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The Postcard: Escape to Cornwall with the perfect summer holiday read
Fern Britton
You will love this witty and warm novel from the Sunday Times best-selling author Fern Britton.Secrets. Sisters. The summer that changed everything . . .Life in the Cornish village of Pendruggan isn’t always picture perfect. Penny Leighton has never told anyone why she’s estranged from her mother and sister. For years she’s kept her family secrets locked away in her heart, but they’ve been quietly eating away at her. When an unwelcome visitor blows in, Penny is brought face to face with the past. And a postcard, tucked away in a long-hidden case, holds the truth that could change everything.Young Ella has come back to the place where she spent a happy childhood with her grandmother. Now she’s here to search for everything missing in her life. Taken under Penny’s broken wing for the summer, the safe haven of Pendruggan feels like the place for a fresh start. Soon, however, Ella starts to wonder if perhaps her real legacy doesn’t lie in the past at all.Pendruggan: A Cornish village with secrets at its heart
Copyright (#u88ef9dde-d742-5cc1-8d8d-92fefd778fc8)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Fern Britton 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Fern Britton 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: 9780007562978
Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780007562985
Version 2017-12-21
Dedication (#u88ef9dde-d742-5cc1-8d8d-92fefd778fc8)
To my darling Winnie, with lots of purrs, Mumma.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u3d9c2ba2-cc5d-588a-b740-71fd81ef611b)
Title Page (#ub8e26f63-de70-5451-b29a-ab25d7ffdb72)
Copyright (#u740b8b2d-05e4-5aea-8b36-8948427a03c3)
Dedication (#ueb50a94a-c06f-5e2d-8eda-7fcc874b8856)
Prologue (#u2a655a65-3f0c-5f01-b07e-a24d02d66014)
Part One: Winter (#u0d1d2774-f71b-5742-ae15-f5820539c4ea)
Chapter 1 (#u41c72d99-2c24-58f3-b3e9-85404c46619a)
Chapter 2 (#u0d4c3063-5a70-5812-81aa-60cc66851a0b)
Chapter 3 (#ud4f8785c-3b82-5b23-924a-5db61ca1b7f6)
Chapter 4 (#ub7a01341-c9e9-558d-b7de-b443de714ffe)
Chapter 5 (#ua6a9c662-e38e-5778-9454-15d8dc1db59a)
Chapter 6 (#u5bd5dfb9-56e2-5783-bb0c-402aa0d55e85)
Chapter 7 (#ud3a47b74-3e40-5b8b-a431-ecb33fe7c049)
Chapter 8 (#u8e5cbfb8-6508-5d39-af8a-90791340461b)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: Spring (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u88ef9dde-d742-5cc1-8d8d-92fefd778fc8)
The baby was crying. Penny listened. Would her mother hear? She opened her eyes wide but could see nothing in the deep blackness of her small bedroom. She rolled over to face the closed door. The perfect line of light from the landing barely illuminated the carpet. She heard the door of the drawing room open downstairs and the soft tread of her mother ascending. There was the comforting ‘shush’ of her mother’s stockinged legs as they brushed together approaching Penny’s door, walking past, then headed into her baby sister’s room.
‘Have you had a bad dream, darling?’ her mother murmured.
Penny listened and caught the rustle of baby Suzie being gathered from her cot and into her mother’s arms.
Suzie had stopped crying and was snuffling. Penny heard the kisses and imagined them being dropped onto Suzie’s soft scalp and downy hair.
‘Mummy’s here, darling. It was just a naughty old dream. Now where’s Bunny?’
Penny, five years old, tightened her hold on her own teddy, Sniffy. She pulled him into her arms and sniffed his flattened, furry ear. She whispered to him, ‘Suzie has had a bad dream. She’s only got Bunny but I’ve got you.’
Eventually Suzie was soothed back to sleep and her mother walked back and past Penny’s room. Penny called, ‘Night-night, Mummy.’
She got no reply.
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1 (#u88ef9dde-d742-5cc1-8d8d-92fefd778fc8)
Penny Leighton didn’t feel right. She hadn’t been feeling right for a long time now. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had felt right.
She was lying in her big marital bed. The Cornish winter sun had not yet risen and she could see the dark sky through a crack in her exuberant poppy curtains. She’d thought them so cheerful when she’d bought them. She looked at them now and closed her eyes.
She had to get up. She had an important call to take at eleven o’clock. She opened her eyes and squinted at her phone. Ten to seven.
‘Morning, my love.’ Simon stirred and reached under the duvet to put his hand around her waist. ‘How did you sleep?’
She closed her eyes. ‘Hm.’
‘Is that a hm of yes or a hm of no?’
‘Hm.’
‘Did Jenna wake up?’
Her look said it all.
‘Oh dear. Why won’t you wake me? I’m more than happy to see to her.’
‘Then why don’t you?’
‘I don’t hear her.’
‘There doesn’t seem any point in us both being awake then.’
