The Many Colours of Us: The perfect heart-warming debut about love and family. Rachel Burton
Chapter 29
The house in Campden Hill Road, W8 is based on a real house which, during the 1980s and 1990s was owned by friends of my parents. During my teenage years that was the house from which I first learned Philadelphia Simmonds’ art of retail therapy, where I first heard Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where I first read Bleak House. In a way Julia was born in that house. I’m glad she finally came out to play.
Firstly, a big thank you to everyone at HQ for picking my book out of the slush pile and making a childhood dream come true on a train between Bristol and Bridgwater one cold November afternoon. Particular thanks to my editors, Victoria and Hannah, for being able to understand what’s going on in my brain better than me.
To Cesca Major, who read a very early draft of The Many Colours of Us and encouraged me to go on and to “make the solicitor hotter”. I hope Edwin lives up to your expectations!
To Jo Murray-Dry, without her encouragement and relentless nagging this book would probably still be sitting on my hard drive, lonely and unread.
To Andy Cowan for explaining, in words of one syllable so even I could understand, the purpose and structure of a synopsis.
To Hayley Webster for long chats about Bert the Chimney Sweep.
To Ian Mountford for coming up with Creamadelica – probably best not to know where that came from but most welcome!
To Caroline, Rachel and Gillian – the probate team at Birketts LLP in Cambridge. It was a joy to work with you for six months and thank you for answering all my weird probate questions without actually knowing they were going in a book. Any mistakes are entirely of my own making. The probate process, especially in an estate the size of Bruce Baldwin’s is desperately slow and I have sped it up considerably to maintain the pace of the narrative.
To everyone on Twitter who has ever offered me words of encouragement when I thought I would never get to type “The End”. There are way too many of you to mention but you know who you are.
To my mum and dad, who always taught me you can do anything you want if you just work hard enough. My mum died the day after I finally typed “The End” and never got to read the final version, but without her encouragement I’d never had written the beginning.
And last, but certainly not least, to my beloved Drew. Thank you for feeding me, cleaning the house and looking after the cats while I lived in an imaginary world all summer. And thank you for answering me seriously every time I asked the question; ‘What would Edwin Jones do?’
To Mum, Liz, Nana – shine on crazy diamonds
6th June 2001
My dearest daughter,
And so, you are eighteen.
I wish I could see you and tell you how proud I am of you. I wish I could tell you how excited I was when I heard that you’d been offered a place at Cambridge. I wish I could be with you when you open your A Level results. I wish I could see the look on your face when you get the grades I know you deserve.
I saw you the other day, my beautiful girl, walking down Kensington High Street laughing with a friend. Tall and tanned, dark hair tumbling down your back. You looked so carefree, so happy, as though nothing could touch you. You looked exactly like your mother used to, when I first met her.
Sometimes, though, when the light catches you in a certain way, you have a look of me about you, as though a wisp of the young man I used to be lives on within you, looking out for you.
I want to remind you, now you are all grown up, that your mother has always loved you too. Life hasn’t been kind to her; or rather the life she chose hasn’t been as kind to her as she’d hoped. She had to give up a lot when she had you, and everything she did, she did because she was trying to do the right thing by you. I hope one day, when you hear the truth, you will be able to forgive her. Forgive us both.
This will be the last letter I write to you. I hope she will let you read this one. I hope she will let you ask questions and hear the story you need to hear. The story of you. And if she doesn’t I hope that one day you will get curious, wonder where you came from and come and find me.
Until that time, I wish you nothing but happiness in everything you do. Study hard but play hard too. Life is short and you never know what tomorrow might bring.
Despite everything I have always loved you and always will.
Happy Birthday, Princess.
Your Father
From: [email protected]
Sent: Thur, 06 Jun 2013 at 18.32
Subject: Re: Inheritance – Private & Confidential
Dear Ms Simmonds
Thank you for your email of yesterday’s date.
It is important that we meet as soon as possible to discuss the matter of your recent inheritance further and I suggest a meeting at 2.30 p.m. on Monday 10th June 2013 at my offices as detailed below.
Please ask for me at reception.
I look forward to meeting you.
Regards
Edwin Jones
Partner
Jones & Cartwright Solicitors, 55 Park Lane, London
‘I’m Julia Simmonds,’ I say, as I walk up to the reception desk at Jones & Cartwright Solicitors. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Edwin Jones.’
‘Take a seat,’ the woman behind the desk replies. She has steel-grey hair and a stern expression and peers at me over half-moon glasses. ‘Mr Jones will be down shortly.’
I perch on the edge of a big brown leather sofa. It’s so old and worn out it looks as though it will swallow me up if I sit on it properly. I’m sweating already and I can feel my hair curling around my temples. The weather forecast said that today will be the hottest June day since records began. There is no air-conditioning in Jones & Cartwright.