Maddie Please - Come Away With Me - The hilarious feel-good romantic comedy you need to read in 2018

Avon an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

The News Building

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Maddie Please 2018

Cover design © D Meacham Design 2018

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

Maddie Please 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 ebook 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.

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305208

Version: 2018-07-23

For Arthur

For Henry

With much love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Come Away With Me Maddie Please

Copyright Avon an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers The News Building 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018 Copyright © Maddie Please 2018 Cover design © D Meacham Design 2018 Cover image © Shutterstock.com Maddie Please 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 ebook 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. Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305208 Version: 2018-07-23

Dedication For Arthur For Henry With much love.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Maddie Please

About the Publisher

Scotch Whisky, Coffee Liqueur, Single Cream, Sugar Syrup

So, it was Friday night. Six-thirty. I’d got in at half past seven that morning and was still working. Everyone else was entitled to a social life, but not me, apparently. India had left at five on the dot as usual, trilling happily about some party she and Jerry had been invited to. Something that necessitated an extended lunch hour so she could get her nails done. Wouldn’t that be nice? No such excitement awaited me when I got home.

I started to clear up; Tim was always very good but India thought she had staff. She’d left a half-eaten prawn sandwich on her desk that was curling gently as I swept it into the black bin liner. Mercifully it looked too revolting to eat, otherwise I would probably have been tempted. I had no willpower. As I went round the office, emptying the bins and wiping crumbs off India’s desk, I reminded myself of things I had to do.

I was supposed to be losing weight for India’s wedding in December.

I was supposed to be organising her hen weekend.

I was supposed to be looking forward to being her bridesmaid.

*

Don’t get me wrong; usually I loved my job. But I loved it a lot more before my sister started working there.

Dad took over our grandfather’s estate agency in 1998 and it was in a glorious old building in the middle of the high street, next door to the baker’s, perfect for foot traffic and the odd tourist to wander in and enquire after a little place in the country. Actually, thinking about it, we’d had quite a few of those recently.

In my teens I used to help Dad out in the office at weekends and in the school holidays, learning how to answer the phone (smile, Alexa, smile), draw up floor plans and conduct viewings. It was in my blood. The thrill of waiting for an offer to be accepted, of being able to look around gorgeous houses I couldn’t afford, pointing out exciting things, like underfloor heating, ten-inch attic insulation or garden water features, never left me.

It was almost perfect, if only Dad had stopped harking back to the glory times of property when you used to be able to buy a flat in London for buttons and sell it for millions a few years later. Even when we were small he would bang on about getting on the property ladder. It wasn’t as though he’d done badly in recent years, despite the property crash in 2008, but he was only too keen to tell stories of the good old days. Perhaps it was because I was three years older than India, but I paid attention and found something I really loved doing.

I started working with Dad straight out of school, never considering doing anything else. Pretty soon, Dad was happy to leave me to run the office while he and Mum took more and more holidays.

India floated off to a polytechnic to do media studies. Heaven only knew what she actually did there. Having never been to uni myself, it seemed her three years away were punctuated with rancid arguments with flatmates, complaints about everything and tearful phone calls for money. The vacations were worse. India spent all her time lounging about the house, eating all the biscuits and having long telephone calls with her friends, which seemed to consist of little more than India saying: ‘Yes, no, no . Did he? What did she say? No! No! Honestly? ’

India seemed good fun in those days, maybe because she wasn’t my responsibility. She knew loads of people, introduced me to her friends and was an unending source of fabulous gossip. I can remember us enjoying girls’ nights in, face packs, pizzas, terrible movies and bottles of wine pinched from Dad’s collection. We once watched Mamma Mia! while necking back some vintage Dom Pérignon champagne. We got a lot of grief for doing that but at least India took the blame.

I had just accustomed myself to perhaps taking over entirely at the office and reorganising it after Dad retired when India finished uni. She’d failed to get a degree of any sort. This was breezily explained as being down to a ‘glitch’ in the examinations department that would be sorted out ‘eventually’.