A Home for Broken Hearts Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Rowan Coleman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Almost One Year Ago

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sneak Peek

  Copyright

  Praise for Rowan Coleman:

  ‘Painfully real and utterly heartbreaking, every page will leave you an emotional wreck but, ultimately, this is a wonderfully uplifting novel about mothers and daughters’ Lisa Jewell

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I loved this book. It did make me cry but it also made me laugh. Like Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, I couldn’t put it down. A tender testament to maternal love’ Katie Fforde

  ‘Written with great tenderness, The Memory Book manages to be heartbreakingly sad yet uplifting too. You'll hold your loved ones that little bit closer after reading this novel. I absolutely loved it!’ Lucy Diamond

  ‘The Memory Book is warm, sad, and life-affirming, with an unforgettable heroine who will make you laugh and cry. It's a tender book about treasuring the past and living fully in the present; you'll finish it and immediately go give your loved ones a hug’ Julie Cohen

  ‘Warm, funny and totally heartbreaking, The Memory Book is a wonderful read’ Polly Williams

  ‘. . . just stunning . . . incredibly beautiful . . . the story took me on a journey that was at turns, devastating and then so uplifting. It made my heart soar at the strength of the human spirit and how capable human beings are of true, selfless love. An unforgettable and courageous story . . . This story has the ingredients to capture the world’ Katy Regan

  ‘A heart-breaking story that will stay with you long after you've finished the book’ Carole Matthews

  ‘. . . terrific . . . incredibly moving but also witty and warm’ Kate Harrison

  ‘. . . breath-takingly gut-wrenchingly heart-breakingly wonderful. Exquisitely crafted and with huge emotional depth . . . extraordinary’ Veronica Henry

  ‘An absolutely beautiful, stunningly written story - you HAVE to read The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman!’ Miranda Dickinson

  ‘Heartbreakingly good stuff – just be sure to stock up on tissues’ Fabulous Magazine, The Sun on Sunday

  ‘This is a heart-rending story, but it's also completely absorbing, uplifting, tender, sad and wise’ Sunday Mirror

  About the Book

  Ellie Woods spends her days immersed in the escapist pages of the romantic novels she lovingly edits. But her reality is somewhat less rose-tinted. Once upon a time, Ellie had her ‘happily ever after’ moment when she married her beloved Nick, but fifteen years later her husband’s tragic death leaves her alone with their soon-to-become-a-teenager son, faced with a mountain of debt, and on the verge of losing the family home.

  On the brink of bankruptcy, Ellie finally succumbs to her sister’s well-meant bullying and decides to rent out some rooms. And all too soon the indomitable Allegra with her love for all things lavender, Sabine on secondment from Berlin and estranged from her two-timing husband, and unreconstructed lads’ mag aficionado Matt enter her ordered but fragile existence – each with their own messy life in tow. And Ellie finds herself forced to step out of the pages of the romantic novels she hides behind, and learn to live – and love – again.

  Maybe a new chapter is about to begin for them all…

  About the Author

  Rowan Coleman lives with her husband, and five children in a very full house in Hertfordshire. She juggles writing novels with raising her family which includes a very lively set of toddler twins whose main hobby is going in the opposite directions. When she gets the chance, Rowan enjoys sleeping, sitting and loves watching films; she is also attempting to learn how to bake.

  Rowan has written eleven novels, some of which include The Memory Book, The Accidental Mother and the award-winning Dearest Rose, which led her to become an active supporter of Refuge, the charity against domestic abuse. She is donating 100% of royalties from the ebook publication of her novella Woman Walks Into a Bar to the charity.

  Rowan does not have time for ironing.

  www.rowancoleman.co.uk

  @rowancoleman

  Also by Rowan Coleman:

  The Memory Book

  Dearest Rose

  Lessons in Laughing Out Loud

  The Happy Home for Broken Hearts

  The Baby Group

  Woman Walks Into A Bar

  River Deep

  After Ever After

  Growing Up Twice

  The Accidental Mother

  The Accidental Wife

  The Accidental Family

  Writing as Scarlett Bailey:

  Just For Christmas

  Married by Christmas

  Santa Maybe (digital short)

  The Night Before Christmas

  Rowan Coleman

  THE HAPPY HOME FOR BROKEN HEARTS

  For Freddie, born 22nd August 2009

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you so much Kate Elton and Georgina Hawtrey-Woore and all of the team at Arrow who continue to show me unfailing support and loyalty and whose hard work on my behalf makes me work all the harder for them.

  To dearest Lizzy Kremer, my marvellous agent, thank you for always being there and for standing by me through thick and thin!

  Thanks also to my friends Jenny Matthews, Rosie Woolly, Cathy Carter, Clare Winter, Sarah Darby, Margi Harris, Kirstie Robertson, Catherine Ashley, Natalie Jerome and Katy Regan. You have made tough times seem much less difficult than they would have without you.

  Thank you to my mum, who has been brilliant over the last year, always there to turn to. Thank you to Adam, for listening to my ideas and always having something interesting and inspiring to say in return. And finally thank you to my delightful children, to baby Fred who makes me smile even at three a.m. and my beautiful Lily who really is my best friend.

  Almost One Year Ago

  Ellen braced herself against the unforgiving expanse of faultless blue sky that stretched endlessly above her head, and wondered if such a perfect day was quite seemly on an occasion like this. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the oak trees that surrounded them and the warmth of the sun prickled through her cotton shirt and suit jacket, causing a trickle of sweat to wend between her shoulder blades. The sheer weight of the heat seemed to compress her, squeezing her ribs together, imprisoning her heart. Struggling to catch each breath, Ellen had to fight the urge to simply run away, to find some small, quiet dark place where she could breathe again and close her eyes and pretend that none of this was happening. If her younger sister hadn’t been there, gripping her arm so tightly that she would have bruises in the morning, then perhaps she would have fled. But Hannah was there, supporting her, restraining her, helping her – forcing her – to get through. It was Hannah who had told her to wear something lightweight and comfortable, a dress or a skirt, but Ellen had stuck to her guns and stuck to a suit. It was fitting, respectable, suitable for such an important occasion.

  Funny, Ellen thought without a trace of amusement, focusing with determination on a single blade of bright green grass that lay against the toe of her shoe, it had rained on her wedding day. A cold drenching downpour had sheeted from a steely spring sky in a relentless onslaught.

  They had laughed, Ellen and her brand-new husband when they had looked at their wedding photos, the pair of them standing outside the church, teeth gritted in rigor mortis grins against the cold. Ellen hadn’t minded the weather on that day, the chill that raised goosebumps on her bare arms or the needles of fine rain that consistently assaulted her face, teasing her heavily applied mascara loose from her lashes. On that day all she needed to fight off the elements was the knowledge that the man who was now her husband, the man who she still could not believe had chosen her above anyone else, was standing by her side, his hand in hers, and that from that day on, he always would be. That sodden, foggy, miserable day had been her friend.

  This day, this perfect July day that wheeled so recklessly around her was her sworn enemy, a predator waiting for her to break cover and bolt for safety, poised to pounce and rip her to shreds, because this was the day of her husband’s funeral and a world without him in it became her enemy, determined to assault her with every weapon in its armoury. As the business of burying Nick went on around her, Ellen thought of home, of the cool clean stone tiles of her kitchen floor, the shelter of her shadowy bedroom, curtains still drawn as they had been since the day he died. At home it was easier to believe that he had not gone, at home she still felt safe.

  Finding every single further second that required her to stand at her husband’s graveside intolerable, Ellen gasped for breath, drenched from the inside out by the suffocating heat, flinching as she felt her son prise open her clenched fist and slide his fingers in between hers. Ellen looked down at ten-year-old Char lie and mustered a smile for him; he squeezed her fingers in return. He was supporting her, Ellen realised, ashamed. He was coping when she was not; fearless, bearing the unbearable with the kind of valour that her husband would have shown. Ellen took heart from Charlie, determined not to let him see how frightened she was, how lost, panicked and confused, hurt and bereft she felt. She wouldn’t let him see that at that precise moment, standing under the blazing sun next to Nick’s grave, she had no idea how to live from one minute to the next, let alone another day, another week or another year without her husband.

  All she knew was that she longed to be at home.

  Chapter One

  Slowly the tip of his sword slid between the laces of her bodice, each breath from her heaving bosom forcing the opening a little further apart, revealing ever more of the milky white flesh concealed beneath …

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Please, Captain, if you are any kind of gentleman don’t – oh, please …’ Eliza begged, her heart fluttering with both fear and undiscovered longing as the captain’s dark gaze roamed over her tender form.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘You are mine now,’ he rasped, his voice husky with desire. ‘Just as this house is mine now, just as this sword always has been!’ Eliza gasped, her eyes widening as she perceived the captain’s burgeoning weapon. ‘Reconcile yourself to the knowledge that you are mine and I will have you at my will, first body then soul …’

  ‘Mu-uuuuuum!’

  Ellen’s head snapped up as finally the voice of her son dragged her out of the darkened seventeenth-century chamber with a locked door where a young Puritan maid was about to be ravished by her rakish Royalist captor, and back to her kitchen table in Hammersmith. Discovering Charlie at her side, she slipped a folder on top of the latest Allegra Howard manuscript that she had been sent to copy-edit by the publishing company she freelanced for, and fixed her gaze on him.

  ‘Yes love?’ she asked him mildly.

  ‘What does burgeoning mean?’ Charlie asked her with wide-eyed curiosity. Ellen squirmed – how long had her eleven-year-old been standing there reading over her shoulder?

  ‘Burgeoning? It means … um … to … um … grow rapidly or sprout – like … um like buds in the springtime.’

  ‘How can a weapon like a sword burgeon, then?’ Charlie asked her, his level blue eyes searching out her gaze and holding it. ‘Because it’s made of steel, isn’t it? Hard steel. Steel doesn’t burgeon.’

  ‘Obviously it doesn’t!’ Ellen agreed. ‘I’ll be correcting that! I don’t know – these writers, they haven’t got a clue about metaphor. I swear I could do it better myself. Now, what would you like for tea?’ She asked even though she knew the answer, because it was the same every day.

  ‘It might be a metaphor,’ Charlie said casually, loosening his school tie. ‘Maybe the writer is using his burgeoning sword as a metaphor for the man’s erection, for example.’

  ‘Charlie!’ Ellen exclaimed, folding her arms across the offending manuscript as if she might somehow stop any further indiscretions escaping from it.

  ‘What?’ Charlie said. ‘I’m only discussing literature with you, Mum.’

  ‘Yes but … Charlie, you’re only eleven – you shouldn’t be discussing …’

  ‘Erections,’ Charlie repeated. ‘I shouldn’t be discussing erections with my mother? Who should I discuss them with?’

  Ellen’s mouth open and closed as she fought for an answer. For the millionth time, at least, in the last eleven months the thought ‘if only Nick were here’ flashed across her mind. But Nick wasn’t here, and Ellen had to try to learn again how to manage without him, something she felt she had had to learn and relearn a multitude of times.

  ‘Well, because you’re only eleven and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a boy of your age …’

  ‘I’m nearly twelve,’ Charlie reminded her.

  ‘Your birthday’s not for two months. Don’t wish your life away, Charlie …’

  The pair held each other’s eyes for a second, the same unspoken thought passing between them.

  ‘James Ingram’s mother talks to him about sex all the time,’ Charlie challenged her, papering over the gulf that stretched between them with practised ease. ‘James Ingram’s mother told him he could ask her anything he liked, and she’s an accountant. She doesn’t read porn for a living, like you.’

  ‘P—! Charlie, you know full well that I don’t read anything of the sort. I copy-edit romantic fiction for Cherished Desires, you know that. And if … if you have any questions about anything you can always come to me, of course you can.’ Ellen felt the heat inflame her cheeks. ‘Is…is there anything you’d like to talk to me about? Sex-wise?’

  Charlie stared at her for a long time, and finally Ellen detected the spark of mischief in his deadpan eyes: he was teasing her in that way he had. Deadly serious, edged in equal measure with humour and what she often thought might be anger. Or perhaps frustration that he was changing so rapidly and she was failing to keep up with him.

  ‘Er – no – that would be too weird!’ Charlie grinned. ‘I think James Ingram is a freak anyway.’

  How Nick would laugh, Ellen thought. He’d come in from work sometime between nine and ten and they’d stand in the kitchen, him leaning against the counter while she cooked for him, telling him every last thing that Charlie had said or done, and he would laugh and say something like ‘that’s my boy’. With some effort Ellen held back the threat of tears and smiled at Charlie.

  ‘So how was school today?’

  ‘Same as ever, only I have to get my permission slip in, you know for the skiing trip – so can I go or not?’ he asked, and Ellen realised that she would have preferred the most explicit question about sex that he could think of, compared to that one.

  ‘Well Charlie – the thing is …’

  Ellen sat back in her chair and wondered how to tell him what she herself didn’t yet fully understand. She and Charlie were broke.

  Nick’s accountant, Hitesh, had visited her just before lunchtime. He’d been a regular visitor over the last few months, taking on the financial mess that Nick had unwittingly left her with and battling on Ellen’s behalf to try and get it sorted out, which she was eternally grateful for, especially when neither of them knew how or if she would be able to pay him for all the time he’d given her. He’d told her on the phone before he came that now at least her affairs could be finalised, and that she should disclose any investments or savings that she might have had tucked away. Ellen had been unable to think of any. Nick dealt with all the money stuff, Nick dealt with everything.

  When Hitesh had gone she had made herself a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea and sat at the table for a long time, staring unseeingly at the pile of washed saucepans gleaming like long-lost treasure on the draining board.

  There had been two options open to her: to deal with the situation head on as Hitesh had advised, to look at her incomings and outgoings to see exactly how bad her position was, or to finish reading the first section of the latest Allegra Howard novel, The Sword Erect.

  Ellen had had to put the book down midway through a chapter when Hitesh arrived. She had been forced to tear herself away just as the feisty, yet innocent, yet unknowingly desirable heroine, young Eliza Sinclair, niece of a Parliamentarian supporter, had been locked away in her own home by the ferocious, yet wildly handsome, yet brutal, yet vulnerable Captain Rupert Parker, when he and his Royalist troops had commandeered her uncle’s house for the King, taking all of its occupants prisoner. The captain, bewitched by beautiful dark-haired, blue-eyed Eliza from the moment he set eyes on her, admired her physical perfection, particularly her comely and generous bosom, even through her modest Puritan dress. Unable to control the depths of desire he felt, he had decided to have his way with his female prisoner, despite her protests and vain attempts to escape his clutches. Ellen had been forced to leave the action just as the oak stairs were moaning and creaking under his approaching footsteps while Eliza waited, trapped behind a locked door, helpless and alone, fraught with apprehension. It had nearly killed Ellen to leave the next few pages unread.