Creature Comforts
Fall in back in love with life in this gripping read about fate and second chances.The eagerly awaited new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author.Izzy has broken off her engagement to her feckless fiancée Kieran and returned to her childhood home – the sleepy village of Halfhidden.She soon realizes that life in the village is anything but peaceful – for one thing she’s living with her mad aunt Debo and her pack of dogs, and for another, Izzy has a lot of unanswered questions.When she was a teenager, Izzy was involved in a terrible accident, involving various inhabitants of Halfhidden. As she sets out to discover what actually happened on the night of the accident, she realizes that her painful past is actually standing in the way of her future happiness. So when a handsome stranger comes to Halfhidden will she let love back into her life?
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TRISHA ASHLEY
Creature Comforts
Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015
Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2015
Cover design © www.alicemooredesign.com
Cover photograph © Lucy Grossmith/www.heart-to-art.com
Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847562791
Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780007580446
Version: 2018-04-10
For my dear friends and fellow authors, Mary de Laszlo and Norma Curtis, with love.
Contents
Prologue: Halfhidden, West Lancashire, 1993
Chapter 1: All Fools’ Day, 2012
That evening, Baz Salcombe’s old Range Rover, which was mainly used by his teenage son, Harry, and his friends, passed through the stone gateposts of the Sweetwell estate and paused briefly in the blackest of shadows by the turn to the Lodge, before pursuing an unsteady course up the dark, tree-lined tunnel of the drive.
The road beyond the first sharp bend first hunched itself up and then dipped deeply into a hollow, but either the driver had forgotten that or was recklessly convinced that the car would fly over it, for it suddenly leaped forward with a roar – then the brake lights flashed and it swerved, flipping sideways into the trees with an almighty crash.
The ominous sound, together with the incessant blaring of the jammed horn, carried as far as the Lodge and set off a cacophony of barking from Debo Dane’s Desperate Dogs Refuge. Judy Almond, her friend and housekeeper, who was starting out for the local pub to collect Debo’s niece, Izzy, stopped dead with the car keys in her hand, heart racing.
Tom Tamblyn was halfway down the woodland path that led to his cottage by the Lady Spring when he heard the crash, but Dan Clew, Baz Salcombe’s gardener, was first on the scene, for he’d been so close by that he actually felt the resonance of the impact through the soles of his feet. Arriving at a run, he found the crumpled car lying on its side in a thick tangle of old trees, wheels still spinning and the headlights blazing out at a crazy angle.
The uppermost doors had burst open and, to his great relief, he saw his son Simon climb out and then stagger up the bank, where he slumped with his head in his hands. A girl was screaming hysterically and even before Dan had fished out a torch from his pocket and investigated, he guessed it would be Cara Ferris, the local vet’s daughter.
Cara, her face masked with blood from a deep cut, was already frantically scrambling out of the back seat and it looked as though she’d had a lucky escape, for a branch had impaled the car from front to back, as if preparing to spit-roast it.
Dan moved the torch beam to the front and could see at a glance that his boss’s son, Harry, had taken the brunt of the collision and there was nothing to be done – and the girl slumped next to him had a bad head injury and didn’t look in much better shape. He paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder as if to check for any sign of other rescuers, before reaching in and gathering up her small, slight form.
Tom Tamblyn was just in time to see Dan lift the unconscious figure out of the front of the car, before laying it down on a bit of flat turf next to the drive.
