Page 45 of Slow Burn Summer

So that’s BIG news, a book! You always said you had one in you, even if this one only has your name on the front. Does that mean I can call myself Alice Darrowby from now on, then? And there I was thinking I’m the one who wants an adventure!

About that…Mum, I know you disapprove, but you’ll get it once you meet Flynn. He’s so cool and SO into me, no one’s ever made me feel like this before. I’ll bring him down to meet you and Dad soon, you’ll change your mind then, I know it.

Sorry about emailing, I just can’t cope with a row. My voicemail sends you its love!

A xx

Hi Kate,

Congrats on the show this morning, you were excellent! Loving the husky-eyed man detail, keep those tidbits coming.

How are you fixed for the weekend? Crossing my fingers and hoping you’re free, because I have some terrific news! There’s a huge romance festival in Cornwall on Saturday and I’ve managed to wrangle alast-minute table. It’s basically a meet-and-greet: readers will come by to get their books signed, have a quick chat, nothing too difficult, I promise.

Let me know and I’ll make all the arrangements.

Rachel

Dear Kate,

So how have you found publication week? I caught the TV show, you handled it well. Those things are never easy, even if you’re used to them. Writing is by necessity a rather solitary existence, and by and large that has always suited me.

My love was the opposite, brightened any room just by being in it. Even if she was sitting in silence reading a script, or writing, or painting still life. She’d paint food, mostly, buy odd fruits and colorful tins of fish and go crazy if I ate them without realizing.

People are like that, aren’t they? Human dimmer switches. Some people throw light, others cast shadows. You asked me what lights me up, apart from books. She did.

I hear the book is selling gangbusters, to use Fiona’s favorite phrase. The best thing I’ve ever written, as she delighted in telling me!

Is there anything you need from me? Besides my real name, any form of human connection beyond email, or any acknowledgment of my involvement with the book?

You asked a while back about favorite smells. It’s strange how the question seems innocuous at first glance. I think of my wife’s perfume and the buttermilk pancakes she perfected over the years. Other scents too, childhood associations I can almost recall if I close my eyes and concentrate. My grandmother kept a small shop, which always smelled of sugar from the sweet jars mixed with newsprint ink from the morning papers. My grandfather’s silver-walled greenhouse was always sun-warmand redolent with the green-leaf scent of tomato plants. Comforting memories more than scents, lost connections to simpler days.

Probably best to play it safe and just say freshly cut grass and babies’ heads, they seem to be the internet stock answers. Readers are savvy, though—always be as honest and specific as you’re able.

I’ve told you mine, you tell me yours?

Speak again soon,

H x

24

“This is you.” The taxirumbled to a halt partway down a steep hill winding toward the harbor. “I’ll grab your case.”

Kate unfolded herself from the back of the car, grateful to stretch her legs. It had been a hot, sticky day of upheaval and last-minute changes, traveling solo rather than with Liv as she’d hoped.

They’d had everything meticulously planned out. Nish would mind the shop and the kids were sleeping over with his parents while Liv and Kate headed to Cornwall for a girls’ trip, which had gone a long way toward keeping Kate’s nerves in check. And then Nish’s father had fallen from a stepladder while pruning a climbing rose in his garden and ended up in the ER with a broken hip, and Liv had been left with the shop and the kids and a head full of uncharitable thoughts about her father-in-law needing to be more bloody careful at his age. She’d handed Kate a box wrapped in brown paper before she left and told her to open it in Cornwall.

“Oh,” Kate said, more a sigh of pleasure than a formed word as she took in the postcard-worthy scene laid out before her. “Would you look at that.”

“I do, every damn day,” the driver muttered, dropping her case on the cobbles beside a sun-bleached garden gate. He lookedlike someone who should have retired ten years ago and still wasn’t over the fact he hadn’t.

“Lucky,” she said.

“Some might say,” he groused, not looking as if he was one of the people who might. “Key’s under the pot.”

He jumped back in his car and drove away, leaving her to look around for the plant pot. It was easy; too easy in Kate’s view, coming as she did from busier places with higher crime rates.

She’d had no idea what to expect of the accommodation Rachel had arranged for her; everything had been so last-minute they’d only confirmed the address that morning. She’d expected a hotel room or a local B&B, but it seemed she was in a tiny petal-pink cottage overlooking the glittering harbor.

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