Who Do You Think You Are?

Tash is back in Doncaster from the Big Smoke, leaving a broken marriage behind her. Her parents killed in a tragic accident, she’s left rudderless and alone. So when sexy features writer Tim arrives back on the scene, she’s sorely tempted. But what if journalist Ed, rootless and troubled, is The One?

Ed’s been enjoying the expat high life, but now he’s back in Doncaster. Haunted by the past he’s never quite been able to leave behind ? his brother disappeared at the height of the miner’s strike never to reappear ? it’s even harder now that he’s surrounded by painful reminders. If the only way to lay his brother to rest is to find out what really happened all those years ago, who better to help than sexy librarian Tash?

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Claire Moss 2013

Claire Moss 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.

E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472054821

Version date: 2018-07-23

was born in Darlington, north-east England, in 1977.

She has worked with books and the written word all her adult life as a bookseller, librarian and novelist. Having always been an avid reader of popular fiction, she struggled to find women’s fiction set in the north and containing characters concerned with issues other than beauty and credit cards. Eventually she decided she would have to write it herself.

Who Do You Think You Are? is her second such novel. Set in modern-day South Yorkshire and harking back to a secret from the time of the mid-1980s miners’ strike, it is a fresh and witty love story with a gritty contemporary edge.

Claire Moss is married and lives in North Yorkshire with her husband and two young children.

For Kieran and Laura

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

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

Endpages

About the Publisher

Doncaster – May 2005

‘Have you always been a librarian?’ I asked her.

Her eyes narrowed but she was smiling. The smile sent a warm rush through my stomach but the narrowed eyes scared me slightly.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, still smiling, ‘I wasn’t born a librarian, if that’s what you mean.’

I smiled too. ‘What, you mean you didn’t come out of the womb with a finger to your lips, telling the midwives to “ssshh”?’

She rolled her eyes and tried to look annoyed. ‘No. And I didn’t have a pair of half-moon glasses round my neck or my hair in a bun either.’

‘I must confess,’ I said, leaning on the desk, which, incidentally, meant I was leaning closer to her, ‘the dark-rimmed glasses are there so you’ve ticked that box but – ’ I shrugged, ‘ – your hair is disappointingly stylish.’ Was I flirting with the librarian? I never flirted with anyone. Or if I did, I didn’t realise I was doing it until it was too late.

She ran a hand over her cropped, dyed-red hair; her cheeks flushing slightly. I appeared to be the only person in the room other than her – possibly the only person in the building other than her – who was under forty and in possession of a full complement of teeth. If flirting was unusual in this kind of situation for me, it must be pretty much unheard of for her. She rallied pretty quickly though.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, leaning back in her chair. ‘You only get your bun when you become chartered.’

I laughed. ‘You can get chartered? What like, “I’m a chartered librarian”? Like a chartered accountant?’

She pulled the kind of face girls at school used to pull when they’d hit you with a ruler but you were still the one who got bollocked by the teacher. ‘Yes, like a chartered accountant. Or like a chartered – I don’t know, a chartered something else that’s a proper profession. It is a proper profession, you know. Why, what do you do?’