Cathy Hopkins - Dancing Over the Hill - The new feel good comedy from the author of The Kicking the Bucket List

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Copyright © Cathy Hopkins 2017

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Cathy Hopkins 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: 9780008202095

Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008202088

Version: 2017-12-01

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Robert Browning (1812–89)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

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

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

Matt’s A – Z of Activities for Retirement

It’s never too late!

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Cathy Hopkins

About the Publisher

Friday night (thirty years ago):

Our passion spent, we lay back on the grass, satiated, our limbs entwined, the sun shining down on our naked bodies. It was one of those times, I would remember and cherish forever.

After a few moments, we sat up and surveyed the valley below and fields stretching out in front of us.

Matt turned to look at me. ‘Forever,’ he said as he looked deeply into my eyes.

‘For—waaargh! Ants!’ I cried as I leapt up and began to brush the invaders off my legs.

‘And … Cait, get dressed! Fast. We have to leg it now !’ said Matt as he pointed to the bottom of the hill where two walkers could be seen advancing up the lane towards us.

‘No!’ I grabbed my dress from where it had been thrown over a fence and dived into it as Matt jumped up and began to scramble into his jeans. Stumbling and laughing, we ran off before the intruders spotted us and realized what we’d been up to.

*

Friday night (now):

‘Fancy an early night?’ I asked. I knew he’d get the subtext, we’d been married long enough not to have to spell it out; plus ‘have sex’ had been on my to-do list for weeks.

‘We could, or …’ Matt replied.

‘Or what?’

‘Glass of wine and a box set?’

‘What have you got?’

‘Latest series of Game of Thrones .’

‘No brainer. I’ll get the glasses, you open the bottle.’

Items mislaid:1) Reading glasses.2) Book (it was by the bed).3) Bottle of Ginkgo biloba (it’s supposed to improve memory but I can’t remember where I put that either).4) Mobile phone.

Chin hairs plucked: 4

‘Matt, Matt. Are you OK? Matt .’

No response. I’d just got home from work to find Matt, stretched out and snoring softly on the sofa in the sitting room. He’d taken off his suit jacket, tie and shoes and cast them onto the nearest chair. An empty bottle of red wine and glass were on the coffee table in front of him, together with an open dictionary. Something must have happened. Matt was never here on a weekday, he was in Bristol, working, usually back on the train which got in around 8.30 p.m. He wasn’t a big drinker, either.

Maybe I shouldn’t wake him, I thought. Should leave him to sleep it off. But … he’s never home in the day. What’s happened? I gave him a gentle shove, then a more persistent one, but he was dead to the world. I checked he was still breathing. He’d been snoring a moment ago – of course he was.

Reassured that Matt was still in the land of the living, I tiptoed out and into the kitchen to search for my mobile to see if it offered any clues. I’d forgotten to take it out with me, so didn’t know if he’d been trying to reach me. I found the phone in the fruit bowl and turned it on to see if there were any messages. There were four missed calls and one text. All from Matt. The text said: When r u back? Need 2 talk.

Two minutes later, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to my two closest friends, Lorna and Debs. They had said they’d drop in on their way back from a trip to the garden centre.

‘Spring flowers,’ said Debs, and handed me a bunch of white tulips.

‘Thanks, but shh, Matt’s home, asleep on the sofa,’ I said as I ushered them through the hall and into the kitchen diner, where I shut the door after them. They made an odd pair. Debs, a curvaceous bohemian, forty-seven years old, with a mop of dark hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with a chopstick, was wearing a kingfisher blue silk top, green harem trousers and a big emerald amulet fit for an Egyptian high priestess. Although British born and bred, with her olive skin and brown eyes she looked Spanish, a throwback to her Andalusian great-grandmother, she’d told us. Next to her, Lorna was small and slim, in her fifties, and was in jeans and a blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, her silver-white hair cut neatly to her shoulders. I was the oldest of the three of us, but often felt like the youngest, a twenty year old trapped in an old body. Matt called my friends the S and S, the silly and the sensible, Debs being the first, Lorna the latter; he said that each of them represented a different side of my nature. ‘There’s more to me than that,’ I’d told him. ‘I have many sides – I’m multifaceted, like a diamond.’ He’d laughed. Cheek.

‘Matt? What’s going on?’ asked Debs, and was about to go barging in to see him but I pulled her back.

‘I don’t know, but he’s clearly had a skinful. Best leave him for now.’

‘Not like him,’ said Lorna as she settled on a stool at the island.