Never forget you, p.1
Never Forget You, page 1
Praise for Fiona Lucas
‘A gorgeous book about second chances and moving from the darkness and back into the light. Brimming with love and overflowing with hope – I adored it’
Milly Johnson
‘A poignant and emotional story about loss, grief, and the beautiful dawn of a second chance of love, life and happiness. Bittersweet but full of hope’
Judy Finnigan
‘A poignant and uplifting read about loss, love and learning to put yourself back together again after facing the unimaginable’
Sophie Cousens
‘A poignant but hopeful journey through grief and the struggle to let go of those we have loved and lost’
Sunday Post
‘A beautiful story’
Bella
‘A beautiful story about learning to live and love again. Took me from heartache to hope, and left me smiling through my tears’
Zara Stoneley
‘A beautifully written story of love, loss and hope. I adored it’
Emma Cooper
‘Full of heart and tenderness, Anna and Brody carried me with them every step of their journey – a truly outstanding book to lift you up’
Jane Linfoot
‘Beautifully told and full of hope, this love story will touch your heart’
Helen Rolfe
FIONA LUCAS is an award-winning author of contemporary women’s fiction. She has written heart-warming love stories and feel-good women’s fiction as Fiona Harper for more than a decade. During her career, she’s won numerous awards, including a Romantic Novel Award in 2018, and chalked up a no. 1 Kindle bestseller. Fiona lives in London with her husband and two daughters.
Also by Fiona Lucas
Writing as Fiona Lucas:
The Last Goodbye
Writing as Fiona Harper:
The Memory Collector
The Other Us
The Summer We Danced
The Doris Day Vintage Film Club
The Little Shops of Hopes and Dreams
Make My Wish Come True
Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2022
Copyright © Fiona Lucas 2022
Fiona Lucas 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.
Ebook Edition © October 2022 ISBN: 9780008371951
Version 2022-09-12
Note to Readers
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008371944
Content Warning:
This text contains potentially upsetting material relating to abusive relationships, emotional abuse, and coercive control. Reader discretion is advised.
For Norina Coupar
(1947–2019)
Contents
Cover
Praise
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part II
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
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Part III
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Part IV
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Acknowledgements
Extract
Chapter One
Chapter Two
About the Publisher
Part I
5 years ago …
Chapter One
YOU CAN’T RUN away from your problems, Lili …
The voice of reason, which sounded suspiciously like my sister’s, echoed in my head as I walked briskly down a quiet London street. I’m not running away, I replied silently and very reasonably. I’m taking time to think. It’s a healthy, productive thing to do.
And, given the circumstances of my life, a very sensible one. I had a big decision to make, one that might change the course my life had been on since the age of eight. I hadn’t been able to think properly inside the house – too many eyes, too many expectations – so I’d come to the one place in the city where I knew I would find not only solitude but clarity.
Office buildings of different ages towered over me as I hurried down a narrow cobbled street. I passed the silent doorways, shut against the heat, and ducked through a wrought-iron gate into the grounds of what had once been a church.
The tower remained, as did three of the walls, but the roof and any stained glass had been lost generations earlier, thanks to a bomb blast in the Blitz. Where rubble and dust had once been was now a beautiful garden. Ivy wound around the delicate tracery at the tops of the empty windows. Fragrant shrubs perfumed the air.
It was mid-July and, thanks to a week-long heatwave, unbearably hot in the city centre. Even though it was only mid-morning, the pavements were beginning to bake and the air shimmered with exhaust fumes. But here … Here it was cool and shady, the noise of the traffic muffled. It was like slipping into another world. And, in this world, I could let everything slide away and be myself, no one looking, no one judging. That, in itself, was more delicious than the gentle breeze playing with the hem of my summer dress.
I followed the path through a small porch into what would have been the nave of the church. Benches were arranged around a fountain made from a large, flat stone set into the paving stones. I slipped one sandal off and extended my foot, relishing the shock of the cold water as it hit my skin and trickled down over my toes.
I kicked my other sandal off and walked a short way to sink both feet into the soft, springy grass near one of the high, arching windows. There were flowers up there amongst the ivy, possibly clematis or jasmine, but they were hidden too well by the vigorous climbers to tell which. I stepped a foot onto a warm patch of earth at the edge of the flower bed in an attempt to get a better view and reached for the branch of a nearby shrub to steady myself. However, before my fingers even locked around it, my hand jumped back, an almost electrical pain shooting up my finger and along my arm. ‘Ow!’ I said loudly and stumbled back onto the grass, clutching my throbbing finger.
‘Are you okay?’
I almost jumped out of my skin for the second time, as I turned to see a rather tall man running towards me. ‘Um …’ was all my adrenaline-riddled brain woul d allow me to say, then I waved my hand in his general direction. ‘Bee …’
His gaze was momentarily caught by the rather large black-and-yellow insect zig-zagging away from the bush I’d been reaching into. ‘You’ve been stung?’ he asked in a curling Scottish accent.
I nodded.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you.’
For a moment, I thought he was going to go all Indiana Jones and suck the poison out of my finger. I was almost disappointed when he dashed off across the grass to where a fancy-looking tripod and camera stood, rummaged in his backpack, and returned with a small plastic case.
‘It only works if you get to it quickly,’ he said, nodding at me to hold my hand out while he unpacked the contents and assembled what looked like a fat syringe with a little clear plastic cup on the end instead of a needle. He took my hand, placed the device over where I indicated the sting was, and pulled the plunger. The suction caused the skin to balloon into a little dome and, magically, a little bead of what I assumed to be venom appeared on the surface. I watched wide-eyed as he released the device and wiped the evidence of the bee attack away with an antiseptic wipe. ‘There … It might still throb a bit, but it won’t be nearly as bad as if it had stayed in there.’
‘Th-thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He smiled at me, and I had another pulse-spiking adrenaline surge.
‘Do you think it’s going to die?’
He stopped smiling and looked confused.
‘Bees die after they sting something, don’t they?’ Now it had occurred to me, I was quite upset about that. After all, it had hardly been the bee’s fault I’d lumbered into its nectar-gathering session.
He glanced in the direction of where we’d last seen it. ‘I’m pretty sure it was a wasp, so I think you’re okay on that front. No bee murdering going on today.’ There was a lovely roll of the ‘r’ when he said ‘murder’. His expression grew more serious. ‘But what about you? You’re not allergic to bees … I mean, wasps … are you?’
He began turning my hand around to view my finger from different angles, checking for swelling, and oxygen no longer seemed to be reaching the bottom of my lungs as efficiently as it had done a few minutes earlier. Maybe I was allergic?
‘I don’t know,’ I said, managing to string a coherent sentence together, despite the soft brush of his skin against mine. ‘I don’t think so. But people develop weird allergies out of the blue sometimes, don’t they? My aunt ate shellfish with no trouble her whole life until she turned twenty-nine, and then – Bam! – one butterfly king prawn and they had to call an ambulance. She’s needed to carry an EpiPen ever since.’
Why was I telling him this? And why wasn’t he letting go of my hand?
‘Are you okay?’ he asked again, leaning in and looking into my eyes.
He was much taller than me, even though I was a pretty average height, but not burly – the sort of boy who would have been a rangy youth but had filled out a bit now he was a man. I guessed he was maybe a year or two older than me, and he had slightly shaggy dark hair with just a hint of red where the sun hit it, and the most ridiculously thick lashes. He wasn’t what some people would consider traditionally good-looking, but there was a strength to his features and a warmth in his brown eyes that was very appealing.
‘Yes … I think I’m okay,’ I said.
His smile widened and he loosened his grip on my hand, let it fall and started packing his syringe thingy away.
‘What exactly is that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, just a useful bit of kit I like to carry with me, I travel a lot – and sometimes to places with much scarier bugs than a common-garden English wasp.’
I nodded. This was probably not the time to tell him the closest time I’d got to being anywhere abroad was a hen night in Dublin with my cousin. Expensive foreign holidays weren’t a feature of my upbringing. Not that nobody hadn’t wanted to travel; it’s just that other things … other priorities … had made it impossible.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you when I came running over,’ he said. ‘I was just taking a few shots of the garden.’
I laughed softly, closing my sore finger in my other hand. ‘You did make me jump. I thought I was alone. Not many people know this place exists. Not even Londoners.’
‘I stumbled upon it on a previous visit, but it was dark then, and I always promised myself I’d come back during the daytime. I’m about to go travelling and I have a connecting flight tonight from Heathrow, so it seemed a shame not to take the opportunity while I was in London.’ He stared up at the golden light filtering through the ivy. ‘This place is just so …’
‘Magical,’ we both said at the same time, breaking into matching smiles. And for a couple of seconds that was all that mattered.
‘Why here? Why not one of the bigger tourist spots?’
‘I love exploring new places, finding those hidden, unusual parts of a city that add to its personality … its identity. London is so much more than the Thames and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Nelson’s Column. It’s also this …’ He spread his arm to indicate the garden in which we were both standing.
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. It occurred to me how unusual it was to find a man who wasn’t just interested in how things seemed, who liked to peel back the surface and find out the truth they held.
‘It’ll be our secret, then,’ he said and smiled at me again. However, this time it was more intimate. It felt as if he was inviting me to join a club where we were the only two members. I was ready to sign up on the spot, no fourteen-day cooling-off period required.
The conversation had reached a natural pause, a place where it would have been easy to walk away, continue my tour of the garden, but I didn’t make a move towards my sandals, still sitting by the edge of the fountain.
I searched my brain frantically for words – any words – that might prevent this moment from coming to an end. My gaze latched on to his camera. ‘Can I see what you’ve taken?’
Great. Now he knows the barefoot, bee-sting girl is nosey as well as weird and a little bit accident-prone.
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then said, ‘Sure.’ I followed him over to his tripod, where he hit a lever to release the camera. He held it out so I could see the screen on the back but kept his hands on it so he could operate the various buttons.
The first pictures were gorgeous. He’d captured the light slanting through the elaborate windows, lighting up the leaves of the trailing climbers from behind so they glowed with colour.
‘Oh …!’ I said as he moved the images on again. Amidst the sun-drenched foliage, there was now a figure … Me. The sun was above and behind me, lighting my long, mousey-but-wavy hair up at the edges into a golden halo. I twisted my head and shot him a questioning look.
His mouth grimaced but his eyes kept smiling. ‘You walked into the shot as I pressed the shutter. I was so absorbed in what I was doing, I didn’t realise you were there until I saw you through the viewfinder. And then you screamed—’
‘I didn’t scream,’ I quickly corrected him, hoping I was right.
The humour in his eyes told me just how loudly I had proved myself wrong. I twisted my mouth to hide a smile as he scrolled through the next few images. ‘Just the one shot …?’ I couldn’t help but notice two or three more.
‘I always fire off a few at a time. Complete habit. But I’ll delete them if you want?’
I looked down at the display and exhaled. I’m a pretty self-contained and private kind of person. It should have been an automatic ‘yes’, but, in this picture, I didn’t look like a little girl lost, no idea which direction her life should take. I looked like a young woman who was exactly where she was supposed to be. I almost looked beautiful.
‘No,’ I said, twisting my head to meet his eyes. ‘Don’t delete them. It would be a shame.’
I suddenly became aware of just how close we were standing to each other. I found myself staring at his lips, and when I tore my gaze away and met his, he was looking at me with a strange intensity. ‘Can I take your photograph?’
‘I thought you already did that,’ I said quietly, unsure why his question had sent a quiver through me.
‘I’d like to take one of you looking at the camera, looking at me the way you are just now.’
Oh. Like that.
