The Wish: The most heart-warming feel-good read you need in 2018. Alex Brown
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HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018
Copyright © Alexandra Brown 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com
Alexandra Brown 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 e-book 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008206697
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008206710
Version: 2018-08-17
For all of you, my magnificent readers,
with luck & love xxx
‘If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain’
DOLLY PARTON
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Alex Brown
About the Publisher
Tindledale 1976
As the hot evening air furled around their bare bodies hidden among the medley of wild flowers in the meadow, the two young lovers lingered for one last kiss before parting and hurriedly pulling their clothes back on.
‘We can’t carry on like this,’ the man murmured, catching a frond of the woman’s wavy blonde hair and twiddling it between his fingers. Nuzzling the side of her neck, he drew in the sweet, sultry scent of her new Blasé perfume, knowing that, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t seem to resist her. And it had been this way since the very first time he had caught sight of her, when he’d started at the senior school in nearby Market Briar. Thirteen years old and pulsing with teenage boy hormones, he had fallen for her beguiling ways, the teasing, lingering looks, letting him think he was in with a chance, when all the while he never was. Not really. He knew that now. But that had made him want her all the more, so when she had eventually given him a kiss behind the old abandoned caravan in the Tindledale Station car park, he had thought he’d died and gone to heaven … and he had been kept dangling, trapped in the never-ending cycle of lust and loathing ever since. Simply unable to resist coming back for more whenever she wished.
‘Why not?’ she pouted and pulled her hair away from his fingers before pushing it back over her shoulders. After slipping her clogs on, she dashed over to the layby to retrieve a packet of Player’s cigarettes from the glove box of a coffee-coloured Ford Cortina.
‘You know why …’ he started, swiftly swiping the Afghan coat that they had been lying on out of the grass and going after her, vowing to call it a day. He lifted her wrist and traced his thumb over the big, shiny engagement ring on her finger. ‘You’re getting married.’
She snatched her hand away and flipped open the Zippo lighter, sucking on the cigarette until the tip sizzled and glowed flame red. ‘And you’re not! So stop worrying.’
She made a circle shape in the air with the cigarette before blowing a couple of smoke rings into his face. ‘We’re having fun, aren’t we?’ She handed him the cigarette and he managed a couple of puffs before she gestured to get it back.
‘Sure,’ he shrugged, slinging the coat onto the back seat of the car before pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his flared jeans. ‘But—’
‘No buts! Come on, why spoil the moment?’ They stood in silence,