Alexandra Brown - The Great Christmas Knit Off

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014

Copyright © Alexandra Brown 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Map © Nicolette Caven 2014

Alexandra Brown 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: 9780007597369

Ebook Edition © November 2014 9780007597376

Version: 2016-12-14

For my Nanny Edie

Who always loved a good knit and natter session xxx

‘In the rhythm of the needles there is music for the soul.’

– Anonymous

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Epigraph ‘In the rhythm of the needles there is music for the soul.’ – Anonymous

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

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About the Author

Also by Alexandra Brown

About the Publisher

Hettie Honey picked up a lovely lavender lace weight that a customer had abandoned by the till after pondering for what seemed like an eternity that, actually, it wasn’t the right shade of lavender after all. She then walked across the shop floor of her House of Haberdashery to repatriate the ball into its rightful place – a wooden, floor-to-ceiling cabinet comprising twenty-four cubbyholes inset over three shelves crammed with every colour, ply, and type of yarn imaginable. Hettie smiled wryly, remembering the programme she had listened to on the radio not so long ago. Knitting! It was all the rage nowadays and she hoped it would finally catch on in Tindledale, her beloved picture-postcard village and Hettie’s home for the eighty-three years of her life to date. She ran the timber-framed, double-fronted shop adjacent to the wisteria-clad roundel of the oast house her father had built before she was even born.

Hettie lifted the tray on which sat the last remnants of her afternoon tea; a cheese sandwich minus the crusts because her teeth weren’t as strong as they used to be plus a pot of tea and a pink iced finger that had only cost ten pence on account of being past its best. Kitty, in the tearoom up on the High Street, had tried to give her the bun for free, but Hettie hated taking charity, especially when she felt there were other people in far more need. Hettie moved to the back of the shop, swept the curtain aside and went through to the little kitchenette area. Years ago this had been her mother’s sewing room, and the wooden Singer machine with its rickety foot pedal still lived there, with a multitude of multi-coloured bobbins all piled up high on the shelf behind it.

After placing the tray on the draining board next to the age-veined Belfast sink and carefully wrapping the crusts in clingfilm to dunk into her warming homemade soup the following afternoon, Hettie picked up the picture frame on the mantelpiece above the fire and ran a finger over the faded black-and-white autographed photo. She allowed herself an enormous sigh. She wasn’t usually one for self-pity or hand wringing, but another one of the letters had come this morning, with FINAL DEMAND stamped across the top in ugly red type. Business had been so slow these past couple of years, and now, with her dwindling savings and pittance of a pension, she had come to realise that it was going to take a darn miracle this Christmas for Hettie’s House of Haberdashery to remain afloat come the new year.