Charlotte Phillips - Access All Areas - HarperImpulse Contemporary Fiction

CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2015

Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2015

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover design by HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

Charlotte Phillips 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

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,

downloaded, 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.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008119379

Version 2015-04-30

In memory of my fantastic Dad. I love and miss you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page Access All Areas CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2015 Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2015 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015 Cover design by HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd Charlotte Phillips 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 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, downloaded, 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. Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress. Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008119379 Version 2015-04-30

Dedication In memory of my fantastic Dad. I love and miss you.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Coming soon from Charlotte Phillips …

Also by Charlotte Phillips …

Charlotte Phillips

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Anna Clark tried for the third time to squeeze her fingernails under the stupid sash window of room 214 of London’s Lavington Hotel, and prise it open. With each failed attempt, panic had increased its attempt to throttle her and panic was the last thing you needed when you were two floors up and on the wrong side of the sodding window.

What she needed now was a cool head. And possibly nail extensions, not that she’d ever so much as crossed the threshold of a beauty salon. Long nails might be great for opening ridiculous sash windows that shut by themselves, but when you earned a living as a photographer, long nails were the last thing you needed. Not that it was earning her anywhere near a living at the moment, which was actually the whole point of her being here.

It had all sounded so easy two days ago back in the sunny little kitchen at home. Exclusively her home now since her father had died, nearly six months to the day after her mother. She’d only just emerged from the crushing grief and shock, taking comfort in holding on to what remnants of family life she had left, to find it wouldn’t be her home for much longer if she didn’t find a swift and sizeable cash injection.

Her old school friend Lucy had offered some straight talking, mainly because she couldn’t offer money.

‘I’d love to help,’ she said on the phone, ‘but they pay peanuts at the hotel and I’m still having no luck with auditions.’

Lucy liked to describe herself as a jobbing actress who filled in the gaps by working as a waitress at the Lavington. Lately it was more the other way round. Her last acting job had been seven months ago, an advert for crisps which had required her to say the line ‘Love That Crunch.’ Hollywood was an elusive animal.

‘It’s fine. I’ve got lots more people I can ask,’ Anna had lied. ‘I just need to find enough to buy me some extra time with the bank. Then maybe I can get a second job, get things back under control…’

Selling her soul was beginning to sound appealing. Her photography work had petered out somewhat these last months and it would take time to build her client base back up. Time she didn’t have. She’d been so preoccupied with her father’s failing health that all the day-to-day stuff, including work, had fallen by the wayside. Little had she known the mess she was already in.

The bank hovered over her like a large and very ugly vulture, ready to swoop in and whip away the only thing that she had left of her family, and all because her father had remortgaged the house to buoy them up through her mother’s illness two years earlier. Of course he’d expected to have years left in him to work and pay the loan off. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Anna until the very end and she only discovered the full extent of the mess when she finally steeled herself to sort through her father’s papers after he’d gone. By then the repayments had quietly lapsed for months. Brown envelopes had been stuffed away as he refused to accept that he wouldn’t beat the illness and turn things around. No one could have guessed that he’d follow his wife so quickly to the grave, leaving Anna alone.

Well, not alone exactly. She had the bank for company.

No way was she giving up her family home without a fight. It was all she had left of her old life. And that was exactly what she was doing now, teetering in the gap between the window and the curly black wrought iron railing that came up to her thighs, on a ledge that was designed to hold nothing more than a couple of plants or a window-box. This was her last resort at saving the last remnants of a happy family life which had meant the whole world to her. The loan arrears were gobsmacking, the bank was on the brink of repossessing and Anna had done her best to fend them all off. She’d already tapped friends, family, everyone she could think of for a loan and had sold everything she could bear to part with that wasn’t nailed down. And still it wasn’t enough.