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  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Rowan Coleman

  Title Page

  Chapter One: Lisa

  Chapter Two: Demelza

  Chapter Three: Abby

  Chapter Four: Kirsty

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Read on for an extract from The Summer of Impossible Things

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Four strangers, united by their shared love of POLDARK, come together on a trip to Cornwall in search of their hero…

  Lisa has sworn off love and relationships after a really bad experience, but lately she’s been tempted to take a chance on a more exciting life. First she meets fans of the TV show Poldark online. Then she proposes a very special road trip to Cornwall, in search of where their favorite show is being filmed.

  But can four strangers find friendship, as well as a certain sexy hunk on their trip south?

  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 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 would like to live every day as if she were starring in a musical, although her daughter no longer allows her to sing in public. Despite being dyslexic, Rowan loves writing, and has written twelve novels, including her Sunday Times bestseller The Memory Book which was part of the Richard and Judy Autumn Book Club, and the award-winning Runaway Wife.

  www.rowancoleman.co.uk

  Facebook/Twitter: @rowancoleman

  ALSO BY ROWAN COLEMAN:

  We Are All Made of Stars

  The Memory Book

  Runaway Wife

  A Home for Broken Hearts

  The Other Sister

  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

  Praise for Rowan Coleman:

  ‘I immediately read The Memory Book and it’s WONDERFUL … I’m so happy because she’s written other books and it’s so lovely to find a writer you love who has a backlist’ Marian Keyes

  ‘Oh, what a gorgeous book this is – it gripped me and wouldn’t let me go. So engaging, so beautifully written – I loved every single thing about it’ Jill Mansell

  ‘What a lovely, utterly life affirming, heart-breaking book We Are All Made of Stars by Rowan Coleman is’ Jenny Colgan

  ‘Painfully real and utterly heartbreaking … wonderfully uplifting’ Lisa Jewell

  ‘Like Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, I couldn’t put it down. A tender testament to maternal love’ Katie Fforde

  CHAPTER ONE

  ********************

  LISA

  Location: 23 (a) Parker Street, Leeds

  Radio station: Aire FM

  Track playing: ‘I Want to Dance with Somebody’ by Whitney Houston

  Miles travelled: 0

  Miles until Captain Poldark: 543.5

  Lisa closed her front door – hard enough to hear the click of the latch – and then turned the deadlock key. She heard the reassuring clunk of the bolt slide into place. She pushed against the door once, twice and a final third time. She then crossed it off her list in her notebook.

  ‘This is it,’ she said aloud into the quiet calm summer morning. Standing on her doorstep, she took a moment to notice how beautiful Parker Street was – at least when there were no other people in it, cluttering it up with their lives.

  Lisa reached her tired but reliable little lilac Nissan Micra. She checked in the back seat, as she always did, just to make sure there were no axe-murderers waiting to pounce. Of course Lisa knew in her rational mind that the chances of there being an axe-murderer waiting in the back of her Micra were slim to none. However, she still had to check.

  At some point, some years ago, Lisa had become very frightened of almost everything. She wasn’t just frightened of axe-murderers and terrorists or war or an outbreak of an unstoppable zombie virus. She was also terrified of her next-door neighbour, the guy who got the bus every morning at the stop across the road, old Mrs Rashid in the corner shop, the checkout girl in Asda … pretty much everyone and everything she could think of. And Lisa spent a great deal of time thinking of new things to be afraid of. She reasoned, in a very unreasonable way, that if she could think of it, then it might not actually happen.

  Lisa knew that most ‘normal’ people would think of her as really very odd. But knowing that didn’t seem to help at all. It could be worse, she often thought to herself. You could be mad, and not know it.

  And then she’d wondered if actually that wouldn’t be better.

  As it was, there was only one way Lisa had found to get by from day to day without spending it under her bed. This was to check and double check, secure and triple-secure her life in every single way she could think of. Otherwise she would be gripped by terror that seemed just as real to her as her bedside table, or the pot plant she’d inherited from her mum. However, the effort to try and keep herself safe meant that – up until today at least – she spent most of her time locked in her house, her own prisoner.

  Keeping the world out was the only thing that worked, and reading books helped too. In books Lisa became a hundred, a thousand different people, who were all more brave, more clever and more beautiful than she. They were people who had a future, people who had a happy ending. She had thought that perhaps that might be the pattern for the rest of her life and she was coming to terms with that.

  And then out of nowhere, this had happened.

  And it had been her idea. Lisa wasn’t sure whether it had been a moment of madness, or possibly a moment of sanity. She was only sure that she seemed to be going through with it. And she felt kind of … excited.

  Chucking her bag into the boot, Lisa slipped into the driver’s seat. She slotted her key into the ignition and put her road atlas on the passenger seat. (Satnavs were one of the many modern things Lisa was scared of.) She had carefully plotted the route in black marker pen, each relevant page flagged with a different coloured Post-it note. She took a deep breath. In through the nose, one, two, three. Out through the mouth, one, two three.

  She looked at the purple troll that hung from the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t think about it, Lisa,’ she said aloud. ‘Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.’

  Strangers from the Internet.

  Of course the moment she tried not to think the thought, it appeared. And it was massive and neon green in colour and flashing like the lights outside a strip club.

  ‘I’m going to meet people from the Internet,’ Lisa said to Troll, hearing her own voice, high and tense. ‘Strangers from the Internet. These are people I have only ever known on the Captain Ross Poldark fan forum, poldarlings.com. STRANGERS FROM THE INTERNET. They are the very people who everyone knows are most likely to be crazy, perverts and murderers.’

  Her breaths started coming in short tight bursts. She clenched the steering wheel so hard she could see the whites of her finger joints.

  ‘I’m going to meet strangers from the Internet. Strangers. From. The. Internet.’ The big, scary thought made Lisa feel very, very small, like a bug that could be
so easily crushed under foot.

  ‘Don’t think about it, Lisa,’ Lisa said aloud once more. She turned the engine on and opened her road atlas to the first page of the journey. ‘You want to do this. You want to go to Cornwall and find Captain Poldark in real life. It’s your dream. The only one you’ve had since … Remember that’s why you are doing this, you want to find Captain Poldark. And you’d be far too scared to do it alone. You don’t have any friends in real life that would travel over four hundred miles, mostly along B roads, to see a man in a three-cornered hat with a scythe.

  ‘The only people that would come with you are these people, people you’ve been chatting to almost every day since the first series of Poldark was on TV. I mean, yes, technically they are strangers. But they are strangers that you know. So don’t think about it, Lisa. Just do it. For once in your life just do it. This is the only way you are going to find Captain Ross Poldark, also known as Aidan Turner, and tell him what he’s meant to you. You are not an idiot, Lisa. You know he probably won’t even care, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you will have done something you’ve dreamt about doing, something that seemed impossible. And maybe, Lisa, just maybe, if you can do that then … well, everything else can seem more manageable too. And you won’t have to be so afraid anymore.’

  Lisa took the handbrake off, and pulled out of her parking space.

  At last she was on the road. The first stop was Dudley where she was going to pick up her first passenger, username: @I_AM_DEMELZA.

  Of course it was going to take her much longer to get to Dudley than it would take most people, more than twice as long. But that was the trouble when you were too scared to drive on anything but a B road, it always took a long time to get anywhere.

  ‘It’s not the destination,’ Lisa said. ‘It’s the journey.’

  And then she remembered Captain Poldark, and his dark and stormy eyes, and thought that in this case, it was the destination. It was totally the destination.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ********************

  DEMELZA

  Location: 13 Waverly Drive, Dudley

  Radio station: Free Radio Black Country

  Track playing: ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ by Blondie

  Miles travelled: 153.7

  Miles until Captain Poldark: 389.8

  Fifteen minutes ticked by as Lisa sat outside 13 Waverly Drive looking at @I_Am_Demelza’s house, trying to assess it for risk. It was a nice, neat semi-detached house with bay windows and fresh white net curtains. The garden was nicely done, and when Lisa rolled down the window, the scent of the roses in the front border drifted in through the window. It didn’t look like the house of a serial killer, she thought. Then again, what was she expecting, a massive flashing sign reading ‘ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. I QUITE LIKE CHOPPING PEOPLE UP AND WEARING THEIR HEADS AS HATS’?

  ‘Lisa Murray was the fifth victim of the Head Hat murderer,’ Lisa muttered in Crimewatch style. ‘She had been totally unsuspecting on that bright summer’s day as she approached his lair of doom.’

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ she told Troll. Troll didn’t even blink.

  Getting out of the car, she locked it and checked the handle three times. She clutched her car keys in her fist, went up the white painted steps, and rang the doorbell. The first few bars of ‘Amazing Grace’ sounded.

  It was nearly enough for Lisa to turn on her heels, run down the steps, then leap into the car and press central locking. Except that the door opened almost at once, and her mum had brought her up to be much too polite to just run away, even from someone she thought might be criminally insane.

  ‘Hello love, you must be Lisa?’ A woman of about seventy smiled at Lisa.

  ‘Demelza?’ Lisa asked, because if she was honest she had rather been expecting a pretty young woman with a mass of red curls and stunning figure to open the door. Possibly carrying a chainsaw. But this was cool. She was pretty sure she could take this old lady in a fight.

  She followed her into a neat and airy living room. China cats pranced on the mantelpiece and a bronze carriage clock ticked neatly on the sideboard.

  ‘Oh dear me, no,’ Not Demelza chuckled. ‘No, no, my Demelza days are long over, sad to say. I was a fan the first time round. No, no, it’s Ray you’ve come to pick up, but he’s not quite ready yet, I think he’s having trouble with his scar.’

  Any one of the words in that sentence would ordinarily have sent fear pulsing through Lisa’s veins, but all of them at once almost stopped her heart in instant dread. Ray. He. Scar.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,’ Lisa said.

  Get out, get out, get out, get out, was all she could think, scrambling for the front door. Danger, danger, danger!

  ‘Lisa, dear!’ Not Demelza called out. ‘Please, wait. You don’t understand. Ray, he needs this. Please don’t go!’

  Lisa stopped at the front door, flung it open, and stepped outside onto a welcome mat that read ‘Home Sweet Home’. In that place of relative safety she felt a little calmer. After all she could always gouge out an eye with her car keys before making a dash for the car, pressing central locking and calling the police. She turned around to face Not Demelza.

  ‘The thing is I didn’t know that @I_Am_Demelza was a man,’ she explained. ‘He never said. Which is classic creep behaviour. And I don’t really feel able to drive several hundred miles with a man that I don’t know. You can see where I am coming from, right? Unless you and him have the whole Norman Bates thing going on.’

  ‘Norman who?’ Not Demelza’s face crumpled into a picture of sadness, and instantly Lisa felt sorry.

  ‘You’re right. Of course you are,’ Not Demelza said. ‘Ray should have told you who he was. I told him. “Ray,” I said, “you need to tell them you’re a fella. They aren’t going to like finding out at this stage.” But he thought that, if you found out before today, you would have uninvited him.’

  ‘Well, he was right,’ Lisa said.

  ‘The thing is he’s really been looking forward to this trip. He really needs this. He’s been so down since he got out of the army, and he hasn’t got many friends …’

  ‘So you’re telling me he’s an ex-army loner who lives with his mum?’ Lisa said. ‘You’re not exactly selling him.’

  ‘But if you think about it,’ Not Demelza replied, ‘who better to protect you on your journey than a soldier?’

  ‘We’re going to Bodmin, not Mordor,’ Lisa said. Although, in truth, to her both destinations seemed equally scary.

  ‘Lisa, hi, great to meet you …’ Ray said as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a frock coat and knee-length leather boots.

  Lisa decided not to try to eye gouge. Instead she raced straight for the safety of her Micra and locked all the doors. She’d already dialled 999 when Ray arrived at her window. Her finger hovered over the call button.

  Ray crouched down outside. ‘Lisa? What’s wrong?’

  Lisa stared at him through the window.

  What’s wrong? Lisa thought. You’re a man whose fan-forum username is ‘I Am Demelza’, and who turns out to be six-foot tall. You’re also built like a mountain, dressed in full Captain Poldark uniform, complete with a fake scar down one cheek – the wrong cheek, by the way – and you want to know what’s wrong?

  But she didn’t say any of that. She just sat in her car, with the windows rolled up, staring. Maybe if she stayed very still he would just go away. And the police were just a call away – although she couldn’t be sure how much of a threat they would see in a Captain Poldark tribute act.

  ‘Lisa, just open the window, just a crack,’ Ray said. One of the black curls from his nylon wig trembled in the breeze. ‘Hear me out, please?’

  Lisa looked at Troll, and Troll stared right back at her.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, pressing the button that lowered the window a couple of inches. ‘I am Demelza? I don’t bloody think so. Look, I’m sure you’ve got reasons. We’ve all got reasons, but this w
as a bad idea, a stupid idea. I’m going home.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Ray crouched down and took off his hat, and with it came the wig revealing short reddish-blond hair. ‘I know I should have said. I should have made it clear that I was a guy …’

  Lisa raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh you think?’

  ‘But I never said that I wasn’t. You lot just assumed I was a girl. And after we’d been chatting for weeks, I thought if I bring it up now that’s just going to seem even weirder. And I really looked forward to talking to you on Poldarlings. Then you came up with the idea of the trip. I thought, if I mention it now, they definitely won’t want me to come, and then I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I’d hoped it would just work out in the end.’ He shrugged and looked so sad that for a moment Lisa felt sorry for him.

  ‘Why not I_Am_Poldark?’ she asked him. ‘Why Demelza?’

  ‘I thought you’d be even more freaked out if I turned up dressed as Demelza.’ Ray half smiled. ‘I’ve got that costume in my luggage. I do a pretty good accent too.’

  Lisa stared hard at him, and then suddenly she saw the truth.

  ‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, I get it. Why didn’t you just say?’

  ‘About me being a bloke? Well, because …’

  ‘I mean, no one cares anymore if you’re gay. Although I suppose maybe in the army it would still be tricky …?’

  ‘Um.’ Ray took a breath. ‘Look, cards on the table. I got out of the army over a year ago. Medical discharge, depression, some other stuff. I haven’t had any luck getting a job. When I came out of the army I thought there was someone waiting for me, someone who really loved me. But I was wrong. I got home and well … let’s just say they didn’t invite me to the wedding.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lisa said, then lowered the window another inch or two. She knew something about heartbreak and betrayal. She knew how it could make a person different, make it so they didn’t even recognise themselves any more. ‘I’m sorry. The person you loved married someone else?’