Dear Rosie Hughes
Page 22
Home! Imagine that?
Firstly, I want to thank you for inviting Josh to Appledart (I take it you got hold of him through Dad?). You’re an incredible woman, Aggie, really, you are. I also wholeheartedly give my blessing for the book, but more of that in a minute, because I have to tell you something of great importance and you’d better sit down because– I can bloody well flick-flack!
I know, incredible!
Gethyn had been helping to support my back while I practised, but I never quite committed to really going for it and failed every time. And then, after I got the letter from Josh asking me to marry him, I just went for it and Ta Da! Tis done.
But flick flack aside, you’re right about not seeing the bucket list as something to be ticked off as quickly as possible, and honestly, I don’t care if I never swim with dolphins (actually, I do, they are truly amazing), or count to ten in Russian backwards, or basically tick my life away on a wish list of doing things for the sake of it. My home, my family and my friends really are all I need – this life, the one I already have, it’s enough. So now my bucket list reads like this:
1. Hug Mum, Dad and the dog.
2. Show Josh the warmth of my love.
3. Go metal detecting with Dad. He’s never given up on finding that elusive pot of gold, and if we believe strongly enough, together, maybe one day we’ll find it.
4. Play a duet with you.
That’s it.
But oh, yes, your book: I loved the blurby thing, and for once, I’m delighted by your mother’s behaviour because it’s about time you wrote a novel in your own name. Agatha Braithwaite is a great name and it suits you. Oh, and feel free to go crazy with the romance stuff and give me a fabulous, over-the-top, happy ending. I know Gethyn gave you some grief over this, but sod it. Mum said I was to imagine my future life in a glowing, positive way, so let’s go for full technicolour (just like when Dorothy enters Oz in the Judy Garland film).
This is what I want:
At the end of the book I should travel to your café (all upset because my marriage is over – my face stained with mascara smudges) and then you smile at me (knowingly), wipe my face clean, brush my hair and lead me out to the beach for a walk (because I’ve been travelling for days and I need fresh air). But, would you believe it, Josh is waiting for me on the jetty, standing in the rain. I run up to him cautiously, because I’m not sure what he is going to say to me (can a person run cautiously?) and he tells me how he loves me and asks me to marry him - all over again – and I say, ‘Yes, please’ and we kiss and the waves brush across our feet (maybe we need to be on the beach, not on the jetty for the kiss). Having watched the scene from a distance, you meander back into the café and sit on Gethyn’s lap, who’s waiting by the fire, and he smiles up at you and you tell him you’re pregnant (I thought I’d throw that little showstopper in there) and it suddenly stops raining, and Josh and I walk off into the sunset together, and we all live happily ever after. The end.
Author’s Notes
Knoydart:
There is a very special place on the west coast of Scotland called the Knoydart Peninsula. Anyone who has been there will know that my fictional haven, Appledart, is based very closely on Knoydart (let’s face it, Appledart is more or less a carbon copy). I wrote part of this novel during my brief stay on the peninsula, during which time I walked to the hamlet of Airor and visited the Road’s End Café and realised – with great whoops of delight – that it was the perfect location for Aggie’s new home. I’m grateful to the owner for allowing me (so blatantly) to steal Road’s End Café for my novel.
https://en-gb.facebook.com/The-Roads-End-Cafe
Iraq:
Although I served with the 1st (UK) Armoured Division in Iraq during the conflict in 2003, Rosie and Gethyn are not a representation of either myself, or anyone I met during that time. Rosie and Gethyn have their own unique, fictional story. I have, however, drawn on my experiences during the war to add reality to Rosie’s experience.
About the Author
Melanie Hudson was born in Yorkshire in 1971, the youngest of six children. Her earliest memory is of standing with her brother on the street corner selling her dad’s surplus vegetables (imagine The Good Life in Barnsley and you’re more or less there).
After running away to join the British armed forces in 1994, Melanie experienced a career that took her around the world on some exciting adventures. In 2010, when she returned to civilian life to look after her young son, on a whim, she moved to Dubai where she found the time to write women’s fiction. She now lives in Cornwall with her family.
Her debut, The Wedding Cake Tree, won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Contemporary Romance Novel of the Year 2016.
@Melanie_Hudson_
TO COME
About HarperImpulse
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