The Secret of Orchard Cottage: The feel-good number one bestseller
Warm and wise bestselling fiction from the hugely popular Alex Brown, the author of The Great Christmas Knit Off and The Great Village Show.April Wilson is wondering what to do next – her life has been turned upside down after the loss of her husband so she’s hoping to piece herself together again with a visit to her elderly great aunt, Edith. Arriving in the rural idyll of Tindledale, she’s dismayed to find Edith’s cottage and the orchards surrounding it in a sorry state of disrepair. Edith seems to have lost interest completely, instead she’s become desperate to find out what happened to her sister, Winnie, who disappeared during WWII.April gets to work immediately, discovering that the orchard still delivers a bumper crop each year, and with the help of some of the villagers – including Matt, the enigmatic Farrier – begins to unravel the mystery of the missing Winnie. Slowly,April can feel things coming to life again – but can Orchard Cottage work its magic on her too?
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Harper
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First published in Great Britain by Harper 2016
Copyright © Alexandra Brown 2016
Cover design by Alexandra Allden © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover images © Ivary / Getty Images (orchard scene); Shutterstock.com (all other images).
Alexandra Brown 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780007597420
Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780007597444
Version 2017-10-20
‘Treasure this book always, for it will stand the test of time’
– Winnie Lovell, 1941
Table of Contents
Tindledale, June 1941 …
As the early morning sun sauntered over the apple trees in the orchard next to the cottage, bathing her bedroom in strands of glorious spun gold, Winnie Lovell tucked the last letter into an envelope and stowed it inside her handbag along with the others for posting later. Then, after replacing the lid of her fountain pen, she crouched down and swept the rug aside to lift a wonky floorboard to the left of the wardrobe and reached in between the rafters to retrieve an old wooden apple box containing her diaries dating back to when she was a little girl. Winnie placed the pen inside the box and took out the pressed purple violet one last time and held it up to her cheek, allowing herself a brief moment of contemplation before hurriedly secreting it all away back under the floor. She stood up and straightened her stockings in silence, reminding herself that this wasn’t the time for sentiment. No, absolutely not. Her mind was made up. Resolute. And there really was no going back now.
Winnie buttoned up her new khaki uniform jacket and straightened the collar, proud to be a part of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY as everyone said, and cast one last glance around the rose-print-papered bedroom in the eaves of the honey-stoned cottage that had been her home for all of her twenty years. She really would miss this old place, Orchard Cottage, a special place on the outskirts of Tindledale, the village where she had grown up. With its tiny school with the clock tower on the roof and the cobbled High Street, flanked either side with black timber-framed, white wattle-walled shops with mullioned windows, surrounded by lush, undulating fields full of hops, hay, lambs, cows, strawberries, buttercups and delicate pink cherry blossom in springtime that swirled all around like confetti in a breeze. All the familiarity, and there was a certain beauty, comfort even in the predictable, seasonal routine of a life lived in a rural village. But constraint too, and as much as she loved Tindledale, Winnie knew there was a whole new world waiting for her beyond the bus stop in the village square. Adventure. That’s what this was. She had waited her whole life, or so it seemed, for this very moment. She had already fulfilled her duties in the Women’s Land Army, teaching the city girls how to work the land. Luckily the base hadn’t been that far away so she had been able to hop on the bus home when she had leave, but this time it was different. As soon as the next part of her training was completed, she would go into the field and then who knew when she might next come home? But Winnie was determined to give it her all. Do her bit for the war effort. Her patriotic duty. And her parents had been so proud when Bill the postman had cycled up to the apple barn door to deliver the letter requesting her to report to the special FANY training centre located over two hundred miles away. Before war had been declared, the furthest Winnie had been was to Market Briar, the market town on the other side of the valley, and she had certainly never travelled on a train, which reminded her – she looked at the alarm clock on the cabinet beside the bed – it really wouldn’t do to be late! The next bus,
