The Little Book Café: Emma’s Story

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HarperImpulse

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2018

Copyright © Georgia Hill 2018

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

Georgia Hill 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.

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008281274

Version: 2018-07-10

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part Two: Emma’s Story

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

Also in The Little Book Café Series

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

To Bertie, with love and cuddles.

‘Emma, what have you done now?’ Linda Tizzard shrieked as she opened the bathroom door and stared at her daughter, open-mouthed.

Emma shot up guiltily. She mopped at a lock of her now bright tangerine hair with a stained towel. ‘Thought I’d go auburn. For a change.’

Her mother thinned her lips in a way Emma remembered only too well from childhood misdeeds. She was in trouble. Big trouble.

‘Auburn? You mean Tango orange, don’t you? Get this bathroom cleaned up now. It’s turned the bath orange. Why on earth didn’t you come into the salon and have it done properly, child?’ Linda grabbed a flannel and began scrubbing.

Emma pursed her lips. ‘Maybe ‘cos I can’t afford Klassy Kutz prices?’

Linda paused in her cleaning and looked at her daughter in exasperation. ‘You never stop to think, do you? Just like your father. You could have come in as a model or had one of the apprentice stylists. Suki wouldn’t have minded.’

Emma chose not to answer. Suki owned the salon Linda worked in as a stylist. And she thought Suki would have minded very much. Although her mother adored the woman, Emma thought she was little more than a slave driver. She ran the shower hose attachment over the orange-splattered basin. ‘I really don’t know why you don’t start up on your own, Mum, rather than renting a chair at Suki’s.’

‘You think we’ve got that sort of money?’ Linda glared up at her daughter. ‘You need to get your head out of those clouds.’ She resumed scrubbing.

‘You could always go mobile. There’s always a need for mobile hairdressers and all the money would be yours then.’ Emma sighed knowing it was no use. Her mother was permanently in a bad mood. Emma knew it was worry over money but it didn’t make it any easier to live with. She knew Linda would never leave the salon. Her mother always chose the safe option. ‘Owning businesses isn’t for the likes of us,’ she always said. ‘Know your place and keep your head below the parapet,’ was her mother’s much-repeated motto.

‘I’ve got a perfectly good job at the salon, thank you very much,’ Linda said predictably. ‘And we need the money coming in, what with your dad’s job looking dicey. Seems there’s no call for a traditional vacuum cleaner nowadays. Folk all want those fancy cordless ones.’

Emma lapsed into silence again. Her family seemed to lurch from one crisis to another. Last week it had been one of her mother’s regulars moving away from Berecombe. As she’d been a twice a week set and blow-dry customer, it meant a loss of income. Lurking in the background was the constant threat to her father’s job as office manager at a local manufacturer and this week Stevie, her thirteen-year-old brother, had got into trouble at school. She stared out of the bathroom window at the back garden. The small patch of lawn suffered from Stevie’s keepy-uppy competitions and the flower beds, now it was early autumn, had lost their summer glory. Her father’s beloved greenhouse was in one corner and the guinea-pig hutch was in another. It was just the sort of boring garden replicated in every Thirties semi on their street. She sighed again. Everything seemed so ordinary, so dull. Nothing happened to compare with anything in any of the books she read. It was one reason why she’d tried to spice things up. Dyeing her hair at least made a change. The other had been her longing to be more Demelza. ‘Be More Demelza’ was Emma’s new mantra. Passionate, forthright, wild with an independence of spirit Emma admired. That and the fact she’d married one of literature’s most gorgeous men, Ross Poldark.