The Love Shack
Jane Costello was a newspaper journalist before she became an author, working on the
Liverpool Echo
, the
Daily Mail
, and the
Liverpool Daily Post
, where she was Editor. Jane’s first novel,
Bridesmaids
, was an instant bestseller and her subsequent novels have been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including The Melissa Nathan Award for Romantic Comedy and the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Comedy Award, which she won in 2010 with
The Nearly Weds
. Jane lives in Liverpool with her fiancé Mark and three young sons. Find out more at www.janecostello.com, and follow her on Twitter @janecostello
Also by Jane Costello
Bridesmaids
The Nearly-Weds
My Single Friend
Girl on the Run
All the Single Ladies
The Wish List
The Time of Our Lives
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Jane Costello 2015
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Jane Costello to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
PB ISBN: 978-1-47112-927-8
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47112-928-5
TPB ISBN: 978-1-47112-926-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For my fabulous bridesmaids,
Ali and Nina
Acknowledgments
This book was a joy to write, but I can’t deny it involved the odd moment – the ones all authors know about – during which I was quietly tearing out my hair. Special thanks go to Mark O’Hanlon for the reassurance, IT support, for coming up with the title and, if that wasn’t enough, for proposing marriage too. (I said yes, obviously).
Huge thanks also to my editor Clare Hey, whose insight played such a crucial role in making
The Love Shack
the book it became. It would’ve been a far poorer novel without her.
The entire team at Simon & Schuster remain a pleasure to work with – there are too many to lovely people there to mention them all but I must give a shout-out to Suzanne Baboneau, Sara-Jade Virtue, Ally Grant and Dawn Burnett. Thanks all!
One of the more challenging – and interesting – elements of this novel to write about was Dan’s job at a homeless charity. Although the charity in this book, its staff and service users, are all entirely fictional, I did spend some time shadowing the team at The Whitechapel Centre in Liverpool before I wrote it. I found such an inspiring bunch of people there, all of whom are doing vital work to help those less fortunate than most of us. I salute you all and thank you for putting up with my (probably daft) questions.
Speaking of which, thank you also to Donna Smith for putting me straight on what might happen in an armed siege (a sentence I never thought I’d find myself writing!)
Thanks also to my agent Darley Anderson and his angels, with a special mention for Clare Wallace and Mary Darby.
Thanks, as ever, to my mum and dad, Jean and Phil Wolstenholme – and (Uncle) Colin Wolstenholme for the number crunching.
And a final mention to my gorgeous children, Otis, Lucas and Isaac – love you all
lots
. x
Contents
Chapter 1
Dan
When a man loves a woman, there are moments when she’ll nudge him out of his comfort zone. Most of the time, he can live with this. He’ll man up and remind himself what she is to him: his Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
. His Patricia Arquette in
True Romance
. His Princess Fiona in
Shrek
(though somehow she never appreciates that comparison).
However, there are times when even the most temperate of men, and I consider myself among them, approach their limit.
I am standing outside a row of small cottages, set high above the River Dee in Heswall in the Wirral Peninsula. I am clutching the estate agents’ blurb that was thrust at me this morning – and which I’d shoved into the ‘man bag’ my mother bought me in her enduring quest to turn me into a metrosexual – and my limit currently feels dangerously close.
When, four months ago, my girlfriend suggested that we buy a place together, I was nothing less than keen. Gemma is the sort of woman I never thought would come along: the girl of my most pleasant dreams, my All Time Great.
But who knew that house-hunting would turn out to be the hardest thing a man could do, outside training as a Royal Marine or venturing into Next on a Saturday?
We started our quest with the old houses we both liked in the Georgian Quarter in Liverpool. ‘We could buy somewhere cheap and do it up,’ I agreed. What a hopeless, naïve fool.
That was before our chips were thoroughly pissed on, along with all hopes of cracking open the Blossom Hill. The houses in that part of the city – the ones for sale anyway – were miles out of our price range.
So we widened our search to include anywhere within a forty-minute drive from Liverpool, making the rookie error of believing this would open up a cornucopia of choice. Since then, weekends have been dominated by viewings of places it was impossible to leave without wondering whether you’d contracted typhoid from the door handles.
Things came to a head last week when we were touring a semi with a pungent nursing home fragrance and a bathroom suite the colour of bile. I was invited to inspect a converted under-stairs toilet, only to come face-to-face with the owner’s teenage grandson, mid-way through evacuating the by-products of the previous night’s takeaway.
It wasn’t just the puking teenager that did it for me. It was that there was simply nothing left that we hadn’t seen. We’d already viewed a vast spectrum of houses, starting with The Dead Certs and ending with The Dregs, and one fact was now screaming at us:
WHAT WE WANT DOESN’T EXIST.
Which I must admit, even I find hard to believe. I know we’re first-time buyers with a challenging budget, but our tick-list shouldn’t be insurmountable: nice area, two bedrooms, running water a bonus.
There is of course another issue, one I couldn’t say out loud: some houses were deemed unsuitable by Gemma for reasons that remain as mysterious and inexplicable as the construction of Stonehenge.
I’d complete the tour, optimistically anticipating her verdict about a place I couldn’t see anything wrong with, only to be told emphatically that she couldn’t see anything right about it.
It’s not often that I put my foot down. I’d flatter myself if I could list three occasions in the four years we’ve been together. But we needed a break from this, and I said so.
To my surprise, she agreed wholeheartedly. For a week and a half, life
Before Rightmove
resumed and the internet was free to exist without risk of Gemma melting it.
Then I got a phone call yesterday asking me to knock off work early to check out this place because it looks ‘completely perfect on paper’.
So here I am.
‘You’re early. Anyone would think you were starting to enjoy all this,’ she grins, clasping my hand as she stands on her tiptoes and sinks her lips into mine. She tastes of the same cherry lip balm she used to wear when we first got together. I feel a nostalgic pang of regret that this time, instead of heading back for some pleasures of the flesh, I’ve got to go and pretend I have an opinion on some bay windows.
She’s come straight from work and is in heels, a suit and is carrying her ‘statement bag’ (which I’ve now learned simply means psychotically expensive).
‘I can think of nothing more enjoyable, except perhaps plucking out my own armpit hair,’ I say.
‘It’ll be worth it if it’s
The One
. And I’ve got high hopes. I don’t know how I missed this place. It’s been on and off the market for a while, apparently. And look at the view, Dan.’
I can’t argue with the view, which stretches across rooftops, fields and trees, right down to the river and across to the Welsh hills.
We look up to see the estate agent marching towards the house, his phone at his ear. ‘There’s one and a half per cent at stake here. I don’t care if she’s a little old lady – so was the Witch of the West.’ He sees us and straightens up. ‘Gotta go.’ He slams shut the phone.
‘
Hiyyy
.’ He grabs me by the hand and pumps it up and down. Like Gemma, he’s wearing pinstripes, though his are crooked at the top as his trousers stretch violently over a pronounced belly. ‘Rich Cummins. FAB to meet you both. Day off, is it?’
‘No, I . . .’ I glance down at my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, which might breach the dress code in some workplaces, but not mine.
‘Pah. Five years ago you’d have been sacked for not wearing a tie, and now look. Standards, eh?’ Gemma stifles a smile. ‘KIDDING! Right. This . . . is Pebble Cottage.’ He presents the house to us with a flourish of his arm, like a magician’s assistant after sawing someone in half. Then he opens up.
The hall is small but bright and overwhelmed by the kind of junk only women buy: candle-holders, key hooks, picture frames that are battered (deliberately).
We enter a living room that’s been decorated by someone who knows what they’re doing. It has a cast-iron fireplace, lots of books, pale walls, a faintly ethnic rug. On the mantelpiece, there’s a single picture – of three women in their late twenties in front of the Sydney Opera House – and gaps where it looks as though others once were.
It’s a nice gaff. At least, I think so.
I glance at Gemma as she runs a finger along the window-frame with her Bad Cop face on. She’s worn this expression at every viewing since her friend Allie confided that she had paid more than necessary for her house because she failed to hide how keen she was.
The estate agent claps his hands together. ‘I should warn you that this property is
blindingly
popular.’
‘Um . . . why’s it still for sale then?’ Gemma asks. He responds with an odd little laugh, as if she’s told a joke he doesn’t quite get.
‘There’s no chain in this sale – the owners are moving out this weekend. The schools here are UH-MAZ-ING . . .’
‘We don’t have kids,’ Gemma tells him.
