Freya North - Home Truths

Home Truths

Copyright

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition 2006

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2006

Copyright © Freya North 2006

Freya North 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, 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: 9780007180356

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007325788

Version: 2015-10-13

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication .

Praise for Home Truths :

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end.’

Cosmopolitan

‘An engrossing emotional drama that's sure to feature on bestseller lists.’

Eve

‘You'll laugh, cry, then laugh some more.’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner in Home Truths … touching, enjoyable.’

Heat

‘Extremely skilful.’

Daily Telegraph

Praise for Freya North:

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women with real feelings.’

She

‘Tantrums, tarts, tears and text-sex … what’s not to love about this cautionary tale for true romantics?’

Heat

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship.’

Glamour

‘Passion, guilt, envy, love and sex, topped with lashings of laughs. Freya North has done it again, only better.’

Daily Express

Dedication

For Georgiamy beautiful, beautiful girl

Epigraph

Write your sister’s weak points in the sand and

her strong points in stone.

Anon

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Django McCabe

Tuesday

Django McCabe and the Nit-Pickin’ Chicks

The Rag and Thistle

Penny Ericsson

Home from Home

Winter Ice

Road Kill

Waterworks

He’s Not There

April Fool

My Round

Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow

Derek

Then What?

1960s and All That Jazz

The M1

Dovidels

Kate and Max and Merry Martha

Sweet is the Voice of a Sister in the Season of Sorrow

Coupling

On the Phone

Seeds Sown

Seeds Not Sown

Seeds in a Packet

Bad Seed

Stray Cat Blue

A Fish Out of Water

Al and the Girl from Purley

Cat Out of the Bag

The Ten o’Clock News

Where Were You When You Heard that Django McCabe Had Cancer?

Testing Time

Time for Tests

VT 05154

Lester Falls

Plastic Tubing

Love at Long Distance

No-Brainer

Freedom Trail

Red-Eye

Return of the Natives

Fen McCabe and Matt Holden

Pip and Zac Holmes

Cat and Ben York

To the Bone

Hard Facts and White Lies

Sundae

Moving On

Christmas

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Freya North

About the Publisher

Prologue

‘How do you say goodbye to a mountain?’

From her vantage point, Cat York looked across to the three Flatirons, to Bear Peak and Green Mountain. She gazed down the skirts of Flagstaff, patting the snow around her and settling herself in as though she was sitting on the mountain’s lap. ‘It’s like a giant, frozen wedding dress,’ she said. ‘It probably sounds daft, but for the last four years, I’ve privately thought of Flagstaff as my mountain.’

‘There’s a lot of folk round here who think that way,’ Stacey said. ‘You’re allowed to. That’s the beauty of living in Boulder.’

The sun shot through, glancing off the crystal-cracked snow on the trees, the sharp, flat slabs of rust-coloured rock of the Flatirons soaring through all the dazzling white at their awkward angle.

‘When Ben and I first arrived and I was homesick and insecure, I’d walk to Chautauqua Meadow and just sit on my own. It felt like the mountains were a giant arm around my shoulders.’ Cat looked around her with nostalgic gratitude. ‘Then soon enough we met you lot, started hiking and biking the trails and suddenly the mountain showed me its other side. You could say it’s been my therapist’s couch and it’s been my playground. It’s now my most favourite place in the world.’

Stacey looked at Cat, watched her friend cup her gloved hands over her nose and mouth in a futile bid to make her nose look less red and her lips not so blue. ‘This time next week, the only peaks I’ll be seeing are Victorian rooftops,’ Cat said, ‘grimy pigeons will replace bald eagles and there’ll just be puddles in place of Wonderland Lake. Next week will be a whole new year.’

‘Tell me about Clapham,’ Stacey asked, settling into their snow bunker.

‘Well,’ said Cat, ‘it’s a silent “h” for a start.’

They laughed.

‘God,’ Cat groaned, leaning forward and knocking her head against her knees, ‘I’m still not sure we’re doing the right thing – but don’t tell Ben I said so. I can’t tell you about Clapham, I don’t think I’ve ever been.’ She paused and then continued a little plaintively. ‘God, Stacey, I have no job, my two closest friends don’t even live in the city any more and I’m moving to an opposite side of London to where I used to live, where my sisters still live.’

‘It’s exciting,’ Stacey said, ‘and if you don’t like it, you can always come back.’ She tore into a pack of Reese’s with her teeth, her chilled fingers unfit for the task. ‘And there’s some stuff that’s really to look forward to.’

Placated and sustained by the pack of peanut butter, the comfort of chocolate, Cat agreed. ‘I’ve missed my family – by the sound of it, my middle sister Fen is having a tough time at the moment. And it’s going to be a big year for Django – he’ll be seventy-five which will no doubt warrant a celebration of prodigious proportions.’

‘I’d sure like to have met him,’ Stacey said and she laughed a little. ‘I remember when I first met you, I thought you were like, so exotic, because you came to Boulder with your English Rose looks and a history that Brontë couldn’t have made up. You with the mother who ran off with a cowboy, you who were raised by a crazy uncle called Django, you and your sisters brought up in the wilds of Wherever.’