A Summer Fling (54 page)

The money from her divorce was finally through and a lavish spending spree for cruise clothes did her good. Gordon had been, as expected, hideously uncooperative in their divorce in the beginning. Unexpectedly, it had been Sarah who had convinced him to let go and be reasonable. His first act as a divorcé was to move permanently into his Blegthorpe caravan.

‘What date have they given you for the baby?’ asked Raychel.

‘October the thirty-first,’ sighed Anna. ‘As if it could be anything else. What about you?’

‘Feb fourteenth. As if it could be anything else!’ Raychel grinned back. She felt positively euphoric today because this had been the first day she hadn’t been sick. She hadn’t realized morning sickness lasted all day, but she didn’t really care because she was having the baby she never thought she and Ben would dare to conceive. The Siddalls were a big and sprawling family and loads of them were living in Barnsley. Thanks to Elizabeth’s persuasion, Michael’s twin sister had been willing to provide some DNA to test, once they had assurances they wouldn’t be sued by the CSA, and yes, there was a match. That meant that Raychel was not a child of incest as she had believed all her life. Michael wasn’t exactly perfect dad material, being in prison for armed robbery, but Raychel had no intention of building relationships with strangers. She had all the family she wanted in Elizabeth, John, Ellis, Ben and the women now surrounding her.

‘I’m going to have to have a big reorganization in my department,’ tutted Christie. ‘Everyone will think I’m a boss from hell because my staff are leaving me in droves!’

‘Give over, there’s a queue of applicants to work with you,’ smiled Raychel. ‘And I hope you don’t replace me because I’ll be coming back after my maternity leave. Least I won’t have Malcolm staring as my boobs get bigger and bigger.’

Malcolm was long gone. He’d tried to report Anna for crushing his conkers, but as James McAskill said, with a totally exposed sparkle of
Schadenfreude
, ‘There was no proof.’ Malcolm wasn’t about to leave things there, but there
was proof,
however, that he’d squeezed a young typist’s bum. What her father did to Malcolm made Anna’s knee work to his knackers look like foreplay.

Anna topped up her glass. ‘I think I’m allowed this. The baby won’t object, will he?’ She smoothed her hand over the front of the wedding gown that her husband had designed for her. Underneath it, she was wearing a loose but incredibly sexy pregnancy corset. Vladimir had made it very easily rippable-off at the back.

‘A toast,’ said Christie. ‘To Anna and her new husband and all the lovely babies to come.’

‘And to us,’ added Anna. ‘To women, because we’re bloody marvellous.’

‘To friends,’ said Raychel.

‘Both here and absent ones busy playing guitars,’ added Grace.

They all raised their glasses to each other. Then to the West. To Canada. To the Sun.

A big warm thank you to the following.

To my agent Darley Anderson and his Angels, my editors Suzanne Baboneau and Libby Yevtushenko and my publicist Nigel Stoneman, whom I drive insane on a regular basis, but I appreciate more than I can say.

To my old mucker ‘Super’-intendent Pat Casserly for patiently filling me in on police technicalities and procedures – all mistakes are mine!

To my greetings card buddies – Alec Sillifant, Paul Sear, Fraz Worth and Pete Allwright for support and well-needed chuckles during the ‘Robert de Niro’ weeks. And Freya Halvorsen for her essential music at
myspace.com/freyahalvorsen
which soothes the most savage of beasts (i.e. me, according to the kids!).

To my pals – Cath Marklew, Maggie Birkin, Tracy Harwood, Rae Hobson and Judy Sedgewick – I’m so lucky to have you. And to master photographer and substitute brother Chris Sedgewick at
www.untitledphotography.co.uk
for taking the only pictures of me that don’t make me want to open a vein.

To Mr Gary ‘Jaws’ Tiplady at
www.garytiplady.co.uk
for being a giant in every sense of the word and giving my family such fun Bond memories to treasure – plus a stockpile of material.

To the
Barnsley Chronicle
, the
Yorkshire Post
, the
Sheffield Star,

the
Barnsley Eye
, Sadie Nicholas, and the very dashing Darryl Smith at the
Sunday Post
for the amazing press support. And to the
bellissima
Franca Martella, Gareth Evans and all the BBC Radio Sheffield crew – who are like my family after all this time (you poor buggers!).

To Dr Peter O’Dwyer who knows I’m mental but has always made me feel more like a tortured genius. You’ve been a total brick over the years – love, good luck and much happiness to you.

To Camelia Popescu and Jaiken Struck of Kwintessential for being a brilliant translation service. Thanks to you I can now swear in Romanian as well as seduce any passing vampires. And to the super Heidi Sheeran at TalkbackThames for helping me with film-crew details in record time before little Anna arrived.

To my writer mates, Sue ‘Dalai Lama’ Welfare, Louise Douglas, Tara Hyland, Jane Elmor, Katie Fforde, the world’s best poet James Nash and the beautiful Lucie Whitehouse for not only being my friends but writers that I’m truly in awe of. As are my New Romantic buddies – Lucy Diamond, Sarah Duncan, Matt Dunn, Kate Harrison and JoJo Moyes. Thank you for letting me into your gang
www.thenewromantics.org
. I’m honoured to be in such illustrious company.

To Stu Gibbins who is the best designer of websites I have ever met, but I don’t tell him that in case he puts his prices up. His address is
[email protected]
and he’s a smasher.

To Lynsey Thompson at Toni & Guy because I can’t live without her magic scissors!

To ‘my fellow Gateway Plaza owner’ Martin Brook and Matthew Stephenson of The Brook Group. Richard Ward and Dean Cook of Bapp Industrial Supplies, David Sinclair of the Civic, Jill Craven of the Library, Louise Weigold of the Lamproom Theatre and ‘Mrs Barnsley’ Mel Dyke for being truly supportive Patrons of the Arts in our town. We have so much talent here and thanks to them, people are starting to realize we are more than flat caps and whippets – at long last!

To Emma Bruce and Wayne Smith at Morrisons and Mike Bowket and Celia Chappell at Reedmoor Distribution for giving me the sort of backing that authors usually only dream of.

To my P&O mates, Liz, Elle and Wayne ‘Mr Bump’ Baister, who own the most essential clothes shops on land –
www.bertie.co.uk
– and, at sea, supply me with so many laughs that I could write a book every day in their wonderful company.

To my absolutely wonderful
Come Dine With Me
fellow chefs for the most rock ’n’ roll week I’ve ever spent, Phil Davies, Paul Hoyle, Verene Farrell and Christian Whiteley-Mason. And to the crew lovelies, Natalie Watts, Nicole taylor, Nicola Cornick, Laura Harding, Hugh Lambert, Martyn ‘The Bear’ Brake, Russell Scoltock and Steve Grealey. And to my fabulous florist friend Gail Lawrence. You’ve all given me yet another book to write.

And last, but by no means least, to my family: my lovely mam and dad – Jenny and Terry Hubbard, who are always there for me. And my cheeky, funny, fast-growing sons, Terence and George, who make me smile, drive me nuts and fill up my heart with sunbeams.

I think you’re all ace.

magical new novel

Lara Rickman took a large gulp of coffee and then swallowed hard and fast before she could spit it out. It was as cold as a tub of ice cream in a polar bear’s freezer. How had it cooled so quickly? Surely her PA had only just brought it in for her and the first sip had been piping hot. She checked the clock in the corner of her monitor to find that, in fact, an hour had gone by – sped by at warp speed, as the hours seemed to these days. And not just hours, but days and weeks and months. Had she really been seeing her darling James for three whole months? Had it really been five months since she’d been up to Yorkshire to see her parents, arriving late Christmas Eve, driving back to London early Boxing Day morning on what could only be described as a whistle-stop trip? Had it been nearly two months since she’d last spent proper face-to-face time with her work friends May and Clare? Even then it had been only for a rushed sandwich in the staff restaurant when
their three schedules made a rare crossover, like planets happening to align. They’d eaten so fast it was a wonder that the Benny Hill theme tune hadn’t been playing in the background.

Even though they had all worked for the same company for years, Lara, May and Clare had not met before they gravitated towards each other at a conference a year and a half ago, after ending up in the same discussion group. But then again, Cole and Craw Finance was a massive organization which employed over three thousand people and operated from four adjacent buildings in the City; still in the process of being united into one. The three women were amazed to find that they were all from Yorkshire – Clare from York, May from Leeds and Lara from Barnsley – had all been involved with setting up or trying to rescue businesses, and were all born within six months of each other. Enough common ground to kick-start a fledgling friendship between them. They arranged to meet for lunch occasionally when their busy diaries allowed it. All three of them were hard-working and driven career women, who hadn’t had close female friendships for years. In each other they found a
little of what they had been missing.

Lara was in charge of rescuing ailing businesses or sending them to the brokers’ yard. May was a business advisor who helped set up new companies from scratch and Clare was an accountant for the subsidiary firm Blackwoods and Margoyles, which benefited from being part of the Cole and Craw group yet had an independent set of ruling partners. Blackwoods and Margoyles were renowned experts at trying to turn around businesses teetering on the edge of bankruptcy – the last-chance saloon.

At their last sandwich-sharing, the topic of holidays had arisen and all of them confessed they hadn’t had a proper break for years. So they made a mad and impulsive decision to book time off together and escape to a spa. And there and then, they’d whipped out their diaries, blocked in the time and Lara had volunteered to find them somewhere wonderful, luxurious, relaxing and indulgently expensive. To her shame, she still hadn’t booked it. She had been too busy with either work or her new mad passionate relationship, which was also speeding along at a rate of knots. She was moving in with James that coming weekend. She realized that was fast, but he had been so seductively keen to rush things to the next stage that she hadn’t resisted.

She clapped her hands together. She had ten minutes until she went into her next meeting with a trio of ancient accountants; it promised to be an afternoon of total and utter boredom. Lara had lost her work mojo. She was very good at what she did, in fact too good, and promotion after promotion had elevated her into a career of meetings, conferences and supervising other people doing the nitty-gritty parts of the job that she loved to do herself. Lara was fabulously well-paid for what she did, but she was extremely fed up and overworked.

She checked her make-up in the small magnified mirror she kept in her drawer and wished she hadn’t. Her make-up was fine but the face underneath it looked tired, her once bright hazel eyes were dull with no hint of a sparkle. Oh boy, did she need a holiday. She gave her short blonde wavy hair a primp with her fingers – it didn’t obey combs, never had – and put the mirror away.

She pulled up Google on her screen, whilst taking her Visa card out of her purse, then in the search bar she typed
Superior Cottages
, praying that they still had vacancies. She knew the exact place she wanted to book – she’d seen it recommended in the
Escape From It All
section of a glossy mag she’d read on the train weeks ago. Before the meeting with the Three Stooges she would book the holiday.

First hurdle: the site was down. But at least there was a message informing any would-be customers that one of their operators would be happy to handle their query over the phone. Lara rang the booking line. As luck would have it, a Miss Becky Whiteley answered.

‘Superior Cottages,’ Becky drawled in her automaton greeting. ‘Becky Whiteley speaking. How may I help you?’

‘I want to book a cottage but your website appears to be down,’ said Lara.

‘Yeah, we’re having problems at the moment,’ said Becky. ‘Sorry about that. Can I take your name, please?’

‘Lara. Lara Rickman.’

‘And which of our cottages were you interested in booking and when?’

‘Wren Cottage in Wellem, from August the tenth to August the twentieth.’ A beautiful olde worlde log cabin in the grounds of a manor house which had been converted into a spa and advertised every sort of massage under the sun – foot, neck, elbow, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Bognor Regian, bamboo, hot stone, salt scrubs, hopi candles, being slapped on the back with a cold salmon . . . This place did everything. It had an inside swimming pool the size of Wales, bubbling Jacuzzis, a Michelin-starred restaurant. It was heaven on earth if the hype was to be believed.

It was going to cost them a bomb but they’d all done well for themselves and had earned nice impressive job titles and financial packages to match. They deserved a bit of pamper time. Ten glorious wonderful days of it, to be exact.

‘And please include the luxury welcome hamper,’ requested Lara. ‘It’s one hundred and fifty pounds, I do believe.’

Becky’s concentration levels were middling at the best of times but today – her very last day in this shitty Watford-based holiday agency – they were at rock bottom. She pressed the wrong key and lost the screen. She frantically stabbed at a few more keys, which only made the situation worse and so she reached for a pen and her reporter’s notepad to take down details which she would type up after the call had finished. Visa number, email, address, contact telephone number, holiday dates.