You Make Me Feel Like Glamping
Cold Feet Meets Carry on Camping in this camptastic debut novel, perfect for anyone who ever had to put up their tent in a gale…This is Part One is a series of four e-serial stories.Is friendship meant to last forever? Charlotte Mayfield hopes so. Especially as she’s throwing some luxury glamping into the mix.After fifteen years of trying to be the perfect wife, maybe Charlotte’s best friends from uni – Freya, Emily and Izzy – can still glimpse the woman she’d once set out to be.Freya is up for it. Could a powwow with her yesteryear besties helps her knock some sense into her useless husband?Emily’s hiding her own crisis from her parents, colleagues and now, her mates. Can a weekend under canvas get her to open up?Izzy’s back from a decade abroad with an unexpected addition, her nine-year-old daughter Flora. She’s also keeping another big secret, one that’s brought her home for good. Will a year of yurts mend two decades of hurts – or are some things, like shower blocks, burnt sausages and no wi-fi, best left in the past…
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The Happy Glampers
Part One
You Make Me Feel Like Glamping
DAISY TATE
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in ebook format in 2019 by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © Daisy Tate 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustration © Jacqueline Bissett
Emoji(s) © Shutterstock.com
Daisy Tate 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 2019 ISBN: 9780008312961
Version: 2019-07-15
For Jorja and Grissom
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
‘Cake!’
Everyone cheered as Charlotte slid the very last cake they would ever eat as uni flatmates on to the table. She dropped a shy curtsey and stood back, watching as they plunged their forks into the huge lemon drizzle. No plates. No serviettes. No ‘you firsts’. Just pure, unadulterated, last-day-of-uni bliss.
She’d miss uni. She’d miss her friends. These last three years had been the first time in her life she’d felt as if she mattered. As if all of her silly hopes and dreams might have a splash of validity. London, she worried, could very well prove her parents right. That taking a ‘useless degree’ in art history would land her one job and one job only: cleaner.
‘Ohmigawd, Charlotte. This is ah-mazing!’ Izzy’s mid-Atlantic accent cranked west as she sang out, ‘I’m surfing my nirvana waves!’ Last week her bliss was having a booty boogie. Izzy’s happy place was a moveable feast.
‘Izz. Your bit’s at that end.’ Charlotte always made one end gooier than the other because Freya liked it fluffy, Izzy liked it gooey and Emily said she didn’t really give a monkey’s so long as it looked and tasted like cake.
Her eyes jumped from friend to friend as conversations pinged all over the shop. Everywhere but on the question of when they’d meet again. Did they care as much as she did that their ‘household’ was splitting up? It was a bit late in the day to fret about whether or not her role as ‘The Organizer’ was the only reason they adored her. She’d almost slavishly taken to the role, taking charge of any and all pragmatic concerns – finding housing, creating cleaning rotas, always ensuring there was loo roll. Three short years ago they were strangers. Today? Today they were the most mismatched gaggle of girls she’d ever had the pleasure of calling her very best friends.
‘This is cardiovascular disease on an epic level,’ Emily said through a mouthful of icing. ‘And I never want it to end.’ The future Doctor Cheung was too busy waiting for Izzy’s cackle of delight to notice how pleased Charlotte was at the backhanded compliment. If there was a way to preserve this moment in time – capture it in a jar, press it into a scrapbook, dangle it from a charm bracelet – she would do it in an instant.
‘C’mon girlie,’ Freya pointed at the empty chair beside her, her Scottish burr exaggerated by the rolling of the r. ‘Would you park your wee bum for once?’
Charlotte sat, pretending she didn’t care that they were devouring the cake like heathens, missing the fact she’d spent that little bit extra on the lemons, added a half-cup more drizzle, precious pence spent that she could barely afford on her student grant, because that’s the way her friends liked it best, but, as ever, she was unable to stop herself from beaming. She basked in the glow of their approbation. Relished that they loved it every bit as much as they had when, just a week into uni and shy as a dormouse, she’d made one for them in their very first student accommodation.
‘Nummy!’ Freya swept her wavy, pixie cut to the side and grinned at Charlotte. ‘Promise me we’ll meet up in London and eat cake?’
‘No!’ Emily put up a hand. ‘She’s mine. I refuse to let her leave. I claim you as my baking bitch for the duration of med school.’ She took a decisive bite as if the matter was settled. Emily had a way of drawing lines in the sand.
They all turned to Izzy, waiting for her to stake her claim on Charlotte. She looked up when she felt the group’s eyes on her. ‘What?’
