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Fairytale of New York
Miranda Dickinson
Are happy-ever-afters made in Manhattan? Find out in this gorgeous debut, perfect for cold winter nights.Once upon a time an English girl went to New York to live out her very own fairytale…Florist Rosie Duncan's life couldn't be better, she has a flourishing business on New York's Upper West Side and fantastic friends. Moving to Manhattan feels like the best decision she ever made. Even though at the time, it was her escape route from heartbreak . . .For the past six years Rosie has kept her heart under lock and key, despite the protests of her closest friends - charming, commitment-phobic Ed, unlucky in love Marnie and the one-woman tornado that is Celia.Then a blossoming friendship with publishing hot-shot Nate begins to shake Rosie's resolve at the same time as her brother arrives in the Big Apple, hiding a secret.But a chance meeting brings Rosie face to face with her past, unravelling the mystery behind her arrival in New York. Rosie is forced to confront questions she has long been trying to ignore, including will she ever get her very own happy-ever-after?A sparkling, romantic comedy about an English girl who finds herself in the city where dreams can come true - or so she thinks…
MIRANDA DICKINSON
Fairytale Of New York
Copyright (#ulink_ff5d46c5-665b-55b7-b166-ee639b892251)
Avon
An imprint of 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 in 2009
This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2017
Copyright © Miranda Dickinson 2009
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
Cover design © Charlotte Abrams-Simpson 2017
Miranda Dickinson 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 ebook 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 ebooks
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
Source ISBN: 9781847561657
Ebook Edition © October 2010 ISBN: 9780007346325
Version: 2017-11-17
Dedication (#ulink_da038bfe-b2ec-5954-87d0-750513935b10)
For Linsey – because she wanted to know what happened next.
Contents
Cover (#ub1aba493-aff6-54cc-8b3e-f63347fd1777)
Title Page (#ua8bd6737-2f7f-5f9b-90c5-84212df4ca56)
Copyright (#u6dbeec35-f775-574f-ac1f-4875943bbb51)
Dedication (#ulink_59ccef79-7aa9-5fec-8ca7-10a6b62d6ff2)
Chapter One (#u443852ec-6221-54d1-a654-e71c234ac5cf)
Chapter Two (#udff67727-fe72-5c35-8ccb-340ed79fd405)
Chapter Three (#uc48fae87-b923-50b8-a959-e81665991182)
Chapter Four (#u8d8f6687-5831-55b2-a5d7-2c57903aff6b)
Chapter Five (#u90df663c-f4ec-5326-9ace-62fbdb2329b8)
Chapter Six (#ub6397ec9-c317-5f5f-9ba6-1fa647547477)
Chapter Seven (#u13791c93-61fe-50db-a661-cf551f0c9a58)
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)
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)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_c1ba0310-6f92-5e38-b9bc-07fd8f776b2b)
This city is not mine by birthright: I was born over three thousand miles away in a sleepy town in the heart of England. But ever since the day I set foot on its sidewalks, I have felt caught up in the biggest, most welcoming embrace by every street, store and tree-lined avenue. I don’t know if a city can make a heart decision, but if it’s possible then New York chose to make me belong. And even though some of my most difficult and painful days have taken place here, somehow this city has always softened the blows—just like a good friend who sits you down with a cup of tea and tells you to be patient because things will turn out OK in the end. And you know they will. Eventually.
My friend Celia tells me that I’m a ‘Frustrating but Adorable Optimist in the Face of Overwhelming Evidence to the Contrary’. If you think this looks like a dramatic newspaper headline then you’d be on the right track: Celia writes a column for the New York Times and she’s lived here all her life. She was one of the first true friends I made in the city and she watches out for me like a slightly neurotic older sister. She won’t mind that description of her—come to think of it, that’s probably one of hers anyway.
Celia’s apartment is on the second floor in an elegant Upper West Side brownstone residence just off Riverside Drive on West 91st Street, and every Saturday morning we meet there to put the world to rights over coffee. Sitting at her maple table by the large picture window, I can see out to the street below. ‘Sit for long enough in New York and you’ll see everyone in the city walk by,’ Mr Kowalski always used to say. He was the original owner of my florist’s shop, before he retired to his beloved Warsaw with his daughter Lenka, where he lived until his death, just over five years ago. Mr Kowalski was another of the first true friends I made in my adopted country.
‘Rosie, you have no idea how blessed you are to have History in England,’ Celia declared one Saturday morning as she appeared from the kitchen with the coffee and a basket of warm muffins. As usual, we had entered a conversation a little way in from the start and continued as though we’d been there from the beginning. I couldn’t help but grin at her as she flopped down into the chair beside me.
‘Ah, history…’ I replied in a learned tone.
‘I mean, you Brits just don’t appreciate the awesome privilege of having kings and queens going back centuries. I can’t say that my ancestors were walking in New York in the tenth century. I can’t say that my family is born-and-bred American. I mean, heaven only knows where my family came from. I’m probably four-sixteenths Ukrainian with a touch of Outer Mongolian thrown in somewhere along the line.’
I was about to say that there is actually no such thing as a true English person either, and remark that my family probably came from Moravia or somewhere originally, but I could see this was a serious topic of concern for Celia. So I stayed quiet and poured the coffee instead.
‘Why are you so hung up about it, mate?’ I asked.
Celia’s troubled countenance softened and she reached for a muffin.
‘It’s my column for the Times next week. I’m thinking about the importance of history for humans to find their place in the world. The more I consider it, the more I realise it’s a nonstarter. Most of us don’t know our own history here—save for what we learn at school. We’re a hotchpotch of immigrants, convicts and dreamers, all clamouring for some damn utopia that doesn’t exist. We want to belong, yet we don’t know what we want to belong to.’
Somehow, I suspected those sentences would appear in her column soon. This is a regular phenomenon; in fact, I think our Saturday morning chats must be the best documented in history. If, in a thousand years’ time, historians want to know what things twenty-first-century friends were discussing, all they will have to do is to examine the archives of Celia’s column at the New York Times (which will, by then, be thought-transmitting to its readership, I suppose).
‘You are such a writer,’ I smiled. ‘Every word beautifully crafted…’
‘Honey, everything is copy. My father always said that.’ She picked up a teaspoon and frowned at her reflection. ‘And I am starting to look like my mother.’
I couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘You are not.’
It has to be said, Celia is a good-looking lady, immaculately turned out at all times and with one of those complexions that most women would walk over burning coals (or inject odd bits of animal into their skin) to achieve. To look at her, you could never guess her age; despite her strenuous denials of the fact, she can easily pass for an early thirtysomething, when in reality she’s nearer the middle of her forties than she would ever admit. She has a style that seems to exude from deep within her—a quality my mum would call ‘effortless’. Even that morning, when her only appointment was in her own apartment for coffee with me, her jeans and blue linen shirt looked a million times more elegant than they would have done on anyone else.
‘So, my Authors’ Meet next Tuesday night…’ she said, discarding the subject and brandishing the next with a warpspeed that would impress even Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, ‘I thought Café Bijou in TriBeCa would be ideal. It’s new but worth a risk, so I’m told.’
‘Sounds promising,’ I said, watching sunlit steam rise as I broke open a warm muffin, letting the pieces fall onto my plate. ‘Who’s coming?’
‘Henrik Gund is a definite, and I’m awaiting replies from Mimi Sutton and Angelika Marshall, though of course I’m kinda confident they’ll find it hard to resist. In fact, most of New York’s finest will be there. It has the potential to be amazing…of course there are still a few worries to iron out…’ Celia paused, turned squarely to face me and smiled one of those immaculately painted, high-maintenance Jewish smiles of hers that, I have learned, always precede a Celia Reighton Big Favour.
Somewhere, way in the back of my brain, a familiar little voice began screaming, Don’t do it! Don’t do it…!
But it was too late. I had already conceded to the inevitability of surrender. With acting that would have had Spielberg armwrestling Scorsese for my services, I replied as if I hadn’t a notion of what was coming, ‘That’s wonderful, Celia. It sounds like everything is going to plan, then.’
‘Well…almost everything, Rosie,’ Celia replied slowly.
So, it starts, announced the irritated voice in my head. The smile was widening with every grovelling word Celia spoke. ‘It’s a little delicate, but I have to tell you…seeing as we’re such good friends…it’s just that I’ve been let down by Philippe—’ (for your information: incredibly pretentious and over-priced ‘Floral Artiste’)—‘you know how whim-driven these people can be—And I really need some stylish table pieces.’
‘Oh, that’s dreadful, mate,’ I sympathised, mirroring her agonised tone.
You are SO on your own… The little voice in my head let out an exasperated sigh, packed its suitcase and caught the first Greyhound for Vegas.
‘It is so dreadful you wouldn’t believe.’ Desperation was setting in. ‘Honey, you know I only use Philippe because my agent is seeing his brother. His creations often verge on the vulgar, in my opinion. Did I mention how I just adored what you did for Jessica Robards’ wedding last fall?’ Celia’s increasing grip on her coffee mug was threatening to crush it completely and her smile was fast becoming a cheery grimace.
It was time to put my friend out of her agony.
‘How many pieces do you need and what flowers did you have in mind?’
‘Oh, darling, would you?’ Celia flung her arms around me, lifting me several inches from my chair and letting out a squeal of delight.
‘Yes, OK, I give in! You can have my great expertise at extremely short notice and, no doubt, at a sizeable discount. Now, let me go before you kill me!’
I was duly released and she fell back into her chair, giggling like a delighted schoolgirl.
‘Ooh, you’re so wonderful, Rosie! I knew you wouldn’t let me down! Well, let’s see…I need ten—no, make it twelve—with gardenias—no, roses…Or maybe both? I’ll leave it to you to decide—after all, you’re the designer. But I’m picturing them hand-tied, of course, with plenty of that straw stuff.’
‘Raffia?’ I offered.
Celia didn’t hear. She was already in full artistic flow, gesturing flamboyantly with each new idea that she stumbled across. ‘Well, absolutely, honey, that too! And baskets—ooh, yes…little woven rustic ones like they have in England.’
‘Ah, you mean historical ones…’
Celia stopped abruptly and chastised me with a mock frown. ‘You see, that’s what I was saying, sweetie. You British have so much history that you can afford to throw it away in jest. Pity the poor American here…’
Once again, the conversation shifted, as New York hurried by on the street below.
