It’s a Wonderful Night: A delightfully feel-good festive romance for 2018!
One night will change their lives forever…Georgia Bailey is closing up her little charity shop in Oakbarrow when she gets a mysterious late night call from a stranger, threatening to jump off the town’s bridge.Something about the man’s voice is faintly familiar but all she can do is stay on the line and after talking for hours, losing sense of time passing, coax him back from the edge.The next morning, Georgia walks to work, buys a festive latte from Leo (who she’s had a crush on for months!) at the local coffee shop, and is shocked when she suddenly recognizes the voice from last night…A heartwarming festive love story that reminds us that even in the darkest of times, hope is always just around the corner!Readers love Jaimie Admans:‘I'm a big fan of Jaimie Admans and absolutely love her sense of humour and lively writing.’‘I cannot wait for Jaime Adams to write more books.’‘A round of applause, Miss Admans, a round of applause.’‘The one thing Jaimie Admans does well is endearing characters.’‘This is an author that I will definitely be reading more from.’
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JAIMIE ADMANSis a 32-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather and cheese and onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots. She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.
Jaimie loves to hear from readers. You can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.com or connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.
It’s a Wonderful Night
JAIMIE ADMANS
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2018
Jaimie Admans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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.
E-book Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008296896
Version: 2018-09-12
Table of Contents
For everyone.
You are good enough.
No matter how impossible things seem, you truly have a wonderful life, and the world will always be better with you in it.
I’m in the cupboard under the stairs trying to wrangle a naked mannequin up the narrow steps to the back room when I hear the phone ringing. I groan. It’s only going to be a telemarketer, isn’t it? It’s eleven o’clock on a November night and I’m working overtime because, as the manager of the One Light charity shop, it’s my responsibility to get the Christmas window display finished before morning. I don’t have time for discussing ‘an accident I’ve had recently that wasn’t my fault’, mis-sold PPI, or my solar panel needs. Don’t they even stick to normal working hours now?
I’ll ignore it. I take a defiant bite of the fun-size Crunchie I’ve just found a bag of in the cupboard under the stairs. Who put chocolate down here? Maybe the volunteers were trying to hide it from me? It’s obviously leftover from Halloween and that was over a month ago. There’s not usually chocolate hanging around that long if I know it’s there. A day would be pushing it. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad hiding place after all.
The ring is insistent and I have a conscience about ignoring a ringing phone. It could be an emergency. It could be my dad saying he’s fallen and can’t get up, or paramedics who have been called out because he’s had another heart scare.
I look at the mannequin’s blank face. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter to it as I try to prop it against the wall, shove the last half of the Crunchie into my mouth and rush through the back room and out onto the shop floor, leaving behind a series of thuds as the mannequin slides back down the steps I’ve just dragged it up.
I’ve forgotten to hit the light switch so the shop floor is in darkness and I trip over a clothing rail and nearly go flying.
‘Hello?’ I say with my mouth full as I grab the handset from behind the counter. It’s far from the polite ‘One Light charity shop, how can I help you?’ that we’re supposed to answer the phone with, but I fully expect the caller to have rung off by now anyway.
‘Do you think it will hurt?’
‘What?’ I say with all the eloquence of an inebriated badger, hopping about with the phone in one hand, the other clutching the toe that collided with the clothing rail.
‘If I jump off this bridge?’
I choke on the Crunchie.
‘Are you okay?’ the man’s voice on the other end of the line asks.
‘Yes, thanks.’ I clear my throat a few times, trying to dislodge rogue bits of honeycomb. Only I could greet a suicidal man by choking at him. ‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?’
He lets out a laugh that sounds wet and thick, like he’s been crying. ‘I’m not the one choking to death. Do you need a glass of water or something?’
