These Days of Ours Read online

  About the Author

  At home in Surrey, JULIET ASHTON writes all day in her small study while her two dogs stare at her. The rest of her house, which is full of music and books and comfy places to sit, she shares with her twelve-year-old daughter and her husband, who’s a composer (hence the music). She believes wholeheartedly in the power of books to improve lives, increase understanding and while away happy hours.

  Praise for Juliet Ashton:

  ‘Funny, original and wise’ Katie Fforde

  ‘Cecelia Ahern fans will love this poignant yet witty romance’ Sunday Mirror

  ‘You’ll laugh and cry your way through this original and touching love story’ Closer

  ‘It’s a gorgeous ride with a hell of a final shock’ Star Magazine

  ‘A fast paced story with a most unexpected twist’ Image Magazine

  Also by Juliet Ashton

  The Valentine’s Card

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016

  A CBS company

  Copyright © Just Grand Partnership, 2016

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Juliet Ashton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5505-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5506-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group

  (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and support the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  This book is for

  Kate Furnivall

  Contents

  Please Come to Kate’s 5th Birthday Party!

  You Are Invited to Becca’s 18th Birthday Bash!

  Love Is ...

  Kate & Julian Ames

  Charlie and Becca

  From: [email protected]

  Yulan House

  IN LOVING MEMORY

  Shhh!

  From: [email protected]

  Ho! Ho! Ho!

  You are cordially invited to

  Qīn‘àī de kăītè

  Mum, Mary , Becca, Leon, Charlie, Anna, Flo, Aunty Marjorie & Uncle Hugh

  Merrion Books

  if you believe in fate

  The crumpled invitation had somehow survived thirty-five years and numerous house moves, its words still legible, though faded:

  Kate tucked it into the corner of the dressing table mirror as she leaned in, eyeing her reflection sideways, as if trying to take it unawares. ‘Not bad. Not good. But not bad. Happy Birthday, me!’

  The invitation slipped a little and caught her eye. Kate had shared her fifth birthday party with Princess Diana’s wedding day. She was ambushed by peachy nostalgia: the whole nation had been so in love with Lady Di. She remembered the mums around the TV set, ooh-ing at the new princess’s dress.

  And then Becca broke my new Action Man. Kate sighed. Typical. Her cousin had been unable to comprehend why a girl would want an Action Man, but their classmate Charlie had understood.

  Kate conjured him up. Slightly whiffy and very scruffy. The other kids gave Charlie Garland a wide berth because he was different. Kate had overlooked the nits because he was also good-different; quiet but not boring, Charlie didn’t tease the girls just for being girls.

  A sudden noise jerked Kate back to the present. It sounded just like the idiosyncratic yawn of the front door scraping open. She listened hard, but heard only the silence of an empty house, a silence that is actually a gentle soundtrack of ticks and creaks.

  Turning back to the mirror, Kate regarded her tired but merry eyes. This is what forty looks like. Kate tapped the underside of her chin in case it harboured any ideas about drooping on the threshold of her – gulp – fifth decade. All in all, her reflection didn’t look too bad if she left out her contact lenses.

  Standing up, Kate paused at a ghost of a noise, more a swish than an actual sound. She wondered at her jumpiness. God knows, I’ve had enough practice at being alone. Today, as on every other day, her house curled around her, snug and calm.

  And empty. For many, forty was the perfect excuse for a party but Kate had opted out; a lifelong party goer/giver, she’d let the usual suspects know that this milestone would pass with no birthday ‘do’.

  Reaching into the wardrobe, Kate’s hand found the dress immediately. She marvelled again at the weight of it. Pale satin, with the milky sheen of pearls, the dress was cut with a devastating simplicity that echoed more elegant times. Kate could testify to its waist-shrinking, arm-flattering superpowers.

  Heavy layers of satin and tulle swooned against Kate as she held the frock against her dressing gown, holding it like a lover. The dress made her feel like Audrey Hepburn. A lumpy Audrey, admittedly, with a few more miles on the clock, but a very happy Audrey all the same. Waltzing dreamily, Kate withstood the urge to reflect and ruminate on this landmark birthday. She wouldn’t dwell on the missed chances, the fluffed catches, the absentees she missed so deeply . . .

  But sometimes the past pushes in without asking. Suddenly Kate was five again, blowing out the candles on her cake. Charlie had sidled up to her, to stand very close and say ‘I like your dress’, low and urgently, like a small spy passing on classified information. Kate remembered snapping ‘What?’ She’d been suspicious of compliments, mistrusting them as much as Becca craved them.

  Charlie’s hands had gripped his paper plate so hard it trembled. ‘I love you,’ he’d whispered.

  Kate hadn’t hesitated; she’d pushed Charlie’s face into the iced sponge.

  Now, Kate replaced the dress in the wardrobe, where it effortlessly outranked its denim and cotton peers. She stroked it regretfully, as if it was an exotic pet that had to be put down. Pity I’ll never get to wear you. Kate shut the door on the wonderful confection, its skirt puffing out and resisting. Even if she dyed it or took up the hem, a dress like that could never be anything but a wedding dress, which rendered it quite useless to Kate.

  She wheeled at the unmistakable sound of a foot on the stairs. Kate crossed to the door. ‘Who’s there?’ she called, certain now that she was not alone.

  Becca’s parties were legendary.

  This one was particularly well attended thanks to Becca’s promise that her parents would be out for the whole evening. With a wink, she’d guaranteed, ‘It’ll be the best party in the history of the known world.’

  A couple of hours in, and on her second glass of suspiciously strong punch, Kate agreed. Not because of the Everest of cocktail sausages she’d helped build, nor the plastic bin filled with ice and beer, nor the fairy lights that transformed the ground floor of Aunty Marjorie and Uncle Hugh’s over-tasteful sitting room into a magical grotto alive with possi
bility.

  Tonight would be memorable – downright historic – because, for Kate, tonight was the night.

  She would do it. She would shrug off her pesky virginity. She would have sex. That phrase made Kate wince so she amended it speedily to Make Love, awarding it capitals because, as all the magazines said, as her ‘experienced’ friends declared, it was a giant step in a girl’s life.

  Or maybe that should be A Giant Step.

  Downstairs, Things Can Only Get Better, a constant on Kate’s pink Walkman, blared out. Her friends, head to toe in trendiest black, bellowed the anthemic chorus, leaping up and down on Aunty Marjorie’s cherished Persian rugs. Everybody Kate knew dressed in black all the time. Polo necks. Tights. It was as if there was no other colour available in the shops; as if all teenagers were constantly en route to a funeral.

  Up in the spare bedroom, the music was muffled to a thumping pulse in the darkness. Kate sat on the pile of coats on the bed and regarded her boyfriend of six months, who was kissing distance away. Charlie was taller than her. She liked how she had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him, and she liked the concave spot just below his shoulder where her head fitted when they wound their arms about each other. There were things she didn’t like about him – his tendency to get stuck into a tedious conversation with her dad when Kate was ready to leave the house, or his ambivalence towards Becca – but they didn’t seem to matter.

  ‘Why not?’ Kate was asking. ‘Seriously, though,’ she said, seriously. ‘We’re mad about each other, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlie’s dark eyebrows descended, as if he was in pain. ‘Of course we are. Well,’ he added, those eyebrows on the up again. ‘I’m mad about you.’

  Kate punched him. Rather hard. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed when he flinched. ‘So . . . we’re crazy about each other and we have a bedroom to ourselves with no parents popping in without knocking . . . so why don’t we . . .’ Kate had been practising her sultry look but suspected it was more duck than siren.

  ‘It’s not very romantic, is it?’ Charlie looked around the sparsely furnished spare room with its magnolia woodchip walls and its fitted wardrobes. In a corner stood an exercise bike, with drying underwear – sturdy enough to suggest it was Aunty Marjorie’s rather than Becca’s – draped over its handlebars. A half-built model aeroplane sat marooned on the beige carpet. ‘And I can’t think of a single epic love poem about the coat pile.’ He squirmed on the shifting hillock of cardigans and jackets.

  ‘Write one, then.’ Kate poked him. This time she didn’t say sorry. ‘Take some time off from writing the greatest novel the world has ever read.’

  ‘You call it that,’ said Charlie. ‘Not me.’ Kate knew if she patted the back pocket of Charlie’s punky pinstripe trousers (that wasn’t a bad idea; she was keen on Charlie’s bottom) she’d encounter a tiny notepad and a stub of pencil. ‘You say your novel is about love. Real love. Raw important love. Small, beautiful love.’ Kate ducked to maintain eye contact as he dipped his head, wincing as she quoted him back at himself. ‘Think of it as research!’

  Edging closer, trusting proximity and pheromones to be her most persuasive allies, Kate placed a hand on Charlie’s thigh. ‘Come here,’ she said in a low voice. They kissed and she moved nearer still, so they were entwined, his strong arms like straitjacket sleeves around her.

  ‘Kate, no,’ he murmured.

  ‘But why?’ she murmured back. Kate knew of Charlie’s sexual adventures with his ex. Everybody knew. His ex was not a discreet girl. Kate froze, mid-kiss, as an unwelcome thought coughed and made itself known. ‘Christ, Charlie!’ She pulled away, popping their bubble of intimacy. ‘Did you fancy Natalie more than me?’ She jumped up as he laughed. ‘Don’t laugh at me! Answer the question.’

  Spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender, Charlie said, ‘I laughed because that’s dumb, Kate. I fancy you more than I’ve ever fancied anybody. I fancy you more than . . .’ He cast about desperately for some goddess that any sensible male of his age would lust after. ‘More than Demi Moore!’ he shouted, triumphant.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Kate knew what she was and what she wasn’t. She was five feet and a little bit, with legs that were more reliable than elegant, and a witty face peeping out from a fringe that was never quite straight. She prowled, arms folded, as the moody rumble of Oasis seeped up through the floorboards.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ pleaded Charlie. ‘I don’t just fancy you, Kate. That’s only part of it. I love you.’

  That wasn’t the first time Charlie had said that since Kate’s fifth birthday party, but it was still in single digits. Kate stared at him, his straight nose and full lips outlined in the silver moonlight that struggled through Aunty Marjorie’s neurotically ironed net curtains. His jumpers were no longer stained and he was now the parent to his feckless mother, but Charlie’s basic raw material was unchanged since 1981. He’d been certain then and he was certain now, but how could he be so sure this was love? Kate’s friends bandied the word, using it about one boy one week, and another lad the next. Kate was cautious about the four letters, wary of their power, sure of their magic.

  Charlie reached out from the bed and took each of her hands in his, unfolding her arms, unlocking her mood a little. ‘You never seem to believe me when I say it,’ he whispered. In the dark his body was almost invisible in its de rigueur black, his disembodied face an anxious oval above his polo neck, his hair wilting a little, despite the gel he lavished on it.

  ‘I do believe you.’ Kate looked down at him, benign again. How speedily her moods shifted around Charlie. ‘I do,’ she repeated sadly. ‘So why can’t we . . .?’

  ‘I’ve never done it before.’ Charlie’s lips clamped shut over his admission, as if daring her to comment.

  ‘Yes you have!’ Kate realised how ridiculous it was to insist Charlie was wrong about his own virginity, or lack thereof. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Believe it or not, sometimes you girls get the facts wrong when you huddle in the loos and swap stories.’ Charlie dropped her hands and stood up. Over by the window his slender body took shape in the mercury light. ‘I don’t know why Natalie said we had sex. We just kissed, really, and fooled around a bit.’ He half smiled over his shoulder. ‘Sorry. I know you don’t like me talking about her.’

  ‘Now I know she’s a lying nutcase I don’t mind so much.’ Kate sat heavily on the end of the bed. ‘I really thought . . .’

  ‘I wanted to tell you. But it’s embarrassing.’ His head sank. ‘All the other guys have done it.’ Charlie cleared his throat, said casually, ‘Guess this is when you chuck me, yeah?’

  ‘What if the other boys only say they’ve done it?’ Kate stretched out one leg, inky as a spider in its opaque hosiery, ending in a clumpy black shoe. ‘You’re right, Charlie. This isn’t the right time or place for our first time. We can wait.’ Marvelling at his assumption she’d dump him over something so trivial, Kate pretended not to notice how his whole body sighed with relief. ‘Fancy a dance?’

  ‘No.’ Charlie closed the distance between them with one stride, laying Kate back among the coats and covering her body with his. ‘I fancy you.’ He kissed her, his hair flopping into her eyes. They almost slid to the floor, but righted themselves, refusing to let their lips lose contact.

  ‘You’ve changed your mind, then?’ giggled Kate against his teeth as she tugged at his jumper and he fumbled, chimp-like, with the buttons of her shirt.

  ‘We don’t need romance,’ breathed Charlie, leaning away just long enough to tear his jumper over his head and toss it away. ‘We are romance.’

  Suddenly the music grew louder. A wedge of gold appeared on the floor. The door had opened, just a sliver.

  Kate dived under the coats.

  ‘Shit!’ Charlie followed her, hurriedly pulling windcheaters and denim jackets and second-hand raincoats over them both. By the time the triangle of light grew large enough to illuminate the bed, they’d burrowed down deep and were invisible to the income
rs.

  Nose to nose in their murky tent, Kate mouthed Becca! to Charlie as she heard her cousin say, ‘Julian! Listen! This is important,’ in the special voice she used to house-train boyfriends, nine parts candy floss to one part napalm.

  ‘And so is this.’

  Kate and Charlie stifled their giggles, their faces beetroot, as smoochy noises travelled through the layers of coats. Urgh! mimed Kate, who had no wish to eavesdrop on Becca’s romantic interlude.

  ‘No!’ said Becca. ‘If I don’t get what I want, then neither do you.’

  ‘Oh come here.’ Six foot four of British upper class male entitlement, gift wrapped in corduroy and tweed, Julian was accustomed to getting his own way. He and Becca illustrated the well-known paradox irresistible force meets immovable object. The pair of them were both irresistible and immovable, but Kate knew who she’d back in any battle of wills.

  The music from downstairs turned up a notch. Bon Jovi yodelled loud enough to rattle the shelving. There would be complaints from the neighbours but Becca, Kate knew, would visit with flowers and wine and girlish remorse, and all would be forgiven. Good at making a mess, Becca was even better at clearing it up. Countless times, Becca had got Kate out of trouble. Almost as many times as she’d got her into trouble.

  ‘God, you’re gorgeous,’ breathed Julian, as Charlie pretended to vomit.

  ‘Kate helped me choose this.’ Becca twirled for Julian in her burgundy micro mini. ‘I borrowed her choker.’

  ‘It looks better on you.’

  Kate pulled an outraged face in the dark, but had to agree with Julian’s ungentlemanly comment. Everything looked better on Becca. Anointed as the family ‘Pretty One’, she lived up to her title, with expensively tended blonde streaks and a diet-honed body.

  Strangers always sensed the girls were related, even though one cousin was leggy and va-va-voom, and the other was shorter, darker and generally huddled over a book (the ‘Clever One’). It was the eyes; both Kate and Becca saw the world through china blue peepers that hinted at their shared Irish heritage. Through the coats she heard her cousin defend her.