The Food of Love

by Amanda Prowse

  PRAISE FOR AMANDA PROWSE

  ‘A tragic story of loss and love.’

  Lorraine Kelly, The Sun

  ‘Captivating, heartbreaking and superbly written.’

  Closer

  ‘A deeply emotional, unputdownable read.’

  Red

  ‘Uplifting and positive, but you may still need a box of tissues.’

  Cosmopolitan

  ‘You’ll fall in love with this.’

  Cosmopolitan

  ‘Warning: you will need tissues.’

  The Sun on Sunday

  ‘Handles her explosive subject with delicate care.’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Deeply moving and eye-opening.’

  Heat

  ‘A perfect marriage morphs into harrowing territory . . . a real tear-jerker.’

  Sunday Mirror

  ‘Powerful and emotional family drama that packs a real punch.’

  Heat

  ‘Warmly accessible but subtle . . . moving and inspiring.’

  Daily Mail

  ‘A powerful and emotional work of fiction with a unique twist – a practical lesson in how to spot a fatal, but often treatable disease.’

  Piers Morgan (CNN presenter)

  ‘A truly amazing piece of drama about a condition that could affect any one of us in a heartbeat. Every mother should read this book.’

  Danielle Lineker (actress)

  ‘A powerful and emotional page-turner that teaches people with no medical training how to recognise sepsis and save lives.’

  Dr Ranj Singh (paediatric doctor and BBC presenter)

  ‘A powerful and moving story with a real purpose. It brings home the dreadful nature of this deadly condition.’

  Mark Austin (ITN presenter)

  ‘A festive treat, if you love Jojo Moyes and Freya North, you’ll love this.’

  Closer

  ‘Magical.’

  Now magazine

  ‘Nobody writes contemporary family dramas as well as Amanda Prowse.’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Amanda Prowse is the Queen of contemporary family drama.’

  Daily Mail

  OTHER BOOKS BY AMANDA PROWSE

  Poppy Day

  What Have I Done?

  Clover’s Child

  A Little Love

  Christmas for One

  Will You Remember Me?

  A Mother’s Story

  Perfect Daughter

  Three and a Half Heartbeats (exclusive to Amazon Kindle)

  The Second Chance Café (originally published as The Christmas Café)

  Another Love

  My Husband’s Wife

  I Won’t Be Home for Christmas

  OTHER NOVELLAS BY AMANDA PROWSE

  The Game

  Something Quite Beautiful

  A Christmas Wish

  Ten Pound Ticket

  Imogen’s Baby

  Miss Potterton’s Birthday Tea

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Amanda Prowse

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940048

  ISBN-10: 1503940047

  Cover design by Debbie Clement

  For my son Josiah Hartley.

  You, Josh, are my finest achievement.

  I am proud every time you walk into the room.

  And when my time on earth is done I shall sleep peacefully, knowing that I contributed something wonderful to the world, and that thing is you.

  Follow your dreams, climb high, stay kind, be happy and know that we are made from the same batch of stardust . . .

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  Nine hours to go . . .

  TWO

  Eight hours, thirty minutes . . .

  THREE

  Eight hours . . .

  FOUR

  Seven hours, thirty minutes . . .

  FIVE

  Seven hours . . .

  SIX

  Six hours, thirty minutes . . .

  SEVEN

  Six hours . . .

  EIGHT

  Five hours, thirty minutes . . .

  NINE

  Five hours . . .

  TEN

  Four hours, thirty minutes . . .

  ELEVEN

  Four hours . . .

  TWELVE

  Three hours, thirty minutes . . .

  THIRTEEN

  Three hours . . .

  FOURTEEN

  Two hours, thirty minutes . . .

  FIFTEEN

  Two hours . . .

  SIXTEEN

  One hour, thirty minutes . . .

  SEVENTEEN

  The hour is now . . .

  EPILOGUE

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ‘The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.’

  E. M. Forster

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  I started writing at the age of forty, having always been an avid reader. Every book I read I would put into a category of either ‘I wish I had written that book’ or ‘I can do better than that!’

  I didn’t have the confidence or courage to put pen to paper, fearing my lack of grammar and limited understanding about the world of publishing might hamper my efforts.

  It was only after beating cancer that I looked at the world in a different way, figuring that if this was my one time around the block, what did I really want to do? And what I really wanted to do was write stories! I have been writing for four years now and have written seventeen novels and six novellas.

  I am pretty much average at everything. I’m a rubbish cook, useless at sport, and can never manage to get the duvet into the duvet cover. They say everyone has one thing that they can do, and I have discovered my one thing: I can write stories very quickly. They play in my head like a movie and all I have to do is write down what I see. I am truly thankful every single day for this gift.

  I write about ordinary women, women who find their lives disrupted and need to find strength to overcome the obstacles in their path. I find it amazing when a stranger tells me that they have enjoyed one of my books; that stranger and I are linked by something that germinated in my imagination. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

  PROLOGUE

  The sun slowly casting its fire-coloured rays over everything it touched as it sank was one of the most beautiful things Freya had ever seen. She would never forget the sight of pelicans sitting on the Florida shoreline like prehistoric time travellers, masterful and breathtaking, as they balanced on poles rising up from the seabed, stretching their immense wings in the scarlet remains of the day.

  Lockie and the girls had earlier fished from the dock – catching nothing but each other’s crossed fishing lines. The fun, however, had been in the anticipation, any disappointment now quashed by the sampling of fine gelato as they strolled the streets of old Naples, window-shopping as night turned to day and the sun pulled their tanned skin taut on their weary bones. Charlotte, already becoming a lady at nine, nibbled daintily at her single-scoop cone, w
hile Lexi was fully focused on balancing her towering three scoops, as if unwilling to forfeit a single bite.

  Freya laughed at her seven-year-old. ‘Goodness me, Lex, carry on at this rate and we’ll have to put you in the hold on the flight home; you’ll never fit in the seat!’

  As they wandered on to the long pier at the end of this golden day, Freya knew this family vacation would be crystallised in memory, there for her to dip into when the cold, grey sky of a British morning threatened to pull the happy from her heart and the spring from her step.

  ‘So can I, Mum? Can I?’ Having somehow gobbled all her ice cream, Lexi jumped up and down in front of her, drawing Freya from her musings.

  ‘Can you what, darling?’

  ‘Can I go swimming?’ She beat her little fists on the sides of her rounded thighs, irritated by the seconds of delay that this conversation was causing.

  ‘No! Of course not! It’s dark! You wouldn’t be able to see where you were going, it’s dangerous.’ Freya shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to swim!’ Charlotte got this in quick, in case there was any doubt.

  ‘No one is swimming!’ she asserted. ‘Goodness knows what sea creatures might be lurking beneath the surface.’

  ‘Please can I?’ Lexi whined.

  Freya sought out her husband’s face, trying to catch his eye. ‘Can you believe her?’

  Lockie laughed. ‘I’ve already told her that if a shark comes along, she knows what to do. Isn’t that right, Lexi?’

  Lexi responded by lunging forward and giving her best jab into thin air. ‘I have to punch it on the nose!’

  Freya looked at Charlotte, who peered cautiously down between the wooden slats into the water.

  ‘Daddy’s only joking, Charlotte.’ She used her well-practised placatory tone, before turning to bare her teeth at Lockie.

  ‘Of course I was joking!’ He winked. ‘It would be utterly pointless trying to punch them on the nose.’

  Charlotte yelped and pointed. Freya turned her head, as if in slow motion.

  While their discussion raged and their attention was diverted, Lexi had slipped away and climbed up on to the side of the pier. Freya’s words stuttered in her throat, kept from escaping by a plug of fear. Her arms flapped to no avail as she tried to gain Lockie’s attention.

  As if time froze, Lexi stood perfectly still, balanced on the narrow ridge of weathered timber; her little toes gripped the surface as she steadied herself with her arms outstretched.

  Then, as Freya reached for her, the little girl lifted her chin, her eyes pegged on the horizon, heedless of the long drop into the dark water below, and jumped into the unknown.

  ONE

  Freya loved the familiar sounds of their home cranking to life: the burbling radiators, the creaking floorboards and the rumble of pipes. She found the cacophony predictably reassuring.

  Staring out of the sash window of the first-floor kitchen of their redbrick Edwardian villa, with her mug in her palm, she looked over the high-walled garden, abundant with climbing wisteria and flowering jasmine. It was a beautiful morning. The sun rose, dusting all it touched with a peach-tinted blush. Freya savoured this moment of peace on a brand-new day.

  They had taken the decision a few years ago to pave the small rectangle, making a grand courtyard garden rather than a lousy scrap of lawn. The outer edges were adorned with a range of receptacles – old chimney pots, redundant butler sinks, and rusted watering cans; nothing was considered too grand or too defunct not to be shoved with soil and a few geraniums or variegated ivy. The effect was stunning. Freya had created a busy, bright private oasis in the middle of the city. And to tend it gave her as much joy as to look at it.

  She peered over the wall and down into their neighbours’ kitchen, the same space on the ground floor in their house taken up by their TV room, her husband’s studio and the now redundant darkroom.

  ‘Good morning!’ Lockie bellowed, as he made his presence felt. He always did this: entered the room as though he was coming on from stage left.

  She spun around, cheeks flaming, eyes bright and biting her bottom lip.

  ‘What are you looking so guilty about?’

  He narrowed his gaze and trod the stripped floorboards, placing his large hands around her narrow waist and pulling her towards him. He looked over her shoulder, his chin trapping her long fair hair against her skin as he tried to see what had caught her eye.

  ‘Nothing.’ She blushed.

  ‘Ah, now I know you were up to something! “Nothing” is your default when you can’t think of a good lie quickly enough.’

  ‘That is so not true!’ she protested.

  Her husband kissed her on the mouth and she felt the flames of love and longing flicker in her gut, filling her with warmth, even now, after nineteen years of marriage. They were lucky.

  ‘Okay, well, I might have been spying on the Rendletons!’ She giggled.

  ‘I knew it!’ He slapped his thigh. ‘And what salacious titbits did you pick up about their life from your covert operation? Tell me it was something juicy! Was Mr Rendleton having a slug of gin before his cornflakes? Or, worse, was Mrs Rendleton entertaining the postman while her husband was in the shower?’ He waggled his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘For goodness sake, Lockie! She’s eighty-four!’

  ‘Good point.’ He released her. ‘Plus I don’t think our postman is what the girls might describe as “fit”.’

  ‘Poor man!’ Freya pictured the chirpy chap that traipsed up the path of their neat front garden in a busy suburb of St Albans.

  ‘I was hoping for sex this morning, but no sooner had I blinked and lifted my head, you’d run away!’ he whispered, as she ran her hands through his thick, long dark-grey hair, which he wore slicked back, more often than not secured in place by his reading glasses.

  ‘Not deliberately,’ she breathed, ‘but I do have a lot on today.’

  ‘You have a lot on every day.’

  ‘True, but today is a deadline day, and there’s nothing like the promise of Marcia’s dulcet tones on the line to goad me into action.’

  She abandoned her husband to the cereal cupboard, where muesli in a multitude of variations sat in expensive, environmentally friendly packaging.

  ‘Can I pencil you in for sex tomorrow morning?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

  ‘Yes, I’ll put it in my calendar. Remind me to set my alarm a little earlier.’

  She nodded, without any sense of irony, as she pulled open the wide drawer underneath the sink and rummaged around for a grocery bag.

  ‘Will do.’ He beamed.

  ‘Have you been stealing the plastic bags? I use them for rubbish and all sorts. Now that we have to pay for them, I try to keep a couple in my rucksack for any bits of shopping I pick up, but they seem to disappear.’

  ‘You got me. I do it for the thrill, guv!’ he mocked.

  ‘Very funny.’ She tutted in his direction.

  Lockie reached into the cupboard and studied the cereal box, holding it at arm’s length as he lowered his glasses from his head to his nose, reading aloud: ‘For a sense of well-being and long-lasting energy, to invigorate, restore and bring out your natural essence.’ He sniffed and looked at his wife. ‘Lovely. I was hoping to bring out my natural essence. This might just do the trick!’ he added sarcastically. ‘I remember the days when we bought cereal because it tasted good, not because it was going to change our lives.’

  ‘Yes, but the stuff that tasted good has so much sugar on it, it could rot a tooth at twenty paces.’ She laughed.

  ‘But you’re missing my point: it tasted good!’ He emphasised his point with vigour.

  Lexi yawned from the doorway, still in her pyjama bottoms, with an oversized sweatshirt slipping from her shoulder, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a crease from the pillowcase still on her cheek.

  ‘Daddy’s hankering after sugary cereal.’ Freya rolled her eyes at the younger of her two girls.

  ‘It’s
not the only thing Daddy wants,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who’s taking me in today?’ Lexi asked casually, caring little for her dad’s preferred choice of breakfast and even less about the debate that raged across their spacious kitchen. She was far more interested in how much time she had to get ready.

  ‘Dad. He’s got a shoot in London and so he can drop you both at school on the way.’

  ‘Can he indeed?’ Lockie called from the end of the long refectory table at which he sat, with his bowl of unsatisfying muesli to one side and his laptop open.

  ‘Yes!’ Freya called from the sink. ‘I’ve told you, I’ve got a deadline; my piece on “fuss-free food for fussy toddlers” needs to go off by this afternoon.’

  ‘Ooh, catchy title! Not.’ Lexi sniffed, making her way to the sink and running a large glass of water.

  ‘What have you got on today, darling?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She sipped.

  ‘Oh, right, well that should be a doddle, then.’ She swooped by and kissed her little girl on the head. ‘What can I get you for breakfast?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Lexi yawned again and continued to drink.

  ‘In that case, go and shower and give Charlotte a shove. Daddy can’t hang around.’

  ‘Charlotte doesn’t need a shove, thank you very much!’ announced Charlotte as she made her way down from her room on the second floor. ‘She is up and has been for the last hour!’

  ‘She’s only been up for an hour because she’s been doing her project that should have been handed in yesterday.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Lexi. Oh, what’s that noise?’ Charlotte rushed over to the fruit bowl that sat on the end of the counter and picked up a banana from the wooden bowl, holding it to her ear like a telephone. ‘Oh hi, Toby . . . Yes, I love you too, more than anything in the world!’

  The smile slipped from Lexi’s face.

  ‘No, I haven’t told my parents that I have a boyfriend who’s in the sixth form and two years older than me,’ Charlotte continued, ‘but it’s not because I’m trying to keep you secret, not at all!’

  ‘You’re such a bitch!’ Lexi shouted, slamming her glass on the countertop before running out of the room. She raced up the stairs.

  ‘Alexia, that language is not okay!’ Freya shouted after her daughter. She shook her head. ‘That was a bit mean, Charlotte. Is it true? Has she got a boyfriend?’