Ellen Berry - The Bookshop on Rosemary Lane - The feel-good read perfect for those long winter nights

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Ellen Berry 2016

Cover photographs © Istock / Shutterstock / Thinkstock

Cover design © Emma Rogers 2016

Ellen Berry 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: 9780008157128

Ebook Edition © July 2016 ISBN: 9780008157135

Version 2017-08-07

For Liam

Because I love the way you say cookery book

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

In The Beginning …

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

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six : Five Months Later

Chapter Thirty-Seven : The Bookshop’s First Birthday

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Keep Reading …

By the Same Author, Writing as Fiona Gibson:

About the Publisher

Of the hundreds of cookbooks in Kitty’s collection, an extraordinary number were dedicated to cooking under difficult circumstances. Meals With One Pan, Dinner For Pennies, The Frugal Hostess, even Cooking Without a Kitchen. At ten years old, Della Cartwright was intimately familiar with her mother’s personal library; she could instantly locate Blancmanges, Jellies and Other Set Desserts , and lay a finger upon Rescuing Kitchen Disasters with no problem at all. She knew, however, that there was no book in the house entitled Rustling Up Dinner When Your Husband Has Left You For Another Woman. Which was precisely what Kitty Cartwright needed right now.

Stillness had settled over the kitchen in Rosemary Cottage. Even the books, which entirely lined every inch of available wall space – promising infinite culinary adventures – looked forlorn. Usually the hub of the house, filled with delicious aromas as Kitty chopped and stirred, the room felt cold and uninviting now. A few shrivelled potatoes sat in the wire rack, and tiny flies drifted around them. The milk was sour in the fridge, and the Victoria sponge Kitty had made over a week ago sat, hard and uninviting, beneath its fluted glass dome. Still in pyjamas at 2.30 p.m., Della skimmed her gaze over the books. They no longer promised treats. They overwhelmed her.

Della’s stomach growled hollowly. Hunger had driven Jeff, her big brother, to his best friend Mick’s house at the end of the lane, whilst Roxanne, the youngest, would occasionally emerge from her bedroom to snatch a Jacob’s cracker or a handful of dry Sugar Puffs from the cupboard. Mostly, though, she remained in her room, styling the synthetic blonde hair of her army of Barbies.

Della, the middle child, had no interest in dolls. She owned a battered old Chopper bike – the one Jeff had outgrown – that she’d cycle through the mushy fallen leaves entirely covering the winding lanes of the small Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge. Mostly, though, she loved to stay indoors and cook. Kitty had never given the impression that she knew what to do with her children – it was as if they had been foisted upon her, forever requiring name tapes to be sewn into clothes, or to be driven en masse to Clark’s in Heathfield for school shoes – but she did seem to appreciate a kitchen assistant. Della had made this her job. Together, mother and daughter would pore over the books. Whilst Kitty took charge in her rather flappy manner, Della would undertake menial tasks: peeling carrots, trimming green beans, and gathering up the eggshells her mother left strewn around in her wake. She felt useful then, as if she belonged.

Della ran her fingers along the spines of the books. What to Cook Today was where her hand stopped. Perhaps she hadn’t known the whole collection after all. She didn’t remember seeing that one before. She pulled it from the shelf and studied its plain brown fabric cover. It was slightly stained and smelled musty, its title almost faded away. There were no pictures inside: just tiny type on mottled yellowing pages and a few scribbled notes in the margins. Della fetched a notebook and pencil and, installed at the well-worn kitchen table, she started to flick through the book.

Potato Soup, she wrote in rounded childish lettering. Roast Chicken. Semolina Pudding. Warm, comforting foods to coax Jeff back from Mick’s and Roxanne away from her Barbies and, most importantly, their mother away from her glass of gin. Della was sensible enough to know Kitty needed to eat, and that gin and tonic didn’t count as real food, even with ice and lemon.

Getting up from the wobbly kitchen chair, Della took an elastic band from the rubbery ball which Kitty, frugal to the last, had made by collecting the ones dropped by the postman, and used it to secure her thick brown hair in a ponytail. Then she lifted her own navy blue apron from the hook on the kitchen door and, aware of the distant chink of ice cubes in a glass, turned back to the chapter entitled Soups and Starters.

And so she began.

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