by Beth Moran
Prologue
22 December
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It was finally here. The highlight of the Dougal and Duff calendar. Everyone would be there, from the lowliest admin assistant to the senior partners. The oak bannisters were draped with ivy, dotted with twinkling red and white fairy lights. The doorway leading into the designated party room was framed with pine branches, a cheeky sprig of mistletoe hanging in the centre. Inside, the room looked even more spectacular than last year. Hundreds of sparkling snowflakes dangled from the wood-panelled ceiling, more fairy lights and greenery adorned every surface. The Christmas tree in the centre of the back wall stood festooned with baubles and ribbons.
Waiting staff slipped between the clusters of office cliques with trays of champagne and crumbly canapés, their black uniforms in sharp contrast to the glittering party dresses and tartan finery. A swing quartet thrummed, but it couldn’t beat the buzz of festive gossip. Rumours had been flying that the newest partner, Richard Abernethy, freshly returned from yet another victory in the Paris office, had been dropping hints about an important announcement. And when a locally renowned jeweller delivered a ring-shaped box to Reception that morning, every one of the sixty-three employees knew within minutes. The only question was who. Nobody had a clue.
That was, except me.
The other PAs assumed I must have some insight to the mystery woman, given that I’d almost unlimited access to his emails and diary. They spent most of the evening trying to badger me into giving them a name. Or at least a list of suspects.
I smoothed down my ridiculously expensive dress, patted my hair, took another fake-nonchalant swig of champagne and said nothing.
Not because of loyalty to my boss. Although that would have been reason enough.
Taut with nerves, heart fluttering, resisting the urge to wash the dryness from my mouth with another drink, I not so surreptitiously watched my secret boyfriend and soon to be fiancé from across the room and wished he’d hurry up and get on with it.
I had always dreaded Christmas. Particularly these last few years when it had simply been another day alone, opening the same gift card sent by my dad and watching someone else’s television. Waiting to hear from Richard, despite him telling me that he’d probably not get a moment to call.
But this year – surely I’d be spending it on his family’s estate in the Highlands? I had already planned the clothes I would pack, and spent a frantic afternoon searching for the perfect ‘last-minute’ gifts for his parents and younger brother.
For the first time, in so long that it made my heart ache just thinking about it, I would be spending Christmas with a loving, happy family.
I took a deep breath, smothered my smile and, for the millionth time that day, silently practised my surprised, thrilled and senior-partner’s wife worthy ‘yes’.
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Chapter One
When the house had been described as like something out of a fairy tale, I’d been picturing Snow White’s cottage, or a quaint gingerbread house (minus the evil witch, whom I’d left behind in Edinburgh), not a shrunken, grottier version of Sleeping Beauty’s derelict outhouse. And, in my storybook, there hadn’t been an old pram, two sagging armchairs and a turquoise toilet blocking the driveway.
I peered through the taxi window, trying to kid myself it would look better once I was out of the car. Or it had stopped raining. Or if I took my glasses off. The driver pulled up in front of a rusted mangle.
‘Could you get any closer to the door?’ I asked, tugging the zip a bit higher on my jacket.
He swivelled his head to look at me, one eyebrow raised.
‘What about parking on the lawn?’
‘That ain’t a lawn. It’s a jungle. I ain’t risking my tyres on that.’
I blew out a sigh, and unbuckled the seat belt.
‘Fifty pound.
What?’ My hand froze halfway to my purse. ‘We agreed thirty.’
‘That was before the ford, the mud pit and the overgrown branches scratching my paintwork. The car needs a full-on valet and the extra won’t even cover it. I’ve got standards to uphold.’
I cast my eyes around the faded upholstery, scuffed trimmings and air freshener designed as a topless woman.
‘You knew the address was on an unnamed road in the middle of a forest and you still said thirty.’ I tried to keep the tremble out of my voice. The extra twenty pounds might not pay for a car valet but it would help me not starve for the next couple of weeks.
‘I’m the only taxi-driver round ‘ere who’ll come out this far.’ He grinned. The big bad wolf. ‘I’m the only taxi full stop. If you want out of ‘ere any time soon, best stay in my good books.’ He tipped his head towards the house. ‘And, trust me, you won’t be wanting to ‘ang around.
‘Are you threatening me?’ I did my best to channel some of the experience I’d gained working for sharks who’d sell your own baby back to you, and straightened my shoulders. After enduring a lifetime of being treated like a worthless wimp, this was supposed to be a fresh start. The new, improved, over-it, Jenny.
I opened my purse, and deliberately placed three notes on the plastic ledge between the front and back seats. ‘I’m giving you the thirty pounds you asked for, and not a penny more.’
He curled up one side of his lip, leant towards me and growled. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Letting out a squeak, I unclasped my purse again. ‘And a tip! Of course. Here. I’ll make it twenty.’ Yanking open the door, I tumbled out into the freezing January rain, slipping and sliding round to the car boot. Hauling out my suitcase, followed by a rucksack, I stumbled out of the way just in time to avoid injury, but not a generous splattering of filthy spray from the revving wheels.
Wiping a smear of mud off my glasses with a sodden sleeve, I stared at my new home.
A semi-detached old woodsman’s cottage; the grey plaster frontage streaked with grime, slumped chimney and patchy roof confirmed it hadn’t worn the years well.
I squelched through the puddles, rucksack on my back, hand-me-down Mulberry suitcase dragging behind, and peered in through the ivy-smothered front window. Rummaging in my jacket pocket for the key, I gave up attempting to make out shapes in the gloom beyond.
‘Right. Might as well get it over with. Get out of this rain and put the kettle on.’ I wiped the worst of the dirt from the keyhole, congratulating myself for having had the foresight to have the utilities reconnected before I arrived, and forced the key in, slowly wiggling it until it unlocked.
I pushed against the door. Nothing. Not even a rattle.
Turning the key back to the original position, I tried again. As water ran in icy rivulets down my face and up my sleeves, I did everything I could to make the door budge. Pounding, shoulder-barging, kicking, taking a slippery running charge like the cops in films.
After a while, determined not to start crying, I dumped my luggage and precariously stepped along the front of the house to see if I could get around the back. No good. More bushes, the rain dripping off two-inch thorns. I glanced over at the adjoining cottage. There none of the windows were cracked and the garden didn’t look as though it had been abandoned by a rag-and-bone man. Hmm. Maybe I could sleep in there instead. Just for tonight. According to my mother, the whole building had lain empty for years. There wasn’t much demand for cottages in the middle of nowhere, unless done up as holiday lets, and no one wanted to holiday next door to a scrapheap.
I cautiously moved closer, trying to peek beyond the closed blinds, before looking through the letterbox, but the approaching dusk made it too dark to see. I tramped along a brick path around to the back; here things appeared much the same. A wooden picnic bench sat forlornly on a patch of weed-riddled gravel about six feet square. Beyond that, my half of the building was nearly hidden where the forest had encroached right up to the house in a twist of branches and brambles. I might be able to squeeze through to the back door. I should at least attempt to squeeze through to the
back door.
But then again, it would probably rip my jeans, and this was the only pair that fitted. And if I scratched my face, it would be harder to find a job, and then how could I survive here? I probably didn’t even have any phone reception, so I couldn’t call anyone if I tripped on a stray root and impaled myself on the thorns. I quickly checked my phone (not wondering even for a second whether Richard had been trying to send me any grovelling messages admitting it was all a terrible mistake). See! No signal. It would be reckless and foolish to force my way into that tangle of spikes.
I shuddered. Glancing at the shadows looming around me, I imagined the kinds of animals that prowled Sherwood Forest once darkness fell. They’d find my broken body, drawn to fresh meat by the scent of blood leaking from a thousand puncture wounds. I wouldn’t stand a chance.
And even if I could call that taxi bloke for help, he probably wouldn’t come.
If only there were a dry, empty, nearby dwelling-place for me to take refuge in! Just to get me through the night, until the rain stopped. I stood, hesitant, and pondered whether I had the guts to go for it.
I didn’t ponder for long. I was too cold, wet, muddy, hungry and bone-shatteringly tired to care about the law. If I got arrested at least I’d have a dry place to sleep and, hopefully, some breakfast.
I hurried over to the cottage, said a quick prayer and tried the door. Locked. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed a stone and bashed it through the door’s frosted window.
Preparing to carefully poke my hand through the hole, I nearly severed my wrist when a pair of arms grabbed me from behind. Pulling me away from the door, the arms wrestled me over to the picnic table and pushed me down face first until my top half lay in the pool of water collecting on the surface.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ The man held me down with a hand on each shoulder, preventing me from seeing him. Okay, so with my eyes closed and glasses fallen off I wouldn’t have been able to anyway, but still. His voice sounded rough, and strong, and mad as hell.
I gasped, sucking in half a mouthful of rainwater from the tabletop, which I proceeded to choke on. As a frankly hideous retching sound emerged from my throat, the man quickly let go. ‘Woah. If you’re going to throw up, at least do it in the bushes, not on my bench.’
I heaved myself upright, and twisted around, one hand gripping the table, trying to stop my brain racing long enough to catch hold of a useful thought.
‘Your bench?’
‘Yes. My bench. My broken pane of glass. My house. So, to repeat, what are you doing here?’
‘But nobody lives here,’ I managed to rasp. ‘The house is abandoned.’
‘Does it look abandoned?’ he asked, his voice getting louder.
‘Can’t see. Glasses.’ I felt around on the table in vain until he grunted in exasperation and bent down, before thrusting the rain-smeared glasses into my hand. I clutched them for a few raggedy breaths, a little scared to put them on and see the face matching that furious voice. It looked as bad as I had feared. Thick, dark eyebrows over eyes black with anger. And behind a bristling beard, a mouth twisted in disgust.
I glanced at the house, fear shoved aside as temper sparked, my constant bodyguard these days. ‘Yes. It does. No lights on. All overgrown. No car outside. And I was told nobody lived here.’
‘And who told you that?’ He folded his arms.
‘My mother. The previous owner of the other house.’
‘The owner died six years ago.’
‘Yes. So the house went to her daughter. My mother. And, as of last week, it belongs to me. Hence I have a key.’ I pulled the key out of my pocket and waved it at him.
‘If you have a key, what are you doing smashing my window?’
‘I couldn’t get the door open.’
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.
‘So, I came around the back. But I couldn’t get to the door. And it’s nearly dark, everything I’m wearing is sopping wet. And the taxi driver stole my money…’ I took a long, deep breath. I would not cry in front of this man. I had vowed never to let a man think I was a pushover again. Come on, Jenny, buck up.
‘Tezza’s Taxis?’
I nodded, wiping a raindrop off my nose.
He sighed. ‘The front door won’t open from the outside. I’ll hack a path to the back and you can at least get out of the rain. Call round in the morning and I’ll give you the name of a decent taxi firm before you go.’
‘Go where?’
‘Back to wherever you came from.’
I gaped at him for a moment, vaguely registering that the rain had begun to ease, the background percussion replaced with the slow plop of water dripping off leaves, and the hiss of steam escaping both my ears.
‘I’m not going anywhere. I live here now.’
He looked me up and down. ‘Trust me. You’ll be leaving in the morning. If you last that long.’ He nodded towards a brick outbuilding tucked under an oak tree. ‘I’ll get hacking. But if the rain starts again I’m stopping to board up my window.’
‘Actually, it’s fine. Thank you. I can do my own hacking. I apologise about your window. Do send me the bill. Good day.’
I marched as best I could back around the house, only losing my shoe once in the mud.
‘Okay, Fairy Godmother. I reckon right about now would be a perfect time for you to show up.’ I scanned the woods, struggling to make out anything in the deepening gloom. After a good ten minutes pulling branches aside, stamping them out of the way and ripping my hands to shreds in the process, I found a shed.
It took only a few tries to smash the wood, encircling the lock, to bits using a thick branch and the force of my anger. Nicely warmed up, somewhat exhilarated by my discovery, I stepped inside. Maybe a teensy bit unnerved by my neighbour’s comments about only lasting a night, I decided to put off investigating the house until morning. In front of me appeared to be an excellent place to unroll my sleeping bag and seek a very welcome oblivion.
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About the Author
Beth Moran is the author of three previous books, including Making Marion. She regularly features on BBC Radio Nottingham and is a trustee of the national women's network Free Range Chicks. She lives on the outskirts of Sherwood Forest.
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Boldwood Books Ltd.
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Copyright © Beth Moran, 2020
Cover Design by Charlotte Abrams-Simpson
Cover Photography: Shutterstock
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The moral right of Beth Moran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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 apologise for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make th
e appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Paperback ISBN 978-1-83889-337-8
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