by Jill Mansell
Copyright © 2015 Jill Mansell
The right of Jill Mansell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published in Great Britain as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 0884 2
Cover illustration © Heather Gatley
Author photograph © Paul Burns
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About THREE AMAZING THINGS ABOUT YOU
About Jill Mansell
Also by Jill Mansell
Praise for Jill Mansell
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
About THREE AMAZING THINGS ABOUT YOU
Hallie has a secret. She’s in love. He’s perfect for her in every way, but he’s seriously out of bounds. And her friends aren’t going to help her because what they do know is that Hallie doesn’t have long to live. Time is running out . . .
Flo has a dilemma. She really likes Zander. But his scary sister won’t be even faintly amused if she thinks Zander and Flo are becoming friends – let alone anything more.
Tasha has a problem. It’s not being nicknamed ‘Bin Girl’ because of an embarrassing incident with a credit card. It’s that her new boyfriend is the adventurous type. And she’s afraid one of his adventures will go badly wrong.
THREE AMAZING THINGS ABOUT YOU begins as Hallie goes on a journey. A donor has been found and she's about to be given new lungs. But whose?
Jill Mansell’s enchanting new novel will drive readers to seize life with both hands and make the most of every minute . . .
About Jill Mansell
Jill Mansell lives with her family in Bristol. She used to work in the field of Clinical Neurophysiology but now writes full time. She watches far too much TV and would love to be one of those super-sporty types but basically can’t be bothered. Nor can she cook – having once attempted to bake a cake for the hospital’s Christmas Fair, she was forced to watch while her co-workers played frisbee with it.
But she’s good at Twitter!
@JillMansell
Also by Jill Mansell
Three Amazing Things About You
The Unpredictable Consequences Of Love
Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
A Walk In The Park
To The Moon And Back
Take A Chance On Me
Rumour Has It
An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Thinking Of You
Making Your Mind Up
The One You Really Want
Falling For You
Nadia Knows Best
Staying At Daisy’s
Millie’s Fling
Good At Games
Miranda’s Big Mistake
Head Over Heels
Mixed Doubles
Perfect Timing
Fast Friends
Solo
Kiss
Sheer Mischief
Open House
Two’s Company
Praise for Jill Mansell
‘Bursting with humour, brimming with intrigue and full of characters you’ll adore – we can’t think of a better literary remedy for the gloomy last days of winter’
***** Heat
‘A heart-warming read which deals with loss, love and change’
Essentials
‘This is a warm, witty and romantic read that you won’t be able to put down’
Daily Mail
‘Mansell’s fiction is a happy leap away from the troubles of today’
Sunday Express
‘Slick, sexy, funny stories’
Daily Telegraph
‘Fast, furious and fabulous fun. To read it is to devour it’
Company
Acknowledgements
I am hugely grateful to Dr Joanna Cannon for reading this book while it was still in manuscript form, in order to reassure me that I hadn’t made any embarrassing medical errors. Thanks are also due to Dr Keir Shiels, who generously answered medical questions, and to Helen Davies for her advice on inheritance issues.
Finally, I would like to thank the inspirational Oli Lewington whose autobiography Smile Through It, about living with cystic fibrosis, was invaluable while I was writing this book. Any mistakes, needless to say, are mine alone.
Chapter 1
Now
OK, this is it, confession time. For the last two years I’ve asked all of you to tell me three things about you. And in return I’ve never told you anything about me. Which probably hasn’t seemed very fair, has it?
But it’s currently one o’clock in the morning, I’m in the back of a car being driven down to London and I’ve decided to come clean.
So here we go:
I’m twenty-eight, I have cystic fibrosis and I never actually expected to live this long.
The hospital transplant coordinator called two hours ago – they have a new pair of lungs for me.
I’ve never been so scared in my life. Also, excited. But mainly scared. Because this is a big thing that’s about to happen and since I’m a coward I can’t help picturing the worst-case scenario.
So now you know the reason for the full disclosure. Basically, if this turns out to be the final entry on the website, you’ll understand why. Needless to say, I really hope it won’t be.
One more thing. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to the wonderful family of the donor fo
r giving me this gift, this incredible chance. I’ll be grateful until the day I die and
Hallie paused, reread what she’d written and deleted the last sentence. In its place she typed: I hope you know how amazing you are. Your courage, kindness and generosity will always be remembered.
Droplets of light summer rain speckled the windscreen of the car. Hallie gazed out into the warm night as a sign saying London 25 miles loomed out of the darkness towards them and slid past. Street lamps glowed amber and houses showed only occasional lights in their windows; almost everyone at this time was asleep. Soon, though, dawn would lighten the sky, alarm clocks would wake them and they’d carry on living their normal lives without even pausing to think how miraculous their normal lives were.
Just being able to breathe in and out, that was pretty miraculous . . .
The finality of it all hit her afresh. There was still a chance, of course, that the tissue match would turn out not to be good enough and the transplant wouldn’t go ahead. Which was why she wasn’t uploading her post to the website just yet. But a few short hours from now, she could be in the operating theatre receiving another person’s lungs. And who knew what might happen after that?
How many people would read what she’d written? What would they think?
Sitting back, Hallie thought of the line she’d deleted and wished she could as easily erase the song now playing in her head. It was a great song, one that people loved to sing during karaoke sessions. Everyone always joined in enthusiastically with the chorus.
She wasn’t sure of the exact lyrics, but the last line of the chorus went something like: This could be the day that I die . . . this could be the day that I die . . .
Oh well. Seemed like her brain still had a sense of humour, at least.
Before
‘Hey, hi, how’s things? What are you up to?’
Hallie brightened at the sound of Bea’s voice. ‘You really want to know? OK, I’ll tell you. But I’m warning you now, you’re going to be so jealous.’
‘Fire away.’
‘I’m in Venice, sitting at a table outside Caffè Florian in St Mark’s Square. The sun is shining, church bells are ringing and the waiter’s just opened a bottle of ice-cold prosecco.’
‘Is the waiter handsome?’
‘What do you think? This is Venice! Of course he’s handsome. He’s giving me one of those handsome-waiter looks,’ said Hallie. ‘With his eyes.’
‘Hmm, and is he listening to you saying this?’
‘It’s fine, he doesn’t speak a word of English. I may seduce him later. He has a look of Bradley Cooper about him.’
‘Sure you don’t mean Tommy Cooper?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Are there pigeons there?’
‘Yes, loads.’
‘My mum went to St Mark’s Square once. A pigeon did a poo on her head.’
‘Lovely.’
‘She was so mad,’ said Bea. ‘She’d had her hair done specially for the trip. I wouldn’t stick around there if I were you. Get out while you can. Those Italian pigeons are evil.’
‘Fine, you’ve convinced me. I’m going to jump into my helicopter now and fly home.’
‘I think you should. Shall I come over after work this evening?’
‘That’d be good.’
‘Around seven then. See you later. Bye-eee!’
Hallie put down the phone and straightened her duvet, which had gone crooked again. She pulled herself into a more comfortable sitting position and did her best to adjust the pillows too. There was a definite art to staying in bed and not having to endlessly rearrange yourself, and she’d yet to master it. Back-arching, shoulder-stretching, bottom-wiggling and neck-tilting all played their part.
Having stretched and wriggled and got herself half sorted, Hallie looked out at the indigo sky as darkness fell. It was the week before Christmas, and multicoloured fairy lights were being switched on. From here, she had arguably the best view of the village: to the left, the high street; to the right, the River Windrush with its low stone bridge and the row of honey-coloured shops, hotels and houses on the other side of the water. She could watch everyone coming and going, keep track of people she knew, and also view the progress of tourists making their way around Carranford, the self-styled jewel in the north Cotswolds’ crown.
Not so many visitors during the winter months, of course, but still enough to keep the people-watching interesting and the tourist-friendly shops open. A coachload were currently milling around, taking endless photographs, diving in and out of shops and buying souvenirs they didn’t need, as well as Christmas presents for friends and relatives back home. By the looks of things, plenty of them would be opening a festively wrapped umbrella this year, printed with scenes of Carranford. Bea must have sold over a dozen today alone.
Eight days to Christmas. Hallie tried not to wonder if this one might be her last, basically because such thoughts were unanswerable and never helpful. Apart from anything else, the answer was always possibly.
Then again, that applied to everyone on the planet.
Banishing the question from her mind, Hallie switched on the iPad and checked her emails instead. Several more had arrived this afternoon from visitors to the website. Brilliant, something to keep her occupied until Bea turned up. Never mind wondering if this Christmas would be her last; there were far more important problems to be sorted out, like how a girl should handle the discovery that she’s inadvertently been dating twin boys, and the best way for a middle-aged man to divide his time over the festive season between his dull wife and his enthralling mistress.
Hallie had set up the website during a prolonged and particularly tedious hospital stay. Didn’t everyone enjoy reading advice columns? She always had. She loved them, and loved coming up with solutions to problems too. When the columnist neglected to mention a useful suggestion, it always killed her not to be able to jump in and add a reply of her own.
The answer to this particular dilemma had, therefore, been to create the web page and begin dispensing advice herself.
She hadn’t done it as poor-tragic-Hallie-with-the-manky-lungs-and-limited-lifespan either. This would only have inhibited questions; she’d known that from the word go. No, when people had problems in their lives, those problems were overwhelmingly important to them and everyone simply had to respect that. They certainly mustn’t feel as if they couldn’t compete with the person doling out the advice.
So she’d been anonymous from the start, and had remained so. All her readers knew was that she was female. The website was called www.threethingsaboutyou.com, and everyone writing in for advice with a dilemma was asked to include three things about themselves. Whether they chose to reveal big or small details was entirely up to them, but it was always an interesting indicator of character, and Hallie used them to more fully understand the people who were asking her to advise them.
Of course, for the first few weeks there hadn’t been any readers, nor any problems being sent in, simply because no one knew the website existed. She’d had to make up dilemmas, borrow and adapt some from old magazines and reply in her own words to people who’d never confided in her in the first place.
But before long, interest had started to grow. Thanks to the power of social networking, people slowly discovered the website and, deciding they liked it, spread the word to their friends. The number of hits steadily increased, and readers began submitting their own problems, which was good of them and freed Hallie up to spend more time researching the relevant issues and compiling the best possible answers.
Since then, the popularity of the website had continued to grow. Hallie was known to her readers as Rose, which was her middle name. Visitors to the site were welcome to contribute their own advice, but she was the one who decided whether or not it was posted. It was generally agreed that Rose’s replies were great and her rapport with the contributors second to none. She had warmth, wit and compassion, and the readers appreciated this.
Alm
ost as much as Hallie appreciated them in return.
She clicked on the first email:
Dear Rose,
I’m a fireman.
I play rugby.
I’m afraid of the dark.
I’m forty-six, married for almost twenty years, and my wife doesn’t know I like to wear women’s underwear. Well, no one does. My problem is that last week my mother-in-law took it upon herself to wash and clean my car while I was out at a works event. Being the thorough type, she took out the spare tyre in the boot and found the bra and knickers underneath.
She has now accused me of having an affair and is demanding I confess all to my wife. I know what my mother-in-law is like – she won’t rest until I do. So which do you think I should admit to being, Rose? An unfaithful husband or a transvestite? I honestly don’t know which option she’d find easier to accept.
Okaaaaay.
The second email said:
Dear Rose,
I’m ugly.
I’m fat.
I hate my life.
There’s this boy in my class and I really like him but he never looks at me. I thought it was because I wasn’t skinny enough because he seems to like only thin girls, so in October I stopped eating and now I’ve lost three stone but he still isn’t interested.
What’s wrong with me and how can I make him fall in love with me? I just want to be happy. Do you think it’ll happen if I lose more weight? Help me, Rose, I’m so miserable I just want to die. Please please tell me what to do.
Hallie’s heart went out to the desperately unhappy teenager. She would answer this one first. Poor girl, a bit of love-bombing probably wouldn’t go amiss.
Chapter 2
It was Christmas Eve, and Tasha Sykes was discovering that coming out shopping three hours before she was due at the airport possibly wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had.
But there were last-minute things she’d needed to buy, and she hadn’t expected quite so many people to be as disorganised as herself. The shops were hot and heaving, the biting cold outside was making her nose sting and her phone kept buzzing with texts from friends demanding to know why she’d left the party early last night.
