FERN BRITTON
The Holiday Home
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.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Copyright © Fern Britton 2013
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Illustration © Robyn Neild Author photograph © Neil Cooper
The author 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
Source ISBN: 9780007468539
Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007468553 Version: 2017-12-21
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, down-loaded, 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.
For Jack. May all your dreams come true. I love you.
Mum xx
Table of Contents
Keep Reading: A Seaside Affair
Atlantic House 1988
THE HUSK OF A DEAD FLY LAY DRY AND BRITTLE on the sun-bleached oak window sill.
The house was silent and empty in the drowsiness of the bright spring morning. If its almost three-hundred-year-old walls harboured any memories of previous occupants, the weddings and wakes, conceptions and christenings that had taken place here, there was no sign. Where rich brocade curtains had once hung from the tall windows, there clung trailing cobwebs. The days when handsome young men in tight breeches and high-collared frock coats had wooed maidens in