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About the Author

Lucy Dillon grew up in Cumbria and read English at Cambridge, then read a lot of magazines as a press assistant in London, then read other people’s manuscripts as a junior fiction editor. She now lives in a village outside Hereford with her husband and an Otterhound.

Lucy’s books Where the Light Gets In and Unexpected Lessons in Love were both Sunday Times bestsellers. She has also won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Contemporary Romantic Novel prize and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award for A Hundred Pieces of Me and Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts.

You can follow her at her website www.lucydillon.com, on Twitter @lucy_dillon, on Instagram @lucydillonbooks or find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/LucyDillonBooks.

Praise for Lucy Dillon’s previous book, Unexpected Lessons in Love:

‘Real, heartbreaking – I loved it.’ Katie Fforde

‘My heart is smashed and repaired for reading this wonderfully romantic and strong piece of fiction.’ Milly Johnson

‘A heartwarming romantic comedy that tells us to be brave and to listen to our hearts. Suffused with Lucy’s trademark warmth and gentle humour (with a splendid canine supporting cast), it’s sure to win your heart. Irresistible!’ Veronica Henry

‘Such a great “what would you do?” book about love, truth, friendship and of course dogs. Kept me guessing all the way.’ Laura Kemp

‘Brilliantly written and believable, this book is a real class act.’ Fabulous

By Lucy Dillon

Unexpected Lessons In Love

Where the Light Gets In

All I Ever Wanted

One Small Act of Kindness

A Hundred Pieces of Me

The Secret of Happy Ever After

Walking Back to Happiness

Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts

The Ballroom Class

@lucy_dillon

@lucydillonbooks

Dedication

For TAR, my anchor, and Barney, my little pal. Gone, but never very far away.

Prologue

Hallowe’en, 1998

Branston was not the most convincing lion Tara had ever seen but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

‘You look terrifying, Branston,’ she said, and adjusted his mane: her old yellow ballet tutu with plastic spiders stapled at strategic intervals for added Hallowe’en effect. To be honest, he looked more like a sunflower than a lion but he was sitting there patiently, letting her finish off his outfit with bits of tissue cobweb.

‘And you are the most beautiful Labrador in the world,’ she added, to be kind.

Branston gazed at her with his patient, melted-chocolate eyes, and trod on her foot with his big golden paw. Tara thought, not for the first time, You are the one person in this house who actually listens to me.

‘I wish you could tell me what you’re thinking,’ she said. Then added, ‘Actually don’t,’ because she didn’t want to hear how bored he was with the whole dressing-up routine. Branston had let her put bunny ears on him for Easter and angel wings last Christmas, but this was going to be a public premiere – if anyone ever appeared to take her, Toby and Branston out trick-or-treating.

Even if he could speak, Tara sensed that Branston wouldn’t have said a lot, but even so, it would feel more like a conversation than anything she was getting from her parents or her brother this evening. Toby was being particularly irritating. First of all he’d told her he didn’t want to go trick-or-treating because he had ‘better things to do’, then he’d changed his mind but refused to go along with her theme, and now he was making his own costume with a school shirt, red ink and Mum’s dressmaking scissors, which even Tara thought was a dangerous idea.

She didn’t know why Mum was letting him.

Mum was in one of her funny, glassy moods where she closed her eyes deliberately before she said anything. Her friend Diane had ‘let her down’ about taking them out tonight – ‘Not my problem, your father can do it for once!’ – and Toby had answered back so many times, and now Dad had come in an hour later than normal from his office, and Mum had shoved him into the kitchen and turned up the television. All of which was a very good reason to hurry Toby along.

‘Toby?’ Tara yelled up the stairs. ‘Toby, are you ready?’

No answer.

She glanced at the clock above the kitchen door – which was still shut – and chewed the loose skin around her thumbnail. Mum and Dad had been in there since ten past six and it was now nearly seven. The local news was nearly over; the weather forecaster was bellowing about rain. Tara didn’t care who was taking them out, but if they didn’t leave soon, it would be too late. And too wet.

What was she supposed to do? She sat on the stairs and put her arm round Branston.

‘I wish people would just talk to me,’ she whispered into his solid head.

Suddenly, the kitchen door was flung and Tara’s dad – Keith – flew out, followed by an apple. He ducked, and it crashed against the frame of the front door, knocking a family photo off the wall. The photo dropped on to the floor but amazingly, the glass didn’t smash.

‘Jesus Christ, you crazy—’ Dad started, then swivelled to see Tara standing by the door with the dog. ‘Tara. Hello, pickle.’

‘Are we going trick-or-treating?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Trick-or-treating?’

‘Mum said you’d take us. Diane’s sick,’ she added. She didn’t know what with, but Mum’s expression had made it clear she wasn’t supposed to ask.

Dad wiped his hand over his face. Tara caught a glimpse of something she didn’t recognize in the brief second it was uncovered, and a shadow went across her heart.

‘So can you take us?’ She smiled up at him, not wanting to push but at the same time wishing someone would just say how magnificent Branston looked. ‘Please?’

He glanced over at the kitchen but the door was shut. ‘The thing is …’

‘Do you like Branston’s outfit?’ Tara prompted him.

‘He looks terrific! And you’re … Alanis Morissette?’

Tara opened her coat to show him her blue gingham summer uniform. ‘Dorothy. From The Wizard of Oz.’

‘Of course you are. Well done, sweetie.’

Dad winked, and Tara’s anxious heart jumped with relief. Her dad’s smile always made her smile; it was the twinkle in his eye that hinted that some treat might be in the offing, as he would say: chocolate from the stash in his office drawer, or a tenner from his back pocket to splash out at Claire’s Accessories, a palace of glittery delights that Mum frequently muttered should be burned to the ground.

Tonight the smile was as warm as usual but it didn’t make Dad’s eyes crinkle up. His eyes were the same, but different. Sad, almost. Tara felt panicky without knowing why. A thick lump bulged in her throat, as if she’d swallowed bread without chewing.

‘I, er, need to nip out somewhere first,’ he said.

‘To get sweets for the treats?’

‘Yes. Well, something like that. Here, this is for you …’ He was grabbing his heavy wool jacket from the coat stand by the door, fishing in his pocket at the same time.

‘Toby?’ she called up the stairs, willing her brother with their special twin radar to get down here, to help her understand. Adults tended to prefer Tara to Toby, but he always seemed to know what was going on with them. ‘Toby, hurry up!’

The reply from upstairs was muffled. ‘Don’t rush me!’

‘Now!’ she yelled, sending silent shrieks of panic.

‘Here.’ Dad was offering her something from his clip of banknotes, and she took it mechanically without looking because she didn’t dare let Dad’s face out of her sight. ‘I love you, Taransay.’

Taransay. He was the only one who ever used her full name. But only on special occasions.

‘I love you too, Dad …’ she said, but he’d crouched down and had her head in his hands and he was kissing her along her sharp centre parting, where her dark hair split into two neat plaits.

‘Dad …’ This was so weird. He never kissed her on the head like this either. He bear-hugged her, or tickled her, or planted loud raspberries on her tummy, although he hadn’t done that for a long time.

‘Right then,’ he said cheerfully, and ruffled Branston’s ears. ‘You hang on there, I’ll see you in a minute.’

‘Toby!’ Tara turned for one second to yell up the stairs and when she turned back, the front door was shutting, and Dad had gone. ‘Toby!’

Branston whimpered, and went to follow him, but Tara said, ‘Branny, please!’ and he sat back down again, confused.

Tara flattened her palm over her heart. She could feel it hammering and hammering. What was happening? Dad said to hang on, he’d be back in a minute, and that was absolutely normal, but somehow it wasn’t.

She looked down to see what it was he’d given her. It was a note she hadn’t seen before. A red one. Fifty pounds. Why had Dad given her fifty pounds?

This wasn’t right. She stared at the apple-bobbing apple, which had rolled over to the coat stand. It looked fine, but it would be bruised inside under the skin, spoiled brown and spongy when they cut into it later.

Feet thundered behind her, Toby clattering down the stairs.

‘Where’s Dad gone?’ He was wearing one of her old school shirts, now splattered with red ink and slashed like a jellyfish with the dressmaking shears.

‘Out.’ She showed him the note. ‘He gave me this.’

‘For you, or to share?’

‘To share,’ said Tara automatically, because she and Toby always had to share things. ‘I think,’ she added, more uncertainly.

‘Great. Why’s he going out with Ashley?’ he asked.

‘What?’

Toby’s gaze flicked towards the door. ‘Ashley was outside. In her Corsa. Dad got in and they just drove off.’

Ashley was their babysitter, their cleaner Jen’s daughter. She was at Reading University and she had long blonde hair, and let them stay up very late on the nights when Mum and Dad went to ‘functions’ – usually parties, sometimes awards. Dad got invited to a lot of parties because his business was doing well. He often had to travel as far away as London, which Tara thought should have made Mum happy but it didn’t.

Tara was about to say, That doesn’t make sense, but Toby’s dark expression said it for her. She could almost hear his mind working, putting the pieces in order.

She pressed her lips together. She had a sickly feeling that speaking now would confirm that something was wrong and Tara didn’t want that.

Branston groaned, and flopped down with his head on her foot.

Outside, it started to rain. Hard.

CHAPTER ONE

‘So tell me what happened. Start wherever you like, doesn’t have to be the beginning,’ said Tara, and when Grace Jordan didn’t reply immediately, she pushed the box of tissues across the table and waited.

The words would come. Tara had spent enough hours with clients struggling to make sense of Longhampton’s freak floods to know that the experience loomed over its victims like an iceberg: too big to see all at once, too unexpected to explain away as ‘just one of those things’. They’d been the worst floods in local memory – the most destructive, the most disruptive – and had to be broken down into small, easily comprehensible chunks of shock. A bloated sofa floating in water spangled with red and blue emergency lights. A policeman in waders on the doorstep, insisting the family evacuate now. A carpet, newly laid for Christmas, filthy with slime and human waste and God knew what from the swollen river that had risen and risen, and then covered half of the county in a muddy blanket.

Eventually, Grace spoke. ‘I didn’t realize until the water was already coming up the stairs.’ She stared ahead, at Tara’s peace lily. ‘My little boy, Harrison, he went downstairs to get a drink and he come running straight back up. “Mummy, Mummy, there’s water in the house.” And when I looked over the banisters, the cushions from the sofa were in the hall. I thought, why are they there? Then I realized – they were floating.’ She pulled a tissue from the box and started plucking it. ‘I didn’t know what to do. All I could think of was the guinea pigs. Harrison’s guinea pigs in their cage by the washing machine. Fluff and Peppa.’ Her hand covered her mouth, suppressing a sob. Above it, her eyes blurred, as the scene played back in her mind. ‘Sorry. Sorry …’

Tara made a soothing noise. ‘It’s OK, Grace. Take your time.’

‘I think it was worse that it happened in the night? The electricity had gone off and I didn’t know – there were lights downstairs but it was the fire brigade on the river, getting Mrs Brody from next door out. She’s in a wheelchair. They had to lift her on to the wall, you know where I mean? By the bridge?’

Tara nodded. She knew exactly where Grace’s house was: it was on a pretty terrace near the town centre. Whitewashed frontages with red roses climbing around shiny black doors – and about a metre above the normal level of the River Martle. But the River Martle hadn’t been at a normal level recently. For three days, it had been on a level with the fan extractor on Grace Jordan’s kitchen hob.

‘But they got you and Harrison out safely?’

Grace blew her nose. ‘The firemen in the dinghy came and Harrison jumped in, but I couldn’t move. I kept thinking, what do I save? Dad’s ashes were in the lounge, and I wanted to go back for them, but the fireman grabbed me. He said the river was still rising and there was gas …’

Tara made some discreet notes – Harrison, six, guinea pigs, Swan Terrace – giving Grace time to gather herself. Everyone she’d counselled in the last three weeks had tried to go back for something: wedding photos, a handbag, phone chargers. Baby books, family jewellery. Quite a few urns. Tara wondered what she’d save, if her house – well, her mother’s house, now hers – had been half a mile closer to the town centre, within reach of the creeping water.

Her mum’s ashes would probably have been safe enough, on the top shelf in the pantry. Nine months on, Tara and her twin brother Toby were no closer to confirming a place and a time to scatter Ruth Hunter’s remains. If the River Martle had intervened and swept Ruth into the Severn, then back out into the Bristol Channel and on to the Atlantic, it would actually have been a solution to the problem. Also usefully equidistant between her in Longhampton and Toby in America.

Other than that … Tara decided she’d probably have grabbed her handbag. It was a good one, Mulberry, an unusually generous but sensible thirtieth-birthday present from her ex, Justin. For most people, she mused, since Grace was still blowing her nose, a family home contained a paralysing dilemma-load of stuff to rescue from floodwater. But she wouldn’t have had that problem. There was nothing irreplaceable in Wye Villa. Ruth had saved her (and Toby, not that he’d involved himself too deeply) that bother by ditching most of their childhood memories with an efficiency that even Marie Kondo would find somewhat ruthless.

The family photo album, Tara thought, with a pang. She’d have grabbed that – if she could only find it in the house. It contained precious evidence of the Happy Years, pre-divorce, photographs of summers in France with Mum and Dad; her and Toby’s awkward boy–girl twin birthdays, cakes split between dinosaurs and ponies; 5 p.m. Christmas-dinner tables messy with wine glasses and discarded Quality Street wrappers, long-suffering family dog Branston in a variety of paper hats. Tara had searched without success for the album. Surely Mum hadn’t chucked it out? Maybe she had, along with every trace of Dad.

Well, every trace of Dad apart from her and Toby. And Toby had removed himself thoroughly as soon as he’d left school. Tara still missed Toby, even though he’d been living away for nearly fifteen years. Like the album, he was the only surviving evidence of their childhood.

‘Sorry.’ Grace sniffed. ‘I know it’s only stuff. Apart from Fluff and Peppa.’

‘Did the firemen …?’ Tara left a discreet pause.

She nodded. ‘Nice policewoman waded in and got them out. She got an earful from her boss but she could see Harrison was in a right state. I was too, to be honest.’

‘And they’re OK? The guinea pigs?’

‘More or less.’ Grace blew her nose again. ‘Peppa’s not quite right.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘Guess I can always replace her with another one. Harrison’s only six, not sure he’d notice the difference!’

‘No, don’t!’ Tara hadn’t meant to speak but a memory pushed its way out with unexpected force. When Grace looked up, startled, she felt obliged to explain. ‘My dad ran over my brother’s rabbit, Simon, then replaced him with another one without telling us.’

‘Did you notice?’

Tara hesitated. This was the first time she’d told anyone about Simon’s demise and suspicious resurrection. Not her supervisor, not her therapist – not even her brother. She wasn’t totally sure why she was telling Grace now. ‘I saw him run Simon over.’

‘No way.’ Grace was temporarily distracted from the flooding. ‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘Well … no. Mum and Dad acted like nothing had happened and I was only eight so I … went along with it.’ Gaslighting, they’d call it now. Mum and Dad had instantly ceased their sniping for as long as it took to gloss over Simon’s premature end and source his stunt double. Tara supposed she should give them credit for that. Bronze parenting stars all round, Ruth and Keith.

Tara checked herself. She’d always been an expert compartmentalizer but over the past few months, the oddest memories had started tumbling out of her mental cupboards, often at inopportune moments like this, and it was getting harder to shove them back in and carry on. She frequently agonized about the further qualifications she’d put off starting, usually when facing the Centre’s tougher clients, but lately she found herself wishing she had some better strategies to use on herself. The problem was, further training would mean opening up all the mental cupboards, and …

Tara leaned forward, focusing her attention on her client. ‘So, to go back to your earlier question – how can you help Harrison’s nightmares? I’d say, be honest. He’s only little – he doesn’t need lots of detail but he does need to make sense of what’s just happened in his world. Let him draw pictures if it’s easier than talking. But don’t hide fear away. Yes, it was scary, and it’s very sad you’ve lost some things, but you’re both safe. Walk him through what you’d do if the river ever floods again.’

‘And if Peppa … doesn’t make it?’

‘Be honest about that too. You don’t want him demanding someone calls the Guinness Book of Records when the new Peppa magically reaches her nineteenth birthday.’ Toby’s insistence on his ‘miracle rabbit’. Her guilty silence.

Grace was looking at her curiously now. Tara wondered if her face was betraying the churning in her chest.

‘It’s amazing what people will believe if they want to.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘Especially when it comes to families.’

At the end of the session, once Tara was on safer ground talking Grace through practicalities – did she need help dealing with insurance? Was she in contact with the flood support team? She showed her out of the consulting room and into the long corridor.

Down the hall, the Centre’s new counsellor, Dr David Dalloway, was also saying goodbye, to an emotional middle-aged couple with a tubby Labrador. The dog was soft and golden, as if he’d been moulded out of shortbread dough, and he turned towards Tara while his owners carried on talking over his head.

Tara blinked: not just because there was a dog in the Centre (Jacqueline, the Centre’s director, was vigilant about airborne allergens) but because it was the spitting image of Branston, her childhood confidante. The Labrador gazed straight back at her. Was it her imagination, or was he trying not to roll his chocolatey eyes? As if he despaired of his humans’ madness but loved them anyway?

That was probably too subtle a communication for a Labrador. Branston had had two expressions: ‘Give me toast’ and ‘I’m sad that you’re sad’. Both resulted in a cuddle, his heavy head leaning carefully against her small neck, his warm, biscuit breath in her ear. He always smelled of biscuits. Usually because he’d just stolen a packet of digestives.

The Labrador wagged his tail, and just as poor Simon had popped up out of nowhere in her mind, Tara suddenly had an almost physical memory of Branston nosing open the bedroom door to lie by her side, loyal and comforting, when her parents were arguing in the kitchen below. Her throat tightened.

It had been a really, really strange few weeks, coming right on top of a miserable few months.

This was Tara’s first full day back, after a sabbatical spent talking constantly about the floods and the emotional wreckage they’d caused, and she couldn’t concentrate at all. Usually her emotions were laid in careful, protective strata like a well-packed suitcase, but the floodwater seemed to have forced its way through them too, pushing up memories she’d packed away years ago.

‘… really helped us, David, thank you so much.’ The lady was grabbing David’s arm as if he were a vicar, not a relationship counsellor. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever said this before to a marriage guidance therapist, but I’m almost looking forward to our next session!’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ said David. ‘But that’s just a reflection of your hard work, Gillian.’

‘Yup.’ Tara watched the husband scratch his stubbly chin. He seemed stunned. ‘You’ve got us bang to rights, I’ve got to say.’

David Dalloway raised a modest hand. ‘Think about what we discussed and we’ll pick it up again next week. Thank you, both.’

The dog wagged its tail and he bent to give it a friendly pat on the flanks.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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