From a Distance
Page 26
Luisa was surprised. ‘Is this not a bit old-fashioned for you? I always thought my favourites were too slow for you lot,’ she teased.
Ellie shook her head and put her hand out for her mother’s. ‘No. I heard this in a bar that night just before I called you, and it made me so homesick I decided then and there to come back,’ she said.
They listened to the bittersweet song in silence. It was so easy to be happy, Luisa thought, this was it. Simple stuff, but who could ever ask for more?
Ellie turned to her. ‘Mum what’s the special ice cream for tonight? You did make one, didn’t you? Like we always have for birthdays and everything?’
Luisa smiled. ‘It’s a surprise,’ she said.
Acknowledgements
I owe the most enormous debt of gratitude to my editor, Alexandra Pringle, for giving me time to find my way around this story, and I don’t know how to thank her. All I know is that From a Distance would not be the book it has become without Alexandra’s wisdom and faith, or her team’s many talents and limitless enthusiasm.
I also thank Gillian Stern for becoming my characters’ best friend and champion, as well as mine, and for getting right under their skins to edit this book, and Justine Taylor for a comet-like copy edit, blazing a trail through what was by then a somewhat battered final draft.
Thanks too, to the venerable fabric designer Pat Albeck for sharing her expert knowledge of the process of silk screen printing and to my fellow novelist Louisa Young for reading an early draft and asking the questions that set my sights on a very particular horizon.
To Roman for helping me research, to James for putting up with me, and to all the rest of my beloved family and dear friends for consistent understanding and support as I headed back for yet another edit, yet another draft, yet another dive away from them and into the world I was creating. Thank you.
My final thanks are to Louise and Graham Banks for allowing me to dedicate this book to the memory of Sam, their son, whose wild and wonderful musical taste I have borrowed.
A Note on the Author
Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels: Come and Tell Me Some Lies; The Hook; Hens Dancing; Summertime; Green Grass; Poppyland; and A Perfect Life. She has also written a novel for young adults, Phosphorescence. She is a regular contributor to Country Life and the Sunday Telegraph, and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives by the sea in north Norfolk.
www.raffaellabarker.co.uk
@raffaellabarker
Also by Raffaella Barker
www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
‘A gentle, charming account of a family of cosmopolitan sophistication living in a rural shambles’ Evening Standard
Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father’s rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.
Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.
‘She writes beautifully … combining with apparent ease, emotion and admirable precision’ Independent on Sunday
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Hens Dancing
‘Charming … Engrossing’ Sunday Times
‘A positive hymn to provincial living, it is an entertaining celebration of family life with all its highs, lows and eccentricities’ The Times
When Venetia Summers’ husband runs off with his masseuse, the bohemian idyll she has strived to create for her young family suddenly loses some of its rosy hue. From her tumble-down cottage in Norfolk she struggles to keep up with the chaos caused by her two boys, her splendid baby daughter and the hordes of animals, relatives and would-be artists that live in her home. From juggling errant cockerels, jam making frenzies and War Hammers, to unexpected romance, Bloody Mary’s and forays into fashion design, Hens Dancing is like a rural Bridget Jones’ Diary as it charts a year of Venetia’s madcap household.
‘Glittering prose … Venetia is a disarmingly wry and engaging narrator with a keen eye for nature and the follies of urban chic’ Financial Times
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Summertime
‘Very, very funny’ Independent
‘My advice is not to read Summertime in public. You’ll giggle, you’ll snort, you’ll make an exhibition of yourself … I loved Hens Dancing, and this is better yet’ Country Life
After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood’ by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk. As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother’s outrageous wedding. As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.
‘I loved it. I couldn’t put it down’ Daily Express
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Green Grass
‘So funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell
‘She writes beautifully … Combining with apparent ease, emotion and admirable precision’ Independent on Sunday
Laura Sale has grown tired of her life. Her daily routine of dividing her time between pandering to the demands of her challenging conceptual artist husband, Inigo and those of their thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, has taken its toll. She longs to remember what makes her happy. A chance encounter with Guy, her first love, is the catalyst she needs, and she swaps North London for the rural idyll she grew up in. In her new Norfolk home Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets, an ungracious goat and a collapsing relationship. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, and she takes control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.
‘A light touch and a way with words that leaves you gasping ... With laughter as much as anything’ Marie Claire
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Poppyland
A Love Story
‘A modern day Brief Encounter’ Daily Express
‘Both lyrical and real, light and darkly full of yearnings for a profound and lifelong love’ Good Housekeeping
On a freezing cold night in an unfamiliar city, a man meets a woman. The encounter lasts just moments, they part barely knowing one another’s names, they make no plans to meet again. But both are left breathless.
Five years on they live thousands of miles apart and live totally separate lives, except that they both still think about that night. So when they meet again it seems clear that they will do all they can to try and stay together, but can it be that easy? Will they be able to escape their past? Will they be able to take the risk they know they should?
‘Rich, confident and emotionally convincing’ Sunday Times
‘An insightful, highly readable novel’
Daily Express
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The Hook
‘Glorious’ Mail on Sunday
‘Stylish and insightful … With the pace and verve of a thriller’ Independent
Christy Naylor was forced to grow up quickly. Still reeling with anger after the death of her mother, she abandons college in order to help her father uproot from suburbia and start a new life on a swampy fish farm out in the sticks, a prize that he won in a shady game of poker.
Amid this turmoil, looms the mysterious Mick Fleet, tall, powerful and charismatic. Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is hooked on his intense charm. She knows nothing about him yet she feels like she is being swallowed up in his embrace and she plunges into a love affair blind to the catastrophe he will bring…
‘Delightful … Expertly constructed … A true novelist with an engaging authorial voice and the imagination and skill to create a believable fictional world’ Evening Standard
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A Perfect Life
‘To write well and with such open-hearted affection is an achievement’ Observer
‘Beautifully poignant, insightful and grown-up’ Mirror
The Stone family live a fairy-tale existence in their home in rural Norfolk, complete with adorable children, glamorous parents and postcard-perfect seaside picnics. Nick, Angel and their family lead a charmed life. And yet beneath the surface all is not as it seems.
Why is Nick away so often? Where is the laughter? And what is happening to the children?
We all want a perfect life, but at what price?
‘Evocatively written, provocatively pitched, it tells how time can pick away at the fabric of relationships’ Good Housekeeping
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First published in Great Britain 2014
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2014 by Raffaella Barker
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