Strictly Love
Guilty feet have got plenty of rhythm …Kick off your shoes and snuggle up with this warm and witty new novel from the author of the bestselling Pastures NewLawyer Emily promised her late father that she'd devote her life to good causes. So how comes she spends her days defending Z-listers, desperate to prolong their 15 minutes of fame?Katie is obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother - unlike her own one. In which case, why is husband Charlie permanently AWOL these days?Dentist Mark is licking his wounds after his wife walked out on him and desperately missing his kids. Can he cope with becoming a singleton again - on top of a devastating legal case against him?Meanwhile, happy-go-lucky Jack the Lad Rob is hiding a secret tragedy…Isabella's dance classe give the four the perfect opportunity to forget their troubles and re-invent themselves. They can be whoever they want to be - they'll just let their feet do the talking.Over the weeks, as they foxtrot, tango, waltz and cha-cha-cha their way into each other's lives, they discover the truth about each other - and themselves. But will they like what they learn?
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JULIA WILLIAMS
Strictly Love
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.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd/ 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
A Paperback Original 2008
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Julia Williams 2008
Julia Williams 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
Set in Minion by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire
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Source ISBN: 9781847560162
Ebook Edition © 2008 ISBN: 9780007287406 Version: 2018-05-29
Table of Contents
Part One - Dance Like No One's Looking
Part Two - Love Like you've Never Been Hurt
Part Three - Work Like You Don't Have To
Dusk was falling as Emily got off the train at Thurfield. She looked about her and breathed a sigh of relief. Welcome and all as the Christmas break had been, it was good to be home.
Home. And where exactly was that? Not in Wales any more, that was for sure, where the absence of her father had been a permanent feature of Christmas, during which they had all tried very hard to pretend that things really hadn't changed. But could she yet call Thurfield home? In the year and a half she'd lived here, patiently (foolishly, her sister Sarah maintained) waiting for Callum to make a move to put their relationship on a more even footing, she had seen it more as a holding station – a place for her to temporarily rest while she waited for her life to begin.
But now, looking around her as she emerged from the station onto a snowy High Street, she realised with a jolt that she did feel at home here. Perhaps it was just that she knew her friend Katie was only up the road, or that Callum and his rich parents lived tantalisingly close. Or perhaps it was simply the little country cottage she had fallen in love with the summer before last, despite its desperate need for DIY. Being cramped in her mum's council flat over the Christmas period had made her long for the serenity and peace of the view from her window, looking out onto the common. Not that the rolling foothills of the South Downs compared to the more dramatic Pembrokeshire coastline of her birthplace, but they were hills nonetheless, and Emily was always comforted by them. Particularly now, as they gleamed and sparkled white in the late winter sunlight. They looked heavenly. And it felt heavenly to be back.
It was good to be here, away from the frantic guilt that accompanied the discovery that her mum had somehow got herself into huge debt thanks to a rather unhealthy addiction to scratch cards, or the feeling that her sisters Mary and Sarah were now more burdened than she was by the care of their mother. And it was a relief to get away from Sarah's nagging strictures about Callum.
‘When are you going to get him to commit to you?’ Sarah had insisted on knowing, but Emily couldn't answer that one. She wasn't even sure she wanted him to anyway. Part of the fun of Callum was the lack of commitment, and his ability to surprise, shinning up her drainpipe late at night, turning up at the office with champagne when she was working late, making her fizz over with pleasure when he made it all too clear how sexy he found her. Who needed commitment when he gave her all that?
