Read on for an extract from the next instalment:
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Epub ISBN: 9781473551367
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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Sheila Norton, 2018
Extract from The Pets at Primrose Cottage: Part Two © Sheila Norton, 2018
Cover design and illustration: Head Design
Sheila Norton has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
First published in the UK in 2018 by Ebury Press
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785034213
Sheila Norton lives near Chelmsford in Essex with her husband, and worked for most of her life as a medical secretary, before retiring early to concentrate on her writing. Sheila is the award-winning writer of numerous women’s fiction novels and over 100 short stories, published in women’s magazines.
She has three married daughters, six little grandchildren, and over the years has enjoyed the companionship of three cats and two dogs. She derived lots of inspiration for her animal books from remembering the pleasure and fun of sharing life with her own pets.
When not working on her writing Sheila enjoys spending time with her family and friends, as well as reading, walking, swimming, photography and travel. For more information please see www.sheilanorton.com
The Vets at Hope Green
Oliver the Cat Who Saved Christmas
Charlie the Kitten That Saved a Life
Emma Nightingale needs a place to hide away. Pursued by the demons left by her ex-boyfriend, she takes refuge in quiet Crickleford, a sleepy town in Dartmoor, where she can lay low.
Life in Crickleford is quiet and peaceful, but it won’t be for long if people discover the truth about Emma’s past. Not wanting to make too much of a fuss, she ends up lying about why she’s there – she’s looking after some cats, she says – then suddenly the town’s new ‘pet-sitter’ is in high demand!
While looking after an Alsatian, Emma finds all attention is on her, and the handsome young reporter from the local paper takes an interest in her story …
For all my friends and readers in my adopted county of Devon. Crickleford isn’t a real place, of course – but I think it should be!
With grateful thanks once again to Sharon Whelan, this time for her advice about rescuing a pony. And to Sue Viney for her first-hand knowledge about keeping house rabbits! And as always, to everyone at Ebury for all their hard work in bringing my stories to the readers.
I hopped off the bus, pulling my suitcase after me, and stared around, taking in all the sights I remembered so well, despite the many years that had passed. The market cross, the town hall with its ornate black and gold clock that chimed loudly every half hour, the humpback bridge over the river, and the view, between the stone-built shops and cottages in the Town Square where I stood, of the big, square castle on the hill. So here I was, after all these years, back in Crickleford. Apart from the fact that I was now seeing everything through a January snow shower instead of in summer sunshine, nothing seemed to have changed. And that was exactly what I’d been hoping.
I’d stayed in this little Devon town, tucked away on the edge of a fairly remote part of Dartmoor, several times for family holidays from when my sister and I were about ten or eleven. Our parents had fallen in love with its charm and peacefulness, whereas we children, after the initial novelty of being in the country had worn off, found it too quiet and dull. No cinema! No swimming pool! No bowling alley! What were we supposed to do all week? By the time Kate and I were teenagers, Mum and Dad had given into pressure from us and started taking us somewhere livelier for our holidays.
Now, though, peace and quiet were exactly what I needed, and it couldn’t have been much more tranquil than it was now, on this cold, snowy afternoon. I pulled my woolly hat down over my ears, checked the address I’d tapped into my phone’s memos, then grabbed the handle of my suitcase, hoisted my rucksack onto my shoulders and set off up the lane. I’d found the advert on an internet search, but I had no idea what to expect. I’d never been a lodger before, never expected to be one, either. When I thought about the life I’d been living, just a few short weeks earlier, it seemed incredible that it had all come to this. But I knew I mustn’t think about that. I just had to get on with it, now, whether I liked it or not.
It was only a ten-minute walk to Primrose Gardens, which was a small turning off Lavender Lane. As I trudged along through the falling snow, I felt I could almost smell the perfume, in the chill winter air, of those spring flowers in the road names. They seemed to hold a promise of better days ahead – and I wasn’t disappointed when I arrived at my destination. Primrose Cottage was right at the end of Primrose Gardens, and it was a one-off, a little jewel of a pastel pink cottage, in a road of fairly ordinary semidetached houses. Presumably the cottage was there long before its neighbours were built, giving its name to the road. There was a neat little front garden and a fairly old Peugeot parked outside. I walked up the path and rang the doorbell, suddenly feeling nervous, and it was answered by a woman of perhaps about thirty-five with short, curly fair hair and bright blue eyes.
‘Hi.’ I gave her a smile. ‘I’m Emma Nightingale. We spoke on the phone—’
‘Emma! Yes, of course, we’re expecting you. I’m Lauren Atkinson. Come in, quickly, out of the snow. Just drop your bags there. How was your journey? You didn’t have to get a taxi all the way from Newton Abbot, did you?’ she asked, ushering me through the hallway to the kitchen.
‘No, I got the bus,’ I said, following her. The house smelt of polish. Had she been cleaning up for me? I was only the lodger!
She turned to look at me in surprise. ‘The bus! You were lucky, then. There only are two a day.’
‘Yes. I researched that on the internet, and planned my train time to coincide with it.’
She looked impressed, as if this wasn’t a perfectly normal thing to do for a long journey.
‘You might be disappointed with the internet connection around here,’ she said sadly. ‘Well, with the mobile phone signal too, to be honest. They both tend to come and go. You can normally get a decent phone signal up at the Town Square, though.’
I had a mental picture of the entire population of Crickleford congregating on the Town Square to send their text messages.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said. I’d have to call Mum and Dad later, to let them know I’d arrived safely. I sighed, remembering the looks on their faces when I told them I was leaving. I’d only been home from America for a few weeks, but my homecoming had caused them nothing but aggravation. They said they were sorry I wasn’t staying, but their faces told me otherwise. They were relieved. I wasn’t the kind of daughter a family would want to have living with them. I was a liability. When I said I was coming all the way to Devon, they didn’t offer to drive me. I guess even having me in the car with them would have been more trouble than it was worth.
My sister had been more sympathetic, but I could tell that even she thought it would be better for me not to stay at home in Loughton.
‘You can come back when things have calmed down,’ she said, at least having the decency to look distressed on my behalf. ‘It’s just … right now … well, all this fuss and attention is just as bad for you as it is for us, isn’t it.’
Actually, it was surely worse for me, since I was the cause of all the fuss and attention. But I could understand Kate’s concerns. Married to the lovely Tim, with their nice home, good jobs and two perfect little children, Kate was my twin, but I often thought she must have inherited the entire stock of our parents’ combined genes for sensible behaviour, leaving me with just the stupid, irresponsible ones. I couldn’t stay at home. Everyone around there would be talking about me. It wasn’t fair. And hopefully, here in this rural backwater away from most vestiges of civilisation, and having reverted back to my real Christian name, I could be anonymous. The very idea of anonymity, right now, was bliss.
While I’d been thinking all this, Lauren had pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen table, boiled the kettle and got mugs down from a shelf. I felt strangely like an honoured guest instead of a paying boarder.
‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked brightly, putting a biscuit tin on the table in front of me.
‘Tea would be great, thanks – but I can do it!’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll show you where everything is and you can help yourself in future. But I thought you’d probably appreciate having a cuppa made for you, after your long journey. From London, you said?’
‘On the outskirts, yes.’
She shook her head in wonder, as if I’d said I’d flown there from the moon.
‘So, what made you want to leave there and come all the way down here?’ she went on, sitting down opposite me. ‘Have you got a job lined up here?’
I couldn’t blame her for asking. After all, she needed to be sure I was going to pay my way. It would be hard to explain that I’d had money in American bank accounts, which, by now, would certainly have been made unavailable to me. Other than that, I only had enough for the first month or so here, and that was thanks to the generosity of my parents. Or their eagerness to see me gone.
‘I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire,’ I lied vaguely. ‘Interviews lined up.’
‘That’s good. What is it you do, then?’
Do? I resisted the urge to laugh. I hadn’t actually had to do anything much apart from float around looking glamorous, since I’d left England at the age of nineteen with Shane, the love of my life (at the time). Before that, well, there’d been a brief spell of—
‘Caring!’ I said. ‘Working in a care home.’
‘Really? With elderly people? That must have been very rewarding.’
I’d only done it for about a year. Between leaving school with no qualifications, moving in with Shane, and him getting his big break. But I remembered there’d been talk of me needing to take NVQs.
‘Yes,’ I said now, my fingers crossed under the table. ‘I’ve got my NVQs and everything.’
‘Well in that case, you shouldn’t have any trouble. There’s a massive shortage of carers everywhere, isn’t there.’
Was there? How would I know? But I nodded sagely as I sipped my tea. And then, fortunately, before I could add any further lies, there was a shout from the next room:
‘Mummeeee! What are you doing? Can I watch TV?’
Lauren raised her eyebrows at me.
‘That’s my little one, Holly. I did warn you, didn’t I? She’s not normally too noisy.’
‘Oh, that’s fine, I like children. How old is she?’
‘Three. Here she is. Holly, this is Emma. Remember I told you? She’s going to be living here.’
A little girl with blonde curls and blue eyes like her mother was watching me suspiciously from the doorway.
‘I’m not three,’ she told her mother crossly. ‘I’m nearly four.’
‘Hello,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I hope we’re going to be friends.’
The look of suspicion intensified.
‘Let’s take Emma upstairs and show her her room, shall we?’ said Lauren brightly. ‘Can you manage your bags up the stairs, Emma – let me take one.’
‘No, that’s fine, I’ve got it.’ I grabbed the case and the rucksack again and followed her up the slightly rickety stairs, with Holly stomping up behind me.
‘Here you are,’ Lauren said, throwing open a door, revealing a room that I could only describe as very blue. Blue walls, blue curtains, blue duvet, even a dark blue carpet. Fortunately I like blue. The little lattice window looked out over the garden, where the snow was beginning to settle on a couple of small trees and a child’s swing. I suddenly felt sure I was going to feel happy here, in this little blue room.
‘It’s really nice,’ I said.
‘It’s my grandad’s room,’ Holly said in a mutinous tone.
‘Oh!’ I looked at Lauren, confused. Another door had a sign on it in the shape of a teddy bear with the name HOLLY painted in pink, and I presumed the other two doors belonged to the bathroom and my host’s own room. The cottage wasn’t exactly big enough to be hiding another wing.
‘Yes, darling,’ Lauren was saying patiently to her daughter. ‘But Grandad’s not here any more, is he?’
‘Oh!’ I said again. ‘I’m so sorry to hear—’