by Kim Nash
Moonlight Over Muddleford Cove
An absolutely unputdownable feel good romantic comedy
Kim Nash
Books by Kim Nash
Amazing Grace
Escape to Giddywell Grange
Sunshine and Second Chances
Moonlight Over Muddleford Cove
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Books by Kim Nash
A letter from Kim
Amazing Grace
Escape to Giddywell Grange
Sunshine and Second Chances
Acknowledgments
To my lovely big sis Lisa Jenkins.
* * *
Thank you for being my biggest book cheerleader.
* * *
This one had to be dedicated to you, bearing in mind that Muddleford is based on Mudeford where we spent lots of time as kids. And don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone about when you fell in the water when you were crabbing on Mudeford Quay.
* * *
Thanks for loving my books, for sending me pictures of Jack Grealish to cheer me up when I’m feeling down and for sending me hugs in the post.
* * *
I promise you the biggest hug in the world when lockdown has finished but I’m warning you that I might cry!
* * *
Thanks for being the best big sister I could wish for.
* * *
Love you loads.
Your little sis
xxx
Chapter One
As I stepped off the bus, I tutted loudly, realising that I’d left my bag of shopping on the seat. Turning quickly in an effort to get back on, I stumbled and fell into a puddle. I righted myself, reached for the door, and the driver grinned at me as he pulled away. Charming!
Grabbing my handbag, which had also landed in the puddle, I twisted awkwardly and got the heel of my shoe stuck in a drain. The flipping thing wouldn’t budge so I took off my shoe and bent down to pull it out. I heaved it out noisily and looked down at my hand. There was a shoe, but in the drain, my heel remained. A group of teenagers who were at the bus stop found it highly amusing, especially when I glared at them. Could this day get any worse?
Chuntering away to myself as I hobbled home, I reflected on my dreadful day. First thing this morning at work, we’d all been called into a meeting to be told that one of our biggest clients had cancelled their contract and it was very serious for the future of Breakspear and Proud. They were the third this month, and the impact of this had meant there’d been talk about jobs being lost. I was the last person employed, and those last in are normally first out. There were lots of hushed whispers around the office and I was really worried.
The work news alone, was a rubbish start, but then the seam at the back of my rather snug-fitting favourite black pencil skirt had split quite spectacularly as I bent over to pick up some papers that Mr Rhodes had dropped on the floor. Everyone in the office had found it highly hilarious that I had huge white pants on, which made it ten times worse when the rest of my outfit was black, so I’d had to tie a cardy around my waist and pop into the only shop for miles around – a small supermarket, with a very basic clothes department, opposite the office – and buy a pair of trousers which weren’t cheap and weren’t particularly nice either. That’s where I’d seen the meal deal for a three course meal for two for twelve pounds and I thought I’d buy it to try to cheer up Callum. He’d been a bit down in the dumps lately and seemed really distant. A treat once in a while wouldn’t break the bank. Shame it was still on the bus.
Maybe a night off from talking about our forthcoming wedding would do us both good. There was so much to do, I seemed to be constantly talking about it, and it was doing my head in. We could relax over a nice bottle of Merlot and watch a movie, snuggling up together on the sofa just like the old days. You never knew where it might lead…
I loved the street I lived on. All the houses and tiny front gardens were really well cared for and as I stood at the bottom of our path, and looked up, I felt proud of the painting job I’d done on the front door over the weekend. Now it was a bright glossy red, with a shiny new silver knocker and letterbox in which my dishevelled reflection came back at me. Either side of the front door were artificial potted buxus plants. It was a house that looked loved.
I smoothed down my wayward long brown hair, making a mental note to check my bank account to see if I could afford to get my scraggy split ends trimmed soon, before putting my key in the lock. The front door seemed to be stuck on something, so I gave it a good shove and nearly fell over a suitcase that had been left in the hall. Then my eye caught sight of a bulging holdall on the other side of it. What the hell was this?
Rubbing the back of my neck I yelled, ‘Callum, I’m home!’
‘Oh God! Nell! Erm! What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you home yet.’ He nervously looked at his watch.
‘Dur! I live here!’ I grinned and tilted my head to one side. ‘Are we having a clear out?’
He couldn’t look me in the eye and that was the moment that I knew. My stomach churned.
‘We’re not, but I am.’
‘But, but…’ I sank to sit at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I don’t understand. Where has this come from?’
‘I’m sorry, Nell, but I can’t do this anymore. I’m leaving.’
And that was when my incredibly crappy day got even crappier.
Chapter Two
BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP!
I groaned. I hated the noise of Callum’s alarm clock. I went to reach across him to switch it off. I opened my eyes slowly and expected to see Callum lying next to me. And then I remembered that yesterday was the day he’d left me, that it wasn’t a dream. Excruciatingly, it hurt all over again. It was a physical ache. Surely, it’s your heart that should hurt, not your stomach or even your whole body.
I lay on my back and stared at the purple beaded light fitting, trying to work out what had gone wrong. Yesterday I had been an excited, if a little stressed, fiancée who was getting married in fewer than three months. Today I was single and had no idea what even the next three days held. And what about the future? God only knew about that.
Bleary-eyed from polishing off a bottle of red on my own the night before, I stumbled into the bathroom to grab my slightly grubby towelling pink robe and staggered downstairs, picking up the post from the doormat on the way. All of it was addressed to Callum except for one official-looking white envelope with my name on it, postmarked Dorset.
Crikey, Dorset brought back some memories. It was somewhere I hadn’t thought about for years but there h
ad been a time when I considered it with great fondness, a place of wonderful childhood memories. A tiny little bit of my heart flipped over as I remembered some very special people I once knew from there.
Flicking on the kettle, and waiting for it to boil, I ripped open the envelope to see that it was from a Cash and Sons Solicitors asking me to call them. I bit the inside of my cheek, a habit I had when I was nervous, wondering what on earth they wanted with me. I’d ring them at lunchtime and find out.
There was a bit of me that wanted to stay home to nurse my bruised heart, but then the sensible side of me said that I’d be better off keeping busy at work, especially at a time when jobs were in jeopardy. I didn’t think a day off right now, despite the reason, would be particularly beneficial to me. I was quite a practical person – I’d had to be with some of the things I’d had to deal with in my life – and decided today shouldn’t be an exception.
Peering in the bathroom mirror, I pulled the skin down from the tops of my cheeks and looked at my bloodshot eyes. They were in a state. Callum had always said that my eyes were hazel with flecks of gold and that he loved gazing into them. Huh.
The hot water cascaded over my weary body and scalded my skin as I stood under the shower for way longer than was necessary. A different kind of hurt felt good. I churned over everything in my mind, trying to work out how this had happened and how I hadn’t seen it coming. What had I done wrong? I glanced down and saw my skin glowing redder and redder. I knew I couldn’t hide in there forever and eventually found my way out. Looking at that blasted alarm clock again, I realised that I needed to crack on if I was going to catch the bus in time to get into the office for 9 a.m.
I grabbed my new trousers off the chair in the bedroom, which was piled high with washing that needed to be put away but never seemed to be, and smoothed the creases out as much as I could. Something Callum had always moaned at me about. One of the many things. He had always told me to hang up my clothes, like he did. But I’d always thought the things that made us different were the things that made us work. We were different. He was the yin to my yang.
Callum was an adrenaline junkie, loving nothing more than a weekend spent bungie jumping or extreme mountain biking or white-water rafting, whereas I was the calm one, and a real home bird, someone who liked to read and bake and even crochet from time to time. I realised now those differences that I thought made us special and kept us together were probably what had driven him away.
The weather that morning was damp, drizzly and dreary, which matched my mood perfectly. I looked up at the sky at that horrible fine rain which appears not to be much but gets you soaked through to your skin. It also meant that my hair, which I’d spent ages straightening to look sleek and glossy, would be a frizzy mess within five minutes. God I was miserable.
Resting my head on the bus window, I thought back to when I’d asked Callum last night why he was leaving. He’d sat down on the third stair from the bottom and looked so sad as he’d put his head in his hands and said that he was sorry but he didn’t want to live a life where he just existed. He’d said that it wasn’t a decision he had taken lightly, but he didn’t want to stop at home every night and be a pipe-and-slippers man, growing old when he had his whole life ahead of him. He wanted to go out at night, to the cinema or to pubs and bars, and then he wanted to travel the world and experience different countries and cultures. My idea of experiencing different cultures, he’d said, was having a Chinese or an Indian takeaway on a Saturday night.
He also said that he didn’t love me anymore.
Once I was close to work, I could see Shivani to the left of the revolving door which led into the lavish reception for the building. She was taking a drag of her cigarette as if it were the last one she was ever going to be allowed, even though she went down for a fag break at 10.30 a.m. every day. She saw me and threw the butt to the ground, stubbing it out with her shoe, and flung her arms out to me.
‘Nell, my love. How are you?’ She stood with her hands either side of my arms and rubbed them vigorously, looking deep into my eyes. ‘Mmm! You look like crap, so let’s pop to the ladies first and see if we can do anything with that face.’
The thing I loved about her the most was how she never fluffed up her words to make anyone feel better.
‘And don’t worry, I’ve told everyone at work what’s happened and that you are fine but not to mention it. At least now you can just go and get on with your day without dreading anyone asking you anything.’
Despite her honesty, Shivani was a true diamond who was always putting others before herself. When she wasn’t at work, she helped out in a local foodbank. When she wasn’t there, she covered the odd shift or two a week at a local women’s refuge.
She made me sit on the counter in the ladies loo, while she applied some blusher to my pale cheeks.
‘Come on,’ she nudged me, passing her mascara over. ‘You’ll feel better if you look better.’
‘Isn’t there a rule about using someone else’s mascara? I thought I once read that you can pass on mites or something?’
‘Oh don’t worry, love! It’s going straight in the bin after you’ve used it.’
‘I was thinking of me catching yours, actually!’
‘Oh, I’m not worried about that.’ She smirked. ‘There, isn’t that better?’ She swizzled me around to look in the mirror and I admitted that I did look better than I had when I’d arrived, although that probably wasn’t difficult.
‘Now you just need to smile.’ She poked me in the ribs and despite me not wanting it to, it did make me laugh.
She always knew how to bring out the best in me and I loved her dearly. I was grateful to her for cheering me up on what I had thought was going to be a very miserable day. I’d thought it possible I might never smile again.
As I sat at my desk, gazing into space, another conversation from the night before came back to me. One where Callum had said that there was nothing I could do and that he had made his decision and wouldn’t be changing his mind. Not now and not ever. When I’d asked about all the wedding arrangements that had been made, he told me to cancel them. It was like one gut punch after another.
My mobile rang, startling me from the memory, and I could see on the display that it was Miranda, the wedding organiser from the hotel where we had been going to have our reception. Shivani glanced over at me, and seeing my lip tremble, in her wonderful way, came and took the phone from my hands, where I was staring at it in horror.
‘Hi there. This is Shivani here. Nell isn’t available right now, so how can I help?’
There was a long pause as Miranda obviously told her the reason for the call.
‘I’m so sorry, but there’s been a big change in circumstances and the wedding is no longer going ahead. Can you make all the necessary arrangements to make this as easy as you possibly can, please? Nell is, as you can imagine, most distraught at the moment and unable to cope with doing everything herself.’
She winked at me, and despite everything I smiled.
‘No point having a dog and barking yourself!’ she laughed as she disconnected the call and handed back my phone.
Shivani had a way about her that commanded respect and she told me that Miranda had said that she’d take care of everything she possibly could and would email me in a few days to update me and let me know of any refunds I’d get.
‘One less thing for you to worry about right now. Let’s head off to the pub at lunchtime and we can grab a sarnie and make a list of everything you have to cancel. I’ll help you.’
I could hardly speak the words ‘thank you’. I was so grateful to her for taking control. I still felt like a dithering emotional wreck and I wasn’t sure everything had quite sunk in yet. I also wished I hadn’t drunk all that wine either. I should have known better.
The morning dragged on. I couldn’t focus on anything for longer than five minutes at a time but I knew that I was better at work than if I’d been wallowing in self-pity on my
own at home. My mum had taught me years ago that there was no point in having a pity party longer than an hour, and that you just had to give yourself a kick up the bum and snap out of it. The advice used to really annoy me when I was younger but it had been helpful throughout my life when I’d been upset about one thing or another. What a shame Mum hadn’t taken her own advice.
We’d been through a lot over the years, Mum and I, and this guidance had stood me in good stead. I was only fourteen when Mum and Dad split up, and we moved away, and it was just the two of us against the world. Our small but perfectly formed little family, who had moved to a brand new place where we didn’t know a soul. Where we had to make new friends, I had to settle into a new school and Mum had to find a job that could support us both in our new life. And where our life had hit rock bottom.
At 11.30, Mr Rhodes called us all into the conference room. The glass-fronted room overlooked a park and while he was talking to us I was finding it difficult not to concentrate on the couple sitting on a park bench, holding hands, looking as if they were having a very serious conversation. I wondered what they were talking about.
‘Nell, did you hear what I said?’