River Deep Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Rowan Coleman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes, Dorothy Koomson and Liane Moriarty, this is an uplifting and heartfelt novel from the author of The Memory Book, which was featured in the Richard & Judy book club 2014

  For five years, Maggie has known what her life is all about: her satisfying job in a small catering company, her boyfriend (and boss) Christian, and the future they’re building together. Christian is the man Maggie’s destined to be with forever, she fell in love with him the moment they met, their love runs River Deep, Mountain High – until Christian comes home one night and says the terrible words ‘it’s over’.

  Numb, shocked and disbelieving, Maggie moves home to her parents’ pub. Jobless and single, living in a bedroom still papered with A-ha and Take That posters, she’s back to square one. The life she spent five years building is over. Or is it? Convinced she knows Christian better than he knows himself, Maggie sets out to win him back. But when she enlists the help of Pete, temporarily abandoned by his fiancé, she starts to wonder just how broken her heart really is ...

  About the Author

  Rowan Coleman worked in bookselling and then publishing for seven years, during which time she wrote her first novel, Growing Up Twice, published in 2002. She left to write her second novel, After Ever After, and now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and daughter.

  Also by Rowan Coleman

  Growing Up Twice

  After Ever After

  RIVER DEEP

  Rowan Coleman

  For Erol and Lily, always

  Prologue

  St Albans, July 20th

  ‘Did you hear what I said? Maggie?’

  Maggie opened her eyes and was momentarily dazzled by the rush of morning light that swam dizzily on the smoked glass coffee table. She screwed her eyes shut as she pulled herself into a sitting position, trying to make sense of the situation. Gradually the edge of the coffee table came into focus and beyond it sat Christian, his hair unkempt, his face dark with stubble, his eyes rimmed with red. Maggie smiled at him.

  ‘Oh, you’re back!’ She looked around her and down briefly at her crumpled shirt. ‘I can’t believe I slept all night on the sofa waiting for you to get home!’ She touched her face, aware that her skin would be red and creased with sleep, and pushed her tangled hair behind her ear. ‘You must have been hard at it all night?’ She gave a small laugh but there was something, some sixth sense, which stopped her just short of crossing the room to fling herself into his arms as she had done so many times before. As Christian listened to her she noticed his face crumble slightly. He dropped his chin and looked away.

  She looked at the wall clock. Five forty-five a.m. ‘God, it’s still the middle of the night! I know, I’ll make us some coffee and we can take it to bed?’ She raised her eyebrows playfully. Hopefully.

  ‘I said – that it’s over. It’s over, Maggie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t plan it this way, I never dreamt things would end like this, but they have. You have to believe me, I’d do anything not to hurt you like this. I’d … I’m sorry.’

  Maggie stared at him, rooted to the spot. She felt panic constrict her chest, and as she looked at him she felt the same love, the same passion she had always felt ignite into an uncontrollable storm that raged behind the stupidly calm façade of her face.

  ‘You mean the business, don’t you?’ she asked him, knowing that he didn’t. ‘But listen, listen to me. It’s OK, because … It will be OK. I’ve been thinking, we might have overstretched ourselves opening a London branch now, I think maybe we needed more time, maybe we were going too fast.’ She paused as he lifted his gaze to meet hers, saw tears in his eyes, and felt fear and hope all at once. ‘Because it doesn’t matter. We’re in good shape here, we might have to let a couple of people go, which is a shame, but I made sure when we started this … I made sure that if the London branch didn’t work out it wouldn’t be the end of us, of Fresh Talent, I mean. It wouldn’t be the end of us. I know we’d have to start again, but we can, we built this up from nothing once, and look how far we’ve come. If we have to do it again it’ll be better, much better, this time.’

  Without realising it Maggie had crossed the room and sunk to her knees at Christian’s feet; unclenching his stiff fingers and holding them in hers, she looked up into his eyes and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t have to be over, Christian,’ she said again. ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  As she looked up at him, she felt that the whole of her life, everything she had given to make things work with Christian, was balancing on a cliff edge. Christian disengaged his fingers from hers and ran them through his hair, shaking his head, and Maggie knew she was falling.

  ‘Please, Mags, please. Listen to me. I don’t mean the business, I …’ He stopped, and it seemed as if he had entirely deflated. ‘I mean us, Maggie. We are over. You and me. I’m in love with someone else.’

  Maggie felt the sudden shocking calm of a drowned woman.

  Leeds, later the same morning

  The first thing Pete saw as he opened his eyes was the curve of Stella’s bottom, like luminescent marble, smooth and firm. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him, perfectly still, thinking. For the millionth time Pete marvelled at her waist-length hair which somehow managed to be all kinds of blonde and curly and straight all at once. Occasionally, when he ventured to compliment her about it, she’d laugh and mention something about it being out of a bottle, but Pete preferred the wonder of it as a mystery. In fact, Pete preferred the whole wonder of Stella as a mystery, an insoluble enigma that he couldn’t hope to understand but could only marvel at. Stella was the universe encapsulated in a single small but perfectly curvy body.

  Not realising he was awake, Stella lifted her bottom gently off the bed and walked over to the mantlepiece of their bedroom. She eyed herself in the mirror for a moment, turned her body a little to examine her profile, and Pete felt the familiar surge of desire for her as he watched her watch herself. That was the wonderful thing about Stella. When Pete had first met her five years ago, she wasn’t like so many of the girls he’d encountered in the past. She wasn’t born half empty, always looking for a fix or a cure in the shape of a man. She wasn’t the type to try and rush relationships to some premature conclusion. If anything, Stella liked to keep the emotional side of things in a kind of suspended animation, and commitment was something
she’d only hint at just when you thought all hope might be lost.

  Pete smiled to himself and let out a small breath. It had been like that with him and Stella not so long ago. She’d come and go, and he’d be waiting for her latest fad or fling to fade until she came back to him, and she always did. But for the last year almost, eight months anyhow, there had been no one else, he was sure of it. In the last few months she’d started to call Pete’s flat ‘ours’ and she’d make plans with him for the weekend as early as Wednesday night. Pete was certain, he was sure, that his persistence had finally won her. She’d stopped searching for a more promising alternative. She was finally his.

  He found it hard to prevent himself from laughing with pure joy as he watched her bend over to rifle through the contents of their bottom drawer, but just as he was about to call out and ask her to get back into bed, Stella straightened and looked at herself in the mirror again. Pete caught sight of her reflection. In her right hand was her passport.

  Pete closed his eyes abruptly, his mind racing. ‘Idiot. Stupid bloody idiot,’ he cursed himself silently. ‘Haven’t you learned that tempting fate always, always ends in tears?’

  He opened his eyes just a crack to see Stella, still naked, zipping the passport into her backpack and stuffing summer dresses on top of it. He’d lulled himself into a false sense of security and now, on the very morning he’d been congratulating himself on being able to keep her, she was leaving. Only this time he wasn’t going to let her go.

  Desperate and determined, Pete formulated the only plan to make her stay that he could conjure up in those few split seconds. It was pretty extreme, sort of Bruce-Willis-on-top-of-a-skyscraper-full-of-terrorists-with-a-nuke extreme – but needs must.

  ‘I’ve got a surprise for you tonight,’ he said, sitting up quickly.

  Stella jumped and dropped a selection of near translucent thongs on the floor.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she laughed, and then, gesturing to the bag. ‘I was just sorting out the washing.’ They looked at each other. They both knew she was lying.

  ‘Reservations at that place you’re always banging on about …’ Pete struggled for the name.

  ‘Hugo’s?’ Stella gave a little jump and Pete groaned inwardly, trying to keep his mind off her breasts and on the plan.

  ‘Yeah, there, I’ve got reservations for tonight at eight. You’ll be there, won’t you?’

  Stella looked at the bag. Suddenly she reached for her dressing gown and put it on, wrapping it tightly around her.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she said with quiet uncertainty.

  Pete ploughed on. ‘Because I’ve got to go out today, I’ve got a few things to organise, some surprises for you and stuff … and you won’t go anywhere, will you, Stella? Promise me you won’t do anything until after tonight, until then, will you, Stella?’

  Stella examined the ends of her dressing gown cords for a long moment before meeting his eyes with a smile.

  ‘No, I won’t. I promise I won’t, but Pete …’

  Pete knew that his plan, his last stand, was about as clear as glass and he knew that Stella could see what was coming a mile off.

  ‘Look, Stella, please. All I’m asking is that you come tonight and just see. Just see how you feel after tonight? I’ve arranged it especially for you.’

  Stella scooped the fallen thongs up from the floor and stuffed them, temporarily at least, back into the drawer. The passport, he noticed, stayed where it was.

  ‘Of course,’ she said with half a smile, and turned on the TV.

  ‘Well,’ thought Pete, high on the terror inspired by the thought that he was going to have to get a diamond big enough to keep her and what’s more a reservation at the most exclusive place in town – by eight o’clock tonight. ‘It’s about time I took the plunge.’

  Chapter One

  ‘Right, Mrs Billingham.’ Sarah looked at the reflection of the woman in her seventies seated before her, and then at the picture of Cameron Diaz clipped neatly from Hello! that she held in her hand. ‘You want ash blonde with honey lowlights and an elfin tousled cut, is that right?’ She raised her voice just a little for Mrs Billingham’s benefit.

  ‘Yes, dear, I thought a change would be nice, don’t you?’

  Sarah cast an eye over Mrs Billingham’s fine hair, drained and thinned by years of colour and permanent curls, and wondered if it could stand a semi-permanent colour wash let alone anything more spectacular. She leaned over the back of the chair, bringing her cheek level with Mrs Billingham’s and, lowering her voice a little, caught her gaze in the mirror. ‘The thing is, love, these colours aren’t included in the pensioner’s special. I mean, you’re right, you’d look a treat, but the colours alone would set you back fifty quid. If you’ve got that to spare then fine, otherwise I can do a nice set and colour rinse for a fiver. What do you say?’

  Mrs Billingham’s face fell. ‘It’s a terrible thing being old and impoverished, dear. Fifty years I worked, and for what? Don’t even see my son any more.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Go on then, a nice set and colour rinse will have to do.’

  Sarah bit her lip, feeling a pang of guilt even though she’d knocked three quid off her usual pensioner rates.

  ‘Mum! Phone!’ Sarah turned to reply to her fourteen-year-old daughter only to find she had already headed back to the flat upstairs, leaving the door marked ‘Private’ swinging in her wake. Good morning, Becca, and how are you? she mumbled under her breath.

  ‘Luce!’

  The junior raised her head from the five-minute job of sorting the colours that she had so far managed to make last all morning. ‘Get Mrs Billingham washed, all right?’ Sarah asked her, and headed for the stairs up to her flat. She couldn’t think who would be calling her on the flat number during the day. Everyone knew she’d be working. It must be creditors or her mother or someone else equally terrifying. Becca had tossed the handset onto the sofa and returned to her bedroom, leaving the TV blaring to an empty room.

  ‘Hello?’ Sarah waited for the reply and then realised who it was. ‘Maggie! Hello!’ she bellowed, picturing her friend jumping out of her reverie at the other end of the line. ‘I’m at work, you should have called me in the shop.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie said at her end. ‘I forgot. What’s Becca doing at home, anyway? It is a Wednesday, isn’t it? Or have I totally lost it?’

  Sarah listened carefully to the tone of her voice. She seemed reasonably composed: calm, if mildly distracted.

  ‘Summer holidays, or Purgatory for Parents as I like to call it. So, um, what can I do for you? It’s just that I’ve got Mrs—’ Maggie’s sob tore down the phone line and battered Sarah’s ear drum before she could pull it away.

  ‘It’s just … I can’t stand it! I can’t stand any of it, Sarah. This bloody pub, Mum and Dad, my stupid bloody brother and the … and the … the fact that he’s gone. Christen’s gone and I just can’t … can you come over? Now?’

  Sarah thought about her pensioners, her Wednesday morning bread and butter, and wondered if Jackie and Luce could cope by themselves. And then she realised they’d have to. In all the years they’d known each other, Maggie had always come to her when she’d got in a mess, across the country sometimes and in the middle of the night. The very least she could do was get across town.

  ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes, all right?’

  Maggie continued to sob regardless.

  ‘OK, well, I’m hanging up now, so I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You can put the phone down now,’ she added.

  As she picked up her car keys, Sarah gave a cursory knock on her daughter’s door before opening it.

  ‘Mum!’ Becca squealed a generic protest.

  ‘I’m going out, all right. Keep an eye on your brother.’

  Becca looked as though she’d just been handed a death sentence. ‘But I’m going out …’ she began.

  ‘It’s an emergency, OK? You want to be treated as an adult, the
n act like one.’ Sarah winced as she heard herself trot out the same words her mother used to bludgeon her with as a girl, and which she had sworn she would never use on her own kids.

  ‘Aunty Maggie blubbing is not an emergency,’ Becca said blithely, turning her face away as her mother tried to kiss her. ‘It’s been a daily bloody occurrence for the last two weeks. I don’t know why it’s taking her so long to pull herself together. I wouldn’t let that old git Christian make me so bloody sad all the time!’

  In the back of her mind Sarah knew Becca was unleashing her level-two swearing to try and keep her there for a few minutes longer, even if it was just for a fight. For once she’d have to let her get away with it.

  ‘It is bloody sad,’ she said to Becca as she shut the flat door and headed down into the salon. ‘Bloody fucking sad.’

  ‘My God, this is the Blue Peter time capsule.’ Sarah looked around her at Maggie’s old bedroom. The only room on the top floor of her parents’ pub, it was small, with a sloping ceiling in which a dormer window was set. The narrow single bed on which Maggie was currently huddled was pushed up against a wall papered in pink and patterned with white love hearts. Sarah smiled to herself remembering the day Maggie had dragged her up the many stairs to look at her new decor.

  ‘Finally, Mum and Dad have let me have something modern,’ Maggie had said proudly. ‘It’s skill, isn’t it?’

  How old were they then? Eleven maybe? Twelve at the oldest. Layered over the paper was poster after poster, ranging from A-ha to Bon Jovi to Take That.

  ‘Ha! Take That! Do you remember us pretending to fancy them ironically, but actually we fancied them totally and screamed like babies when we went to see them? How old were we then? Twenty-three?’

  Sarah looked at Maggie, whose head was buried between her knees, and realised that maybe now wasn’t the best time to be talking over old times. She sat down on the bed and took hold of Maggie’s hand. The summer had arrived with full force the day that Maggie and Christian had split up. For two weeks there hadn’t been even a hint of rain, and the room felt like an oven. Sarah longed to open the window, but instead she spoke soothingly to Maggie.