Cover

Praise

Praise for Phaedra Patrick

“Witty and delightful...this story is a salve to the soul.”

—Colleen Oakley, bestselling author of The Invisible Husband of Frick Island

“Phaedra Patrick has a knack for creating memorable and touching characters.”

—Sarah Haywood, New York Times bestselling author of The Cactus

“The perfect book if you need a lift, or to feel better about the world. It’s a read-in-one-sitting-while-smiling kind of a story.”

—Clare Pooley, bestselling author of The Authenticity Project

About the Author

Phaedra Patrick studied art and marketing and has worked as a stained glass artist, film festival organizer and communications manager. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages worldwide and her first three novels were all USA TODAY bestsellers. Her second novel, Rise and Shine, Benedict Stone, has been made into a Hallmark movie. Phaedra lives with her family in Saddleworth, where she writes full-time.

Dedication

To Pat, Dave, Mark and Oliver.

1

THE APARTMENT IN THE CLOUDS

Liv Green wore her polishing cloth draped over her arm in the same proud way a maître d’ might wear a napkin. She’d already cleaned Essie Starling’s two bathrooms, each bigger than her own bedroom, polished the white marble kitchen worktops and left uniform vacuum cleaner tracks on the dove gray carpets, just how the bestselling author liked them. She wore one earbud while she worked, listening to the audiobook of Essie’s nineteenth novel for the second time and leaving her other ear free in case the author called out any commands.

As Liv carried her cleaning box into the third bedroom, she averted her eyes from the floor-to-ceiling windows. After three years of working here, the panoramic view still made her dizzy. If she were Rapunzel, she’d need a plait thirty-two stories long to reach down to the pavement. Not that many forty-two-year-old mums, wearing bleach-specked jeans and an ancient Rolling Stones T-shirt, ever appeared in fairy tales.

Outside, cars were beeping in the Friday evening traffic. Liv really should be home by now, but there was always something about Essie that made her want to stay.

The apartment’s white walls were lined with shelves populated with framed photographs and a rainbow of books—contemporary novels, battered tomes, childhood favorites and copies of Essie’s own novels in forty languages. Liv loved to gently wipe their covers and admire how various countries depicted Essie’s famous heroine, Georgia Rory.

If she ever told anyone she cleaned for the author, the common reaction was wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “You really work for the Essie Starling?” people would ask. “What is she like? Why is she so reclusive?” Liv couldn’t blame their fascination. She could still hardly believe she worked for her favorite writer, and, out of her three cleaning jobs, she relished this one the most. In response to eager questions about Essie, she gave a slight smile and a shrug, adding to the author’s enigma.