Fern Britton - The Postcard

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Fern Britton 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com

Fern Britton 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.

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.

Source ISBN: 9780007562978

Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780007562985

Version 2019-03-01

To my darling Winnie, with lots of purrs, Mumma.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One: Winter

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Two: Spring

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading…

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

The baby was crying. Penny listened. Would her mother hear? She opened her eyes wide but could see nothing in the deep blackness of her small bedroom. She rolled over to face the closed door. The perfect line of light from the landing barely illuminated the carpet. She heard the door of the drawing room open downstairs and the soft tread of her mother ascending. There was the comforting ‘shush’ of her mother’s stockinged legs as they brushed together approaching Penny’s door, walking past, then headed into her baby sister’s room.

‘Have you had a bad dream, darling?’ her mother murmured.

Penny listened and caught the rustle of baby Suzie being gathered from her cot and into her mother’s arms.

Suzie had stopped crying and was snuffling. Penny heard the kisses and imagined them being dropped onto Suzie’s soft scalp and downy hair.

‘Mummy’s here, darling. It was just a naughty old dream. Now where’s Bunny?’

Penny, five years old, tightened her hold on her own teddy, Sniffy. She pulled him into her arms and sniffed his flattened, furry ear. She whispered to him, ‘Suzie has had a bad dream. She’s only got Bunny but I’ve got you.’

Eventually Suzie was soothed back to sleep and her mother walked back and past Penny’s room. Penny called, ‘Night-night, Mummy.’

She got no reply.

Penny Leighton didn’t feel right. She hadn’t been feeling right for a long time now. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had felt right.

She was lying in her big marital bed. The Cornish winter sun had not yet risen and she could see the dark sky through a crack in her exuberant poppy curtains. She’d thought them so cheerful when she’d bought them. She looked at them now and closed her eyes.

She had to get up. She had an important call to take at eleven o’clock. She opened her eyes and squinted at her phone. Ten to seven.

‘Morning, my love.’ Simon stirred and reached under the duvet to put his hand around her waist. ‘How did you sleep?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Hm.’

‘Is that a hm of yes or a hm of no?’

‘Hm.’

‘Did Jenna wake up?’

Her look said it all.

‘Oh dear. Why won’t you wake me? I’m more than happy to see to her.’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘I don’t hear her.’

‘There doesn’t seem any point in us both being awake then.’

Simon thought better than to reply. Penny had not been herself recently, quick to criticize, withdrawn and moody. He’d felt the sharp side of her tongue too often of late. He decided to make some coffee and bring it up to her but the act of shifting the duvet, even slightly, caused her grievance. ‘Why do you always pull the bedding off me?’ She pulled the duvet tight around her chin. ‘It is winter, you know.’

‘I didn’t mean to. Coffee?’

Penny knew she’d been unkind and rolled over to face him as he sat on the edge of the bed, back towards her, slipping on his T-shirt from the day before. She reached out and stroked the side of his hip. ‘I’m sorry. Just a bit tired. I’d love some coffee, thank you.’ He stood up and she let her arm fall back onto the sheets.

She said, ‘I do love you, you know.’

He ran his hands over his bald head and picked his glasses up from the bedside table. ‘I know. I love you too.’ He smiled at her and, putting a knee onto the mattress, leant over to kiss her. She put her hands on either side of his face and returned the gentle kiss. ‘Coffee, tea or me?’ she smiled. From across the landing came the grizzly morning cry of their daughter, ‘Mumma? Dadda?’

‘Shit!’ groaned Penny.

Simon eased himself back off the bed. ‘I’ll get her. Stay there and I’ll bring you your coffee.’

Penny had her coffee in the luxurious silence of her peaceful bed. Winter in Cornwall held a quiet all of its own. No tractors would be out until the sun came up. No bird would be stirring in its nest and no parishioners would be beating their way up the vicarage path to give Simon another burden of responsibility. Finishing her coffee she stretched and wriggled back down into the warmth of her covers. She’d wait five minutes, just three hundred tiny seconds, she said to herself, and then she’d feel strong enough to get up and face the day.

Unable to put off the inevitable any longer, Penny tore herself out of bed and stared into the bathroom mirror. First she examined the two spots on her chin and then the circles under her eyes. She stood sideways and lifted her nightie to see her pale and wobbly tummy. She’d seen fewer pleats in the curtains of the local cinema. Whose stomach was this? She wanted her own returned. The firm and rounded one that she’d taken for granted for all those pre-baby years. Dropping her nightie and shrugging on her dressing gown, which still smelt of Marmite even after a wash and half a day hanging on the line in the sun, she slopped down to the kitchen.