Jaimie Admans - It’s a Wonderful Night - A delightfully feel-good festive romance for 2018!

JAIMIE ADMANS is a 32-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather and cheese and onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots. She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.

Jaimie loves to hear from readers. You can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.comor connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.

The Château of Happily-Ever-Afters

The Little Wedding Island

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2018

Jaimie Admans 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.

E-book Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008296896

Version: 2018-09-12

Table of Contents

Cover

About the author

Also by Jaimie Admans

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

Chapter 20

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader,

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For everyone.

You are good enough.

No matter how impossible things seem, you truly have a wonderful life, and the world will always be better with you in it.

I’m in the cupboard under the stairs trying to wrangle a naked mannequin up the narrow steps to the back room when I hear the phone ringing. I groan. It’s only going to be a telemarketer, isn’t it? It’s eleven o’clock on a November night and I’m working overtime because, as the manager of the One Light charity shop, it’s my responsibility to get the Christmas window display finished before morning. I don’t have time for discussing ‘an accident I’ve had recently that wasn’t my fault’, mis-sold PPI, or my solar panel needs. Don’t they even stick to normal working hours now?

I’ll ignore it. I take a defiant bite of the fun-size Crunchie I’ve just found a bag of in the cupboard under the stairs. Who put chocolate down here? Maybe the volunteers were trying to hide it from me? It’s obviously leftover from Halloween and that was over a month ago. There’s not usually chocolate hanging around that long if I know it’s there. A day would be pushing it. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad hiding place after all.

The ring is insistent and I have a conscience about ignoring a ringing phone. It could be an emergency. It could be my dad saying he’s fallen and can’t get up, or paramedics who have been called out because he’s had another heart scare.

I look at the mannequin’s blank face. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter to it as I try to prop it against the wall, shove the last half of the Crunchie into my mouth and rush through the back room and out onto the shop floor, leaving behind a series of thuds as the mannequin slides back down the steps I’ve just dragged it up.

I’ve forgotten to hit the light switch so the shop floor is in darkness and I trip over a clothing rail and nearly go flying.

‘Hello?’ I say with my mouth full as I grab the handset from behind the counter. It’s far from the polite ‘One Light charity shop, how can I help you?’ that we’re supposed to answer the phone with, but I fully expect the caller to have rung off by now anyway.

‘Do you think it will hurt?’

‘What?’ I say with all the eloquence of an inebriated badger, hopping about with the phone in one hand, the other clutching the toe that collided with the clothing rail.

‘If I jump off this bridge?’

I choke on the Crunchie.

‘Are you okay?’ the man’s voice on the other end of the line asks.

‘Yes, thanks.’ I clear my throat a few times, trying to dislodge rogue bits of honeycomb. Only I could greet a suicidal man by choking at him. ‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?’

He lets out a laugh that sounds wet and thick, like he’s been crying. ‘I’m not the one choking to death. Do you need a glass of water or something?’

‘No, no, I’m fine,’ I say, wondering if swallowing actual sandpaper might’ve been more comfortable. ‘I’m so sorry, I’d just shoved an entire fun-size Crunchie into my mouth and then tried to speak. If that isn’t a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is.’

I don’t know why I said that. A recipe for disaster is not me choking on a chocolate bar – it’s a guy about to throw himself off a bridge who doesn’t realize he’s phoned the charity shop for a suicide prevention helpline rather than the suicide prevention helpline itself.

My heart is suddenly pounding and a cold sweat has prickled my forehead. I don’t know what to do. I’ve always been petrified this would happen but never really thought it would. I’ve always thought that the two numbers are printed worryingly close together on our leaflets. Head Office told me I was worrying too much, but I’ve often wondered how easy it would be for someone to get our number muddled up with the helpline number and phone here by mistake. And it seems like the answer has just rung.

What am I going to do? I can’t take this call. I don’t know how to talk someone down off a bridge.

‘Oh, I love Crunchies. Don’t tell me you still have fun-size ones leftover from Halloween?’

‘I think they were hidden from me. I’ve only just found them.’ I’m rambling about nonsense but I don’t know what else to say. I know people think chocolate is the answer to most things, but I doubt it’s likely to help in this situation, and as much as I’d like to keep talking about Cadbury’s honeycomb treat, I can’t keep avoiding his first question.

I go to speak but he gets there first. ‘Can we just keep talking about chocolate? This is the most normal conversation I’ve had for days.’

I let out a nervous laugh. ‘We can talk about anything you want. Chocolate’s always a good topic.’