Pastures New

Pastures New
Julia Williams

Take one sleepy Suffolk villageAdd a young widowThrow in a local vamp and a harassed mumStir it up with a sexy, secretive doctorAnd watch feuds grow, tempers fray and love blossom…Amy Nicholson never expected to leave London for the Suffolk countryside. But she also never expected to be a 33-year-old widow, left alone with a young son. Fleeing her memories, she swaps her heels for wellies and embarks on a new rural life.The big-hearted community of Nevermorewell welcome them with open arms. There's old Harry, offering pearls of advice (fuelled by whisky from his hip flask), Saffron, juggling motherhood with business (whilst searching for her lost libido), and Caroline, the scheming local vamp, who tramples over lives as easily as the allotments backing onto Amy's cottage.But just when Amy thinks she's finally leaving the past behind, Ben Martin crashes into her life. Sexy and enigmatic, Ben is haunted by his own secrets. Will love blossom on the allotments? Or will it be once bitten, twice shy?

JULIA WILLIAMS

Pastures New

Copyright Page (#ucbc138ca-5a91-5c68-9048-283e0ab6e0cf)

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.

AVON

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A Paperback Original 2007

Copyright © Julia Williams 2007

Julia Williams 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

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Source ISBN: 9781847563613

Ebook Edition © September 2008 ISBN: 9780007278954

Version: 2018-05-23

For Joseph Henry Moffatt and John Douglas (Roger) Williams, for sharing their wisdom

Contents

Title Page (#u245627fb-0333-54d0-98e0-d79074ce0675) Copyright Dedication (#u89ca9b03-5912-574d-9b19-1719bca3f2f3)Part One: Forever Autumn (#ucf7db2e9-6e47-5839-a336-624038080eac)Chapter One (#ue4987fc9-5534-5d4b-9ccd-4d5047f4d815)Chapter Two (#ub7496382-a7b2-517f-b324-5b25a4ea61d4)Chapter Three (#u045df6df-f7fd-531b-bd6c-6f6cb3aebf69)Chapter Four (#ufe784403-decb-54d3-9830-ca8f4957f7c5)Chapter Five (#u0f89b1dc-85c7-5637-b885-5b13934c2e6a)Chapter Six (#uf237b594-9a99-5a68-a08a-bb1b5e830fe1)Chapter Seven (#u7655e7bc-1c99-572a-a0ef-ea365da97461)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Part Two: Lighten Up (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Part Three: Here Comes The Summer Sun (#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)Part Four: Fix You (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty (#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)Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher

PART ONE (#ucbc138ca-5a91-5c68-9048-283e0ab6e0cf)

Forever Autumn

In the allotment:Harvest the crops, dig over the soil, and prepare the ground for winter.

State of the heart:Barren, cold, dead.

CHAPTER ONE (#ucbc138ca-5a91-5c68-9048-283e0ab6e0cf)

‘There’s a fire on the anti-clockwise section of the M25, just before the junction with the M1, and the traffic’s backingup to junction 26, so do avoid that if you can …’

Hopefully that will have cleared by the time I get back, thought Amy, as Sally Traffic made way for a debate about gun crime. She’d always hated driving on the motorway, and never more so than now, when she had to do it alone.

Oh Jamie, I miss you so much …

The thought came unbidden and unprompted, and she blinked back the sudden tears.

This would never do.

Pull yourself together, girl, Amy admonished herself sternly, straightening her slight shoulders and gripping the steering wheel tighter. If she really was going to make this move, she had to be strong. She had to. Hold on to that thought …

At least it was a gloriously sunny day, and the soft undulating Essex countryside was looking its best. Field after field of sun-drenched corn. Thanks to the rotten summer, the harvest was late, but here and there bales of hay indicated that it was finally underway. And the smell of burning stubble was a reminder that summer really was drawing in. Constable country, Amy thought to herself. She wouldn’t be surprised to find a haywain round the next corner.

The journey from North London had taken much longer than she had envisaged, but eventually Amy found herself driving over the little humpbacked bridge that, according to her map, marked the boundary between the Essex and Suffolk sides of the pretty market town of Nevermorewell. A feeling of excitement grew in her as she pulled the car into the picturesque high street, dwarfed by a large Norman church, and flanked on either side by tiny quaint shops with mock Tudor cladding. It was perfect. Just what she was looking for.

Amy pulled into a parking place – amazingly there were several empty ones. So different from Barnet, where she would have been driving around fruitlessly for hours before finding a spot miles away from home. That had to be a good omen.

She took a deep breath and stared at herself in the rear-view mirror. She teased out her fair curls so they didn’t look quite so tangled, and put on a bit of lippy – bright red to boost her confidence. She rarely wore makeup – Jamie had always said her light natural complexion didn’t need any, and now she didn’t see the point. But lippy was good. Lippy was part of the mask she needed to face each day. The mask she needed right now to persuade Josh of the wisdom of this move. It didn’t help that she was so racked with guilt about it, that she wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced herself.

‘Right, Josh,’ she smiled brightly at her five-year-old son, who was sucking his thumb and looking out of the window. ‘We’re here. And we’re going to look at some new houses for us. Isn’t that fun?’

‘Is Granny coming too?’ asked Josh.

‘No, sweetheart,’ said Amy. ‘You remember, I told you. Granny’s staying in her house, and we’re going to have a new house. Won’t that be nice?’

‘Oh,’ said Josh, his face puckering a little. ‘But we won’t see Granny very much, will we?’

‘No, but she can come and visit any time she likes,’ said Amy, more brightly than she felt. Damn. She thought she’d squared that with him. But then, he was very close to Mary, it was only natural he would feel the loss of her.

And she of him. Amy’s stomach went into spasm as she recalled the conversation she’d had with her mother-in-law a few weeks earlier.

‘So you’re serious about this move then?’

As Amy was in the middle of packing up a pile of books at the time, it was hard to resist a sarcastic remark, but she bit her lip and said, ‘Yes, Mary, I am.’

‘What about Josh?’ Mary had sniffed. ‘He’s not going to know anyone in the country.’

‘Children are very adaptable,’ Amy had snapped back. Mary had touched a nerve, as it was what Amy herself had agonised about over and over again.

‘That may be so,’ Mary had replied flatly, ‘but it’s such a long way.’

‘I know,’ Amy had said. ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘But that’s not going to stop you, is it?’ The comment had been barbed, and hit home as it was intended to. Amy had flinched, but held firm.

‘No, Mary, it’s not,’ she’d replied, wishing beyond all measure that there was an easy way of doing this, an easy way of creating some distance from her memories.