Starting Over at Acorn Cottage Read online

  Also by Kate Forster

  The Sisters

  STARTING OVER AT ACORN COTTAGE

  Kate Forster

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Kate Forster, 2020

  The moral right of Kate Forster to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788544382

  Cover design: Charlotte Abrams Simpson

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Spring

  Chapter 1

  Summer

  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

  Early Winter

  Chapter 57

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Become an Aria Addict

  For my grandmothers.

  Thank you to Marjorie for seeing something in me that others did not.

  Thank you to Jean for the last conversation we had where everything finally made sense.

  Spring

  1

  Clara Maxwell’s love life was in the bin. The whole thing. Every card, letter, note and photo of her and Giles was now into the rubbish. Mostly it was she who had penned the notes and cards and held the phone out for the selfies but she had excused Giles for his lack of romantic gestures as he was so reliable in other ways, like putting the toilet seat down or putting the bins out – which is where the last vestiges of their relationship now lived.

  As Clara tripped over a box in the living room, she wondered why she thought him doing the most basic of tasks in their relationship was a romantic gesture. Why had she thought him doing the basics in life was something to celebrate? She would give credit where credit was due, but she wasn’t about to applaud a dog for barking.

  Clara’s mum had once said to her that women settled for average men because very few were spectacular. But when they had a taste of the spectacular, they realised they could never go back. The best in life was often troublesome because it made you yearn for more and women who yearned for more were considered nags or troublesome, or – the worst insult – high-maintenance.

  Once Clara had been upgraded on a flight from Berlin to back to London from a work trip. Everything about the flight was so wonderful, from the blankets to the way the airline hostess had offered a selection of international magazines to the perfect chicken salad and chilled Chablis that she was served, that Clara had never wanted to turn right in a plane again.

  Perhaps that’s what Giles had felt when he had sex with her best friend. That Judy was first-class and Clara was a stale muffin and a can of Sprite up the back near the toilets.

  Now as she ripped the photos from their fridge and shoved them in the rubbish, she wondered why he had stayed if he was so unhappy with her. Why did he stay and pretend to be with her when he was skulking around with Judy? Clara could never understand why anyone would stay anywhere they weren’t happy. She had seen what lingering in an unhappy relationship could do to a person.

  Clara threw her collection of Learn to Craft magazines into the garbage bag and swallowed back her tears. Two years of a relationship down the drain. Two years of investing in something with no return. Their relationship was a bad loan and Giles was a dud product.

  Picking up the last of her paperback novels and cookery books, Clara shoved them into the large rubbish bag. She looked around the apartment they had shared for the past eleven months. Most of her things had been packed and were already on the van, and she had taken great pleasure in leaving Giles with the bare essentials.

  One knife.

  One spoon.

  One fork.

  One plate.

  One cup.

  One glass.

  One towel.

  One roll of loo paper.

  She knew it was petty but sometimes petty was the only answer a person had in the face of extreme humiliation, and that was what she felt. A red-hot shame flushed from her toes to her scalp when she thought about the duplicitous behaviour of the two people who were supposed to love her.

  Clara picked up the file that had all their shared paperwork in it for the flat and their savings account. She had loved this little flat they had rented while they supposedly saved for their dream house, but she seemed to be the only one who contributed to the savings account. Giles always had an emergency expense such a golf club membership or a work function ticket or something last-minute that meant he couldn’t put money into the account each month.

  Clara had supplied everything in the flat they shared and had decorated it, so it was cosy, thanks to her touches of soft throw rugs and houseplants. She had tried to create a home for them and instead Giles had created an affair, with her best friend, Judy.

  Judy, who had always been the more interesting friend while Clara was the sensible one. Judy, who was a feminist pole dancer and who made her own scented candles and owned cats named Dali and Gala. Judy, who was tall and lithe and blonde (thanks to a bottle of Nordic Mystery peroxide) and had tattoos of climbing roses on her chest. Judy, who was the exact opposite of Clara.

  Clara was what her grandmother used to call old-fashioned pretty. Dark bobbed hair, big eyes and bow-shaped lips, but short at just over five foot and with a tiny waist but curvy elsewhere. People told her she was cute, which made her feel angry, as though she was a kewpie doll, so she strived to annul this assumption by being
business-like in her life. She had a finance degree. One of the youngest and few female bank managers at her bank, and very good with money, Clara never did anything that was a real risk. She always bought tickets early to events, she had insurance for everything – including a very good life insurance policy that Giles would have benefitted from if she popped her clogs early – and she kept receipts for everything she ever bought, just in case she had to return it. She wished she could return Giles and Judy.

  More like Piles and Judas, she thought, as she put her Learn to Knit books into the bin bag and tied it off at the top and threw her River Cottage Cookbook that Giles had given her into the actual bin.

  How could her best friend and boyfriend have betrayed her? She wiped away the tears that hadn’t seemed to stop falling since the dinner four weeks ago. Why hadn’t she seen the signs? No real intimacy. No real connection. No real love. But then again, Giles had not been into sex even before they moved in with each other, and Clara was tired from her job at the bank, so they were like housemates: polite and respectful, but with no passion. But Giles was stable, a sensible accountant; he would be reliable for life. And with her best friend, who was now dancing on his pole. God, Clara hated her.

  Clara had always tried to be what she thought was a responsible, sensible adult. The business degree, the savings account, the accountant boyfriend who didn’t drink or swear, the most sensible man she had ever met, so far removed from her own father – she was so sure she had chosen well.

  Judy was her best friend because Judy had said so – and Clara agreed because she didn’t have time for friends. Judy had sort of pushed her way into Clara’s life a few years ago when she came for a loan at the bank for a mobile pole dancing service. Clara declined the opportunity for the bank to invest in Judy’s Pole Dancer on the Move bus, but Judy still pursued the friendship.

  Giles had always said Judy was a flake and she was pretentious. He’d also said she was a slut, and Clara had told him off for that because having sex didn’t make you a slut. He’d always made fun of Judy’s pole dancing career and told Clara off when she loaned Judy money as a friend, not as a bank manager. Not that it was ever paid back, as Judy was always in some sort of financial and emotional crisis. It seemed to be her default position. But mostly Clara had felt sorry for Judy. She was always wanting something that other people had. A dress, a necklace, a handbag, a boyfriend.

  For three months Judy had been telling Clara to leave Giles after she confided that she would have liked more connection, more conversation and now she knew why. Judas was getting Giles’s love and Clara had the privilege of cooking him dinner.

  And that was ultimately how she found out.

  She’d found her Tupperware container – the one she had filled with cottage pie and given Giles for his ‘weekend away with the lads’ – at Judy’s house. It wasn’t any old Tupperware container. It had her name underneath it, written in marker, with the orange lid and a tiny burn mark on the corner of it from once being too close to the hotplate. Judy had never cooked a cottage pie in her life; her hapless on and off boyfriend, Petey, did everything for her.

  Clara had found the evidence in Judy’s kitchen while looking for a bowl for nuts, and she had wanted to put Giles’s nuts in the container there and then.

  ‘Why is this here?’ she’d asked Giles and Judy and Petey at their monthly Food of the World Dinner. The dinners had started as a joke when Clara had received a sushi making kit from Giles and she made so much sushi that she had to invite Judy and whatever boyfriend she had at the time to eat it. The dinner turned into a thing and now they were eating their way around the world. Except that night was Italian, which Judy always resorted to when she was lazy or pressed for time, which was often. Clara knew the lasagne was a store-bought one, shoved into a glass lasagne dish that she knew was hers and Judy hadn’t yet returned. Judy seemed to have a habit of doing that. Clara had waved the Tupperware container at the audience eating their soggy dinner.

  ‘You said you took this to Cornwall,’ Clara had said to Giles.

  ‘I did,’ Giles had answered but she saw the red flush rise up his neck that was his tell when they played Scrabble and he had a good word.

  ‘But you didn’t because it’s here,’ she’d said calmly. ‘You were on the lads’ weekend last month, and Petey, where were you on the weekend of the 5th?’ She was starting to feel like Hercule Poirot but in a less smug way and more of a ‘my boyfriend is cheating’ way.

  Petey had looked worried. ‘I was at a conference in Guilford.’ He had turned to Judy. ‘You said you couldn’t come because you had to help Clara with cleaning out her mum’s house. You told me how messy the house was when I came back, and that Clara’s mum must have been off her rocker from the medication.’

  Clara had gasped at this comment because while Lillian, her mother, was off her rocker from the morphine for the cancer, only Clara could say so about her mother and she was furious that Judy had used her in her lies.

  Sure, maybe her mother was a little strange with her organic composting and worm farm and the papier mâché seed pod coffin she was making for her own funeral but only Clara had the right to say that. Now her mother was gone, so the betrayal of Giles and Judy was even more painful.

  ‘You used my dead mother in your lies?’ she had asked Judy. This was worse than the betrayal of cheating with her boyfriend. Judy knew what her mum had meant to her, and while her best friend didn’t know everything about her mum she knew more than most, even more than Giles.

  Giles hadn’t said a word, and then Petey had taken on the role of Poirot.

  ‘So, you didn’t help Clara then, Judy? What did you do?’ Petey’s mouth had opened and shut like a fish gasping for water.

  Clara had lost her temper then.

  ‘Oh, do catch up, Petey, she and Giles are having an affair, and eating my cottage pie, and lying to us both,’ she had yelled.

  And she had seen Giles’s hand reach across the table to Judy’s, who had smiled at him in a sickening manner.

  ‘We’re in love,’ he had said to her as though she was missing out on something wonderful, and that was when she had thrown the breadstick from the table at him, knocking over the wine, knocking over the candle, which set fire to the whole evening. She left with her Tupperware and what little of her dignity was in the bottom of the container.

  And now she had thrown her whole life into the bin including her job. She had cashed in her life savings and bought a cottage in some tiny village called Merryknowe, which consisted of a post office, some depressing-looking tearooms with a little bakery attached, and a pub and a few other ragtag shops. She had bought the cottage on a whim, fulfilling her retirement dream about fifty years early.

  Clara had always dreamed of living a simple life. Jam-making, knitting, having a garden and pottering about while she was waiting for the bread to rise.

  It was what she and Giles had talked about. They would look at photos online of houses for sale and discuss their plans, both working hard saving money for the dream.

  Now she was the owner of a small thatched cottage, almost untouched except for a kitchen and bathroom that looked like they were last updated in the 1950s.

  It had a sagging gate, but it also had garden beds and enough land for her to fulfil her vision of her own quiet life. Except it was supposed to be with Mother, and then she died. So, it was supposed to be with Giles. Where their grandchildren would come and visit them, and she would have taken up a craft and would finally learn how to bake and Giles would maybe chop wood and tie the tomatoes up on perfect tee-pee stakes.

  ‘Too many episodes of Escape to the Country while drinking wine,’ her work friends had told her after she shared the news that she was the new owner of Acorn Cottage.

  Clara couldn’t disagree with the dig about either the wine or the TV show. She loved to change into her stretchy clothes, pour a glass of wine and watch the show, deciding which perfect cottage she and Giles would have chosen if they were
on the show. It was a habit she had enjoyed with her mum before she died and then shared with Giles. Except they never bought a house on the show but the news from Piles and Judas, and the added information that Petey had moved out and Piles would stay there until Clara had left, stirred her into action to buy – especially after a bottle of plonk from the shop on the corner. She found the cottage online, emailed the agent matching the offer and it was accepted within an hour.

  She didn’t ask to see it and she didn’t tell Piles about it either. She wanted to be away from him, Judas and everyone else who knew and looked at her like she was a complete idiot.

  God, she was furious, she thought as she pulled the last of her underwear out of the drawer in the bedroom. She found the black lace teddy she had bought but never worn, the pink satin knickers with bows on the sides for easy removal, and the gorgeous coffee-coloured bra, which looked beautiful on, but she had been saving to wear. Saving for what? For who? She hadn’t even put them on for Giles.

  Instead, she had worn the old knickers and bras, the ones that forwent style for comfort. Giles hadn’t looked at her anymore and she hadn’t tried to seduce him. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted him any more than he had wanted her.

  She stood, holding the lingerie with the tags still on them, and then shoved them into her overstuffed handbag.

  She was starting her new life as soon as she had packed everything she owned and would soon be driving to the village of Merryknowe.

  The letter of resignation had been accepted by the bank and, after cashing in her investments and taking the money her mother had left her, she had enough to renovate the cottage and to keep her going for a while until she found what she wanted to do.

  She was a good bank manager but she worried about some of the people whose loans were approved by Head Office. When she brought up the ethical problem she was told, ‘Don’t worry about.’ The powers that be said to her, ‘Let a different department look after it.’

  But Clara had worried about the people who had taken the loans for things they couldn’t afford and then rang her office asking for help in repaying the money.