Stuck on the same level forever. The words slammed into Julia’s brain with such force that she dropped both the carrier bags. Leo’s packet of mini Mars bars slumped onto the floor, followed by a tin of tomatoes which rolled over the granite tiles. Those six words summed her up perfectly. While everyone around her got on with their lives, Julia remained well and truly stuck. Like a needle on an old record player, trapped in the same old groove, going round and round. Going nowhere. And it had taken the chance meeting with Max for her to realise it. While he had been jetting all over the world with his high-flying career, Julia’s life had drifted by in an uninteresting, unremarkable blur. In a few months’ time she would be forty. Practically middle-aged. The best years of her life behind her. And what had she done with them? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. Tears pooled in her eyes. How had she been so dense as to not even notice? How could she have been such a passive spectator, merely along for the ride, making no effort at all to direct …
‘Mum? Are you all right?’
Her daughter’s voice jolted Julia back to reality. ‘Of … of course,’ she blustered, deciding it wouldn’t be appropriate to share any of this with her offspring.
Faye looked unconvinced. ‘You seem a bit … weird. Has something happened?’
Julia pulled herself together with an overexaggerated, dismissive tut. ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve only been to the boring old supermarket. What could possibly happen to me there?’
*****
Watching her mother scuttle out of the kitchen, Faye Blakelaw heaved a despairing sigh. Honestly. Sometimes she found it hard to believe that anyone could be so spectacularly uncool. The woman really was verging on the embarrassing. And why did she have to make such a fuss about the stupid shopping? Josie’s mother wouldn’t make a big deal of anything so mind-numbingly mundane. But that’s because Josie’s mother was the coolest mum on the planet …
When her parents had announced they were all moving to Yorkshire, Faye had been gutted. She loved her life in Bristol, had an extensive circle of friends, a buzzing social life, and a boyfriend of sorts – in a kind of laid-back, who-can-play-it-most-disinterested sort of way. Even school was tolerable. Which was just as well given the exorbitant fees. Faye did experience a slight pang of guilt when she totted up exactly how much her parents had spent on school fees over the years. But while the world of academia might be one in which her brother thrived, it most certainly was not for her. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. She had. Very hard in fact. But her GCSE results last year proved what the whole family had known for some time: that while Leo was a budding genius, striding confidently towards his goal of becoming a vet, Faye would never hover above anything other than average.
‘Oh, we’re so proud of Leo,’ Faye recalled her mother gushing to a friend, when the family had gone out for pizza to ‘celebrate’ the twins’ results. ‘He got the highest grades in the school, you know.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ replied the friend. ‘And what about you, Faye? How did you do?’
‘Faye did her best,’ cut in her mother, before Faye had a chance to open her mouth. And the tone in which it was imparted left Faye in no doubt that ‘her best’ was simply not good enough.
Having once harboured dreams of becoming a vet herself – not that she’d divulged those dreams to another living soul – her lack of academic prowess now meant a serious reassessment of her future. But the reassessment was taking longer than she’d anticipated. She still had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but she desperately hoped that something would turn up – something glamorous and exciting with her name written all over it. Something that might even make her a household name. So, for once, everyone – including her parents – would take notice of her – and not just her brother. That, at least, had been her vision in Bristol – a large bustling city buzzing with opportunity. So, naturally, when the Yorkshire announcement had been made, Faye had freaked. Yorkshire consisted of nothing but sheep and the smelly stuff produced by their back-ends. Glamour and excitement would be as alien to Yorkshire as ducks were to the Sahara. Or so she’d thought …
Sick to the back teeth of constantly being compared to her high-achieving brother, Faye had steadfastly refused to join the local grammar school Leo had been welcomed into with open arms. Instead, she’d eventually worn down her parents into allowing her to do her A-levels at the further education college in Harrogate – a soulless, modern building languishing at the opposite end of the architectural scale to the Victorian red brick of her alma mater. But Faye soon discovered that a pleasant façade and lush grounds weren’t the only things missing. Used to a rigid timetable, with every minute of the day scheduled, she found the college’s lack of structure daunting: the emphasis being placed on the individual to organise and motivate themselves. Unfortunately, Faye was neither organised nor motivated. After the first week, she’d been seriously considering packing it in, when, on the way to catch the bus home one day, a girl about her own age appeared by her side.
‘Hi. You’ve just moved into Primrose Cottage in Buttersley, haven’t you?’
Faye, weary with the whole worrying-about-her-future thing, didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she shot the girl a withering look and continued marching towards the bus stop, willing the day she passed her driving test and got her own car. Then she wouldn’t have to put up with losers who …
‘I live there too. At the other end of the village. In Buttersley Hall.’
Buttersley Hall? Faye almost stopped in her tracks. After the manor house, owned by the ridiculously posh Pinkington-Smythe family, Buttersley Hall was the largest, most stunning house in the village. Her interest peaked, Faye slowed to a more sedate pace and turned to look at her would-be companion. She wasn’t the usual type Faye would make friends with. For a start, she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up – not even mascara, which Faye wouldn’t be seen dead without. And her clothes were more BHS than Boho. But she was pretty in a kind of fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, jolly-hockey-sticks kind of way. And, with her long blonde hair – which Faye suspected would look better with a few highlights – in two loose plaits, reminded her of a milkmaid.
‘I’m Josie,’ she said, her lips stretching into a grin. ‘Josie Cutler.’
‘Faye,’ said Faye, managing a fleeting smile. ‘Faye Blakelaw.’
‘Are you going for the bus?’
‘Ah ha.’
‘I’ll come with you. If that’s okay?’
Faye shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Why not,’ she said, deciding she had nothing to lose. Unlike Leo, who’d immediately become ‘Mr Popular’ at the grammar school, Faye didn’t have a queue of people battering down the door wanting to be her friend at the moment. And if Josie turned out to be a nerd, she could easily dump her. Besides, it was worth a few hours of listening to anyone wittering on, if the end result was a look around the gorgeous Buttersley Hall.
Fortunately, Faye didn’t have long to wait.
‘Would you like to come over tonight?’ Josie asked a few days later. ‘We could have a swim, then order in pizza or something.’
Faye’s eyes grew wide. ‘Have a swim? As in a swim at your house?’
Josie looked embarrassed. ‘I know it’s a bit flash having a pool, but as it’s there, it seems daft not to use it.’
‘Of course it would be daft,’ Faye agreed. ‘And I’d love to come over. What time?’
‘My tennis lesson finishes at six, so come over any time after that.’
‘Great,’ said Faye, scarcely able to believe her luck. ‘See you then.’
Floating up Buttersley Hall’s long gravelled drive a few hours later, Faye almost had to pinch herself. The house resembled something off the telly: one of those Georgian piles on Sunday night period dramas. She didn’t understand