One Endless Summer: Heartwarming and uplifting the perfect holiday read

CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)

PART III

CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 47 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 48 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 49 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 50 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 51 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 52 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 53 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 54 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 55 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 56 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 57 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 58 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 59 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 60 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 61 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 62 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 63 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 64 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 65 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 66 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 67 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 68 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 69 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 70 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 71 (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

PART I (#ulink_f091f511-aa04-5cc2-9997-8a2833f0be02)

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_f4d52b0d-8d54-5e42-8ccb-76fde4c66d0d)

Day 1

Lizzie

The sweet unnatural fragrance of hairspray and deodorant clung to the air in the windowless dressing room. The scents clawed at the back of Lizzie’s throat. She drew in a shallow breath and stared into the camera. ‘My name is Lizzie Appleton, I’m twenty-nine years old, and I have three months to live.’

Lizzie’s words hung in the silence, bringing the enormity of her situation crashing down on her, and with it a fusion of colours that blurred the edges of her vision; blobs of reds and blues floating next to purples and yellows as if she was looking down the barrel of a kaleidoscope. Her head began to pound. What was she doing? Three months. 90 days. It wasn’t enough.

‘That was great, Lizzie.’ Caroline clasped her hands together from behind the camera tripod. ‘Let’s try it one more time with a bit more feeling, OK?’ Caroline pushed her glasses further up her thin nose as she bent over to watch Lizzie through the small, digital screen poking out from one side of the camera. ‘Remember that this is for the advert, so we really need to grab the viewers’ attention.’

‘More feeling? Are you serious?’ Lizzie asked, pulling at the black wool of her dress where it prickled her skin and wondering, not the first time, how it had come to this.

‘Just think of something that makes you sad,’ Caroline said with her usual pursed lip smile.

‘Because dying isn’t sad enough?’ Lizzie narrowed her dark-blue eyes and waited for the documentary producer to squirm inside her grey trouser suit. The producer had been an almost-permanent fixture in Lizzie’s life for the past seven days, and Lizzie was looking forward to saying goodbye to her at the airport in a few hours’ time. In the meantime, any payback Lizzie could give for the hours of listening to Caroline’s voice – which was always a notch higher than it needed to be as she encouraged and chided all in one breath – was worth it. Smile, but not at the camera. Be yourself, but without that sarcasm of yours. Wear comfortable clothes, but be presentable.

But Caroline didn’t squirm or flinch. Instead, she pushed her glasses onto the top of her nest of dark curls and returned the stare. ‘The sooner we get this done, the sooner I’ll be out of your way.’

Lizzie sighed. After their week together, her sarcasm no longer seemed to goad the producer. Lizzie tried to focus; she squared her shoulders, fixed her gaze on the camera, and stared at her reflection in the circular glass of the lens: the button nose and high cheek bones she’d inherited from her mother; the dark-blue eyes; and brown hair of her father, now cut short to accommodate the bare patch at the nape of her neck – a parting gift from the radiotherapy.

The throbbing in her head intensified. Images of her parents from the previous evening bombarded her thoughts. The shaking hand of her father, Peter, and the watery-grey eyes of her mother, Evelyn, which had begged the words her mum had been unable to voice: Don’t go, Lizzie. Stay here with us.

Both her parents looked ten years older than their sixty-one years, and had the lines on their faces of people who’d spent so much of their lives worrying. She’d done that to them. An ache spread across her chest. They deserved so much better than the hand they’d been dealt. But, then again, so did she.

‘Ready?’ Caroline asked, pulling her glasses back into place and brushing off an imaginary fleck of lint from her jacket.