Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After
Harriet Evans

'Funny, wistful and wise, I loved this book' Katie FfordeAbsorbing storytelling at its very best from the Sunday Times bestselling author.The past catches up with you no matter how far you try to run…This is a story of a girl who doesn’t believe in happy endings. Or happy families. It’s the story of Eleanor Bee, a shy, book-loving girl who vows to turn herself into someone bright, shiny and confident, someone sophisticated. Someone who knows how life works.But life has a funny way of catching us unawares. Turns out that Elle doesn’t know everything about love. Or life. Or how to keep the ones we love safe….Absorbing, poignant and unforgettable, Happily Ever After is a compelling story of a fractured family and a girl who doesn’t believe in love.

HARRIET EVANS

Happily

Ever

After

For Lynne with thanks for everything and love x x

She read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Table of Contents

Title Page (#u0532a3a0-676b-5067-93dc-4279c2916631)

Dedication (#ue2d943e3-df7a-5f7a-9585-b0a6065e1465)

Epigraph (#ub27dc28b-2e90-5c73-be85-87c0e20038e6)

Prologue: August 1988

April 1997

September 1997

March 1998

November 2000

June 2001

May 2004

September 2008

Epilogue: Four Months Later

Acknowledgements

A note from the author – the books in Happily Ever After

Praise

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)

August 1988 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)

A Happy Ending for Me by Eleanor Bee

They laugh at me, the girls in the canteen,

But one day I will laugh at them.

Black boots jack boots they are everywhere

But I won’t wear them just because they are trendy.

Oh, you treacherous night,

Why won’t you take flight?

For I am like a little red spot that

That …

ELEANOR BEE PUT down her pen and sighed. She stretched her arms above her head, with the weary movement of one who is wrestling with her own Ulysses. Unfortunately, this action inadvertently caught her hand in the gleaming yellow headphones of her new Sony Walkman. The plastic case was yanked abruptly into the air, dangling in front of her face for a brief second before falling to the ground, with a loud crack.

‘Oh, no,’ Eleanor cried, talking to the floor in a tangle of long limbs, simultaneously pulling off her headphones and thus further entangling herself. ‘No!’

The sound of Voice of the Beehive’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ from Now That’s What I Call Music 12 in her ears was abruptly silenced. The Walkman lay on the floor, the lid of the cassette player snapped off and lying several feet from her amongst a nest of dust and hair in the corner of the room. Eleanor picked it up and stared at it in despair. The door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she could hear the sound of glasses clinking, cutlery scraping on plates. And raised voices.

‘You said you’d take her tomorrow, John. You did.’

‘I did not. That’s utter rubbish.’

‘You did. You just weren’t bloody listening, as per usual. It’s fine. I’ll take her.’

‘Not if you’re still in that state you won’t. God, if you could see yourself, Mandana –’

‘You sanctimonious shit. Listen –’

Eleanor jammed the headphones on again. Pressing her hands against her ears, she crawled across to the dusty corner and snatched the plastic tinted cover, brushing herself off as she stood up. She stared out of the window at the pale lemon evening sun, sliding into the clear blue sea. On the beach, the last few swimmers were coming out of the water. An intrepid band was building a fire, getting a barbecue ready, for this far north in August, the sun didn’t set till well after ten.

But Eleanor did not see the view or the people. She stared blindly at the rickety wooden path down to the sea and wondered if she should burst into the kitchen, tell them she didn’t want to go to Karen’s in Glasgow any more. But she was also afraid of interrupting them; she didn’t want to hear what they were saying to each other.

Mum’s dad had died, two weeks before they’d come to Skye. At first it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. Eleanor felt bad about it but it was true. He lived in Nottingham and they lived in Sussex, and they hardly ever saw him and Mum’s mum. Mum didn’t get on with him and Eleanor and Rhodes had been to the house in Nottingham only twice. The first time he’d smelt of whisky and roared at them when they played in the tiny back garden. The second time he’d had a go at Mum, shouted and told her she was a disgrace. He’d smelt of whisky that time, too. (Eleanor hadn’t known what it was, but Rhodes had told her. He loved knowing everything she didn’t.) Their granny visited them in Sussex instead or saw them for day trips to London, which Eleanor loved, even though nowadays it was annoying Granny didn’t understand she was fourteen and didn’t want to go to babyish things like Madame Tussauds; she wanted to hang out by herself at Hyper Hyper and Kensington Market.