Going Home
There’s nothing quite like going home for Christmas…Leaving her tiny flat in London – and a whole host of headaches behind – Lizzy Walter is making the familiar journey back home to spend Christmas with her big-hearted but chaotic family.In an ever-changing world, Keeper House is the one constant. But behind the mistletoe and the mince pies, family secrets lurk. And when David, the man who broke her heart, makes an unexpected reappearance, it ranks as a Christmas she would definitely rather forget.As winter slowly turns to spring, Keeper House is under threat. By the time the Walters gather at the house for a summer wedding, the stakes have never been higher – for Lizzy, for her family and for love…
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Going Home
Harriet Evans
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Harriet Evans 2005
Extract from The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, reprinted by kind permission of PFD on behalf of the Estate of Nancy Mitford © Estate of Nancy Mitford
Extract from Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Georgette Heyer © Georgette Heyer 1932
Harriet Evans 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
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Source ISBN: 9780007198436
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 9780007373291 Version 2015-04-15
To Rebecca and Pippa, with love and thanks for everything
Table of Contents
‘But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,’ I said. ‘He was the great love of her life, you know.’
‘Oh dulling,’ said my mother sadly. ‘One always thinks that. Every, every time.’
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love
The bus ground its way slowly up the Edgware Road as I sat, like a mad old bag lady, gripping my last-minute Christmas shopping between my legs and on my lap, casting angry glances at those who tried to sit anywhere near me. It was Christmas Eve and I’d only just got round to buying my presents. With the depressing predictability of riots on May Day, rain at Wimbledon, and stories in August about hamsters who can play the kazoo, I promise myself every year that I will have bought and wrapped all my presents by 15 December, and every year I end up in Boots with an hour to go, buying my father a small, slanting glass toothpick-holder, my mother a furry hot-water-bottle cover endorsed by the Tweenies, and my sister Jess a gilt-edged notelet set that says, ‘Happy Christmas!’.
I jumped off at the lights, closed my eyes and ran across the road, praying that this would not be how I met my death. I had half an hour before Tom, my cousin, and Jess arrived to pick me up. We were going home, home home, in one of thousands of cars setting forth from London, after their occupants had put in a half-day at work, bags hastily packed, driving into the twilight. It was only three p.m., but dusk already seemed to be descending over the city.
My flat is just off the Edgware Road, behind an odd assortment of dilapidated shops that are a constant source of delight to me. There are the usual cut-price off-licences (‘Bacardi Breezer’s at 75p!’) and poky newsagents, neither of which ever stock Twiglets but promise they’ll have some next time I come in. There’s also an undertaker, a computer shop selling ancient Amstrads, a joke shop called Cheap laffs – handy when you’re in urgent need of a pair of fake comedy breasts – and Arthur’s Bargains, which, incongruously, sells pianos and keyboards. I would not personally spend my hard-earned cash on a musical instrument from a place called Arthur’s Bargains but chacun à son gout, as the French say. Off a tiny alley, so nondescript I have frequently noticed people not noticing it, away from the roar of the cars and lorries that thunder up and down the Edgware Road day and night, is a small cobbled street with tall, spindly houses, one of which is mine. Well, one of the shoebox flats on the top floor is mine.
The noise of traffic faded as I turned into my street. I could even hear the faint rumble of a tube beneath me, full of passengers escaping from work to enjoy the usual bout of indigestion, seasonal belligerence and disappointing new episodes of
