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The Show: Racy, pacy and very funny!
Tilly Bagshawe
Welcome to Swell Valley – where the scandal is in a class of its own…The second book in the Swell Valley series by bestselling author Tilly BagshaweNestled in a glorious patchwork of fields, surrounded by chocolate box villages, Wraggbottom farm means everything to Gabe and Laura Baxter. But love and tradition doesn’t pay the bills. Luckily, Laura has an idea that will share the secret of her happy (if sometimes muddy) country life: producing a reality show that will save the farm!Until the interfering new vicar, ‘Call-me-Bill’ takes it upon himself to lead a protest against the show. Suddenly the village is divided; even Gabe is torn between his new found fame and his old, happy life.With so much at stake for her village and her marriage, will Laura be able to weather the storm or will her big idea turn out to be her biggest mistake?
Copyright (#ucc7276c6-226d-56bc-8963-06f066523948)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Tilly Bagshawe 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: 9780007523023
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007481415
Version: 2015-05-19
Dedication (#ucc7276c6-226d-56bc-8963-06f066523948)
For Zanna. With love.
Table of Contents
Cover (#uf3e18e6c-fd45-5823-978d-4302ba932936)
Title Page (#ub4b278fe-fad8-5d84-947d-358c03d2ae7d)
Copyright (#ua02deb8f-27bb-5df5-b6db-a7a9b76fe96e)
Dedication (#ua7cd9724-69e5-5ccb-b43d-6e940ccc4ae3)
Map (#ubddf1618-5fbe-5c2e-81a4-216a85ebb37f)
Cast of Characters (#u29fa20d7-2559-5b9d-ac87-c880396a90cc)
Part One (#ud6ce1d70-073e-508c-89e2-0bd243edd5af)
Chapter One (#ua20d08e2-2da1-599f-8853-366e9fb0c494)
Chapter Two (#u2d70fba6-e381-51ac-8bb5-324b8a458b80)
Chapter Three (#u57ce5166-7730-5839-8ff1-4a6449537382)
Chapter Four (#u06068a20-484a-510a-ac8d-b04fdba47659)
Chapter Five (#u8d22f0d7-2ed3-5706-b453-73ba6d458e73)
Chapter Six (#ud87cf478-3c1e-5577-9ee8-0fc3b7db88ec)
Chapter Seven (#ufabd2df0-73a0-53e1-938f-e1333311ed5a)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: The Inheritance (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: The Swell Valley Short Stories (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE (#ucc7276c6-226d-56bc-8963-06f066523948)
CHAPTER ONE (#ucc7276c6-226d-56bc-8963-06f066523948)
Gabe Baxter leaned over and whispered in his wife’s ear.
‘This is awful.’
‘Shhhh,’ Laura Baxter giggled.
‘I can’t shhh. I can’t stand it,’ said Gabe, running a hand through his thick blond hair. ‘Do you think if I offered to pay for the whole roof, she’d stop singing?’
‘Be quiet,’ Laura hissed at him. ‘You can’t even pay for your beer, never mind the school roof. So you’re just going to have to let it go!’
Gabe groaned. The Baxters were in the snug bar at The Fox on Fittlescombe Green, along with the rest of the village on this wet January evening, watching the talent show. Danny Jenner, The Fox’s landlord and village gossip, had organized the event to raise funds for a new school roof. The current performer, Claire Leaman, a dumpy twelve-year-old girl with boss eyes and a wildly misplaced confidence in her own abilities, had spent the last three minutes belting out the Frozen theme tune as if she were on stage at the Oscars, tossing her hair about and warbling like an opera singer on helium. After ‘Mike Malloy’s Marvellous Magic’ (a single, lame handkerchief trick) and Juggling Jack Willoughby, the half-blind church warden from Brockhurst, Gabe had dared to hope that they’d seen the worst of the night’s performers. Apparently he was wrong.
‘HERE I stand! And HERE I’ll staaaaa-aaaay!’Claire screeched.
‘She can bloody well stay on her own,’ Gabe whispered back to Laura. ‘I’m going out for a smoke.’
‘Gabe. You can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she’s Gavin Leaman’s daughter, for one thing.’
‘All the more reason to get out of here,’ Gabe said with feeling.
Gavin Leaman was one of a group of ramblers – ‘The Swell Valley Right-to-Roamers’ they called themselves – who had had the audacity to tramp through Gabe’s orchard last weekend, and who had even wandered into his garden. Gabe had been enjoying Match of the Day in his living room when, as he put it, ‘some sanctimonious cagouled muppet with an Ordnance Survey map’ waved at him cheerfully, as if Gabe and Laura’s land was some sort of public park. Gabe had marched outside to have words with the intruders, and had ended up getting into an unfortunate row with Fittlescombe’s new vicar, Bill Clempson. It turned out the vicar was leading the charge on behalf of the ramblers, armed with a sensible padded nylon bum bag and a whistle.
‘You put them up to this, didn’t you, Vicar?’ Gabe said accusingly.
Bill Clempson pursed his lips. ‘I didn’t put anyone up to anything. These people have a perfect right to ramble here.’
‘First of all, they’re not “rambling”,’ Gabe said with feeling. ‘They’re not fucking Wombles. They’re trespassing.’
‘There’s no need to resort to bad language,’ chided the vicar.
‘If you’d taken the time to read the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000,’ one of the walkers piped up, an overweight woman in much-too-tight breeches, whom Gabe recognized from his son’s nursery, ‘you would know that the British countryside belongs to all of us.’
Gabe stepped forward menacingly. ‘Not this bit, sweetheart. You have precisely sixty seconds to get off my land or I’ll set the dogs on you. You too, Bill.’ Gabe growled at the vicar. Fucking interloper. Who did Clempson think he was?
This being Fittlescombe, exaggerated versions of this showdown were soon flying around the village, with Gabe Baxter either painted as the heroic defender of property rights (an Englishman’s home is his castle, after all) or an elitist snob who begrudged ordinary villagers, and even the parish vicar, a harmless stroll through his fields.
Laura had tried to keep out of it as much as possible. Gabe was right, in her view, but as usual he’d lost his temper and been horribly rude to people that they ran into in the village every single day, which didn’t help their cause, or make Laura’s life any easier. Still, these sorts of spats were part of village life. Not the first time, Laura felt as if her life was morphing into one long episode of The Archers.
Claire Leaman, the rambler’s daughter, was still caterwauling.
‘Sorry,’ said Gabe. ‘That’s it.’ With a mortifying clattering of bar stools, Fittlescombe’s best-looking farmer made his way noisily to the door, earning himself a furious look from Claire’s father and envious ones from just about everybody else.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Laura whispered to her neighbours as she followed him, blushing furiously. ‘He’s got a migraine.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ grumbled the old man near the door.
Outside, Laura found Gabe huddled beneath a willow tree, trying unsuccessfully to light a damp roll-up.
‘That was rude,’ she chastised him. ‘Poor girl.’
‘Poor girl?’ Gabe’s eyes widened. ‘What about the rest of us? Good grief. She’s got no more business singing in public than I have stripping naked and streaking through the House of Lords. Or going for a Sunday walk in somebody else’s garden. It’s just … wrong.’
He pulled an indignant face that made Laura burst out laughing.
‘You’re just wrong! Selfish arse.’
‘I’m so wrong, I’m right.’ Gabe grinned, lifting up an arm so that Laura could slip beneath it. ‘Right?’
Even after nearly ten years of marriage, Laura Baxter found it almost impossible to be close to her husband without touching him. Leaning into his broad chest, she breathed in his familiar, musky smell. Gabe was so handsome, it was almost offensive – blond and brawny and with the sort of smile that could light up even a dreary, drizzly January night like this one. Laura had moved to the Swell Valley to be with him, despite a very rocky courtship, and they were now the parents of two small boys. The Baxters were often broke and always exhausted, but Laura wouldn’t have traded their life for anything.
‘Traitors.’
Santiago de la Cruz – cricket star, valley local and Gabe’s close friend – slipped out a few moments later, nursing a glass of Laphroaig. Santiago was also gorgeous, although in a very different way from Gabe. Tall, dark and quintessentially Latin, he was always perfectly groomed, a thoroughbred racehorse to Gabe’s mud-splattered mustang.
