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First published in Great Britain in ebook format in 2018 by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © Cressida McLaughlin 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018.
Cover illustration © Lindsey Spinks / The Artworks
Cressida McLaughlin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
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Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008225834
Version 2018-04-09
Table of Contents
Part Four : Birds of a Feather
The marsh harrier is a large bird of prey with a brown body and a pale head. It feeds on animals that live on or near marshes and drops unsuspectingly onto defenceless creatures from the air. Its courtship call is a kind of mewling wail.
— Note from Abby’s notebook.
Outside the window of Peacock Cottage, the sunshine blazed. Abby Field could hear the bubbling trill of a robin close by, the gentle tap of bees occasionally banging against the windowpane, but inside the house, everything was quiet.
Jack Westcoat took a sip of coffee and let out a sigh that was like the slow deflating of a balloon.
Abby didn’t know how it had come to this; sitting on the sofa in the quaint, secluded cottage with the man who, over the last few months, she had come to see as the brightest part of her life. He was her summer to the spring of working at Meadowsweet Nature Reserve, to the winter of a confusing, unhappy childhood, her parents’ turbulent relationship leaving a mark that she thought she would never be able to rub away. She hadn’t imagined she would open up to him, allow him into her life, but he had snuck in, their sparring matches the fireworks of early attraction, their walks – through the reserve, around the abandoned Swallowtail House – early dates, and finally, last night, she had given in to her feelings for him.
And now this.
The London event the previous evening was supposed to have been the beginning of a fresh start for Jack, a chance to banish the memory of the year before, where he’d very publicly attacked a fellow author, Eddie Markham, and had slunk away to the Suffolk countryside with his reputation in tatters. Jack had asked Abby to accompany him to the gala, and she’d barely had to think about it. She had socialized, watched in admiration as Jack had charmed everyone and denied Eddie the satisfaction of a repeat of the previous year, and then they had returned, tired but with an air of quiet relief; not quite triumph, but close. When he had asked the driver to take them both to Peacock Cottage rather than drop Abby at home, she hadn’t hesitated. She had wanted Jack for so long, and the reality was better than all her imaginings.
But this morning Eddie Markham had turned up in Meadowgreen and tricked her. He’d grabbed her, a photographer waiting to take a photo of their false embrace. And now she was here, trying to understand why Jack hadn’t given his side of the story in the first place, and what this new development was likely to cost him, just when he’d started to put the guilt and regret behind him.
‘Eddie Markham was my best friend,’ Jack said, and the sound of his voice, low and deep, on the edge of breaking, made Abby’s breath catch.
Raffle, her husky, lifted his head briefly from his front paws, and then went back to snoozing at their feet.
‘We met at school,’ Jack continued, ‘and were pretty much inseparable. My background was more privileged than his, and that didn’t matter to me, but as we grew older, it was clear that it did to him. I tried my hardest not to ever make a point of it, and I thought we had enough in common that Eddie could see past it, but whenever we got in trouble he’d make quips about my dad bailing me out, how I was untouchable. In fact, Dad came down hard on me without fail, adamant that I had to learn from my mistakes.’
He glanced at Abby