Fern Britton - Coming Home

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Fern Britton 2018

Cover photographs © Jan Bickerton/Trevillion Images (cottage and path); © Shutterstock.com(additional images)

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

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: 9780007563005

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780007563012

Version: 2019-03-01

‘A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.’

Amy Tan

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: Adela’s Only Love

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

Part Two: Sennen Comes Home

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

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

Part Three: Ella’s Wedding Day

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

A Year Later

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

The house was still.

Her heart was hammering – she could hear it in her ears, hear her breath whistle in her nostrils.

She tried to quieten both.

In the dark of her bedroom, she strained her ears to listen for any noise in the house.

The church bell rang the half hour. Half past eleven.

She’d gone up to bed early, her mother asking her if she was feeling all right.

‘Yeah. I’m fine.’ She’d shrugged off the caring hand her mother had placed in the small of her back.

‘If you’re sure?’ Her mother let her hand rest by her hip. ‘Is it your period?’

She had hunched her shoulders and scowled at that. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘Ella and Henry had a lovely day with you on the beach,’ said her mother, bending her head to look up into her daughter’s downcast eyes. ‘You’re doing so well.’

Sennen shrugged and turned to head for the stairs. Her father came out of the kitchen. ‘Those little ’uns of yours asleep, are they?’

‘She’s tired, Bill,’ replied her mother.

‘An early night.’ Her father smiled. ‘Good for you.’ She could feel her father’s loving gaze on her back, as she ascended the stairs. She wouldn’t turn around.

‘Goodnight, Sennen,’ chirped her mother. ‘Sleep tight.’

Her parents had finally gone to bed almost an hour ago and now she picked up the heavy rucksack she’d got for her fifteenth birthday. It had been used once, on a disastrous first weekend of camping for the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. Even now the bone-numbing cold of one night in a tent and the penetrating rain of the twenty-mile hike the following day made her stomach clench. Back home she refused to complete any more challenges and dropped out. She used Henry as an excuse. He had just started to walk and her mother expected her to come home from school every weekend and do the things a mother should do for her child. On top of that she was expected to work hard for her exams. Why the hell would she want to learn how to read a map and cook a chicken over a campfire as well?

And then Ella came along.

Sennen had sat in the summer heat of the exam hall, six weeks from her due date, hating the kicks of her unborn child, hating being pitied by her teachers.

She rubbed a hand across her eyes and tightened the straps on the rucksack. What a model daughter she had been. Two babies by a father unknown and now she was leaving. Leaving them, her A levels, her over-indulgent liberal leftie parents who had supported her through it all – and leaving Cornwall.

She hovered on the landing outside Henry and Ella’s room. She didn’t go in. She knew she would never leave if she saw them, smelt them … She kissed her hand and placed it on their nameplates on the door. Downstairs, she tiptoed through the hall. Bertie the cat ran from under the hall table with a mew. She put her hand to her mouth to stop her startled cry then bent down to tickle him. ‘Bye, Bert. Have a nice life.’