After Ever After 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

  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

  Kitty Simpson is a firm believer in fairy tales. And when Fergus Kelly kisses her under a shooting star (or perhaps a banking airplane), she simply knows that he must be The One.

  But eighteen months, a storybook wedding and an adorable but accidental baby later, Kitty’s life isn’t the perfect idyll she thought it would be. She has her Prince Charming, her lady-of-leisure lifestyle and her longed-for escape from city life, but Fergus spends most of his time commuting, looking after Ella is surprisingly exhausting, and a quiet life in the country has her pining for London.

  Suddenly confident, self-assured Kitty isn’t sure who she is any more. Cracks are appearing in her fairy tale. And when they’re compounded by her unexpected attraction to another man, happily ever after seems a long way off...

  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

  Praise for Growing Up Twice

  ‘Growing Up Twice is a fresh, warm and hugely enjoyable read... truly brilliant. Her captivating style leaps off the page, engrossing you from the first sentence’ Company

  ‘A fantastic first novel’ heat

  For Erol and Lily, always

  Acknowledgements

  With huge thanks to Kate Elton for her wonderful support and amazing ability to know what I mean even when I don’t! And to everyone at Arrow and Random House who has helped me come this far.

  To my friends Clare and Graham Winter, the entire Smith family, especially Lynn and Rosie, and to Sarah Boswell and Amanda Hamilton for their superbly practical support. Thank you to Naomi and George Benson for being just next door whenever I needed a coffee or babysitting. Also to Sue Gee for offering such great inspiration and encouragement. Thanks to Lizzy Kremer, who is always there when I need her.

  Especial thanks to my mum, who has been fantastic and who says I couldn’t have written this book without her, and I have to admit I agree. And my final and greatest thanks to Erol and Lily, who give me so much love and joy every day.

  Prologue

  ‘I must say,’ Dora said, looking at her reflection in the mirror, ‘I never thought it would be possible to find a colour that would suit both a black woman and someone like me, you know, someone who permanently looks like they’re in need of a blood transfusion.’ Her expression of mild astonishment dimmed into a scowl as she remembered that a small crown of dark red rosebuds had been entwined into her glossy bottle-black bob. Camille stood beside her and together in the mirror they looked like the yin and yang bridesmaids, or maybe Superbridesmaid and her not quite evil twin.

  ‘I know,’ Camille said with a self-approving glance. ‘Say what you like about the stuck up old bag, she’s got great taste,’ she said with a giggle.

  ‘Shhhhhhhhhh.’ I looked hastily over my shoulder. ‘She’ll be back any moment with the dress!’ I pulled my mother-in-law-to-be’s oversized white towelling bathrobe around me even more tightly and breathed in deeply and then out deeply trying to remain calm and poised – a calm and poised bride-to-be.

  ‘What is this colour anyway?’ Dora said, ignoring me. ‘Is it puce?’

  I remained calm and looked at her, a picture of serenity.

  ‘No. It is not puce. It’s Winter Cranberry,’ I said with deliberate calmness, tapping my foot and looking at the clock. ‘Where has she gone with that dress? It’s almost twelve; we’re supposed to be at the church by one.’ I closed my eyes and imagined Fergus in his hotel room, tying his cravat or trying to. I pictured him in the cranberry and gold brocaded waistcoat and smiled, thinking how dashing he was going to look in the long frock coat and Mr Darcy-style boots. Then I remembered that if my mother-in-law-to-be didn’t get a crack on I’d be marrying him in my knickers.

  Suddenly it all made sense. My eyes flew open.

  ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘She’s run off with the dress! It’s the last chance she’s got to stop her precious son from marrying a commoner from a council estate!’ Dora rolled her eyes, took a cigarette out of her fur-trimmed muff (‘muff!’ she’d giggled when mother-in-law-to-be had handed it to her) and put it to her lips. My jaw dropped in horror; any form of cigarette paraphernalia was strictly forbidden in the double-fronted 1930s Art Deco palace, Castle Kelly – Fergus’s birthplace. The thinly brittle façade of calm I had constructed for myself shattered at my feet.

  I am afraid of Georgina, mother-in-law-to-be. She’s one of those women who look twenty years younger than they should and who dress better than I do. She’s all that and more, queen of her castle and her family, and then suddenly Cinders here breezes in from the cellar after her son, and she doesn’t like it. Not one little bit. I mean, she’s not tried to throw me in a dungeon or anything, she’s been perfectly polite up to a point, but you can just see it in the ice-cold gimlet eyes: You are not good enough.

  Dora snorted with laughter at the look of horror on my face.

  ‘Don’t panic! I’m not smoking it, I’m just holding it; it helps me relax and forget you’ve got me dressed up like a Christmas tree.’ She patted my hand. ‘Anyway, she hasn’t run off with your dress. Can you imagine what the glitterati of wherever-the-fuck we are, Berkhamsted, would say if the social event of the year didn’t happen?’

  I nodded, breathing in, breathing out. Dora was right. Georgina might have been taken aback by Fergus’s sudden announcement of his plan to marry a girl he’d hardly even mentioned let alone brought home for her seal of approval, but once the news had sunk in she had waded into the breach in full organisational battle gear, clearly determined to camouflage the unsuitability of the marriage in as much glamour and style as she could manage.

  ‘Well, you’ll need help, dear, you can’t possibly manage by yourself, what with no mother of your own,’ she had said, and I had been grateful to accept before I realised exactly what she meant – and it wasn’t ‘I’ll book your tickets to the Bahamas, no problem’.

  ‘Yeah, don’t be mad,’ Camille said, twirling one of her wedding-special ringlets. ‘Have you seen those shoes? No one buys Jimmy Choo shoes that they will never wear again unless they plan to go through with it. Anyway, she couldn’t run in those heels and that woman is not leaving those shoes behind. Not unless she really has got a heart of stone.�
�� She flashed me her traffic-stopping smile. ‘What colour is puce, anyway?’ Camille asked me, ‘I always thought it was green.’

  Dora snorted.

  ‘No, you’re thinking of puke,’ she said. ‘Puce is more your Winter Cranberry kind of colour.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said, breaking into their conversation. ‘I mean, she’s Fergus’s mother, right? He is the fruit of her loins and he is just the most wonderful man, the best and kindest man. He must have some of that from her. He can’t have inherited all of his loveliness from his dad. And look at his dad! He’s lovely too and he married her. She must, somewhere deep inside, have a soul.’ I tried to conjure up an image of Georgina as a young mother nursing her only child, but somehow it wouldn’t come.

  ‘Yeah. Cor, Fergus’s dad is top banana. I fancy Fergus’s dad,’ Camille announced, so that anyone just on the other side of the door would be able to hear her. Everyone I know fancies Fergus’s dad, Daniel, because he looks like Fergus but sort of silvered and with a real Irish accent and an endless line in cuddly cable-knit jumpers. Somehow he and Georgina have stayed married for a million years or something, so she can’t be that bad. Either that or she is really bad in a feminist reworking of Bluebeard kind of way.

  Deep calm breaths.

  ‘Stop panicking.’ Dora sat next to me on the bed. ‘The only thing that can stop this wedding now is if one of Fergus’s ex-lovers turns up mid-ceremony and shouts ‘No! He’s already married! To me! And these are his twins!’

  I stared at her in horror.

  ‘Joke! It’s a joke! I’m only joking.’ At last she showed some sensitivity to my total sense-of-humour bypass on the subject and with a rare gentle smile leant her forehead against mine. ‘You know, your mum would be so proud,’ she whispered, before squeezing my hand. Our eyes locked for a moment and Dora let me stare at her for as long as I needed to, to battle back the threat of tears.

  ‘So listen,’ Dora said, breaking the moment with a wink to Camille. ‘You know all about sex, right? Anything you need me to brush up for you now?’

  Camille settled on the bed behind me.

  ‘Yeah, any extra positions you think you might need to know, you know, to keep your marriage nice and spicy?’ she said with a giggle.

  ‘How about how to bring that overlong blow job to a speedy end?’ Dora interrupted her. I shook my head, laughing. ‘No? Sure? You know there is nothing worse than that fifteen-minute lockjaw feeling?’ She picked up an empty champagne bottle and shoved the neck of it into her mouth, making her cheek bulge.

  ‘Ohfferthuckffakegetonwiffit!’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  I laughed and pushed her away, reaching for my glass of flat champagne.

  ‘No, I have no complaint in that area. Didn’t I tell you two why I am marrying this man? Because he’s hung like a very large horse and so dirty in bed that the first time he shagged me I thought we’d get arrested … Oh hi, Georgina.’

  Fergus’s mother shut the door behind her and looked at me, flaring her nostrils as if she had come upon a terrible smell.

  ‘Just joking about, you know … Hen humour …’ I trailed off, avoiding eye contact with either smirking bridesmaid.

  I watched Georgina compose herself, looking as if she were trying her best to shut out the reality of her future daughter-in-law.

  ‘Right, here we go. Come on now, Katherine. Spit spot,’ she said, unzipping the dress from its plastic bag.

  ‘I’d thought you’d lost it!’ I tried to joke in a poor attempt to dispel the tension, but her face never cracked, maybe because of the Botox. I took off the dressing gown and the cold air raised goosebumps on my arms and legs.

  ‘Brrrrr,’ I said with a hapless smile, suddenly feeling that my ivory basque and gold lace-topped stockings were the most inappropriate things imaginable.

  ‘I have never understood why you couldn’t have waited until the summer, at the very least, if not have had a proper engagement,’ Georgina told me, neatly dispensing with any pretence at friendliness. ‘A February wedding, I ask you. It makes it almost impossible for one to find anything worth wearing.’ I looked at her already decked out in a lilac and grey ensemble from some boutique in Kensington where you have to ring the bell to be let in, and they only do that if they like the look of you. I thought briefly of my mum in faded jeans and a cheesecloth smock and wondered what she would have made of all this.

  ‘Hands up, come on.’ Georgina barely managed to suppress a snap, clearly impatient with my reverie. Dora caught my eye, pulling down the corners of her mouth in a sympathetic grimace. I remembered that technically I was getting married to this woman too today, so I stood my ground, just a little bit.

  ‘Well, we didn’t want to wait. Anyway we had planned to go away and get married …’ I tried not to sound wistful as I remembered Fergus persuading me to let his mother take over with her plans.

  ‘Think of it like this,’ he’d said. ‘She hasn’t got a daughter, only a son, and you haven’t got a mother. It will be perfect for both of you. Give you a chance to get to know each other. I just know that when she gets to know you she’ll adore you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I’d said, but as it turned out I had nothing to worry about on that score. Through the short wedding preparation period Georgina had frog-marched me from designated store to designated store overruling my choices on flowers, decorations and colour scheme until finally we came to the frock, at which point I was so determined to dig my heels in that I almost didn’t let her bully me into her choice of impeccably tailored gown. But it was beautiful and worse than that she was right – it was the right dress.

  ‘You look great,’ I said to Georgina meekly, conciliatory as I lifted my hands over my head and became lost to all, for a brief moment bound in the comforting muffle of acres of cream netting. She blinked in response, or maybe because she was going to anyway.

  ‘Right, breathe in. Have you put on a few pounds?’ Georgina asked me as she buttoned up the back of the dress. I avoided looking her in the eye and thought about my period that had been due two weeks ago and was surely late due to pre-wedding stress. In fact, I was so certain that I’d relax the moment the ring was on my finger that I’d stuffed Camille’s muff full of tampons in readiness. There wasn’t room in Dora’s, it was full of fags.

  ‘Right,’ she said, nodding decisively. ‘Very nice.’ She wheeled a full-length mahogany-framed reproduction Victorian mirror round to meet me. I looked at the stranger in the mirror, blinked and looked at Dora.

  ‘Well, look who’s the fairest of them all,’ Dora said with a slow smile. ‘Bloody hell, mate, you look fucking incredible.’ And for once I didn’t think she was taking the piss.

  ‘You do, you look wonderful.’ Camille’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘Oh God, I’m going to cry again!’

  I looked at myself. My dyed red hair had been returned to its natural deep brown and it fell undressed and in loose waves around my shoulders. I had had nightmares about the dress ever since the moment I’d let Dad pay for it. In my memory Georgina had tricked me into buying a huge ballooning edifice, and I woke up sweating, seeing myself getting stuck halfway down the aisle like a huge puffball mushroom. Now that it was on I felt like Grace Kelly, like Cinderella going to the ball. Like Calamity Jane when she gets her posh frock on and makes Buffalo Bill fall in love with her, because men don’t fall in love with girls wearing trousers. Like a woman worthy of Fergus Kelly’s love – the one for him.

  Georgina looked me up and down and nodded.

  ‘Well, come on.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘We haven’t got time for moping about. The car’s due in five minutes and you haven’t got your fur-trimmed bolero jacket on yet!’

  I was laughing as I slipped the jacket over my bare shoulders.

  ‘Kitty?’ My father’s voice sounded on the other side of the door. We all froze.

  I looked at Dora and Dora looked at Camille. Camille gave me an encouraging smile, mouthing, ‘Don’t wo
rry, it’ll be okay.’ At least I think that’s what she mouthed.

  Fergus had despatched his best man to go and pick Dad up and bring him here because Dad couldn’t go anywhere on his own. He wasn’t agoraphobic exactly – he could make it to the local shops and back; he was just terrified of pretty much everything new.

  ‘Kitty, is it all right to come in?’ As usual he sounded hesitant and unsure, and as usual it irritated me. I composed myself.

  ‘Yes, Dad. Come in!’ I called out. I almost didn’t want to see his face when he saw me, I almost wanted to turn my back and run in the opposite direction.

  ‘My word,’ Dad said, and in that split second I prayed that he’d say anything, anything at all except for what I knew he was about to say. ‘You look just like her …’ I watched him lost for a moment, his face a picture of remote reverie. He’d said exactly the wrong thing.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, trying to hide my disappointment. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to remember her, it was just that every other day of my life had been about her death and I so wanted this day to be about my life. I know that Mum would have wanted it too. Dad took my hand and squeezed it; his was a little sweaty.

  ‘She’s here, you know, she’s with us even now,’ he said, his eyes brimming with tears. I closed my eyes on the last image I remember of my mother and tried to chase it away with happier ones. ‘She would have loved this day.’ He dropped my hand and turned his face to the wall, shutting the world out. I glanced awkwardly at the others in the room and laid my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I know, Dad, and she’d want us to be happy,’ I said briskly to him. ‘So let’s make her proud, okay?’ Slightly taller than him in my shoes, I turned him back to face me, straightened the cravat I could see he felt so uncomfortable wearing and smoothed down what was left of his hair.

  ‘Ready?’ I said, wishing that I could ask him if he’d remembered to take his antidepressants, but not wanting Georgina to hear.