The Story of Our Lives: A heartwarming story of friendship for summer 2018
‘A fascinating exploration of friendship. Compelling, twisty, emotional and believable – I loved it.’ Sarah MorganFour friends. Twenty years. One powerful secret.Everyone remembers where they were on 31st August 1997, the day Princess Diana died.Sophie, Emily, Amy and Melissa certainly do -– a beautiful cottage in Southwold, at the start of an annual tradition to have a weekend away together.Every year since, the four best friends have come back together. But over time the changes in their lives have led them down very different paths. And it’s when those paths collide that the secrets they’ve been keeping come tumbling out.One Day meets Big Little Lies in this unputdownable read about four friends, one long-buried secret and the histories we all share.
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HELEN WARNER is a former Head of Daytime at both ITV & Channel 4, where she was responsible for a variety of TV shows including Come Dine With Me, Loose Women, Good Morning Britain and Judge Rinder. Helen writes her novels on the train to work in London from her home in Essex, which she shares with her husband and their two children.
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Helen Warner 2018
Helen Warner 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.
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008202668
Version: 2018-06-26
For ‘The Girls’
Contents
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Acknowledgements
AUGUST 1997
‘One story dominates the news tonight – Diana, Princess of Wales, has died in a car crash in Paris.’
SOUTHWOLD
Sophie could feel herself starting to sweat as she tried to heave the stone pot to one side. Could it really be this one that the key was under? Surely they’d have put it under one that wasn’t so bloody heavy. Instead of lifting it, she decided to try rolling it instead. Sure enough, the pot began to move but the momentum gathered pace more quickly than she had expected and it rolled unstoppably towards her foot and straight over her toe. Breathless with pain and almost not daring to look for fear of the damage she might find, she examined her foot.
The toe of her Converse offered very little protection and sagged ominously where her big toe should have been. Gingerly, she pressed with her thumb and winced in pain. She slumped down onto the path, which was still wet from an earlier rain shower, and groaned as her jeans immediately absorbed the moisture. She knew without looking that the damp patch would have spread in a fascinatingly symmetrical fashion across her rear.
Maybe this weekend away wasn’t such a good idea after all. The omens weren’t great, with the shockwaves over Princess Diana’s sudden death still reverberating throughout the country, and although the others had left it to her to organize everything, she knew they would moan about who was sharing with whom and grumble about the house she had chosen from the listings in the Evening Standard.
Sophie looked up at the pretty whitewashed and thatched cottage, feeling a sudden stab of annoyance at its old-fashioned beauty. It was the sort of place retired couples would come for a weekend of birdwatching, rather than a group of twenty-something girls looking for a good time.
‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ The slightly gravelly Midlands accent reached her before its owner appeared at the gate and began to make her way up the path. Wearing tight bootleg jeans and a skinny white sleeveless top that contrasted with her smooth, dark brown skin, Melissa appeared not to have aged a day since they had first met. Her afro hair had been woven into cornrows that fell to her shoulders and apart from a slash of bright red lipstick, her pretty face was make-up free.
