PRAISE FOR AMANDA PROWSE

‘Amanda Prowse is the queen of family drama’

Daily Mail

‘A powerful and emotional work of fiction’

Piers Morgan

‘A deeply emotional, unputdownable read’

Red

‘Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure’

The Lady

‘Amanda Prowse is the queen of heartbreak fiction’

The Mail Online

‘Captivating, heartbreaking and superbly written’

Closer

‘You’ll fall in love with this’

Cosmopolitan

‘Warmly accessible but subtle . . . moving and inspiring’

Daily Mail

‘Magical’

Now

‘Deeply moving and emotional, Amanda Prowse handles her explosive subjects with delicate skill’

Daily Mail

‘Uplifting and positive, but you will still need a box of tissues’

Hello!

‘A gut-wrenching and absolutely brilliant read’

The Irish Sun

‘Deeply moving and eye-opening. Powerful and emotional drama that packs a real punch’

Heat

ALSO BY AMANDA PROWSE

Novels

Poppy Day

What Have I Done?

Clover’s Child

A Little Love

Will You Remember Me?

Christmas for One

A Mother’s Story

Perfect Daughter

The Second Chance Café

Three and a Half Heartbeats

Another Love

My Husband’s Wife

I Won’t Be Home for Christmas

The Food of Love

The Idea of You

The Art of Hiding

Anna

Theo

How to Fall in Love Again

The Coordinates of Loss

The Girl in the Corner

The Things I Know

The Light in the Hallway

The Day She Came Back

An Ordinary Life

Novellas

The Game

Something Quite Beautiful

A Christmas Wish

Ten Pound Ticket

Imogen’s Baby

Miss Potterton’s Birthday Tea

Mr Portobello’s Morning Paper

Memoir

The Boy Between: A Mother and Son’s Journey From a World Gone Grey (with Josiah Hartley)

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

1984

Ordinarily it would have been exciting, travelling somewhere by train, but there was nothing ordinary about this trip or this day. Bessie’s limbs felt leaden, her spirit even more so. Philip stowed her big suitcase in the overhead wire rack and slid into the seat facing her on the other side of the table. His Adam’s apple looked huge, rising up and down like a lift, carrying conflicting emotions from his brain to his mouth and then back again.

‘I brought some snacks. Sandwiches – cheese and tomato,’ he said.

He placed on the table between them the square Tupperware container with the faded green lid and the small piccalilli stain in the corner. The sight of the box, something from home and touched by her mother’s fingers, was enough to bring on her tears. She shook her head.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Well, not now, but maybe later.’

‘Are you actually turning into Mum?’ she asked, more sharply than she had intended.

‘God, I do hope not.’ Philip drummed his fingers. ‘I’ll leave the thermos in the bag then.’

She felt the sting of guilt. Her brother was her single ally right now, her confidant and only friend. He deserved better.

‘Sorry, Philip, I can’t seem to . . .’ The words ran out.

‘It’s okay,’ he nodded. ‘I understand.’

Regardless of his reassuring words, he avoided catching her eye, staring instead at the back gardens along the route as the train picked up speed.

She looked away, knowing that he didn’t and couldn’t understand. Not that she did herself entirely. Despite her best efforts, tears gathered at the back of her throat and nose and slipped silently down her face.

‘Please don’t cry, Bessie.’ Philip’s tone was calm and kindly, and his sweetness only encouraged her to cry all the harder.

‘I can’t help it.’

He pulled a few folds of toilet tissue from his jeans pocket and pushed them across the table. Gathering them gratefully into her hands, she blotted her eyes.

‘No matter how hard I try, I can’t see my future,’ she managed, her voice low, wary of waking the old man on the other side of the aisle.

‘Well, none of us can – that’s why it’s called the future – unless you’ve got one of those crystal balls or a time machine!’ he said, in an effort to make her laugh.

‘I wish I did.’ She blew her nose. Of course, he was right – no one knew what lay ahead, but Bessie had had a plan where she could see the shape of her life, and now?

‘Nothing has changed so far as the world is concerned. You can still have a great life; you can still make your dreams come true.’

‘You don’t understand, Philip.’ Staring at her brother, she wrung her hands on the plastic tabletop between them. ‘Everything has changed because I’ve changed. It’s only months since I was celebrating my sixteenth birthday with the whole world at my feet and now . . . I’m not the person I thought I was.’ This was true – everything she had thought she knew about herself had been erased. Somewhere along the line, the coating of confidence that had made her feel like she could take on the world and win had been wrenched violently from her without her consent, and she was left soft and fragile, unable to survive a fall.

‘That’s just how you feel right now, but you won’t always. You will be strong again, bright and ready to face the world.’ Again Philip’s Adam’s apple rose and fell, as if swallowing a lie.

Bessie looked away. Someone had scrawled the word courage on the window frame. She let loose a small, ironic sigh of acknowledgement.

The elderly man across the aisle snorted in his sleep. Grey tufts sprouted from his wide nostrils, and he sat with his head tipped back and his hands clasped across his chest. He had placed his cap, wallet and keys on top of his coat, which lay neatly folded on the table. Trusting.

‘When we get there, I’ll come with you, see you settled. Stay for a bit,’ her brother whispered.

Bessie nodded, trying not to think of the dip in the mattress of her childhood bed, that comfortable crawl space where she had succumbed to sleep nearly every night of her life, knowing she was safe, with her parents and brother just along the landing. The smell, feel and weight of the blankets were all the more familiar and comforting because of it. But not tonight.

‘I’m scared, Philip,’ she said in a small voice.

And there it was, the phrase that encompassed all of her feelings.

‘I know.’ He tried out a weak smile. ‘Why don’t you write one of your postcards? Take your mind off things?’

She watched as he unbuckled his satchel and pulled out the small pack of white postcards, bought from the post office on the high street. He clicked the end of his ballpoint and pushed that across the table too.

Bessie gripped the pen and turned the card to the angle at which she was most comfortable writing – in physical terms at least, because it was mental torture to scribble these lies to the people she loved.

Dear Mum and Dad,

How are you both? How is Nanny Pat’s cat? Still hanging on, I hope.

She paused and looked out of the window.

The weather is cold, but lovely. The sky is clear and blue and, if it wasn’t for the frost and the chill, it could be summer, it has the same colour. The sky . . . where in just a few weeks I will be flying. Can you believe it? I am so excited. Me, an air hostess. All my dreams come true . . .

‘Tickets, please! All tickets, please!’ the conductor shouted, slamming the carriage door behind him. Bessie put down the pen. The old man opposite started and sat up abruptly, blinking.

‘I don’t know what’s going on!’ he chuckled, as much to himself as to his fellow travellers.

I know how you feel . . . Bessie turned again to the world rushing by beyond the window. I know exactly how you feel . . .

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

August 20th 1984

The vicar had told the whole RE class that prayers were not meant for personal greed or the fulfilment of desires, and this Bessie adhered to, mostly. Often her requests were for famine relief in Ethiopia, Nanny Pat’s cat, Tiki, who was clinging on to life by a whisker, and her best friend Michelle’s dad, who was out of work and had been for the last two years on account of his dicky back.

But today was a special day. Bessie woke a second or two before her alarm, as she always did, and with her eyes clamped shut, she broke the rules, fairly confident that one selfish prayer, slotted in among the many for the masses, was probably allowed on her sixteenth birthday.

Hey, God, please make this a good year for me. Please help me get out of this town. I want to see the colour of the sky in California. I want to chat to people who don’t know every square inch of this place like I do. I want to have a life like I see on TV, where people live with big, big kitchens, good tans and great hair. I want an amazing life – and I want Lawrence to fall in love with me, like I have with him.

Even the thought of Lawrence was enough to send her a little cuckoo, as if her excitement was more than she could contain. It burst from her like fireworks.

And of course, I also want world peace and an end to all hunger. Thanks. Oh, it’s me by the way, Bessie Worrall.

She kicked off her duvet, jumped out of bed and stood like a star with her hands over her head and her legs splayed. Filling her lungs, she shouted out, ‘It’s my birthdaaaay!’

‘Shut up!’ came the muffled reply from her brother, Philip, whose room was along the hallway. ‘No one cares!’

‘You shut up!’ she hollered in reply, with the express intent of irritating him. ‘And actually, you’re wrong – I care!’

Nothing, not even his foul mood, could dampen her spirits. She walked to the mirror above the chest of drawers in the corner of the room, where an irritating sticky splodge of glue from some long-discarded sticker sat in the corner. She studied her face, figuring she looked pretty much as she had done last night when she’d gone to bed, which was both a disappointment and a relief. Her boobs, she noted, were still no more than small buds, which she cursed, and there was sadly no visible improvement on the crop of spots fighting for space on her chin. She pulled a pouty face, very much liking the way her hair bouffed up when she first woke and disappointed at the prospect of it falling flat over the coming hours. The long-layered lengths with a hint of blonde, courtesy of a generous squirt of Sun-In, gave her a bit of a Bonnie Tyler vibe, although her brother, whose comments she largely ignored, said she looked more like Bon Jovi – but what did he know? She pulled it back into a scrunchie. Her eyebrows were freshly plucked into thin, high arches over her hazel eyes. She ran her finger over the little red dot of crusted blood where she had nicked the skin with a misplaced tweeze. Hours could be spent this way, staring at her face, prodding it, and comparing it to the pretty faces of the girls at school.

It was going to be a fantastic day, and anything could happen! She was sixteen. Sixteen! The kind of age where adults took you a bit more seriously, realising that you were properly emerging from the chrysalis of teenage years and were within snatching distance of adulthood. An age where all sorts of delights were now available, and not only those of a carnal nature, because at sixteen she could, if she so chose, leave school, join the army, get married, work full-time and drive a moped . . . The possibilities felt endless. Not that she intended to join the army or indeed drive a moped – her sights were set on the skies. There was something about the TV adverts for big jumbo jets with their coiffed and lipsticked attendants that fuelled her imagination and spoke to her. They offered the glamour and escape she was looking for. She wanted to fly around the world as an air hostess. She wanted that fitted red uniform and a little suitcase on wheels that she dragged along behind her. A life of freedom and exploration called, and just like her alarm clock, it felt well within her reach.

‘You up, Bessie?’ her mum called up the stairs excitedly.

‘Yep! Coming!’

About to leave the room, Bessie went back to the mirror for one quick check on her teeth, running her tongue over her straight pearly whites, which she considered to be one of her best features.

‘Bessie, for the love of God! Are you coming down or what?’ her mum called again, but with more of an edge this time.

She took the narrow stairs two by two, leaping into the little square hallway by the front door. The summer morning light filtered through the dappled glass of the door and pooled on the green carpet, which, where the sun touched it, had gone a paler shade than the edges. When they had visitors, her mum always moved the rag rug from the bathroom and put it over the lighter spot.

‘Here she is!’ she heard her mum whisper, and knew exactly what to expect next, by long tradition. Bessie paused for a beat, swinging around the corner with her hand on the top of the newel post. And then there it was: the sound of her dad’s harmonica, playing his own version of ‘Happy Birthday’.

Her parents, Jeannie and Eddie, stood side by side in their pyjamas, her mum looking simultaneously happy and emotional and her dad with the cord of his red and black tartan dressing gown tied tight across his burgeoning tum, the harmonica raised to his lips in readiness. The instrument had been a gift to him from his own dad, who had apparently fought in World War II with his trusty instrument secreted in a pocket, whipped out as and when required to lift the spirits of his comrades. Bessie hoped her Grandad Arty had been better at playing than her dad or it might have had quite the opposite effect on his poor comrades in dire need of a boost.

Bessie conducted with her index finger, trying not to let her grin slip into laughter as her dad did his best to get the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’ right and her mum, bless her, sang along in an earnest attempt to keep up with whatever he was now playing. As if this wasn’t bad enough, her brother decided to bang his disapproval on his bedroom floor, the thuds coming through the ceiling. After an excruciating thirty seconds, it was over.

‘Happy birthday, Bessie.’

‘Yaaaaaaaay! Happy birthday to me!’ she roared in return.

Her mum took a step forward and wrapped her in her usual brief awkward hug – a throwback, her dad had explained, from her own childhood, where hugs were in very short supply. Bessie loved that she tried and gripped her tightly in return, whereupon her mum did what she always did and patted her on the head and tousled her hair. Her dad pulled her into a close hold and kissed her on the forehead while her mum scurried off to grab four plates from the shelf in the kitchen cupboard, Bessie and her dad following on behind.

‘Sixteen, baby girl. It doesn’t seem possible,’ her mum said.

‘Do you feel sixteen?’ her dad asked, as he always did.

Bessie touched her head with both hands and then her chest and finally her forearms. ‘Do you know, I do!’ She and her dad laughed.

‘Mind you, it wasn’t exactly the happiest day for me,’ her mum interjected. ‘I mean, of course it was – I got you!’ she corrected, giggling, as she went to the fridge to grab the milk and eggs for pancakes, the only breakfast available on birthdays in this house. Every other day Bessie ate cereal and watched with a look of disgust as her parents tucked into toast and marmalade with chunks of orange peel in it. What was it about old people that made them like the bit of the fruit that in every other orangey scenario was thrown away! She shuddered at the very thought.

‘I was smitten the very moment I saw you, but my goodness, it wasn’t what you might call an easy birth,’ her mum said, wincing at the memory, as she cracked eggs into the Pyrex bowl that had belonged to Bessie’s nanna. ‘I wasn’t ever the same again, not down below.’

‘For the love of God, Jeannie! She doesn’t want to hear about the state of your lady bits on the day you gave birth, do you, Bessie? Not today!’ Her dad took a seat at the kitchen table and popped the harmonica back in his dressing-gown pocket.

‘Actually, Dad, I don’t want to hear about my mother’s lady bits on any day.’

‘Yes, good point!’

‘Can you please tell Philip that I’m making the pancakes and he should come down so Bessie can open her pressies.’ Her mum smiled at her, letting the excitement build.

Her dad rocked back in his chair until he was balancing on the rear two legs and then leant his head away from the table before shouting, ‘Philip, your mum’s making pancakes and you need to come down so your sister can open her pressies!’

Her mum shook her head with a look that was so well practised her dad took little notice.

‘I give up, I really do! Go and get her presents, Eddie!’ her mum said, nodding her head towards the lounge.

Bessie sat down and patted the tabletop in front of her as it filled with gifts wrapped in a wide assortment of paper, carefully harvested after each birthday, smoothed and returned to the drawer. Philip came loping down the stairs in his underwear.

‘Couldn’t you put some clothes on for your sister’s birthday?’ Her mum tutted in his direction.

He glanced down at his hairy legs and pigeon chest. ‘I’d say not, judging by the look of things.’ He sat down and flicked his fringe from his eyes.

‘Why do I bother?’ Her mum gave her umpteenth hefty sigh of the morning.

Philip looked at the open egg box next to the cooker and folded his arms across his chest with a look of disgust. ‘I can’t believe I’m being forced to sit at a table where you’re giving people animal products to eat, Mum!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Their mum whipped around to face her son, whisk in hand.

‘Philip’s a vegan now.’ Bessie nodded to show she had been paying attention.

‘Is that right?’ Her dad looked more than a little perplexed. ‘What’s a vegan, exactly?’

‘It’s like a vegetarian.’ Her mum sounded proud of her knowledge on the matter.

‘Yes, like a vegetarian, but we don’t eat any animal products at all,’ Philip informed his father condescendingly.

‘So, no bacon, no sausage, no roast lamb?’ her dad queried.

‘No, none of them – pig, pig, sheep, obviously.’ Philip stood his ground.

‘What about cheese?’

‘No, no cheese – that’s a by-product of milk, cow juice, dairy, and therefore no.’

‘Humph.’ Her dad scratched his chin. ‘What about proper gravy with juice from the roast?’

‘No, Dad.’ Philip sounded exasperated.

‘Eggs?’

‘No.’

‘A Cornish pasty?’

Philip chose not to answer but breathed heavily.

‘I can’t think what you’ll survive on, boy! Lettuce?’

‘It’s really not that difficult, Dad. Carmen and I refuse to eat the flesh or by-products of innocent animals. If it has a face, I will replace!’ He lifted his hands as if spewing wisdom.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a pancake?’ Her mum shook her head, cracking more eggs into the Pyrex bowl.

Philip looked a little frustrated.

‘So what is it you eat, son? Lentils and potatoes and stuff?’ Her dad inadvertently wrinkled his nose.

‘Yes, when I can get lentils.’

Bessie recognised her brother’s veiled dig at their mother’s store cupboard, which was largely full of alphabet spaghetti, boxes of Frosties, tins of corned beef and Cup-a-Soup.

‘I saw you outside Wimpy two days ago, scoffing a burger,’ she said, blowing his cover.

‘Shut up, Bessie!’ he yelled, and she instantly felt bad for the revelation, but not enough to ignore the tender bait that dangled. It was too good an opportunity to have her brother on the back foot.

‘Don’t get mad with me just because I saw you consuming the flesh of innocent animals! And anyway, you should be extra nice to me today – it is my birthday.’

‘You think you’re so clever, Bessie, but I’ve heard it on the grapevine that there are far worse things to be doing after school than scoffing a Wimpy!’ he said, looking her right in the eye, his chest heaving.

She felt the cold wrap of fear around her head – did Philip know about her and Lawrence?

‘Anyway,’ she said, drawing breath and deciding to get the next jab in, ‘you’re only a vegan because Carmen is a vegan, and I honestly think if Carmen said run around the marketplace with your pants on your head eating a raw chicken, you’d do it!’

Her dad’s head drooped. ‘For the love of God, your mother is cooking pancakes, you’re supposed to be opening your gifts and this is not the atmosphere we want on a special day. Please, please, try and be nice to each other.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been saying that since they were babies! Why can’t they be friends?’

‘Just give her her bloody presents, Eddie.’ Her mum rubbed her forehead, where Bessie had no doubt the beginnings of a headache lurked.

‘Here we are, little love.’ Her dad pushed the gifts closer to her, along with a small bundle of envelopes in the colours of sugared almonds.

‘Thank you!’

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