Life Begins

by Kate Eberlen

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

What if the life you're living, isn't the one you want?

Jessica has been in love with her best friend Robin since they met at university. As events planner, she has organised a surprise birthday trip to Italy for his birthday, quietly hoping he will keep his promise of getting together when they are older.

Laura has two beautiful children, a stylish London home and a thriving career as a deputy headteacher. But staying under one roof in a villa with her husband, his friends and a mouse, is the last thing she wants to do.

And failed actor Robin is looking forward to being the centre of attention once more, as those he loves most come together for a week of events to celebrate a milestone birthday. But as long-simmering desires rise to the surface and tensions reach breaking point, he makes a life-changing discovery.

From the Richard & Judy Book Club author Kate Eberlen, Life Begins is an emotional relationship drama set in the Italian countryside.

Release date: January 30, 2025

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

The crimson leaves of the cherry tree, luminescent in the thin autumnal sunshine, gave Jessica a shot of joyful optimism, just as its froth of pink blossom always did in spring.

As she started walking up the street, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, but hesitated before answering it as Mandy’s name appeared on the screen.

‘Are you doing anything this weekend? Kids are missing you …’

‘Bless!’ She loved Mandy’s kids, sometimes more than Mandy appeared to.

‘Thing is, it’s Keith’s work do and the babysitter has—’

‘I would if I could, but I can’t,’ Jessica interrupted her. ‘Off to Italy tomorrow for a week.’

‘You never said. Is it work? Are things picking up?’

Mandy was like a big sister to her. In a good way, mostly. But there were times Jessica didn’t like the fact that she knew her so well, because she found it impossible to lie to her.

‘Just trying out a new place on the border of Umbria and Tuscany. Might be a venue for small weddings.’ That was all true. Perhaps she would get away with it.

‘Trying it out with who?’

It was as if Mandy could see right into her brain even though she was miles away in Milton Keynes.

‘A few friends.’

‘Robin?’

‘Yes, he’ll be there. I’m actually just on my way to meet him to finalise arrangements.’

She always said actually when she was nervous.

‘Well, actually, I won’t keep you then,’ said Mandy.

It wasn’t just about the babysitting. Mandy did not approve of Robin. Jessica knew she was only trying to protect her, but Mandy didn’t understand their bond. If she knew him, she would, but Jessica had never quite had the courage to put it to the test by introducing the two of them.

The four faces of the Victorian clock tower at the top of Highbury Hill were each showing different times, only one corresponding approximately to her watch. Usually she enjoyed the momentary kick of thinking she was running late, followed by the relief of realising she wasn’t. Just recently though, these fluctuations of adrenaline had begun to feel like regret for minutes not properly lived. The clocks were about to go back. There was a musty chill on the air. In a couple of weeks, it would be too dark to go for a walk at this time. She couldn’t quite shake off the jarring sensation the conversation had left her with. Deliberately lifting and releasing her shoulders, she reminded herself that tomorrow she was going to be jetting off to Italy with her love.

For once, an event she had organised was going to be purely for pleasure, not business, although if the house was as good as it appeared on the website, it might well work for weddings as there was a deconsecrated church attached.

Italy was where everyone wanted to go now. Before the pandemic, her high-end clients were tending to favour a cool Scandi experience, but then there was Stanley Tucci’s series and nobody had to pretend to like moss or sea lettuce anymore. Tuscany was already one of the most popular destinations for weddings, and she was discovering the appealing possibilities of other regions too. Recently she’d organised glamping on a Prosecco vineyard for the hen party of an influencer, with a Ferrari festival on Capri for the stag. She was currently costing a corporate team builder involving rowing the Vogalonga in Venice. Hopefully, Umbria would inspire some art-themed activities. Who didn’t want to set up an easel with a spectacular view after Landscape Artist of the Year?

Bus or walk? It was mad to be worried about the fare compared to the restaurant bill she would be paying later, but she was trying to cut down in any way she could. Since going it alone with her events planning business, she missed the cushion of an expense account, and she was still paying off the debts she’d incurred during lockdown. The only inflation she’d known before was house price inflation, which had made her feel rich, not poor. She’d never really believed warnings about high interest rates, which seemed to belong to a long-ago era, as out of date as faxing and landlines. Now the cost-of-living crisis was at the top of every news bulletin. While she claimed to love working from home, she was already missing an office environment that was heated in the physical sense. It wasn’t yet the end of October but her flat already felt cold when sitting at a computer for long periods. She’d spent most of the day preparing for any upcoming power cuts by researching torches and oversize fleecy poncho things, adding and removing from her online basket as she weighed the comfort of cosiness against the potential horror of accidentally answering the door in the sort of garment worn by people who watched too much daytime television, eating snacks and never rising from the sofa. Aside from her online Italian lesson, the only real buzz of achievement she’d got was when she’d passed the test to prove she wasn’t a robot.

Jessica decided to walk. Her step count was nowhere near ten thousand and exercise would be a good way of releasing the pent-up tension, although recently she’d read that there was something called stresslaxing which meant relaxing that stressed you more because you weren’t working on what made you stressed. Like so many of the newly diagnosed conditions she’d clicked on, she hadn’t known it was a thing, but it exactly fitted what she was feeling.

On Upper Street, she deliberately avoided glancing at the exquisitely understated rings in the window of Dinny Hall. She couldn’t imagine him going down on one knee to propose, but perhaps the moment might be finally approaching when it would become obvious that they ought to spend the rest of their lives together. She crossed the fingers on both hands, trying to shoo away the thought from her mind for fear of jinxing it.

There was a perfume advert on television that asked, ‘What would you do for love?’ In it, the actress was prepared to put on a couture dress, drive a car filled with artificial flowers, wear a headscarf and lie in a sunny meadow. It didn’t seem like that much of a sacrifice compared to all the hours and money Jessica had invested in organising the perfect birthday treat for Robin.

Their place was a brasserie about as close as you got to Paris in London. Robin was a man of habit, which she put down to him to being at boarding school from a cruelly young age. An interior designer friend of his had overseen the redesign a few years ago, so he’d been invited to the opening and taken Jessica as his plus one. They’d been coming every Friday evening since, except for the month he’d been in a play in a south London pub. During the early weeks of lockdown, they’d sometimes met there illegally while Robin walked Lammie, sitting at either end of a bench in the small park opposite, a screw-top bottle of wine between them, staring at the empty windows like three pining, faithful dogs.

Jessica was among the first to book an outside table when restaurants reopened, but as soon as they were fully vaccinated, they’d returned to their usual booth near the bar. Despite perusing the menu every time, remarking on any new dishes and wavering over the plat du jour, they always chose the same thing. Steak frites for him, a salad for her because she knew she should eat more vegetables but couldn’t be doing with the faff of preparing them at home. She always stole most of his perfectly salted French fries. Usually one bottle of Côtes du Rhône became two. There had been occasions when a third had appeared on the bill that neither of them could remember ordering.

Friday evenings were what she lived for.

Jessica had loved Robin from the moment their eyes met across a crowded room at the freshers event on her first evening of university when she’d spotted him picking up two glasses of free wine, indicating with a little entitled gesture to the bartender that he was taking one for a friend. Surveying the crowd, he’d suddenly smiled at her and she’d felt a giddy rush of privilege at being chosen. He’d downed the first glass and half of the second by the time he reached her. Flummoxed by his astonishing good looks, she had found his greed more than reasonably hilarious.

‘You’ve got a great laugh,’ he’d said. Then, looking around the room, ‘Anyone else here you want to meet?’

She hadn’t been sure whether he was offering to introduce her, or finding the crowd as underwhelming as she did.

‘Scram?’ he said, before she’d decided on an answer.

They’d bought a couple of bottles from a supermarket and taken them back to her room, where they’d sat at either end of her single bed exchanging the versions of themselves they’d like to be. She’d never met anyone as posh as him before, but he had such a mischievous quality he didn’t seem threatening at all. They’d both spent some of their childhood in institutions and were used to inventing games to pass the time. So when he asked her what she would be if she were a fruit, she immediately replied a pomegranate, because although it didn’t look much from the outside, it opened to reveal a complex range of exotic flavours inside. He’d claimed to be a strawberry – superficially pretty, but with nothing in its core. They’d laughed a lot.

In the middle of the night, she had woken to find his foot in her face. His sock had a pattern of Bart Simpson faces that didn’t quite compute but made her feel less awestruck. The next morning, she opened her eyes and found herself alone, wondering if she had dreamt him until she saw the two bottles in the wastepaper bin, the glasses washed and placed upside down on a tissue beside the sink alongside a note with a mobile phone number. It was 1999. Not everyone had mobile phones then. She bought her first one that day, a pay-as-you-go Nokia. His was the only number in it for ages, so every time it rang she had the same leap of excitement as when she’d first seen him.

They lived in each other’s pockets, laughing at the same things, renting the movies they loved so often they knew the lines off by heart, linking arms on the way back from the pub, often sharing a bed, but always when they were too drunk to do anything other than sleep. After a few weeks, she worried that they had passed that crucial moment of becoming too close to want to risk the friendship with sex. It was an excuse men had given her occasionally before, but raising the idea of sex seemed to have finished off the relationship anyway. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. In her worst moments, she told herself that someone as beautiful as Robin couldn’t possibly find her attractive. It crossed her mind that he might be asexual or even gay, but then he snogged a woman at a Halloween party and disappeared without saying goodbye. A gaping void of devastation kept Jessica awake all night, but was instantly replaced with joy when he knocked on the door early the following morning.

‘Can you hide me from the witch?’

‘Why?’ she’d asked.

‘It was like waking up with Santa Claus,’ he’d said, describing the close-up view of the girl’s downy facial hair.

Jessica knew she shouldn’t laugh. She wondered if she should even like someone with such a questionable attitude to women. But she took the first opportunity to excuse herself and have a very close look at her upper lip in the bright light of the communal bathroom down the hall. When she returned his smile was incredibly winning.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘What for?’

For a moment, she’d thought he was going to kiss her.

‘Abandoning you to all those rugby players! Bet you had more fun than me, though.’

Had she inadvertently given him the wrong signals?

He’d thrust a brown paper bag at her. It contained two croissants.

‘Put the kettle on, Coco!’

They were so close they’d even developed their own pet names, as couples do.

When she was a little girl, Jessica’s mother had scraped her unruly hair into a topknot, which had led to the nickname Coconut. That had quickly been shortened to Coco, which she had hated. It had been a relief to go to a senior school where nobody knew her and she could recreate herself as Jessica. Unfortunately, there were several Jessicas in her class and, as she was tall, she became known as Big Jessica. By then it was too late to revert to Coco, which seemed much cooler to a fashion-conscious teenager than it had for a serious six-year-old. She had revealed all this to Robin after he had confessed that he hated Robin and always secretly hoped that someone would shorten it to Beau.

‘My brothers always called me Robbo, and my nickname at school was Beauty. Only because my best friend Tim was, I’m afraid, well, not the best-looking … so we were always known as Beauty and the Beast.’

‘Gosh! Beau!’ The name suited him perfectly.

Three thousand seven hundred and twenty-two steps.

He was already in the restaurant scrolling through his WhatsApp messages. Mandy said that there were some men who were too handsome for their own good. Apparently it made them lazy emotionally. Like a lot of Mandy’s opinions, the warning was categoric, as if based on long experience, although it clearly wasn’t something she’d had to worry about with her own husband Keith.

From a distance, Robin looked as boyishly beautiful as he had at eighteen. When she had first known him, people would literally turn in the street, assuming he must be someone famous, which he had actually been for a few months at the beginning of the third year. Closer up, there were a few lines. How could there not be, with someone who laughed so much? He was no longer able to get into skinny black jeans, but he wasn’t overweight despite the quantities of food and alcohol he consumed. The hairline was a little further back when he raked a hand through his floppy Hugh Grant-style hair, but his eyes were still that endless blue that seemed to draw her in. He was just gorgeous, despite the uneven stubble around his chin. His inability to grow a beard when absolutely every other man his age had one had become a bit of an obsession for him, the reason he gave himself for not getting work. Privately Jessica thought it was more about poor choices and – Mandy was probably right – laziness. Ascribing his lack of success to a sparsity of facial hair was probably easier than the preparation and organisation it took to get to auditions, especially when you’d lost confidence. What Robin really needed was someone who believed in him. If they were together, she would enable him to capitalise on the gifts and opportunities life had given him. Enabling was what she was good at.

As she approached the table, he suddenly looked up, awarding her that sparkling focus that made her feel like she was the only person in the world, then stood and gave her such a close hug it made her heart beat faster.

‘Thank god you’re here!’ he said, finally releasing her. ‘You’re the only person speaking to me. I’ve no idea what I’ve done wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I sent everyone a WhatsApp about getting together for my birthday and not a single person has replied.’

Inwardly, Jessica smiled.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’re busy.’

‘I offered to cook, and everything …’

Unable to bear his disappointment any longer, she delved into her bag and produced an envelope with ‘Beau’ written in large bubble letters she’d spent an afternoon filling in with little symbols of their friendship.

‘What’s this?’

He ripped it open without even glancing at her illustration.

‘Surprise!’ she said.

She’d tried to devise a way of getting him to the venue unawares, but the feat of organising a surprise party in a different country involved so many variables it was beyond even her. However, in her determination to keep ownership of the reveal, she’d employed all her powers of persuasion to cajole and threaten the other participants into keeping the secret until the last possible moment.

He stared at the card she’d had custom-made with the view from the house featured on the website, then opened it.

‘Dearest Beau,’ he read. ‘Happy Birthday! Life begins at forty …’

‘It was delayed by Covid …’ she said, in answer to his raised eyebrow. She’d been planning it for two years. Originally for his actual fortieth birthday, but that had been cancelled because of the pandemic, and things were still dodgy with travel a year later. The virus had surged again recently, which had worried her, but they were all vaccinated and the curve of the graph seemed to be descending from a much lower peak than had been the case the year before.

‘To celebrate the beginning of your life,’ he continued, ‘you are invited to Italy for a week of partying with your favourite people. In a region known for its produce, you will wine, dine and dance the week away. Timetable: Saturday 6 a.m. Meet Stansted Airport for 8.20 flight … Oh my god, Coco, I don’t think I can …’

‘Don’t worry, your passport’s renewed.’

‘What, how did you know?’

‘It’s my job to know …’

‘So this is why none of them have got back to me?’

‘Yup. Sorry!’

She watched his frown turn to relief as his brain clicked through a series of things that hadn’t quite made sense at the time but now did.

‘Bloody hell!’

It wasn’t quite the reaction she’d hoped for.

‘You are pleased?’

‘Of course! Just trying to work out how you did it!’

‘I thought about all the things you love most, and it was obvious …’

Now, she scrolled through the photos of the villa saved to her phone, wondering which to win him over with first: the beautifully appointed kitchen with a huge island work surface with strings of garlic bulbs and chilli peppers drying above, a long wooden dining table seating twelve. The slate-grey infinity pool with its view of the surrounding mountains. Eventually, she tapped the interior of the deconsecrated church with original frescoes, now the perfect party room, with a piano, sound system, loads of space to dance and play games.

‘Wow!’ he said.

It still wasn’t the reaction she’d anticipated. Her selling skills clicked automatically into action.

‘The pool’s heated. They usually turn it off at the end of September, but I’ve persuaded the caretakers to keep it on. There’s a huge lawn with a five-a-side net for George. It’s just been the grape harvest, so we can taste the local wine, and it’s truffle season, so I’ve organised a foraging trip. A cookery lesson with a local chef. There couldn’t be more fresh produce – there’s a market in Città di Castello, where there are actually vans selling hot porchetta panini …’

She felt strangely like she was pedalling fast on a stationary bike.

‘Speaking of which …’ Robin picked up the menu, as the waiter arrived to take their order, perusing it for a few seconds as if there was a decision to be made.

‘I think I’ll have the steak frites,’ he told the waiter.

‘The superfood salad. For a change,’ she added.

‘Côtes du Rhône OK for you?’ he asked her.

Occasionally she wondered if they did see things in exactly the same way.

Then Robin suddenly gave her his most sparkling smile and repeated, as if he’d only just heard the words, ‘Hot porchetta panini! Yummo! Who’s coming?’

‘Ellis, George and Laura, obviously. And Tim. And Jonny …’

‘Who’s Jonny?’

‘His new boyfriend, apparently.’

‘He never told me he had a new boyfriend.’ Robin frowned.

‘I think it’s only recent. American … obviously I couldn’t check with you …’

It hadn’t occurred to her that Robin wouldn’t have known. She wondered if she’d agreed too readily to Tim’s request.

‘And the brothers?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

They had to be included on the list of invitees because it was a tradition in his family, probably left over from the days they were all at school and their parents were in some distant foreign country. They were going to be in a separate wing with their wives. She had made it quite clear to them that the two sections of the house were rented as independent entities.

‘So it will be eleven of us?’ Robin scrolled through the photos. ‘Unless you’re bringing someone?’ Robin asked her.

‘No!’

‘No random stone carvers?’

Why had she ever told him about Jake? He was just someone she’d met through work. She’d thought there was a spark, but that hadn’t turned out to be the case when he came to London. Robin had found the whole episode unduly hilarious.

‘What an amazingly generous gift, Coco!’ he said, but her delight at this delayed response was slightly tarnished by worry that he’d got the impression she was shelling out for the whole thing.

‘Actually, I’m paying for you and me, but I’m expecting Tim to cough up his share …’

Now it sounded perversely as if she was being mean. His perplexed frown told her that he hadn’t registered any of her struggles with the business. Robin really had no idea about the restrictions that having to earn your living put on your life. He wasn’t excessively rich, as his brothers were, but none of them had ever had to worry. It didn’t occur to them that other people might not be in the same position.

In her opinion – not that she’d ever voiced it – the trust fund had held Robin back, and landing a role in a film that became a minor cult success at the smaller festivals when he was still a student had reinforced his assumption that everything in life would be given to him with no need to work at his craft. There had been a moment around the millennium when he had been everyone’s pin-up, appearing on Graham Norton and in fashion shoots in the Sunday supplements. At the age of twenty, he’d abandoned university and flown to LA, where, courted by agents and directors, he’d been persuaded to star in a sci-fi movie with a mega budget. He had often called her in the middle of the night not realising, or caring, what time it was, regaling her with hilarious anecdotes about parties he’d been to. Then the film had been cancelled amid a flurry of caustic comments about his lateness and incompetence. Like a shooting star, he had shone brightly for a very short time and vanished. When she’d next seen him, his circumstances had changed dramatically.

Robin poured the rest of the bottle equally between their glasses.

‘I don’t suppose we should have another, should we?’ he said. ‘Or we’ll never be up in time. I’ll need to pack …’

‘That’s unbelievably sensible of you.’

‘We are forty-two, Coco! God, that sounds so old! I still feel exactly the same as I did when I was twenty …’

‘Do you?’

‘Absolutely! Don’t you?’

‘Of course I do!’ She stared into his eyes, trying to fathom if he was implying that he remembered their conversation on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

He’d been just about to depart for Los Angeles.

They’d gone down to the Thames to see the fireworks. The Millennium Wheel had only just taken its place on the London skyline. The crowds were buzzing with excitement as the seconds to midnight ticked down. Then Big Ben began to strike the hour and there was cheering all around them. They’d had to shout to hear each other.

‘Happy New Year, Coco!’

‘Happy New Life in LA!’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you!’

‘You’ll meet amazing people!’

‘No one like you. I honestly don’t know how I’ll survive. I love you so much. I know, let’s get married!’

‘Married?’

‘When we’re forty or something, if neither of us has found anyone suitable,’ he shouted. ‘Deal?’

‘Deal!’ she’d screamed back.

Then the chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ had started and they’d grabbed each other’s hands, bobbing up and down with the people next to them while gazing up at the fireworks, which weren’t nearly as spectacular as everyone had hoped because of the low covering of cloud, but she’d been so happy it had felt as if the bursts of light were fizzing and popping inside her.

‘See you tomorrow, then!’ he said, as they came out of the brasserie onto the pavement, grasping her shoulders as if to look at her properly, his head slightly inclined, his eyes holding hers for so long it felt as if he was gazing into her soul, before eventually drawing her into a brief hug. She watched him walking away, cupping the air beside her ear as if to keep his kiss there, then let out a long sigh as if she’d been holding her breath the entire evening.

Walking home would take her beyond seven thousand steps, but there was going to be plenty of walking in Italy, she thought as she waited for the number 19, resisting the temptation to shake up her step count.

There was a seat right at the front of the upper deck. She loved being up there, especially at night, glimpsing other people’s lives through illuminated windows, like scenes from a soap opera fast-forwarded. Maybe, just maybe, drama was about to happen in her own life. A week together in a romantic setting. Anything could happen.

She tried to stop herself thinking about how Mandy had ended their call.

‘You’d be a useless lab rat.’

It was a comment that had felt hurtful on a number of levels, but Jessica had still asked, ‘Why’s that then?’

‘You never bloody learn, do you?’

The hollow acoustics of the empty school after everyone had left made Laura’s footsteps echo. She imagined a close-up of her shoes walking down the corridor, like the beginning of a crime drama. Heels were always a mistake at work, especially the shiny black stilettos. There had been more teaching than she’d expected because several of the younger staff had called in with Covid. She hoped for everyone’s sake that it was an excuse to allow them to get cheaper flights rather than the beginning of another alarming upsurge. None of the kids had dared say anything to her face, b. . .