About the Author
RACHEL LOUISE DOVE is a mum of two from Yorkshire. She has always loved writing and has had previous success as a self-published author. Rachel is the winner of the Mills & Boon & Prima Magazine Flirty Fiction competition and won The Writers Bureau Writer of the Year Award in 2016. She is a qualified adult education tutor specialising in child development and autism. In 2018 she founded the Rachel Dove Bursary, giving one working-class writer each year a fully funded place on the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme.
Also by Rachel Dove
The Chic Boutique on Baker Street
The Flower Shop on Foxley Street
The Long Walk Back
The Wedding Shop on Wexley Street
The Fire House on Honeysuckle Street
The Second Chance Hotel
RACHEL DOVE
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © Rachel Dove
Rachel Dove 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008375812
Version: 2020-04-20
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Rachel Dove
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgements
Want more?
Author letter
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
To all the fellow women out there, PCOS warriors
&
to everyone who makes the world a better place, one kind act at a time and never, ever give up
To You
If I was writing this letter under better circumstances, I could have written a much better opening. I’m sitting here on my bunk trying to think of what to say. I don’t even know what to call you. I know we have to be careful. If I could, I would say your name over and over for the rest of my life. How lucky people who see you every day are, for they get to say it willy-nilly.
For you, nothing seems appropriate, or enough, so I decided that You will have to do. My You. My one and only You.
I have the shell you pressed into my hand that night, and I haven’t stopped looking at it. It smells of you, of home, and it makes me feel like my recurring nightmare was just that, and that my real life is still there, at Shady Pines with you.
How long do we have left, till the letters have to stop? I fear the day, yet I know it must come. You must live your life, and I should at least try to start mine. Even with the huge You-shaped hole in my soul. Don’t tell me, not till you have to. While you’re free, let’s pretend, just you and Me.
G
Chapter 1
April Statham sat as close to the steering wheel as she could get, nudging herself and her clapped-out brown Ford Escort along the road, turning slowly into the entrance to the chalet park. Unfortunately, a few seconds earlier, a horse rider had passed, and now his steed was going to the toilet in the middle of the road, leaving a huge steaming pile of horse plop right in the entranceway. April wasn’t really one to believe in signs, but this was kind of hard to miss.
‘Er …’ She wound her window down. ‘Excuse me?’ The horse, and the rider, a thin man whose long features mirrored that of his thoroughbred, dipped their heads to look at her. ‘Could you possibly move your horse? I need to pass.’
The horse snorted loudly. Or was it the rider? Both parties looked equally nonplussed, but the man nodded once and the horse trotted away, leaving his … offerings. April turned the car into the lane, avoiding the pile, and headed for the large wooden hut marked ‘Reception’.
‘Bloody great pile of steaming poo in the entrance, great advert for the place,’ she muttered under her breath, her eyes flicking down to her petrol gauge, which was pointed straight at zero. Past zero, truth be told. She could feel the change in the engine, the car chugging along on petrol fumes. She pulled into the space marked ‘Management’ in between the reception hut and a small chalet. She yanked up the handbrake and turned the key in the ignition to off. She could swear that her car breathed a sigh of relief as the engine cut out. They had made it, her and her little car, all the way from Yorkshire to the tip of the Cornish coast. She sat back in her seat, her limbs and back stiff and wizened, as though she had been tied in a knot somewhere along the A38 and had driven bunched up like a pretzel ever since.
She was just easing the knots out of her neck when a sharp tap on her window made her jump. A woman stood there, her face pinched up tight, her dark hair tied into curling rollers on her head. She was wearing a pink dressing gown and dark green wellies, and looked more than a little crazy, even at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. April wound her window down wearily, plastering a patient smile on
