The Story of Our Lives: A heartwarming story of friendship for summer 2018. Helen Warner. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Helen Warner
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Современная зарубежная литература
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008202668
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      HELEN WARNER is a former Head of Daytime at both ITV & Channel 4, where she was responsible for a variety of TV shows including Come Dine With Me, Loose Women, Good Morning Britain and Judge Rinder. Helen writes her novels on the train to work in London from her home in Essex, which she shares with her husband and their two children.

       Copyright

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

      Copyright © Helen Warner 2018

      Helen Warner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008202668

       Version: 2018-06-26

      For ‘The Girls’

      Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

      Copyright

       Dedication

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       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

       CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

       CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

       CHAPTER FORTY

       CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

       CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

       CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

       CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

       Acknowledgements

       About the Publishers

      AUGUST 1997

       ‘One story dominates the news tonight – Diana, Princess of Wales, has died in a car crash in Paris.’

      SOUTHWOLD

       CHAPTER ONE

      Sophie could feel herself starting to sweat as she tried to heave the stone pot to one side. Could it really be this one that the key was under? Surely they’d have put it under one that wasn’t so bloody heavy. Instead of lifting it, she decided to try rolling it instead. Sure enough, the pot began to move but the momentum gathered pace more quickly than she had expected and it rolled unstoppably towards her foot and straight over her toe. Breathless with pain and almost not daring to look for fear of the damage she might find, she examined her foot.

      The toe of her Converse offered very little protection and sagged ominously where her big toe should have been. Gingerly, she pressed with her thumb and winced in pain. She slumped down onto the path, which was still wet from an earlier rain shower, and groaned as her jeans immediately absorbed the moisture. She knew without looking that the damp patch would have spread in a fascinatingly symmetrical fashion across her rear.

      Maybe this weekend away wasn’t such a good idea after all. The omens weren’t great, with the shockwaves over Princess Diana’s sudden death still reverberating throughout the country, and although the others had left it to her to organize everything, she knew they would moan about who was sharing with whom and grumble about the house she had chosen from the listings in the Evening Standard.

      Sophie looked up at the pretty whitewashed and thatched cottage, feeling a sudden stab of annoyance at its old-fashioned beauty. It was the sort of place retired couples would come for a weekend of birdwatching, rather than a group of twenty-something girls looking for a good time.

      ‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ The slightly gravelly Midlands accent