss terms they would be happy to make an appointment for him with the owner.

It was a little strange, but he actually liked the idea of taking a business meeting for the first time in a year. At least this one would be about new beginnings instead of wrapping things up.

He was about to leave the room when he saw something glinting on the floor, where he and Kate had tumbled to the ground.

Walking over, he picked up the necklace, and intrigued, opened the locket dangling from the chain.

On one side was a watch. The screen had a huge crack running right through the centre of it and he was only just able to work out that the time had stopped at 1:23pm.

Well, damn.

He felt awful that he’d obviously broken her watch as he’d fallen on top of her.

He frowned as his gaze fell on the photo on the opposite side of the watch.

It was a photo of a man and little girl, arms wrapped around each other and staring up at the camera laughing.

Well, double damn.

He could have sworn there’d been some chemistry between him and Kate. But thinking about it, she hadn’t said anything overly flirty at all. All the smiling had been about buying this property.

God, his instincts really were shot to hell.

Chapter 9
Letting the Cat Out of the Bag
Juliet

‘Exactly how long are you going to leave it before you tell Kate why you put the idea into her head with all those postcards?’

‘Mum, please.’ Juliet fished out the teabag from her Cath Kidston ‘Garden Birds’ mug and stuck the teaspoon into the hedgehog mug with slightly too much vigour. As the teabag split, she swore softly under her breath, poured the whole lot down the kitchen sink and stuck the kettle back on to boil. ‘I appreciate your concern, but I have to do this in my own way, and in my own time.’

‘You wait much longer and you’re going to lose that offer from the bank.’

‘So then I’ll go and get another one,’ she said, moving to open the fridge for the milk and staring inside at the contents, kind of hoping her eyes would light upon a jar labelled ‘patience’.

She loved her mum, she really did. They had a wonderful relationship, especially considering they worked together every day. But some days… The days where her mum was usually right… They were sometimes the hardest.

Juliet was super-aware that time was running out on the loan offer she had from the bank and she wasn’t exactly confident she’d be able to get another if this one expired, but now that Kate was actually home? Well, it felt only fair to give her at least a couple of seconds to adjust to being back.

Setting down a fresh mug of tea in front of her mum, she joined her at the small kitchen table. ‘Kate and I are going to talk tonight. I promise.’

‘Good stuff. And I’m sorry. I know you’re not the sort to intentionally keep secrets, so I know you’ll get around to telling her.’

Juliet’s mouthful of tea hit her windpipe at completely the wrong angle and splurted back out of her mouth. As she tried to drag in air, Cheryl jumped up to grab a couple of pieces of kitchen roll for her.

Head down, unable to look her mother in the eye, she took the proffered kitchen roll and set about mopping up. When her mum remained silent as she sat back down again, Juliet wondered if maybe she did know her daughter’s dirtiest secret, but out of motherly love, chose to keep quiet.

‘I’m trying to think about everyone,’ her mum said as Juliet took another careful sip of tea, grateful when it went down the right way. ‘I don’t like keeping this from Sheila. It should come from Kate, anyway, even with everything they need to work through and, well – I don’t want you getting caught in the middle and getting hurt.’

‘I know.’ Juliet laid a hand over her mum’s and squeezed it gently before returning it to her mug. ‘But I really think Kate wouldn’t have come back to stay if she hadn’t thought carefully about what that would mean. I know she’s impulsive but she’s never ridden roughshod over people’s feelings.’

‘True,’ Cheryl agreed and then added almost to herself, ‘if anything, everyone has tended to ride roughshod over hers. Or ignore them entirely.’ There was a small sigh and then Juliet felt her mum studying her carefully. ‘You really think Old Man Isaac is going to go for all of this?’

‘Of course,’ Juliet answered, determined to keep the faith. ‘It’s a brilliant idea and who else is going to buy the place?’

At the sound of the front door slamming, Juliet looked automatically at the kitchen door, where Kate appeared. From her breathing and the glow about her, she looked as if she’d run all the way back from The Clock House.

‘Okay,’ Kate asked them, ‘so who on earth is the guy who arrived in the village, like, three seconds ago?’

Juliet looked at her mum, who looked at Kate and said with a mystified expression, ‘You’re going to have to be more specific.’

‘Mr Tall Dark and Handsome,’ Kate said, staring at both of them. When neither Juliet nor her mum said anything, she added, ‘Mr I’m All Done Working-Out So Now I’m Just Chilling Until Marvel Films Call.’

‘Do you know who she’s talking about?’ Juliet asked, turning to her mum and getting more interested by the second at the look in Kate’s eyes.

‘Nope. Don’t know of any superhero lookalikes around here,’ chimed in Cheryl.

‘That’s it?’ Kate pouted, her face getting redder. ‘What’s happened to this place? A complete stranger waltzes in and none of you thinks to start up the phone-tree? Nobody finds out where he’s staying, assembles the SWAT team, goes in and applies the thumb-screws and switches on the spotlight so that they can watch him sweat as he slowly divulges every credential to his name?’ She stared in askance at both of them and then, in true Kate fashion, a look of determination came into her eyes. ‘Well, somebody has to take responsibility here. Auntie Cheryl, I want you to phone Trudie and find out what she knows. If it’s nothing, I want you to get straight on the phone to Crispin Harlow.’

‘And should I use your exact description…?’ Cheryl asked, with a raised eyebrow.

‘Oh,’ Kate faltered. ‘No. Um, he said his name was Daniel,’ she tacked on helpfully, and Juliet was surprised to see the pink still hanging about on her cousin’s cheeks deepen a shade further.

‘So where did you bump into this Mr TDH? Was it at,’ Juliet mouthed her last words, ‘The Clock House?’ even though her mum’s back was turned as she grabbed her bag to look for her phone.

Cheryl opened the kitchen back door and stepped outside, presumably for peace and quiet when she delivered the gossip to Trudie that her niece hadn’t even been back a week and had already quite possibly lost the plot.

Kate nodded. ‘He was standing in the open doorway, presumably waiting for someone to walk into him. I mean who does that?’

Juliet had to hide her smile when Kate belatedly looked around, realised she was standing right in the doorway and moved to take her mum’s place at the kitchen table.

‘I didn’t stand a chance,’ Kate continued. ‘There I was, wandering back in through the garden doors at a completely leisurely pace when I, well, I ran right into him. You’d think he’d have had the good sense to remain upright, because it isn’t as if he isn’t well-built – but no – instead he tries to do the hero thing and reach out to help me and instead we both fall to the ground.’

‘Wow. You called him Mr Tall Dark and Handsome,’ Juliet said, grinning delightedly. ‘You said he was well-built. You’re all… breathy and flushed.’

Kate grimaced. ‘Yes, well, it’s unusually hot for the middle of May.’

‘You think he’s gorgeous,’ Juliet sing-songed. ‘You want to date him… you want to hug him… you want to kiss him… you want to marry him.’

‘Oh my God, thank you, Gracie Hart, can you bring Juliet back now,’ Kate pleaded with a roll of her huge brown eyes.

‘Sorry, not sorry,’ Juliet shot back, laughing and trying to remember if she had ever seen Kate so flustered about a man. She’d occasionally talked about Marco in her emails, but only lightly. In fact, so lightly that by the time Juliet had realised she’d stopped mentioning him altogether, so much time had passed that Juliet hadn’t wanted to open up any wounds by asking what had happened. ‘So what was this guy doing at The Clock House, and how did it go when you got there?’ Juliet’s hand snuck under the table to tightly cross her fingers.

‘He–’

‘Right,’ Cheryl said, coming back into the kitchen, and cutting Kate off, ‘Trudie couldn’t actually remember this Daniel’s last name.’

Kate threw her hands dramatically up into the air. ‘Fabulous. How am I supposed to Google him now?’

‘Why do we need to Google him?’ Juliet asked.

‘So, if I could finish…?’ Cheryl said, nodding her head when Kate and Juliet turned to look at her. ‘She can’t remember his last name, but if you had actually gone to visit your mum like you said you were going to, you could have found out everything you needed to know for yourself because this Daniel chap is staying with her as a guest while waiting for his car to be repaired.’

Kate’s eyes widened to saucers. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, ‘he’s infiltrated enemy camp already. Oh, this is not good. Not good at all.’

‘Okay,’ Juliet interrupted calmly. ‘Let’s suppose both Mum’s and my Kate-interpreting skills are a little rusty. Start at the beginning. You went to The Clock House and…?’

Kate took a couple of calming breaths. ‘Sorry. And sorry, Aunt Cheryl – I know I said I was going to see Mum, but I–’ she dragged in another calming breath, ‘I went to The Clock House instead. I haven’t been back there since,’ she swallowed and Juliet’s heart broke at the bleak light that had crept into her cousin’s eyes. ‘I haven’t been able to go back there since Bea died and so, well, that’s where I went. At first the memories where overwhelming but, then it was almost as if it knew what I could handle, you know?’ she looked up at both Juliet and Cheryl for confirmation and all Juliet could do was smile gently back. ‘Anyway, it was good. Great actually…’

Juliet’s heart leaped.

‘…I mean there was a middle bit where it wasn’t,’ Kate continued. ‘Where I started thinking I can’t do this. I can’t be here. And I definitely can’t follow old dreams and open the place back up as a business. And I was thinking how on earth am I going to tell you, Juliet?’

Juliet felt Kate looking at her and hoped she couldn’t see the blood draining from her face. Kate was the strongest person she knew and she really thought that tempting her into coming back was the right thing to do. But the angst in her voice, the fine tremble in the hands she’d clasped together in front of her…

‘But then,’ Kate continued, ‘I walked out into the courtyard and through the moon-gate – and I saw Bea’s bees. They are Bea’s, aren’t they?’

Juliet nodded.

‘Are you looking after them?’ Kate asked her.

Juliet shook her head and tried to find her voice. The pretty little beehives that had stood in the meadow backing onto The Clock House remained because of one person. And darn it – why did she always lose the ability to speak when it came to him?

‘Is it–’ Kate looked from Juliet to Cheryl, ‘Is it Oscar that’s looking after them?’

Juliet felt the weight of her mother’s stare, despite it being so gentle. Oh, good grief, she knew.

‘It is, Oscar, yes,’ Cheryl said.

Juliet watched Kate’s eyes close as if to absorb what that meant and her hand snuck under the table again, this time to pick nervously at the hem of her dress.

‘Okay, well, that’s good,’ Kate eventually whispered, shaking her head a little, presumably to put the unshed tears back in their place. ‘It’s good to think of them being looked after. Bea loved them so.’

Juliet couldn’t bear it. Getting up from the table, she said, ‘It’s got to be wine o’clock somewhere in the world, right?’

Kate sniffed. ‘Don’t bother on my account. I’m okay. It was just a shock to see them, that’s all. But, oh – I haven’t even told you… It was seeing the bees that made me think everything might be okay after all.’

‘It was?’ Juliet felt those little wings of hope flutter inside her chest.

‘Yes. I don’t know if Bea ever told anyone, but she came up with all these wonderful recipes for using honey in her organic beauty treatments. That’s why she kept the bees.’

‘That hair conditioner she used to make,’ Cheryl murmured. ‘She was always telling me there was a secret ingredient. Must have been the honey.’

‘It was,’ Kate admitted. ‘And when I saw the bees it reminded me about how she went to see Old Man Isaac to ask him if she could site them there and how he was so kind to her. After seeing them, all I could think was that I wanted to use Bea’s honey. I want to open the day spa. I have to do it. Somehow. Which brings me to the teeny-tiny thorny problem…’

‘Whatever it is, I’m sure we can fix it,’ Juliet immediately said. ‘I’ll help.’

‘You have no idea how much I love you for saying that,’ Kate replied. ‘It’s this Daniel… he wants to buy it!’

‘Buy what? Bea’s bees? The honey?’

‘No. He wants to buy The Clock House.’

‘But whatever for?’ Juliet asked, feeling all her plans slip away.

‘Not sure. Can’t let him get it, though. I need to phone Old Man Isaac and organise a meeting, or do you think it would be more professional to go through the estate agent? No. Business is all about using your contacts, right?’

Juliet’s mum stood up. ‘I think I’ll love you and leave you both. You have a lot to talk over together.’

Juliet winced. She would have to be blind and in another room not to pick up on her mum’s pointed comment.

As Cheryl went to leave she put a reassuring hand over Kate’s. ‘I’m so happy for you, lovey. You’ve done all your firsts now. I think you’ve picked a lovely reason to stay. And I know your mum will want to hear about this. But when you’re ready, okay?’

Kate quickly wiped a tear away. ‘You really think she’ll be okay with me being back? I don’t want to hurt her – make it worse for her.’

‘Give it time. You have that if you’re back now. I know it’s easier on you not to expect anything. But she is trying. Truly. Juliet, if you need to go to any business meetings with Kate phone me early enough that I can shuffle my day around and fit your clients in.’

‘Um, thanks, Mum.’

‘Thanks, Auntie Cheryl,’ Kate smiled up at her and then Juliet felt her turn her attention to her. ‘And thank you, Juliet. If you hadn’t sent me those postcards…’ and then, as if what Juliet’s mum had just said had filtered through, she frowned and then laughed, ‘I appreciate your support, but you certainly don’t have to come to any meeting with me.’

‘Actually,’ Juliet said, clearing her throat, ‘about that…’

Chapter 10
And the Cats Just Keep on Coming…
Juliet

‘Juliet?’ Kate asked, the moment her mum had left the cottage. ‘What was your mum going on about? Why would you want to be in on a meeting about buying The Clock House?’

Juliet let out a breath and wondered how on earth to explain, without having to really, you know, explain.

‘Sod it,’ she muttered and got up to search for that bottle of Dutch courage. She pulled an opened bottle of white wine out of the fridge, but it was when she went to pull the cork out with her teeth that she realised Kate was staring at her with a mystified expression on her face.

‘Is the alcohol for celebrating with or commiserating with?’

‘Can it be both and still be okay?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kate said carefully. ‘Have I got this all wrong? Did you not send me those postcards because you wanted me to come home and buy The Clock House?’

‘No, you haven’t got that wrong,’ she answered and with a sigh stuck the cork back in the bottle because maybe it would be better to save the alcohol for Kate’s reaction, rather than being half-sozzled before she’d even finished explaining.

‘Okay,’ Kate said warily. ‘I know it must have been hard not telling anyone about the money and where it came from,’ she waited a heartbeat and then added, ‘you haven’t, have you?’

‘No. I kept your secret.’ It hadn’t been that difficult. Telling anyone would have just made them hurt for what could now never be changed.

‘Thank you. You’re mum must be wondering what the hell is going on, though, and worrying. I mean, me suddenly talking about how I could afford to buy that building and open up a business in it.’

‘Actually, she probably doesn’t,’ Juliet admitted. ‘And that’s probably on account of her thinking that I’m going to be buying it with you.’

‘Buying it with–’

Juliet heard her kitchen chair being scraped back from the table as Kate hopped up. ‘Did I just hear you right?’

Juliet nodded and pulled the cork out of the bottle of wine again.

‘Wait,’ Kate stopped her. ‘You’re serious, serious?’

‘Serious, serious. Fancy that wine, now?’

‘Forget the wine, have you got any honey lying around? I’ll make us both a couple of honey martinis while you tell me why on earth your mum thinks you want to buy The Clock House?’

‘Honey martinis? I haven’t had one of those since…’ Juliet shut her mouth when she remembered it had been after Bea’s funeral. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any vodka.’

‘We’ll do it gin-based, then. You still have that bottle sitting on your bookshelf in the lounge, gathering dust?’

‘Yep.’

‘So go get it and start explaining.’

‘Okay,’ Juliet wandered out into the lounge, throwing a, ‘It’s all because of the cats,’ over her shoulder.

In the lounge she reached up to the top shelf of the bookshelf and grabbed a hold of Gordon. One of her Musketeer cats, Porthos, stretched lazily on the sofa beside her as if he knew that sooner or later he’d be talked about.

‘Well, of course it’s because of the cats,’ Kate said, as if the statement made total sense to her, when Juliet walked back into the kitchen with the bottle. ‘Continue,’ she said, taking the gin from her and then moving to the small workspace area to set out the rest of the ingredients. ‘Or is the deal with the cats big enough that you need the alcohol first?’

‘I can probably survive, but only if you hurry. So the thing with the cats…’ Juliet replied hovering over Kate’s shoulder. ‘I overheard Gloria Pavey–’

‘Gloria Pavey is a complete bitch and no one should pay any heed to whatever she says. Ever. Wait – she is still a bitch, right? Please tell me she hasn’t morphed into a national treasure and I’m going to have to feel guilty for every horrible thing I ever said about her?’

‘Oh rest assured, she hasn’t changed one little bit. Well, actually, now that she’s become the ultimate cliché, she’s worse.’

‘The ultimate cliché? Do tell.’

‘Her hubby went off with a younger model,’ Juliet explained, pushing aside the guilt for gossiping.

‘No! After all the work she had done to make sure that wouldn’t happen.’

‘I know. But it turns out that instead of having her boobs done she should, in fact, have had them reduced and had a completely different part retrofitted instead.’

‘Retrofitted?’

‘The younger model is an actual model… called Bobby. As in short for Robert.’

‘Bobby? Truly? Bob Pavey has left Gloria for another guy… A guy called Bobby?’

‘You forgot the male model part.’

‘The Bobsters… Bob and Bobby Pavey,’ Kate tried the names out and Juliet watched her computing the hugeness of the gossip that had been delivered. ‘God, it must be killing Gloria that she made Bob take her name when they got married.’

‘I know. And you can hardly blame her for being bitter and twisted now.’

‘You’re right. That’s, wow, a lot. I mean, Gloria’s always done the competition thing with just about everyone she comes into contact with, but competing for your husband’s affection against another man? How is she still even adulting?’

‘She’s not, really. And that’s why we’ve all been cutting her a little slack.’

‘Oh my God, I just thought – this must mean I’m officially no longer the only screw-up in the village.’

‘You’ve never been thought of as a screw-up and anyway…’ Juliet added, because if she didn’t get the words out soon she would definitely be too drunk to filter what she was saying.

‘Sorry – yes – so what did Gloria do?’ Kate asked as she took a lemon from the fruit bowl and cut it in half.

‘It sounds so silly now,’ Juliet murmured.

‘It’s not silly if it hurt you. Come on, out with it.’

‘Okay. So. I overheard her declaring me the ‘Girl Most Likely To Become Whispers Wood Official Crazy Cat Lady’.’

There. She’d said it. And with that she opened a drawer to search for the honey drizzler stick thing she was sure she owned.

‘What?’ Kate said, spying it in the drawer and fishing it out for her and then brandishing it like a sword. ‘Is she still living in that converted barn? I am going to track her down and pull her hair and kick her shins and steal her conkers and, hang on, she called you a name?’

‘I know,’ Juliet nodded, squishing half the lemon juice into the cocktail shaker. ‘It’s pathetic. I shouldn’t have let it get to me. Except. Well, Kate, do you know how many cats I have now?’

‘One,’ Kate answered loyally, calmly chucking a shot of gin into the shaker and looking at her for confirmation.

Juliet shook her head.

‘Two?’ Kate asked, chucking in another shot of gin.

Juliet shook her head.

‘Right, right,’ Kate added, measuring out one more shot, ‘I saw another one that looked like it doubled for Grumpy Cat.’ She reached for the honey. ‘So, you have three cats, big deal.’

‘Five. I have five cats.’

The honey drizzler that Kate had plunged into the jar of honey paused mid-air. ‘Wow, Juliet… That’s a lot of fur-babies to feed.’

‘I know,’ Juliet agreed, sliding the cocktail shaker under the spoon of honey before the contents could ooze and drip onto the countertop. ‘And I swear the last two found me, I didn’t find them. I’ve officially run out of names. There are only three musketeers, Kate. Four if you count D’Artagnan. And you know how I hate it when things don’t match. Do you know what I ended up calling the last one, the one that could stunt-double for Grumpy Cat?’

‘What?’

‘Catty McCatFace. And now it has a complex–’

‘Because it thinks it’s a boat?’

‘No, because, because other cats probably hear me calling it in at night and probably go all Gloria Pavey on it when I’m not around.’

‘Oh Jules,’ Kate said sympathetically.

If Kate was using her pet name for her, she really was sounding pathetic. Annoyed with herself, she threw open the door of the freezer and tossed a bag of ice onto the countertop. Taking a rolling pin out of the drawer, she smashed the bag and tipped some of the contents into the cocktail shaker, slammed the lid down on top and began to shake it vigorously.

‘So why would buying The Clock House stop you from being the Crazy Cat Lady of Whispers Wood?’ Kate asked, as she stood back to allow Juliet to reach into an overhead cupboard and grab two jam jars.

Juliet stared at the jars. It had taken hours to build up the lace-effect Washi-Tape evenly.

‘Jules?’

‘Having a business to work on will help take my mind off it. Cheers,’ she said, passing one of the jars to Kate and clinking hers against it before taking a huge gulp.

Lemony-honey-alcoholic goodness slipped down Juliet’s throat, making her think she could do this. She could make Kate understand without having to go into soul-despairing detail.

‘You’re going about this the wrong way,’ Kate said after taking another sip. ‘What would take your mind off thinking you’re going to end up old, alone, mad and with a house full of cats, is to find a man.’

Juliet stared hard at her cousin and then nodded at the genius of it all. ‘Yes. Thank you. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.’

Kate winced. ‘I get that pickings are slim around here, but maybe it’s time to try online dating.’

‘You think all my problems will disappear if I do online dating?’

‘I know it’s not easy–’

‘Oh you do, do you?’

‘Okay. I don’t. And I’ve obviously oversimplified. Obviously there’s more to this than the cat thing.’

‘I’ve tried online dating.’

‘Seriously?’

Juliet put down her drink. She’d only had half of it and couldn’t believe the words had popped out like that. ‘It was a disaster.’ A serious disaster. She didn’t think she could ever do it again. She was too shy. Too reserved. Too tentative. Too unattracted to every man bar one…

‘You never wrote to me about this.’

‘You never wrote to me about what happened with Marco.’

Kate stared into her drink. ‘So we’ve been keeping secrets.’

‘Yes. Secrets.’ Juliet felt the familiar weight of hers and, not for the first time, thought that if she could just once shout it out at the top of her lungs, everything would be better.

‘If I tell you about Marco, will you tell me your secret?’ Kate asked.

‘Is it so wrong to want to concentrate on something other than a man?’ she asked, fully prepared now to sulk. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around them, you know. Maybe I want a new challenge in my life.’

‘Okay. Who is he?’

‘What?’

‘Someone’s done a number on you.’

‘No they haven’t.’

‘Rubbish. Some guy has done a number on you and frightened you off all men.’

‘No. He really hasn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.’

Kate’s eyes narrowed. ‘You sound like you’re talking about someone specific.’

‘Nope,’ Juliet answered, shoving more alcohol down her neck.

‘You want to talk about anything else, don’t you?’

‘I really do.’

‘Okay. You have ten minutes.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘Ten minutes to talk about anything else and then we’re going back to this because something’s going on here.’

‘And to think I was thinking of going into business with you!’

‘Business?’

‘Yes. The Clock House. Business. Together. You and me. You running the day spa. Me…’ she took a much-needed sip of her cocktail and then rushed out, ‘and me running a hair salon.’

‘You want to open a hair salon in The Clock House?’

‘Not anymore, I don’t.’ She sniffed. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘This is about the “killing two birds” thing you were talking about earlier this morning? You want to stop being thought of as the Cat Lady and you want to open a hair salon?’

‘Finally. She gets it. So, what do you think?’

Kate took a sip of her drink.

Juliet wasn’t completely surprised to discover she’d already finished hers.

‘I think it’s the most brilliant idea in the world.’

‘You do?’ Juliet let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding. ‘I mean, you really do?’

‘I really do. But Juliet, let’s be serious for a moment. We have zero experience…’

‘That’s not true,’ Juliet defended, suddenly feeling a lot more confident now she hadn’t been laughed out of her own house.

‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘I totally forgot the part where we’ve both had oodles of manis and pedis and the part where we’ve both had our hair cut.’

‘Exactly. Plus, what with your business degree and me actually being a hairdresser…’

Kate smiled. ‘Oh yeah. This calls for more honey martinis.’ She grabbed the shaker out of the sink and pulled the bottle of gin towards her. ‘So, we’re really about to think about doing this?’

‘Seems like. Oh. Wait here. I need to go get my business plan.’

‘You have a business plan?’

‘Of course.’

‘Am I the only one who hasn’t actually done a business plan?’

‘Yes, but that was probably because you needed to be here first and, you know, see if you could, do it.’

‘I guess.’

She left Kate happily hacking the rest of the ice into tiny shards while she raced upstairs to get her laptop and files. Catty McCatface was sitting on the bed and looked up at her when she burst through her bedroom door.

‘What?’ Juliet whispered as she looked at the cat’s permanently dour expression. ‘A girl has to grow up. Move on. Make a life for herself. Find a dream that could actually come true, and work towards that. Oh, you know I’m right,’ she added when the cat merely sniffed and put its head back down on its paws and closed its eyes. Quietly she left her bedroom and jogged back down the stairs.

‘So what’s the other reason you want to buy into The Clock House?’ Kate asked before Juliet had even set the laptop on the kitchen table.

The file Juliet was holding slid to the floor. ‘What happened to me getting ten minutes?’

‘They’ve been and gone and I’m onto my second cocktail of the morning and suddenly I’m thinking something doesn’t add up.’

‘It d-doesn’t?’ she stammered as she dropped to the floor to pick up the file.

‘No. It doesn’t. For starters, what does your mum think?’

‘You know she’s always encouraged me to go it on my own one day. And the timing couldn’t be better,’ she rushed out, blowing a strand of hair out of her face as she rose to her feet.

‘Really? Why is that? And don’t tell me it’s because of cats, because it can’t be.’

‘Well, then let me show you my plan. Let me pitch to you.’

‘Okay, but I get a full Q and A, after.’

‘Fair enough.’ Juliet put down the file, switched on her laptop and then tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘So, as I was saying, mum has always encouraged me to think long-term. You know we’ve always been a team, so in the beginning it felt super-logical to work with her when I qualified. But then I kept working with her because it was easy. Too easy. I find it difficult to…’

‘Push yourself forward?’ Kate inserted.

‘Yes. Push myself forward. Thank you.’ She pulled up some graphics and turned the screen towards Kate. ‘Obviously I didn’t tell the bank manager any of the personal stuff. This is just to help explain to you.’

Kate nodded and then sat forward in her chair, not looking at the screen but looking at Juliet with a serious expression. A completely business-like expression. ‘Juliet, have you thought about how much starting a business is about pushing yourself forward?’

‘I have and… hey, I thought we were going to do the Q and A after.’

‘Okay, Miss Bossy Boots!’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I can’t do this if you’re going to interrupt – and I’ve been practising.’

‘No more interrupting. I promise.’

‘Good. So, you know how much I love doing hair and you know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am. But it’s not enough. Not any more–’ she broke off when she saw the questions enter Kate’s eyes, but to Kate’s credit she kept to her promise and didn’t interrupt.

‘Mum’s not going to want to work forever and I know I could take over her clients. Spend my days doing semi-waves and sets. But I want more than that. I appreciate that this is Whispers Wood and the clientele is somewhat older. But with the right location and the right ambience… which is The Clock House all over if you buy it and open it as a day spa… Well, in a nutshell, I want to be able to rent some space from you. If I open in The Clock House I could attract clients from outside Whispers Wood. I know I could.’

‘I know you could too. That’s not what I’m worried about.’

‘Oh.’ From her earliest memories Juliet had somehow understood she’d always be just on the periphery of the bond Kate and Bea had shared. She fiddled with the corner of the file she’d been clutching. ‘Is it – is it that this was all yours and Bea’s dream? Not the salon part but the spa, and you think to do it with anyone else wouldn’t be right. That she wouldn’t have liked it?’

‘No. No not at all. I’m worried that you’re incredibly polished and professional… and I’m not. I have the idea and that’s it. I need to spend hours working out if this is all properly doable. I guess I’m worried that if it isn’t… there wouldn’t be anything to hold me here.’

‘If you don’t want to take the risk, I need you to know I’m going to do this anyway. That’s how serious I am about this. I have a loan from the bank – it’s not huge, but it would be enough to open a tiny salon in one of the empty shops on the green. It won’t be the same, but this is what I really want.’

‘You see? You’ve spent proper grown-up time coming to this conclusion. I’m pretty sure pebble-tossing didn’t even enter your head as a decision-making process.’

‘But Kate, you have thought about this more than that. All those years you and Bea dreamt about opening up the spa. You haven’t forgotten all of that. You’ve just filed it away in a box marked ‘difficult’. You access all of that thinking and you’ll find you’re already halfway there. And I bet you’ve done some thinking these last few weeks. You just don’t want to admit how much.’

‘Okay. Say you’re right – say I’ve had some… thoughts about what it would be like running my own business. Say I think that having a hair salon along with a day spa would only benefit us both…What happens now?’

‘You phone Old Man Isaac and make an appointment with him.’

‘It’s as simple as that?’

‘I think it has to be. If we keep focusing on how big a thing this is, then we might not follow through. And, Kate? I really want the both of us to follow through on this.’ Juliet knew she had to do something to drag herself out of fantasy-land and into fulfilling-a-lifelong-dream-land.

‘I guess there’s no time like the present,’ Kate said, suddenly standing up so that she could push her hand into her pocket. Out came a folded-up piece of paper. ‘It’s the estate-agent deets. I’ll make the call now.’

Juliet smiled. ‘I’ll get us set up in the lounge, there’s at least another four inches of space in there!’

She could hear Kate on the phone as she set about clearing her sewing machine from the coffee table. They were really going to do this. She hadn’t felt this fluttery, excited feeling since… a pair of sinfully gorgeous green eyes popped into her head and with practised concentration she shooed them away again so that she could focus on the task at hand.

‘I’m all set for visiting Old Man Isaac tomorrow morning at ten,’ Kate told her when she re-entered the kitchen. ‘We’re going to have to work our arses off to prep before then. I need to come up with a solid plan as polished as yours in case he asks what I want to do with the place. Hey, you know what we need?’

‘Another batch of martinis?’

‘Nope. Cake. Can you make one of your famous Victoria sponges? Is that still his favourite? I’ll take it with me when I go tomorrow.’

‘Ooh, good idea.’

‘It’s these kinds of little touches that are going to help win him over.’

‘That and the fact that I’m going to lend you one of my dresses.’

‘No daisy-dukes at the meeting?’

‘You want to impress him with your business prowess, not give him a heart attack.’

Kate tipped some of her remaining honey martini into Juliet’s jam jar and slid it back to her before picking hers up and holding it aloft. ‘To Gloria, then’ she said, making a toast.

‘To Gloria,’ Juliet agreed, holding her jam jar aloft. ‘And all the cats,’ she added, as Catty McCatface made an appearance in the kitchen.

Kate grinned as she looked at him and then started singing, ‘Memory, all alone in the moonlight…’

Juliet tipped the last of the alcohol down her throat and joined in.

Catty McCatface looked derisively at the humans as if to say that the sooner cats developed opposable thumbs, the sooner the human slaves would remember their place.

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