A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘And I want to get out of here too, God knows.’

  The fact that he would be leaving on his own two feet was, he acknowledged, largely due to the fact that his actress mother had flown back from America immediately the news of the accident had reached her and set about charming and bullying the surgeons into renewed attempts to save the mangled and broken thing that had been his left leg.

  As if he’d read Carey’s mind, Nick said, ‘Daisy should have had the same trust in the surgeons that your mother had, not dropped you like a hot potato the moment she got the news.’

  ‘She did go to all the trouble of writing to explain she had a phobia of hospitals and illness … and how she’d been meaning to tell me she was moving out of the flat anyway, because she felt our relationship just wasn’t working,’ Carey said, though at the time his girlfriend’s abrupt severance of their relationship had hurt him deeply.

  ‘Lying cow! And I told you she’s already shacked up with your replacement on the series, didn’t I?’

  Carey shrugged. ‘Director’s assistant perks? And everyone’s told me, though I can’t say I care any more. How did you get on at the flat?’

  Nick had been organizing the packing and storage of Carey’s belongings before the sale of the flat was finalized and Daisy had arranged to meet him there that day to collect a few things she’d left behind and hand over her set of keys.

  Nick, who had flung his lanky frame into the armchair, his Converse-shod feet dangling over the arm, suddenly sat upright. ‘There was something I meant to tell you the minute I got here and I completely forgot!’ he exclaimed. ‘Daisy’d already been to the flat and she’d left you this note.’

  He pulled a crumpled bit of paper out of his pocket and handed it over.

  There was no greeting, or polite wishes for his continued recovery. It simply read:

  I can’t cope with Tiny any more, circumstances have changed and anyway, he’s become quite impossible. You bought him, so it’s up to you to decide what to do with him.

  It wasn’t signed.

  ‘Terse – and what does Daisy think I can do with a dog till I get out of here?’ commented Carey, looking up with a frown. Daisy had coaxed him into buying the tiny Chihuahua puppy from a friend of hers, though his novelty had worn off even before he’d begun to show his true nature: no male legs were safe from those needle-sharp teeth. He’d also quickly outgrown the designer dog-carrier she’d bought for him, so it looked increasingly likely that his father hadn’t been a Chihuahua at all …

  They’d been sold a pup.

  ‘She’s too self-absorbed to even think of that one,’ Nick said, then rolled up his jeans to exhibit a fresh set of pinpoint marks. ‘Tiny was shut in the kitchen and when I opened the door, the little bastard got me again.’

  Carey stared at him. ‘You mean … she’d dumped him there and gone?’

  ‘Yep. And since I couldn’t leave him there on his own and there was a plastic pet crate in the hall, I shoved him in that and he’s in the car now. I’ve left the windows down a bit, so he should be okay till I get back. What do you want me to do with him?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to find him a good home. You couldn’t keep him till I get out of here, I suppose, Nick?’ he added hopefully.

  ‘Apart from not wanting my legs to look like I stick pins in them for fun, I’m out all the time, so it wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Carey. ‘Look – if I give you the address of the kennels we used when we went on holiday, could you take him there? It won’t be strange to him and I’ll work something permanent out as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yeah, good idea,’ agreed Nick, looking relieved. ‘They’re letting you out of here soon anyway, so we’ll think of something while you’re staying at mine over Christmas.’

  It was lucky Nick had a ground floor flat … Carey still didn’t know if he’d ever be able to walk without limping, but he was determined he was leaving the hospital without crutches and would dispose of even a walking stick as soon as he could.

  ‘Thanks, Nick – and I’ll only be staying with you till just after Christmas – then I’m off up to Lancashire. That visitor you so nearly knocked flat when you arrived was the bearer of some surprising news.’

  ‘Did he want you to makeover a cottage for him?’ he asked hopefully. ‘As long as you delegate all the physical stuff to other people, you could take commissions to renovate cottages again, couldn’t you?’

  ‘No, it was nothing like that. He was a solicitor and he’d been trying to track me down for ages. In fact, a couple of those letters you’ve brought me are probably from him. He came down himself in the end and one of the neighbours told him what had happened and where I was.’

  ‘Not an ambulance chaser, is he? They can’t sue anyone if they don’t know who the hit-and-run driver was, surely? Unless you’ve remembered any more details about the car that hit you.’

  Carey frowned. ‘Sometimes I get a sort of flash and think I can see a big silver four-by-four … but that might be totally unrelated to the accident. Concussion can have weird side effects.’

  ‘So, not an ambulance chaser?’

  ‘No, he’s a family solicitor – in fact, I suppose he’s my family solicitor now. It appears that my father had an older brother and now he’s died and left me everything, because I’m the last of the Revells … or the last of that branch of them in Lancashire, anyway.’

  ‘You’re an heir!’ exclaimed Nick, his deep-set black eyes suddenly burning like coals with excitement. ‘You’re rich beyond your wildest dreams and can invest lots of lovely lolly in Raising Crane Productions! We’ll make a TV documentary series that will blast The Complete Country Cottage right out of the water!’

  Nick’s small production company, in which Carey had an investment, was doing well, but still looking for that big, elusive hit.

  ‘Don’t get too excited, we’re not talking millions here,’ said Carey, damping down his enthusiasm. ‘There’s a rundown house and not much money. Plus, there’s a resentful stepdaughter and her husband living in the lodge, who expected to scoop the lot.’

  ‘Well, tough,’ said Nick unsympathetically. ‘How come you didn’t know you had an uncle?’

  ‘There was a big family falling out and Dad ran off to be on the stage when he was still in his teens and never went back.’

  The rest was history: Harry Revell, progressing via ENSA on to the post-war stage, had become one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation. He’d married very late and died when Carey was eight.

  ‘Dad never told me anything about his family and if Mum knew, she didn’t mention it. I’ll have to ask her.’

  His mother had been a young aspiring actress when she’d married Harry Revell and she’d returned to the stage after he died. Eventually she’d gone to America and made her name in the hit series The Little Crimes of Lisa Strange. She played a terribly English spinster who travelled round the country solving mysteries, assisted by her sarky female black American driver. It had been going for years and showed no signs of ever stopping.

  Carey looked Mossby up on his smartphone, though there were few pictures and little information. It was a white stucco Arts and Crafts house, linked by an old square tower to part of the original Elizabethan building at the back. It was situated on a sort of bluff with terraces leading down to a lake and woodland.

  ‘It’s a stately home, all right!’ said Nick.

  ‘It’s not huge, but it’s a little bigger than I thought it would be – the Arts and Crafts houses were mostly built by the wealthy middle classes, and were more like overgrown cottages than anything.’

  ‘Well, it should be right up your street, anyway – and did you say it needed renovating?’

  ‘It sounds as if it’s been neglected lately,’ agreed Carey and they looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding.

  ‘This could be just the fresh start you need – and a major opportunity for both of us,’ enthused Nick. ‘Ca
rey Revell’s Mansion Makeover – a Raising Crane Production!’

  ‘It’s not a mansion,’ Carey objected, but his friend had the bit between his teeth now.

  ‘I can make a pilot, see who’s interested in a series – and I think there’ll be a lot of interest, because there’s the dual angle of you recovering from a serious accident and the whole unexpected inheritance thing … And then all the usual ups and downs of restoration, only on a huge scale.’

  His dark eyes glowed again. ‘It could run to more than one series and it’ll give us both the break we need!’

  ‘I haven’t even seen the place yet,’ Carey cautioned him. ‘Hold on a bit!’

  ‘Doesn’t Angelique live somewhere quite near to this Mossby place?’ Nick continued, carried away on a tide of optimism. ‘If there are any windows to be repaired or replaced, that’ll be really handy!’

  ‘Yeah, I expect she’ll think just the same way you do,’ Carey said sarcastically. Angel – or Angelique, to give her her full and slightly ridiculous name – was his oldest friend. As students he, Nick, Angel and a couple of others had shared a house together.

  ‘My old gran used to say that as one door closed, another opened,’ Nick said, getting up. ‘She was right.’

  Then he went off to deliver Tiny to the Poochies Paradise Hotel, after Carey had rung and pleaded with them to house the dog, because last time he’d made himself popular by biting a staff member. They were going to charge double … and triple over the actual Christmas period.

  He couldn’t tell them how long they’d have to have him after that. He assumed Daisy had already offered Tiny to all her friends and acquaintances before she’d dumped him and he didn’t rate Tiny’s chances of being re-homed if he went to a dog rescue centre.

  Carey decided to worry about that later. He got the photos of Mossby up on his phone again and an innate feeling that this was his place – somewhere he truly belonged to – tugged at his heart, taking him totally by surprise.

  It was ridiculous to feel that way, seeing as he’d never even heard of Mossby till that morning!

  Or had he …? Now he came to think of it, the name did stir up some very distant recollection …

  His eye fell on the heap of mail Nick had dumped on the bed and he spotted a letter addressed in Angelique’s familiar scrawl and sent via his friend’s address, as all her letters had been since the accident. At least Nick had always remembered to bring those.

  He ripped it open, skimming the enquiries after his rehab progress and smiling at the small caricatures she’d drawn in the margins – himself wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy and one of old Ivan, who worked in Julian Seddon’s stained glass studio, hobbling about with a slopping mug of tea in each hand.

  She wrote that she was off to Antigua in a few days to stay with her mother and stepfather, who kept a super yacht in Falmouth Harbour, as well as having a nearby villa. Angel had always spent two weeks with them just before Christmas – he’d gone with her himself a couple of times, when they were students – but last year she hadn’t, because her partner, Julian, was recovering from a stroke.

  Carey thought Julian must be making a good recovery if Angel was leaving him to his own devices – or maybe he had insisted, realizing she needed the break? When she’d been to see him in hospital last time she’d been in London on business, he’d been troubled by how worried and strained she’d seemed.

  His conscience suddenly twinged: maybe he should have visited them when Julian first had the stroke, or even rung her more often since? But then, everything had been wiped from his mind by the accident, except recovering and getting out of hospital as soon as he could, preferably on two feet.

  He smiled, wryly. Angel always joked that he only remembered her existence when he wanted her to work for free, making or repairing stained glass for one of the cottages featured on his programmes, but that was far from the truth.

  Since she fell in love with Julian Seddon the summer after she graduated and moved to Lancashire to live and work with him, she might have left the centre stage of his life, but Carey was always conscious of her there in the wings. And he was quite certain she felt the same way about him.

  The Little Teashop of

  Lost and Found

  Trisha Ashley

  Alice Rose is a foundling, discovered on the Yorkshire moors above Haworth as a baby. Adopted but then later rejected again by a horrid stepmother, Alice struggles to find a place where she belongs. Only baking – the scent of cinnamon and citrus and the feel of butter and flour between her fingers – brings a comforting sense of home.

  So it seems natural that when she finally decides to return to Haworth, Alice turns to baking again, taking over a rundown little teashop and working to set up an afternoon tea emporium.

  Luckily she soon makes friends – including a Grecian god-like neighbour – who help her both set up home and try to solve the mystery of who she is. There are one or two last twists in the dark fairy tale of Alice’s life to come … but can she find her happily ever after?

  A Leap of Faith

  Trisha Ashley

  Sappho Jones stopped counting birthdays when she reached thirty but, even with her hazy grip on mathematics, she realizes that she’s on the slippery slope to the big four-oh! With the thought suddenly lodged in her mind that she’s a mere cat’s whisker away from becoming a single eccentric female living in a country cottage in Wales, she has the urge to do something dramatic before it’s too late.

  The trouble is, as an adventurous woman of a certain age, Sappho’s pretty much been there, done that, got the T-shirt. In fact, the only thing she hasn’t tried is motherhood. And with sexy potter Nye on hand as a potential daddy – or at least donor – is it time for her to consider the biggest leap of all? It’s either that or buy a cat …

  About the Author

  Trisha Ashley was born in St Helens, Lancashire, and believes that her typically dark Lancashire sense of humour in adversity, crossed with a good dose of Celtic creativity from her Welsh grandmother, have made her what she is today … whatever that is. Nowadays she lives in North Wales, together with the neurotic Border Collie foisted on to her by her son, and a very chancy Muse.

  Trisha Ashley’s latest novel, The Little Teashop of Lost and Found, was her ninth consecutive Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. Her novels have twice been shortlisted for the Melissa Nathan Award for Romantic Comedy and Every Woman for Herself was nominated by readers as one of the top three romantic novels of the last fifty years.

  For more information on Trisha Ashley and her books, see her website, www.trishaashley.com, where you can sign up to her newsletter, visit her Facebook page (Trisha Ashley Books) or follow her on Twitter @trishaashley.

  Also by Trisha Ashley

  Sowing Secrets

  A Winter’s Tale

  Wedding Tiers

  Chocolate Wishes

  Twelve Days of Christmas

  The Magic of Christmas

  Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues

  Good Husband Material

  Wish Upon a Star

  Finding Mr Rochester

  Every Woman for Herself

  Creature Comforts

  A Christmas Cracker

  A Leap of Faith

  (previously published as The Urge to Jump)

  A Good Heart Is Hard to Find

  (previously published as Singled Out)

  The Little Teashop of Lost and Found

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2003 as SINGLED OUT

  by Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd

  Published as A GOOD HEART IS HARD TO FIND in 2018 by Black Swan

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2003

  Ext
ract from The House of Hopes and Dreams copyright © Trisha Ashley 2018

  Cover illustration © Robyn Neild

  Trisha Ashley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

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

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526112

  ISBN 9781784160876

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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