To Be the Best
Enthralling sequel to Barbara Taylor Bradford’s universally loved novels, A Woman of Substance and Hold The Dream.Set in Yorkshire, Hong Kong and America, this remarkable contemporary novel continues the story of an unorthodox and endlessly fascinating family. As the spirit of Emma Harte lives on in her granddaughter, Paula O’Neill, an engrossing drama is played out in the glamorous arena of the wealthy and privileged, underscored by a cut-throat world of jealousy and treachery.Paula must act with daring and courage to preserve her formidable grandmother’s glittering empire from unscrupulous enemies – so that Emma’s precious dream lives on for the next generation…
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BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD
To Be the Best
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Granada Publishing 1988
Copyright © Barbara Taylor Bradford 1988
Barbara Taylor Bradford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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: 9780586070345
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007363711
Version: 2017-10-25
CONTENTS
To be on my team, you’ve got to be the best. And to be the best, you’ve got to have character.
EMMA HARTE, in A Woman of Substance
Paula left Pennistone Royal just before dawn.
It was still dark as she eased the car out of the tall iron gates and turned left, heading for the moors. But as she came up onto the road which cut through the Pennine Chain of hills the sky was already beginning to change. Its blurred mass of anthracite greys was giving way to amethyst and pink and a cold and fading green; on the far horizon the first rays of the sun shimmered like shards of silver against the dark rim of the moors. It was an eerie hour, neither day nor night, and the silent spacious moors seemed emptier, more remote than ever. And then unexpectedly there was a sudden burst of radiance and that crystalline light so peculiar to the north of England filled the entire sky; day finally broke.
Paula rolled down the window and took a deep breath, then leaned back in the seat, relaxing as she pushed the car forward at a steady speed. The breeze that blew in was cool, but then it was always cool up here on the ‘tops’, whatever the time of year, and hardly the right place to gauge the weather. She knew it would be a scorching day again, and she was glad she had set out early.
It was the end of August when the heather always blooms in Yorkshire and the wild, untenanted moors were glorious. Grim and daunting for most of the year, they were breathtaking in their beauty this morning, a sea of violet and magenta rippling under the wind, rolling ahead as far as the eye could see. On an impulse Paula stopped the car and got out, glancing around, filling her eyes. The landscape was awesome … stunning. She felt her throat tighten with emotion. Grandy’s moors, she murmured, thinking of Emma Harte. I love them just as much as she did … as my own daughters Tessa and Linnet have grown to love them too.
Paula stood for a moment by the car, savouring her surroundings, looking and listening. She could hear the sharp trilling of the larks as they soared and wheeled high on the clouds and in the distance was the tinkling of water as a little beck rushed down over rocky crags, and on the cool air were the mingled scents of heather and bilberry, wild flowers and bracken. She closed her eyes briefly, remembering so many things, and then she lifted her head and looked up. The inverted bowl of a sky was China blue and filled with white puff-ball clouds and brilliant sunshine. The beginning of a pretty day, she thought, smiling. There is nowhere like the moors when the weather is beautiful, nowhere in the whole world. It was a long time since she had been up here. Too long really. My roots are here, just as Grandy’s were, she said under her breath, lingering a moment longer, the memories flooding her fully, carrying her back …
Abruptly, Paula turned away, got into her Aston Martin DB 2–4, and drove on, following the winding moorland road for another hour until it finally started its descent into the valley below, and Fairley. Because it was so early, the village still slumbered. The streets were entirely deserted. Paula parked in front of the ancient grey stone church with its square Norman tower and stained-glass windows, then she alighted, went around to the passenger door and opened it. She had wedged the cardboard box on the floor near the seat, and now she lifted the vase of summer flowers out of the box and closed the door with her knee.
