Hello, Again
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Synopsis
Philippa Taylor (Pepper to her friends) has big dreams. When she closes her eyes, she can picture exactly who she ought to be. The problem is, it's about as far away from her real life in a small coastal town in Suffolk as she can imagine.
So when her elderly friend Josephine persuades Pepper to accompany her on a trip to Europe, she jumps at the chance to change her routine. And when Pepper bumps (literally) into the handsome Finn in Lisbon, it seems as though she might have finally found what she's been looking for.
But Pepper know all too well things are rarely as they seem. Her own quiet life hides a dark secret from the past. And even though she and Finn may have been destined to find each other, Pepper suspects life may have other plans as to how the story should end.
A romantic and sweeping story about friendship, love and realising that sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination.
(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Release date: June 4, 2020
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 320
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Hello, Again
Isabelle Broom
Pepper Taylor visited her mother at the same time every Tuesday.
It was part of her routine, something she had done for a long time, without question.
Today, however, everything felt different. Because this particular Tuesday should have been her sister’s thirtieth birthday.
Bethan had been dead for almost twenty-three years now, and while the anniversary of her accident was always a difficult day, in some ways Pepper found birthdays the hardest of all.
She was not the only one.
‘Hello, Mum.’
Her mother always opened the door with the chain still fastened, and now she squinted at Pepper through the gap, apparently surprised to see her.
‘Oh,’ she said wearily. ‘Is it that time already?’
‘I brought cheese straws.’ Pepper held up a Tupperware box. ‘Baked them this morning.’
There was a pause as the door was closed and the chain removed. Pepper heard the soft patting sound of her mother’s slippers against the plastic hallway runner and wondered, not for the first time, why she didn’t just get rid of it. Once upon a time, it had served as a barrier between the muddy soles of her children’s shoes and the carpet, but now all it did was serve as a reminder that one of those children was gone, while the other was old enough to wipe their feet on the mat outside. Pepper had asked the question a few years previously, only to have her words waved vaguely away.
‘You know I prefer things spick and span,’ her mother had said airily, running an eye over the paint-stained shirt and leggings that Pepper had been wearing at the time.
While Pepper was by no means fastidious when it came to her home or her appearance, she was very particular about her work, and so she had let the matter slide. She had learnt over the years that it was easier to accept her mother’s foibles than attempt to change them, and now, to keep her happy, Pepper abandoned her tatty pumps by the door and ventured barefoot towards the kitchen.
She knew her mother must know what day it was, and how significant a year, but neither of them raised the subject of Bethan. Pepper watched on in silence as her mother made tea, humming faintly as she opened first the fridge, then the cutlery drawer. Her hair, once ash blonde like Pepper’s, was fine and silvery now, and she kept it cut short and neat around her face. Everything about her mother was unobtrusive; she dressed in mostly creams, whites and the palest blues, her nails clean, her make-up immaculate yet understated. Pepper, who favoured bold prints and colourful patterns, and never left the house without a slick of bright-red lipstick, often felt almost garish by comparison.
‘Shall we sit in the conservatory?’ her mother asked, and Pepper nodded. The small, glass-walled room was a relatively new addition to the house, and as such it always felt less oppressive somehow. There were no memories lingering in there, no traps liable to snap.
Pepper waited for her mother to sit first, then settled herself into the squashy wicker-framed chair opposite and brought her knees up under her chin. The weather had been unable to make up its mind all day, and the sky beyond the windows was the same sullen grey as a pigeon’s wing. It felt to Pepper as if spring was taking an awfully long time to arrive, and she said as much to her mother, who muttered something back about her daffodils having bloomed later than expected.
‘How’s work?’ they asked in unison, and Pepper braved a tentative smile.
‘You go first,’ she said.
‘Oh, you know,’ her mother said with a sigh. ‘Busy. Mr Patel retired last week, so we organised a small send-off. Just some party food and fruit punch, nothing too extravagant.’
‘Party food, eh?’ Pepper sipped her tea. ‘I thought dentists frowned upon anything sugary.’
The corners of her mother’s mouth did not so much as flicker.
‘Business is good,’ Pepper went on, when her mother said nothing further. ‘I’m getting regular bookings in London now, plus a slew of children’s parties. Oh, and did I tell you I’d branched out into candle-making?’
The clock in the kitchen chimed the hour.
‘Well,’ Pepper continued, ‘people kept asking about it, so I thought I’d best supply their demand. I’m hosting the first session at my studio in a fortnight, if you fancied joining in?’
Nothing. Her mother was staring hard at a point on the wooden floor, not listening.
‘Or instead, we could dye our hair purple, put tutus on over our normal clothes and dance along Aldeburgh high street reciting Wee Willie Winkie? What do you think?’
‘I see.’ Her mother did not look up. ‘Lovely. Well done you.’
Pepper fought hard not to sigh. She knew her mother didn’t mean to ignore her; it was more a symptom of her perpetual misery. She could not work up enough energy to engage, and it had been years now since she had pretended to try. To distract herself, Pepper dived into the cheese straws, cupping her spare hand under her chin so as not to drop flaky pastry crumbs.
‘Have you spoken to Dad lately?’ she asked between mouthfuls. This, at last, caught her mother’s attention and she looked up sharply.
‘Martin? No. Why? Should I have?’
Pepper had spoken to her father that morning. He had remembered the day, of course, had called to check that she was OK, to chat about Bethan for a time, share some stories.
‘I just thought that he––’ Pepper stopped abruptly when she saw the heat beginning to rise in her mother’s cheeks.
‘Never mind. Forget I mentioned him. Are you done with that tea? I can make us another cup, if you like. Or a pot? Why don’t we have a pot?’
Anything to escape the suffocating tension that had descended.
Pepper hurried back into the house, her heart battering against her chest, only letting go of the breath she had been holding in when the kettle began to boil, soothing her with its familiar sound. She was thirty-six years old, but still scared of her mother, too timid to pull at the threads of the past or stray into a conversation that she knew would cause upset. She had thought that today of all days the two of them might have found a way to talk about her sister, but it was clear now that the topic of Bethan was not only off the table but swept neatly under the rug beneath it.
When she returned to the conservatory a few minutes later, she found her mother distractedly picking dead leaves off a potted fern, the remains of one of Pepper’s homemade cheese straws on a plate beside her.
‘Are you busy on Saturday?’ Pepper asked, putting down the teapot.
Her mother glanced up, arched a questioning brow.
‘There’s a big fête happening over at The Maltings – that care home on the outskirts of town, where I go and volunteer sometimes.’
‘I thought you volunteered at the RSPCA shop?’ her mother countered.
‘I do,’ Pepper said. ‘But that’s only every other Monday. And The Maltings is far more fun – I do art and crafting sessions with some of the residents, help out with lunch, that sort of thing. Some of them are only young, and it’s––’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do Saturday.’ Her mother went back to pruning. ‘Perhaps another time.’
‘Please come.’ Pepper curled her bare toes. ‘I’m hosting a bric-a-brac stall and you know how terrible I am at maths. I’ll end up giving people the wrong change.’
For a moment, she thought her bait had actually worked. Her mother had stood, a look of agency on her face, and promptly wandered off in the direction of the hallway. Pepper heard the creak of the banister, then another of the floorboards upstairs. It was always so quiet in this house, so different from Pepper’s home, where the radio was barely off and the television chatted late into the night. She was overcome suddenly by an urge to scream and had to stuff her fist into her mouth to stop herself, removing it just as her mother came back into the room.
‘Here,’ she said, handing Pepper a large cardboard box. ‘This was all in the attic. I only just got around to having the ladder fixed. You know it’s been broken since your father–– Well, it’s probably no good to anyone, but perhaps you could take a look through, sell anything you don’t want at the fête?’
‘Thanks.’ Pepper shook the box gently and heard a clunk. When she went to prise open the lid, however, her mother raised a hand.
‘No. Open it later,’ she said quickly, gesturing around. ‘The dust will go everywhere, and I only just polished in here.’
‘OK.’ Pepper frowned. ‘But what’s in there? Surely you can tell me that?’
She studied her mother’s expression, watched as her pale eyes flickered with discomfort.
‘Some clothes,’ she said snippily, sitting down and turning her attention back to her plant. ‘Toys, books – that sort of thing.’
‘Oh.’ Intrigue inflated like a bubble inside Pepper’s chest. ‘My old stuff?’
‘Some,’ her mother replied, through what sounded suspiciously like clenched teeth.
Pepper moved the box from side to side, thinking.
‘Mum?’ she began, her voice small. ‘Is this? Are they? Beth––’
‘Please, Philippa.’ Her mother shot her a warning look.
‘Just take the box and go.’
Chapter 2
Taking the beach route was neither the quickest nor easiest way for Pepper to get home, but she turned off the high street regardless, blinking as the blustery wind picked up strands of her hair and flattened them across her cheeks. Agitated gulls were picking their way over the pebbles, as restless as the sea that was swirling and frothing below them, and in the far distance, she could just make out the shape of a man walking his dog.
Pepper put down the cardboard box and contemplated the murky water. It was not quite brown, not quite blue, not quite grey – as if all the painters of the world had used it to rinse off their brushes. She had always seen the world in this way, always strived to find the familiar in the new, or the magic in the mundane. There had been occasions in Pepper’s past where she saw her artistic nature as a curse, but not even that had stopped her from pursuing a career where she was able to indulge in all things creative. Although it was not the dream she had set out to achieve, Pepper was still proud of her little teaching business, Arts For All, and for the most part, she found it both satisfying and rewarding.
She enjoyed meeting people, inviting them into the studio at the end of her garden to learn a new skill, make a new friend or two, then go home with something beautiful they had created, something they could display or give away as a gift. Solitude was the enemy of creativity, and Pepper did anything she could to avoid it, to shield herself from loneliness.
Aldeburgh was one of Suffolk’s more beautiful towns, but it was also one that people left behind. Pepper had watched each of her school friends move away in turn, be it for a job or a relationship, and as time had ticked by, the bonds between them had started to fray. For Pepper, the whispers of the past had always been more insistent than the beckoning hand of the future, and so she stayed where she was, bound by a mixture of duty and fear.
The next gust of wind felt as if it had passed right through her, and she shivered, cursing the lacklustre April weather as she retrieved the box from the ground. Pepper didn’t stop again until she reached the wooden bench in the sheltered courtyard not far from the fishmongers’ huts. It was too early in the season for any of the vendors to bother opening, but there was still enough ripeness in the air to wrinkle her nose. The fresh catch of the day carried a scent that settled into cracks, submerged underneath layers of damp wood and burrowed into plaster and stone – yet she found it oddly comforting. It was the smell of home, of growing up, of long summer days chasing Bethan across the stones, of chips wrapped in newspaper that stained your fingers, of a time when their family was still together, still intact, not broken by tragedy, the pieces scattered and muddled, the picture of happiness destroyed.
It felt right to be here today, even if the memories were making Pepper feel increasingly melancholy. In a bid to distract her mind, she decided to have a look through the box now, rather than waiting until she was home, and slid a hand under the cardboard flap to open it. Inside, she found a plastic Care Bear with a single tuft of pink hair, a metal Slinky twisted into a thousand knots, and a crude drawing of four people with arms dangling out from where their ears should be, oversized feet and huge, wide-apart eyes. There was an ancient bottle of bubbles, its lid stuck fast, a light-up yo-yo that needed new batteries, a deformed-looking teddy that had been washed one time too many, a battered piggybank, a whistle on a string and a My Little Pony purse. It was all rubbish, yet precious – each item a memory of a made-up game, a shared giggle, an imagination permitted to flourish without constraint. Some of the things had been Pepper’s, but many had been Bethan’s – the sketch, the bubbles, the bear.
As she took out each object in turn, Pepper was reminded of how much her younger sibling had begged to play with her toys, had wanted to be grown up enough to have her own Barbie doll, or her own set of smart pastels instead of crayons, and wished she had given in.
Right at the bottom, tucked underneath a Get Along Gang Montgomery Moose doll and a toy barn that mooed when you opened the doors, Pepper discovered her and Bethan’s Book of the World and exclaimed in delight.
This had been their favourite, the one they had pored over together in their tent of many sofa cushions. Pepper felt her eyes fill with tears as she began flicking through, remembering how her sister had asked her to read it to her again and again, to tell her the story of Tutankhamun and the Egyptian Pyramids, of Mount Everest and the South Pole. They had folded down the corners of all the pages bearing countries they wanted to visit, then turned to the world map at the back and charted their course with a finger, soaring across from England to France to Spain to Greece to Africa to China to New Zealand. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten about this book, about their plans, about that intrepid need the two of them had shared for adventure.
All this time, all these years later, and Pepper had not gone on a single trip.
Shame coloured her cheeks, the compulsion to cry suddenly so strong that she felt compelled to stand up again and move, get herself back to her cottage before her emotions had the chance to overtake her. When she emerged from the courtyard, however, Pepper saw someone she recognised on the beach. The older woman was set up in front of an easel that was wobbling precariously on spindly legs, her body mostly concealed beneath an acid-green coat that would make even a colour-blind person baulk.
As Pepper dithered on the spot, deciding whether to say hello or tiptoe past, her friend stood up and began to pack away her things, only to stagger to the side and fall over.
‘Josephine – are you OK?’ Pepper was by her side in an instant.
Ditching the box, she crouched down and wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders, feeling the sharp edge of a jutting collarbone through the coat.
‘Oops,’ proclaimed Josephine in amusement. ‘What a prize pillock I am.’
Although she had followed this up with a bark of laughter, Pepper noticed that she was trembling.
‘Don’t try to stand,’ she soothed. ‘Give yourself a moment.’
Josephine had dropped her bag as she fell, so Pepper scooped up the scattered belongings. As well as pastels, a stick of charcoal and an old rag that smelt deliciously of turps, there was also a miniature set of paints, complete with tiny brushes.
‘Oh, don’t worry about the picture,’ the woman said, as her sketch book was blown open by another gust of wind. ‘Utter tosh – only good for the fire.’
‘I think it’s beautiful,’ Pepper told her honestly, running a practised eye over the faint lines and daubs of grey and blue. ‘Very atmospheric.’
‘Poppycock!’ came the retort. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind helping me up.’
Pepper stood first, then slowly levered Josephine back to her feet, noting the lines of exhaustion on her friend’s face.
‘Do you think you should see a doctor?’ she asked.
‘Good Lord, no!’
‘Sorry.’ Pepper was contrite. ‘I just thought––’
‘No, I don’t want a fuss, darling. Doctors these days have enough whingers to deal with.’
‘Hmm.’ Pepper eyed her with disapproval. ‘Will you at least let me walk you home?’
‘I will do you one better than that,’ replied Josephine, her blue eyes full of mischief as Pepper folded the easel and lay it across the top of the box.
‘Ready? Righto – follow me.’
Chapter 3
Josephine Hurley had swept into Pepper’s life for the first time the previous summer, when the two of them had ended up on adjacent seats of a rail replacement bus. Unlike most of the other passengers, who were chuntering grumpily about ‘the state of the trains these days’, Josephine had clapped her hands together and proclaimed it ‘an adventure’.
After telling Pepper her name, adding mischievously ‘I longed to shorten it to Fifi when I was in my teens, but my father said people would assume I was a go-go dancer’, she explained that she had only recently moved to Suffolk from London, having sold her home following the death of her husband.
‘It was far too large for one old biddy,’ she had remarked dismissively. ‘I would finish cleaning one damn room, then discover cobwebs had gathered in the next.’
By the time they had reached their stop, Pepper had deduced that not only was this whirling dervish of a woman demonstrably sharp of wit, she was also one of those refreshing souls who say exactly what is on their mind as soon as it occurs to them.
‘If it was up to me, I would have carried on working until I dropped dead,’ she had told Pepper of her successful public relations company. ‘But I was overruled by the offspring. Do you have any children?’ Then, when Pepper shook her head. ‘Very wise – they spend the first half of their lives ignoring most of everything you tell them to do, then the latter half complaining that you never gave them the right guidance.’
As well as being in firm agreement about the merits of Pepper’s home county, they found that many of their likes and dislikes were similar, too, and Josephine had clasped her hands together in delight when she found out what her new friend did for a living. She was an ardent fan of both arts and crafts, she told Pepper. ‘But certainly not a practitioner – I have less creative prowess than frogspawn.’
Clearly, however, that was not the whole truth, and Pepper said as much as they settled in at a cosy corner table in the Turbot pub on the high street.
‘You told me when we met that a stickman would be a stretch,’ she said. ‘But from what I just saw down on the beach, you have some real talent.’
‘Hogwash,’ Josephine replied, reaching for her gin and tonic. ‘If you must know, the easel was just a decoy – an excuse to sit and stare out at the water for a while. It’s therapeutic, don’t you agree?’ Josephine stared at her thoughtfully. ‘The voice of the sea speaks to the soul, and all that.’
‘Does it?’ Pepper asked, seeing a flicker of amusement flash across the older woman’s face.
‘Lord only knows.’ Josephine’s stack of bracelets jangled as she put down her drink. ‘I cannot, for the life of me, recall where I read that quote – perhaps inside a fortune cookie or printed on a tea towel?’
‘Keep calm and speak to the sea?’ Pepper suggested, and was rewarded with a chortle.
‘Something like that. Although, I find that the beach is a good place to sit when you have some thinking to do – and,’ she added, with a satisfied sort of flourish, ‘it just so happens that I was thinking about you.’
‘Me?’ Pepper paused with her lemonade halfway towards her mouth. ‘Why me?’
‘Because,’ Josephine was tapping her fingers on the table top now, as if mulling over what exactly to say. ‘No, that won’t do,’ she went on, more to herself than to Pepper. ‘I suppose I need to start at the very beginning.’
Pepper waited, feeling utterly mystified.
‘Have you been abroad much, darling?’ Josephine asked, her gaze direct.
Pepper thought about the book in the box beside her, of folded-down pages and dreams of exploration and adventure.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Never.’
‘You’ve never wanted to travel? See the world? Go and “find yourself” or what have you?’
This was a question that required a more complicated answer, and Pepper hesitated.
‘I did want to,’ she said at last. ‘But the opportunity never came up when I was younger, and since then, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t busy – especially since I started the business.’
‘I understand.’ Josephine smiled to reassure her. ‘Holidays are an indulgence.’
Pepper went to agree, but Josephine cut across her.
‘But they are also a necessity.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Pepper said lightly, watching the bubbles in her lemonade. ‘It’s really not that big a deal. I live by the beach, after all – it’s not like I’m missing out on the whole seaside thing.’
What she didn’t add was that she had never had the guts to go alone. Most people went away with their partners, but Pepper had never held onto one of those long enough either – her most serious relationship to date had lasted less than four months.
Josephine didn’t say anything for a while, she merely shook her head slowly from side to side, before stopping to stare hard at Pepper, as if trying to work her out.
‘There is something I want to tell you,’ she said finally.
Pepper felt a cold stone of dread drop down from her throat into her stomach.
‘There’s no need to look so aghast.’ Josephine reached across and patted Pepper’s wrist.
‘I suspect you might even enjoy this story.’
‘Really?’ Pepper said warily. ‘Does that mean it has a happy ending?’
Josephine thought for a moment.
‘That,’ she said, breaking off to sip her gin, ‘very much depends on you.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘In order for you to understand completely,’ she said, ‘you need to know everything. But for that to happen, I will need to take you back to when I was a young woman – right back to 1966.’
‘OK.’ Pepper was perplexed, but she was also eager to listen. Josephine’s stories were invariably as enthralling as they were entertaining.
‘As you know, many people in this country claim that ’sixty-six was a great year,’ Josephine began, giving Pepper a sidelong glance. ‘England won the World Cup for the first – and seemingly only – time in July, colour television arrived with much hurrah, and everyone was in agreement that the Beatles were just about the most wonderful thing to ever happen to music. I think John Lennon himself claimed that the band was more popular than Jesus – which tells you something about the man’s ego – but regardless, it was certainly a year of celebration and liberation.’
Pepper could sense a ‘but’.
‘The mood was very much “can do”, which I suppose is why I felt brave enough to head off abroad by myself. I had always wanted to explore, and defying my poor mother and father felt like such a rebellious thing to do.’
Pepper, who could relate to this, nodded in agreement.
‘I chose Portugal simply because I had read about it in a newspaper that same week,’ Josephine continued. ‘A bridge had been erected that connected Lisbon to Almada, and there were photos, so I knew it was beautiful. I wanted to get a suntan and see all the azulejos – those are painted tiles, of course. I thought I was so grown-up and cultured, but I was only seventeen. I barely knew my ankle from my earlobe at that age.’
The door of the pub opened, and Pepper glanced up, waving back at the two women arrivals, both of whom were regular customers at her mosaic classes. Josephine fell silent, waiting while the three of them exchanged pleasantries, and there was an awkward moment when it looked as if the ladies might attempt to join them.
‘We’re just––’ began Pepper, pulling her best ‘please don’t sit with us’ face. Luckily, the two women cottoned on fast and, with smiling apologies, moved towards the other side of the bar instead.
‘So,’ Josephine went on, so quietly that Pepper had to lean forwards in order to hear her. ‘That is exactly what I did. I packed a bag, booked my ticket, and off I went.’
‘Just like that?’ Pepper was impressed. ‘You must have been so scared?’
‘Oh, not a bit of it – quite the opposite, darling.’ Josephine shook her head. ‘Being alone felt natural to me. I had never really been given the opportunity to look after myself and put my own needs first until that point, and the freedom it offered felt like a revelation. No, no – I was far too excited to be afraid.’
Pepper gazed at her friend with awe. ‘What was it like?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Was it every bit as beautiful as you’d hoped it would be? Did you find the things you were looking for?’
Josephine smiled, her whole demeanour softening as her memory transported her back to another time. She drank some more of her gin and tonic and seemed to relish the feel of it slipping down her throat. Pepper waited, perched as she was on the literal edge of her seat, for what came next.
‘My dear girl,’ Josephine said, fixing Pepper with an expression that was both wistful and mischievous. ‘What I found was not something at all – it was someone.’
Chapter 4
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Pepper said gleefully. ‘Not that it’s ever happened to me – unless you count Robbie Williams?’
‘Is he a former partner of yours?’ Josephine asked, and Pepper laughed.
‘If only. No, he was a member of a very popular boyband in the nineties – my friends and I used to squabble over which one of us would marry him one day.’
The pub was beginning to fill up with early diners now, and Pepper kept being distracted by people passing by their table to say hello, ask what new sessions she had coming up and tell her how much . . .
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