Kyle, you’re a wonderful brother and a great friend.
Dixie, my furry baby, my life wouldn’t be the same without you.
Jenny Marston, you’re my best friend, agony aunt and my all-round favourite person. Without your friendship, support and encouragement, I wouldn’t be writing these acknowledgements now. I’d also like to thank the Marston family – Linda, Dennis and Rory. Thank you for being my Essex family and being incredible.
Lisa Dickenson, you freaking rock! Don’t ever change!
Cress McLaughlin, for all your fantastic words of encouragement, THANK YOU.
Daniel Riding for your incredible friendship and support. You are amazing!
Danniella, thanks for all your help with Yorkshire dialect.
Ann Troup, for your wonderful advice, fantastic conversations and being my friend.
To all my fantastic blogger friends, none of this would happen without your support. You guys are superstars.
The team at HQ Digital – Victoria, Clio, Sara and everyone else – without you guys, I wouldn’t be able to share my stories. You helped make my dreams come true.
And as always, none of this would be possible without YOU, the person about to embark on this book. Thank you for reading it, I hope you enjoy it.
This book is dedicated to everyone who told me I couldn’t or wouldn’t write a book. You were right; I’ve now written two.
There are worse things you can do than spontaneously burst into song at your nana’s funeral.
I can’t think of what those things might be, but I’m sure there must be some.
At least I’d chosen to belt out a classic – Big Yellow Taxi – although I definitely sounded more like Peggy Mitchell than Joni Mitchell. I’d been up giving a eulogy about my Nana Lily, who’d recently passed away, and had come to the part where I said ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ The rest of the lyrics followed – with surprising accuracy, I might add – before I had a chance to stop myself.
I gave the final chorus everything I had (which, admittedly, wasn’t much) then took a bow. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I bowed. The stunned congregation who’d come to say goodbye to my Nana Lily stared open-mouthed at me, shocked at the assault their eardrums had just taken. A few polite people clapped uncertainly, most just whispered amongst themselves. I guessed they were wondering which loony bin I’d been released from.
As my cheeks flushed crimson, I scurried to my pew and sat next to my mum and dad, who were desperately trying to suppress smiles.
‘What did you think?’ I asked, dreading the answer.
Dad didn’t reply right away. A noise that sounded like a mouse being strangled escaped from his mouth as he tried to get his giggles under control.
‘It was… different, Lucy. I think Nana Lily would’ve loved it anyway!’ Mum said, trying her best to look sombre and serious and failing miserably.
She shook her head and hid her face behind her hymn book so people wouldn’t see her laughing at her own mother’s funeral. It didn’t matter really, since about half the people in St Luke’s Church were now doing the same thing.
Well done Lucy, you absolute banana.
I shuffled down in the pew and screwed my eyes tightly shut. My best friend and flatmate George put his arm round me and gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze.
‘Oh Lucy, you’re such a daft little hedgehog,’ he said. His lush accent came straight from the Welsh Valleys and was my favourite sound in the world.
I shouldn’t even have been here. I’d left this place behind a long time ago and for a very good reason. Now here I was, back in my old hometown of Luna Bay, Yorkshire, and faced with everything I’d spent eight years running from. George had come for moral support and to make sure I actually turned up.
‘Don’t want you running off to become a sheep farmer in Scotland, do I? I need to keep you around to stop me from making terrible life choices,’ he’d said.
Once upon a time, my life had been perfect. OK, so not quite perfect but pretty darn amazing nonetheless. Then last week happened. I’d been assigned a wealthy man’s fiftieth birthday party and everything had gone horribly wrong. He’d been having a secret affair with a twenty-five-year-old Australian lady named Cynthia and the whole party learned about it in pretty spectacular style. When I’d been off fetching Mr Marshall to do his birthday speech, she’d switched a montage of his finest moments for a video of them having noisy sex in a grungy motel off the M25.
Naturally, my boss Helen hadn’t been amused.
‘He’s talking about suing us, you know. He isn’t a happy man,’ she’d said as we’d sat in her office the following morning.
‘In my defence, I couldn’t have known Cynthia was part of the waiting staff at his birthday party,’ I’d replied. ‘I think he was just as surprised by that as I was; he thought she was a dental hygienist. You know, I was a bit surprised he chose a grotty motel to have an affair in. With the money he makes, he could’ve at least sprung for a Best Western.’
My fate had been sealed after that. Through gritted teeth, Helen had said that while I was good at aspects of my job – creative, intelligent and good with people – I was also a walking disaster when it came to being organised and seemed to attract chaos wherever I went.
So here I was, sat in a church filled with people who probably hated me, and desperately wishing I was somewhere, anywhere else. A tragedy had driven me away from this beautiful corner of the world and, ironically, one had brought me back. As soon as I’d heard about Nana Lily passing away, I’d immediately made arrangements to come back. Of course it was nothing more than I deserved: what happened had all been my fault after all. I deserved to be cut off from the place and people I loved so much. Self-imposed exile in London was the least I deserved. Staying in Luna Bay after everything that happened just hadn’t been an option. I’d ruined a whole family’s lives after all. Leaving had been my way of trying to spare them any more pain. What I’d done was bad enough without them having to see me every day, living my life.
However, after screwing things up in London, I’d had to come right back to where I’d started from: Luna Bay. Eight whole years of building a life for myself had been undone, because I didn’t have a clue what to do next. I’d heard of life throwing curveballs, but this was taking the piss.
After the service, we decamped to The Purple Partridge – Luna Bay’s most popular pub – for a small wake. As foamy grey waves lapped against the beach directly below the pub’s outdoor terrace, around thirty of us stood inside, drinking and reminiscing about Nana Lily. It was cold and wet for mid-April, but in a couple of weeks or so the village would burst into colour as summer arrived.
‘I remember making fairy cakes with her and licking the spoon,’ I said, feeling a tug at my heartstrings. George, as if sensing how much pain I was in, squeezed my hand. ‘She always made the best cakes. I loved her vegetable patch too, and the chickens! They always had daft names, didn’t they? My favourites were Steve and Harold.’
Mum and a couple of Nana Lily’s friends laughed. I could tell they were all lost in their own private memories of her, sad that they were now all they had left to remember her by. I was sad too, for different reasons. Namely because I’d hardly seen her in the last eight years.
I felt Mum’s arm around my shoulder and she pulled me close. ‘She was always so proud of you Lucy. She’d tell anyone who’d listen that her granddaughter was living it up in big bad London! Oh talking of which, how did your thing at