Sunshine and Sweet Peas in Nightingale Square

  To

  Grandad Herb

  Who grew sweet peas in abundance

  Prologue

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Kate?’ David asked as our honeymoon flight finally touched down and I twisted in my seat to catch my first glimpse of an Italian sunrise. ‘I know she said something to you.’

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, shaking my head and dismissing the harsh words my mother had used to warn me that my marriage would last six months, if I was lucky. ‘I’m fine. It’s nothing.’

  ‘But you were late to the church,’ David persisted in spite of my reassurance. ‘Very late.’

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ I laughed, reaching for his hand and kissing it. ‘That was down to Dad dithering about. He was more nervous than I was.’

  David nodded.

  ‘Did you think she’d finally got to me?’ I asked, half-jokingly. ‘I hope you didn’t think she’d made me change my mind?’

  ‘The thought did enter my head as the seconds began to tick by,’ he admitted with a boyish grin.

  ‘Then you’re more deluded than she is,’ I tutted. ‘I love you, David and no amount of mithering from my mother could ever change that.’

  It was true. I loved the man in the seat next to me body and soul. I had from the very first moment I laid eyes on him. Yes, he had a dubious relationship history but I knew he wasn’t the same person any more. Unfortunately, my mother didn’t share my belief, but had she paid half as much attention to the impeccable present as she did to the promiscuous past, she would have seen for herself just how well-suited we were.

  David hadn’t so much as looked at another woman since our relationship had turned from casual to serious and sitting on that flight, poised to explore Rome, Venice and beyond, I could see both my marriage and my career comfortingly stretching out ahead of me. David and I were to be partners both in our lives and our work in the antiques trade. Granted we had each chosen to make sacrifices to make our relationship work, but we were both equally determined to make a success of it all.

  ‘She still doesn’t know you like I do,’ I said consolingly, ‘but she will. In time.’

  David didn’t look convinced.

  ‘I just wish I could make her see how much I love you, Mrs Kate Harper.’ He burst out, more serious all of a sudden, ‘I just want her to understand that I would never hurt you, that this old leopard really has changed his spots.’

  ‘Hey,’ I cut in, feeling giddy at the sound of my married name, ‘less of the old, thank you very much! There aren’t that many years between us.’

  David was not to be distracted from making his heartfelt declaration.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean this, Kate. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’ve been a breath of fresh air since the first moment I clapped eyes on you and I would never, ever do, or say, anything that would hurt you or make you doubt me. I don’t care what anyone else thinks of us, all I need to know is that you trust me with every bit of your heart.’

  I closed my eyes as he tenderly cupped my face in his hands and brushed his lips lightly against mine. I had never felt so happy, so loved and cherished. I held tight to that moment and locked it away for safekeeping.

  ‘I trust you,’ I whispered, looking deep into his eyes.

  Chapter 1

  Eight years later

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you feel you have to go at all.’

  This had been the initial reaction from David when I told him I was moving out of our house and leaving London for good, and he had been adding to his arguments to try and make me stay every day during the weeks that followed.

  ‘There’s absolutely no reason why you should go,’ he had said when he realised I was actually serious about making a clean break and not playing some game of cat and mouse.

  My days of playing at anything were well and truly over, but I had struggled to make him believe it. I had struggled to make myself believe it for a while. There had been times when his offers to start over had sounded almost appealing but in the end, I knew I couldn’t live with a half-arsed happy ending. There was no way now that I could ever have what I had once been so content to forgo and what was left over simply wasn’t enough. It was all a far cry from the promises we had made on our honeymoon eight years ago.

  ‘I’ve left you alone, haven’t I?’ he now said reasonably.

  He had. In fact, he had behaved impeccably throughout the proceedings and complied with every stipulation my legal team had suggested.

  ‘I’ve moved out,’ he continued, ‘even told you that you can have this place, every last brick of it and that solicitor of yours has already screwed me for more than half of the business.’

  ‘The business that we grew and developed together,’ I gently reminded him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, slumping down on the sofa, ‘sorry. I know it’s what you’re entitled to. I just can’t bear the thought of you being so far away and it’s making me say stupid things.’

  ‘I’m not going to be that far away,’ I sighed, ‘and besides, you lost all rights to keeping me close when you—’

  I bit my tongue to stop the words tumbling out and reminded myself that it was my badgering which had triggered the ruinous chain of events in the first place.

  ‘I know I did,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I know, but there are only so many times I can say sorry without it losing its meaning.’

  He sounded absolutely miserable and I cursed the naivety which had led me to think that I could bend him to my will once we’d settled companionably into married life. Had I respected the bargain we’d struck, his friends would still be marvelling at the fact that I’d somehow tamed ‘the old rascal’ with the dire reputation whom they all loved so much.

  ‘Talking of the business,’ he said, thankfully changing tack, ‘Francesca Lucca was asking after you today. She wanted to know if you’d found anything for that new place of hers in Florence.’

  I stopped packing and stood with my hands on my hips.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you haven’t told her.’

  ‘How can I?’ David shrugged. ‘She’s a good Catholic woman. Divorce doesn’t feature on her radar.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t feature on mine until you—’ I stopped myself again and took another deep breath.

  It was a miracle that our sniping had never escalated into anything really regrettable, but it was getting harder rather than easier. This move was happening just in the nick of time as we strove to keep our increasingly terse exchanges on the right side of civilised.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to look after her yourself now, won’t you?’ I told him bluntly.

  David and I had built up our bespoke business, travelling the world sourcing antiques, artefacts and curios which would delight our list of discerning clients, who were prepared to pay handsomely for the ‘seeker’ service we provided. Francesca Lucca was one of our wealthiest and fussiest and she had always preferred to work with me rather than ‘that naughty boy’. At almost fifteen years older than me I couldn’t see David as a boy, but she was spot on with the ‘naughty’ tag.

  ‘Are you leaving all of these?’ he asked, pointing at a little side table which was full of photographs.

  ‘Yes,’ I shrugged, averting my eyes and wondering if he’d noticed I was no longer wearing my wedding band. ‘I have a head full of memories, David. I don’t need photographs as well.’

  There was one picture I had kept, though. It was taken the summer we met, just before my final year at university. I hadn’t wanted to go home for the holidays, so needed to work to pay my rent. I had ventured into an antique shop after a parti
cularly awful interview for a job in a fast-food chain, hoping to be appeased by looking at beautiful things.

  Galleries and museums were my usual go-to soothers, but access to the shop was both conveniently close by and free. It belonged to a friend of David’s and the man himself happened to be there bartering over the price of a small statue. They somehow roped me into their conversation and the shy, gauche twenty-year-old I was at the time fell hard for the sophisticated smart-talking man who paid over the odds for an art deco figure just because I said I liked it.

  ‘Let me take you out to lunch,’ he had said once we left the cool emporium and were outside in the heat of the midday sun. ‘It’ll soften the hit my bank balance has just taken.’

  I insisted on paying and the only thing I could afford was burgers and chips which we ate outside under the shade of a tree in the park. It was a strange beginning, an unusual afternoon by any standard, but by the end of it I had a job to see me through the summer and a heart brimming with love that my housemates warned me was bound to end in heartbreak.

  Heartbreak . . .

  ‘You can keep them,’ I said quickly, returning to my half-filled box. ‘And the statue.’

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ said David, mournfully shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I sniffed.

  I had always assumed that when relationships came to a difficult end there was shouting and recriminations, drama and things being thrown and torn, but our untangling hadn’t been like that at all.

  ‘If only I could hate you,’ I sighed, wishing that, in spite of everything, I wasn’t still a little bit in love with him.

  I had watched other people’s relationships break down and they seemed to instantaneously lead to loathing and bitterness, but I couldn’t get anywhere near either emotion, even though the repercussions of what David had done had been so mortifying. Perhaps if I hadn’t felt so responsible for the mess our relationship had become I would have been able to conjure something stronger, but I did feel responsible and therefore I couldn’t.

  ‘If only I could at least really lose my temper with you,’ I said out loud, while wondering if an angry outburst would purge me of some of the pain.

  ‘Perhaps you can’t lay into me because we aren’t meant to go our separate ways,’ David said hopefully. ‘If you really can’t hate me then perhaps that means we should try and patch things up. I could go to therapy, counselling or something.’

  I knew that all the counselling in the world wouldn’t be able to give me the outcome I had been craving.

  ‘No, David,’ I said firmly, ‘absolutely not. The decision’s been made and now we have to stick to it. I want to stick to it,’ I reminded him, just in case he was still labouring under the illusion that there was a glimmer of hope for us.

  ‘Where did you say you were moving to again?’ he asked quickly, trying to catch me off guard as he stood back up.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  It had been hard not telling him about my new home in Norwich. It was neatly nestled in a place called Nightingale Square and sat opposite a grand Victorian pile called Prosperous Place. The pile was just the sort of property we had been employed to furnish and I knew he would have been as intrigued by its fascinating history as I was.

  ‘But it’s not all that far,’ I added. ‘And you can get in touch via my solicitor, should you need to. Try not to get into too much mischief now you’re young, free and single again, won’t you?’

  ‘I only want to be one of those,’ he said sadly.

  And that summed up part of the problem, which I had realised far too late; there was a piece of David which had always been the naughty boy who didn’t want to grow up.

  Chapter 2

  Being a cash buyer, and buying from a vendor with no chain, meant that the purchase of the house was simplicity itself and as the survey didn’t throw up anything untoward I was able to leave London and David’s broken vows behind almost immediately. Thankfully I could afford to take a year out, which would give me time to adjust to life on my own and update my new home.

  I was very happy to be moving to somewhere where no one knew me. My London friends had all been David’s friends originally and the majority were nearer his age than mine. It was only natural that when the moment came they had rallied round, but then drifted back into his orbit. I didn’t mind that my own was empty. In fact, the clean slate this move was offering had become the one welcoming beacon in the sea of sadness I had been treading water in.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ I called from the gate as the removals men set off back to London with a hefty tip, and heartfelt thanks, for lugging about and rearranging some of the furniture that had been left behind.

  ‘You’re welcome love. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, heading back down the path, but not before I’d spotted some curtain-twitching antics in the house on my right. ‘A little bit of luck wouldn’t go amiss,’ I muttered as I closed the door and surveyed my box-filled new abode.

  I was annoyed that my mother had been right about everything, even if she had miscalculated the timing; however, it had been one of her perfectly crafted comments which had led me to Norwich rather than back to Wynbridge. ‘You know it’s the only sensible thing to do,’ she had said while trying to convince me to return home, and she was right. Returning to my childhood home and the nurturing embrace of my family would have been the ‘sensible’ thing to do, and that was exactly what stopped me doing it.

  As out of character as it was, I didn’t much feel like being sensible any more and I certainly didn’t feel up to facing the head-bobs and pitying glances that I knew would be waiting for me in the flat Fenlands of Wynbridge should I return home to nurse my broken heart.

  It had been my brother, Tom, whom I had called on for support when I found what looked, online at least, like the perfect sanctuary for an emotionally drained, and soon-to-be divorced, thirty-year-old woman who was having to face the rigours of creating a whole new life for herself because her seemingly perfect happy ever after had fallen so spectacularly apart.

  Smiling out from the screen the little house in Nightingale Square looked like the answer to my prayers. Somewhere unassuming I could hide away in and nurse my shattered soul in peace and privacy. Yes, I had fallen head over heels in love with it at first sight, and yes, that was admittedly an impulsive trait which hadn’t served me well in the past, but I had everything crossed that it was going to be just the distraction I needed.

  My sister-in-law, Jemma, however, hadn’t been convinced.

  ‘Are you sure Jemma can spare you?’ I asked Tom as we made arrangements to view the house via Skype.

  ‘Of course she can spare him,’ she butted in. ‘Although she’s really hoping you’ll hate it and decide to come home.’

  It was interesting that practically everyone in the family still assumed I considered Wynbridge my ‘home’ even though I had left over a decade ago for university and hadn’t properly lived there since.

  ‘Norwich is hardly the other end of the earth,’ I reminded her as her knitted brow popped into view and I cringed at the thought of moving back into my childhood bedroom.

  ‘But it’s hardly next door either, is it, Kate?’ she pouted back.

  ‘It’s only two hours away, Jem. One hundred and twenty short minutes along the A47, that’s all.’

  ‘That feels like two days with this pair in the back,’ she moaned on, jerking her head in the direction of where my feisty niece and nephew were tucking into their dinner. ‘We just want to look after you. You’ve been through so much . . .’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Tom cut in, ‘but I’m not telling Mum.’

  The train journey from Liverpool Street to Norwich had given me ample opportunity to mull over the nightmarish events of the previous few months and strengthen my resolve that not moving back to Wynbridge was the right thing to do. I had stared out of the window as the world flashed by, the landscape becoming steadily cl
eaner and greener.

  I just knew that the house was going to be the ideal bolt-hole for me; it was still in a city, albeit a far smaller one than London, but it would offer the same urban level of anonymity I craved and that was just as appealing as the original sash windows and stained-glass panelling in the front door.

  I had initially been drawn to Norwich because of its history and unusual castle. The fact that it wasn’t somewhere I was familiar with was an added bonus. The newness of it all certainly felt right. I didn’t want to live somewhere where memories and ghosts lurked around every corner, threatening to leap out and remind me of all that had gone before. My life was facing an unexpected fresh start and Norwich was a blank page with a fascinating past that I was looking forward to learning more about. Besides which, it conveniently put enough miles between me and Wynbridge to stop the family popping in to re-stock the fridge every five minutes, yet was close enough for an organised day trip.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ Tom had predictably said when he hugged me at the station, ‘and you have bags the size of suitcases. I had rather hoped Skype was just showing you in a bad light, but . . .’

  ‘I’m heartbroken,’ I answered him simply, but truthfully. ‘What did you expect?’

  I dreaded to think what he would have said had he known the details of everything I’d had to cope with. Had it simply been a case of good old-fashioned infidelity which had pulled my marriage apart, as I had let everyone believe, I might have been able to gradually piece it back together, but there had ended up being so much more to it than that and not even my rose-tinted desire for a Disney-inspired happy ever after could make me forget it.

  ‘But you still don’t hate him?’ Tom frowned.

  ‘No, I still don’t hate him.’

  Had my brother been privy to the part I had played in the catastrophe, and the colossal guilt I lugged about as a result, he would have understood why I was incapable of hating David for what he had done. I knew that had I not tried to force my beloved into changing his mind about something I had been so readily prepared to sacrifice when we first met, then our marriage would have merrily skipped along much the same as it had for the last few years. I would have still been living my fairy-tale dream rather than sweeping up the leftovers of a Hammer House Horror.