Rachel Burton - The Many Colours of Us - The perfect heart-warming debut about love and family

What if your life was built on lies?

Julia Simmonds had never been bothered about not knowing who her father was. Having temperamental supermodel, Philadelphia Simmonds, as a mother was more than enough. Until she discovers she’s the secret love-child of the late, great artist Bruce Baldwin, and her life changes forever.

Uncovering the secrets of a man she never knew, Julia discovers that Bruce had written her one letter, every year until her eighteenth birthday, urging his daughter to learn from his mistakes.

Julia begins to dig deeper into the mysterious past of her parents, opening up a history she’d never have imagined, but as she discovers the truth she needs to decide if she is willing to forgive and forget…

The Many Colours of Us

Rachel Burton

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © Rachel Burton 2017

Rachel Burton 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 © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008243920

Version: 2018-03-14

RACHEL BURTON

Rachel Burton has been making up stories since she first learned to talk, prodigiously early. In 2013 she finally started making one up that was worth writing down.

She has a BA in Classics and an MA in English and has never really known what to do when she grew up. She has worked as a waitress, a legal secretary, a yoga teacher and a paralegal. She never quite made it to law school.

She grew up in Cambridge and London but now lives in Leeds with her boyfriend and three cats. The main loves of her life are The Beatles and very tall romantic heroes.

Visit Rachel at rachelburtonwriter.com

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Edwin and Julia’s Playlist

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The house in Campden Hill Road, W8 is based on a real house which, during the 1980s and 1990s was owned by friends of my parents. During my teenage years that was the house from which I first learned Philadelphia Simmonds’ art of retail therapy, where I first heard Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where I first read Bleak House. In a way Julia was born in that house. I’m glad she finally came out to play.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone at HQ for picking my book out of the slush pile and making a childhood dream come true on a train between Bristol and Bridgwater one cold November afternoon. Particular thanks to my editors, Victoria and Hannah, for being able to understand what’s going on in my brain better than me.

To Cesca Major, who read a very early draft of The Many Colours of Us and encouraged me to go on and to “make the solicitor hotter”. I hope Edwin lives up to your expectations!

To Jo Murray-Dry, without her encouragement and relentless nagging this book would probably still be sitting on my hard drive, lonely and unread.

To Andy Cowan for explaining, in words of one syllable so even I could understand, the purpose and structure of a synopsis.

To Hayley Webster for long chats about Bert the Chimney Sweep.

To Ian Mountford for coming up with Creamadelica – probably best not to know where that came from but most welcome!

To Caroline, Rachel and Gillian – the probate team at Birketts LLP in Cambridge. It was a joy to work with you for six months and thank you for answering all my weird probate questions without actually knowing they were going in a book. Any mistakes are entirely of my own making. The probate process, especially in an estate the size of Bruce Baldwin’s is desperately slow and I have sped it up considerably to maintain the pace of the narrative.

To everyone on Twitter who has ever offered me words of encouragement when I thought I would never get to type “The End”. There are way too many of you to mention but you know who you are.

To my mum and dad, who always taught me you can do anything you want if you just work hard enough. My mum died the day after I finally typed “The End” and never got to read the final version, but without her encouragement I’d never had written the beginning.

And last, but certainly not least, to my beloved Drew. Thank you for feeding me, cleaning the house and looking after the cats while I lived in an imaginary world all summer. And thank you for answering me seriously every time I asked the question; ‘What would Edwin Jones do?’

To Mum, Liz, Nana – shine on crazy diamonds

6th June 2001

My dearest daughter,

And so, you are eighteen.

I wish I could see you and tell you how proud I am of you. I wish I could tell you how excited I was when I heard that you’d been offered a place at Cambridge. I wish I could be with you when you open your A Level results. I wish I could see the look on your face when you get the grades I know you deserve.

I saw you the other day, my beautiful girl, walking down Kensington High Street laughing with a friend. Tall and tanned, dark hair tumbling down your back. You looked so carefree, so happy, as though nothing could touch you. You looked exactly like your mother used to, when I first met her.

Sometimes, though, when the light catches you in a certain way, you have a look of me about you, as though a wisp of the young man I used to be lives on within you, looking out for you.

I want to remind you, now you are all grown up, that your mother has always loved you too. Life hasn’t been kind to her; or rather the life she chose hasn’t been as kind to her as she’d hoped. She had to give up a lot when she had you, and everything she did, she did because she was trying to do the right thing by you. I hope one day, when you hear the truth, you will be able to forgive her. Forgive us both.

This will be the last letter I write to you. I hope she will let you read this one. I hope she will let you ask questions and hear the story you need to hear. The story of you. And if she doesn’t I hope that one day you will get curious, wonder where you came from and come and find me.