The Love of Her Life

The Love of Her Life
Harriet Evans

A British When Harry met Sally from the new superstar of women’s fiction.Kate Miller re-made herself from a geeky teenager into the image of modern woman, with a career in glossy magazines, a wedding to plan and a flatmate who was her best friend. Then it all fell apart - spectacularly, painfully and forever.Ever since, she’s hidden in New York, working as a dogsbody for a literary agency. But when her father becomes ill, she has to return to London and face everything she left behind.She spends time with her upstairs neighbour, Mr Allan, an elderly widower, taking long walks along London’s canals and through leafy streets. And she visits her adored but demanding father. But eventually she has to face her friends - Zoe, Francesca and Mac - the friends who are bound together with her forever, as a result of one day when life changed for all of them.Mac is the man she thought was the love of her life. Now they don’t speak. Can Kate pick up the pieces and allow herself to love her life again?

The Love of Her Life

HARRIET EVANS

Darling Kate,

I’m sorry.

Perhaps one day, when you’re grown-up, you’ll understand why I’ve done it. Relationships are complicated, that’s the truth. Darling, I love you, and your father loves you. You mustn’t blame yourself. You are our little girl, and we’re both very proud of you.

You must come and see me soon,

Lots and lots of love,

Mummy

xxx

PS Happy belated fourteenth birthday, darling. I do hope you like the telescope, is it the one you wanted?Zoe helped me choose it, so I do hope so. Lots of love xxxxx

It’s not love. It’s just where I live. Nora Ephron, Moving On

Set me a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thinearm; for love is stronger than death.

Song of Solomon, ch VIII, v6

Contents

Title Page (#uc9840026-8913-5a2f-8148-283f3ed552f0)Epigraph (#u29da80ba-ffa7-52c9-b2ef-09e5a06226e0)Part One (#ue0baecd9-3567-5214-a959-749600d24b20)Chapter One (#ud8a07af1-b763-5a75-8690-f3c12c3661b4)Chapter Two (#u8edbc585-d537-5e30-aa58-ef7515dc1f75)Chapter Three (#u1b9c90c7-f580-5ebd-889f-1548e77dcb94)Chapter Four (#u3321fdfb-effd-5b67-a537-58c8fdd693c4)Chapter Five (#u15e44ad6-b117-50f2-b066-4be7794f08f3)Chapter Six (#uc7076764-bbbf-5392-949d-7fb7f604a8e5)Chapter Seven (#u723ad843-d6f4-5259-b108-fc5402f843f1)Chapter Eight (#u9b7bd0f7-2db1-588a-8045-aae4d9d08ccd)Chapter Nine (#ub44f36c9-6a0c-58db-96af-7ab651db5abf)Chapter Ten (#ue595698a-492e-5eb1-b4d3-b4fc9c4d6c66)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Part Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Preview (#litres_trial_promo)Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Praise (#litres_trial_promo)By The Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About The Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PART ONE (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

CHAPTER ONE (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

New York, 2007

Her father wasn’t well. They kept saying she shouldn’t worry too much, but she should still come back to London. He had had an operation – emergency kidney transplant, he’d been bumped right up the list. He was lucky to get one, considering his lifestyle, his age, everything. They kept saying that, too. Earlier, before it was an emergency, Kate had even been tested, to see if she could be a donor. She couldn’t, which made her feel like a bad daughter.

It all happened so suddenly. It was Monday afternoon when she got the call telling her it had happened, the previous day, after a kidney miraculously became available. He’d been unwell for a few years now, the diabetes and the drinking; and the stress of his new life, he was busier than ever – but how had it got to this, got so far? Apparently he had collapsed; the next day he’d been put at the top of the transplant list; and that afternoon, Daniel was given a new kidney. Kate’s stepmother Lisa had rung the following day to let her know.

‘I think he’d very much like to see you.’ Lisa’s rather nasal voice was not improved by the tinny phone line.

‘Of – of course,’ Kate said. She cast around for something to say. ‘Oh god. How … how is he now?’

‘He’s alive, Kate. It was very sudden. But he’s got much much worse these last few months. So he’s not that well. And he’d like to see you. Like I say. He misses you.’

‘Yes,’ said Kate. Her throat was dry, her heart was pounding. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘He’s going to be in intensive care for a few days, you know. Can you come next week? You can get the time off at the office, I presume.’ Lisa made no other comment, but a variety of the comments she could make hung in the air, and rushing in next to them came millions of other guilty thoughts, all jostling for attention in front of Kate till she couldn’t see anything. She rubbed her eyes with one hand as she cradled the phone on her shoulder. Her darling dad, and she hadn’t seen him for eighteen months, hadn’t been back to London in nearly three years. How the hell … was this emergency, his rapid decline, was it her fault? No, of course it wasn’t, but still, Kate couldn’t escape the thought that she had made him ill herself, as certainly as if she had stuck a knife into him.

Out of the window, Manhattan looked calm and still, the grey monolithic buildings giving no clue to the arctic weather, the noise, the hustle, the sweet crazy smell of toasted sugar and tar that hit you every time you went outside, the city she had grown used to, fallen in love with, the city that had long ago replaced London in her affections. Kate looked round the office of the literary agency where she worked. It was a small place, only four full-time members of staff. Bruce Perry, the boss, was in his office, talking on the phone. Kate could see his head bobbing up and down as he violently agreed with someone and what they were saying. Doris, the malevolent old bookkeeper from Queens, who openly hated Kate, was pretending to type but in reality listening to Kate’s conversation, trying to work out what was going on. Megan, the junior agent, was in the far corner, tapping a pencil against her keyboard.

‘Kate?’ said Lisa, breaking into Kate’s thoughts. ‘Look, I can’t force you to come back, but …’ She cleared her throat, and Kate could hear the sound echo in the cavernous basement kitchen of her father and Lisa’s flashy new home in Notting Hill.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ Kate heard herself say, and she crouched into herself, flushed with shame, hoping Doris hadn’t heard her.

‘You will?’ Lisa said, and Kate could hear incredulity and something else, yes – pleading in her voice, and she was horrified at herself, at how cold she was capable of being to Lisa. Her father was ill, for god’s sake. Dad.

It was time to get a grip and go back home. And so Kate put the phone down, booked a flight for Saturday evening, getting into London on Sunday morning. Then she went into Bruce Perry’s office to ask for two weeks off. No more. She wasn’t staying there any longer than she had to.

Bruce had grimaced a bit, but he’d been fine about giving her the time off. Perry and Co was not exactly the fast-paced business unit it might have been, which is why Kate had got her job as assistant there in the first place. In fact, to the outside eye, but for one author it would seem to be a mystery that they managed to stay in business, employing as they did five people, and with no books sold to any major publisher, no scripts sold to any studio, for years and years, so it would seem.

But one day, seventeen years ago, a middle-aged lady called Anne Graves had arrived in Bruce’s office with the idea for a crime series set in her hometown in Ohio. And that day Bruce had got lucky, very lucky. It was Anne Graves who kept them afloat, Anne Graves who paid their salaries, for the lunches, for the midtown offices a block or two from the Rockefeller Plaza. Anne Graves, and her creation Jimmy Potomac and his dog, Thomas. Jimmy and Thomas lived in Ravenna, Ohio, and solved crimes together. A flagpole goes missing. The local sheriff loses his golden wedding anniversary present. Some kids make a little disturbance. That kind of thing. The books had sold one hundred million copies, and the NBC series, Jimmy Potomac, now in its third season, pulled in sixteen million viewers a week. When the dog playing Thomas had died, the studio had received five thousand letters of sympathy.

Kate had been the office assistant at Perry and Co now for over two years. She had yet to meet a single person who’d read a Jimmy Potomac book.

‘Where will you stay?’ Bruce asked. ‘Will you go to your dad?’

‘No,’ said Kate firmly. ‘I’ve – I’ve actually got a place there.’ Bruce raised his eyebrows, and Kate could see Doris put down her ledger and look up, intrigued.

‘Your own place?’

‘It’s … kind of,’ Kate told him. She cleared her throat. ‘I part own it. I was renting it out, but they’ve just left. Last month.’

‘Good timing,’ said Bruce, pleased. ‘That’s great!’

‘Yes,’ said Kate. She wasn’t sure it was that good timing, the ending of Gemma’s rental lease coinciding with her father’s emergency kidney transplant, but still, look for the silver lining, as her mother was always telling her. She shook her head, still trying to come to terms with it. ‘Wow,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m going back to London. Wow.’ She bit her thumb. ‘I’d better see if I can get hold of Dad, Lisa said he’d be awake in a little while …’

‘Well, what will we do without you,’ Bruce said, more for effect than sounding like he meant it. He stood up languidly. ‘Hurry back now!’

‘I will,’ said Kate, although she was kind of sure she could simply not ever appear again and all they’d need to do after a few weeks would be to hire a temp to filter through the fan letters to Anne Graves. ‘I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch like this –’

‘Oh honey,’ Doris said, standing up and coming over. She patted Kate’s arm. Kate reared back in horror, since usually Doris wore an expression of murderous hate every time she came near Kate. ‘Don’t you worry about that. My niece, Lorraine, she can cover for you. She’ll do a real good job too, you know it, Bruce.’

‘Great idea!’ Bruce said happily.

Kate nodded. It made sense. Lorraine had temped for her before, when Kate and her friend Betty had driven across the States the previous summer. She had put all the files back in extraordinary places, none of Kate’s messages had been checked, nor her emails, but she had, during the handover session they’d had, managed to walk behind Bruce, murmuring, ‘Oh, excuse me, Mr Perry,’ brushing her enormous breasts against his back and that, not her shorthand skills, was the reason she’d be welcomed back at Perry and Co anytime. That, plus she was the kind of girl who made herself genial, asking questions about folks, smiling brightly at people, even when on the phone.

‘That OK with you?’ said Bruce, as if it were up to Kate, and he’d ring up a temping agency right away if she vetoed Lorraine. He rubbed his hands together.

‘Oh sure, sure,’ said Kate. ‘That’s cool, and you know, I’ll be –’

‘I’ll call her now,’ said Doris, waddling back to her desk, and smiling gleefully down at her own monstrous nails. ‘Say, Bruce! Lorraine did say to tell you hi last week anyway. She’ll be thrilled, you know!’

‘I’m thrilled too, Doris,’ Bruce said, solemnly. ‘Real thrilled.’ He went back into his office, whistling, as Kate swung back around to face her computer. She bit her lip, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry.