True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Read online

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London, SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

  Copyright © Annie Darling 2017

  Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  Cover illustration © Carrie May

  Annie Darling 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: 9780008173142

  Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008173159

  Version: 2017-04-26

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my beloved Mr Mackenzie.

  He would like you to know that he’s appalled at any similarities between himself and Strumpet and he intends to sue.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  Bonus content for True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Darling

  About the Publisher

  1

  ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’

  Peter Hardy, oceanographer, was the god of boyfriends.

  He was good-looking: blond and tanned from all that time spent diving into oceans in exotic locations, his eyes as blue as those deep seas he mapped, but not ridiculously, intimidatingly good-looking.

  He was also clever. After all, you couldn’t be an oceanographer without a clutch of A-levels and at least a couple of degrees. He had a great sense of humour too – a little bit dry, a little bit goofy, and was particularly skilled at sourcing hilarious cat videos on YouTube.

  But don’t think Peter Hardy’s perfect boyfriend credentials ended there. He always remembered to call his mother on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, was punctual to a fault and if he was going to be more than five minutes late, not that he ever was, he sent an apologetic text. He was also both attentive and enthusiastic in bed, but not into anything too weird. Peter Hardy would never ask a girl to dress up in a pink rubber catsuit or slap him around the face with a wet sock.

  Whichever way you looked at it, Peter Hardy was a prime catch, a paragon of boyfriendly virtue, and Verity Love, though she was a vicar’s daughter and meant to lead by example, was going to have to kill him off at the first opportunity.

  No time like the present, Verity thought as she clutched a glass of vinegary Pinot Noir and smiled weakly at her friends, who were still fangirling Peter Hardy, boyfriend extraordinaire.

  ‘He sounds so lovely. Sweet but manly,’ Posy said enthusiastically. ‘Now, when are we actually going to meet him?’

  ‘Well, you know how it is. He’s so busy with his job. I mean, he’s hardly ever around. That’s starting to become a problem when …’

  ‘We get it. You want to keep him all to yourself.’ Nina nodded. ‘We’ve all been there, but Very, it’s been months and months. You can’t keep your hot oceanographer boyfriend locked away indefinitely.’

  ‘Has it really been that long?’ Of course it had. It was now the end of June and Peter had conveniently come along at the end of the previous November to save Verity from flying solo for the Christmas party season. In fact, she’d been a no-show for most of the festivities but who could blame her for bailing when she was feasting on prime oceanographer goodness after a three-year dry spell? ‘Gosh, it’s been over six months! Wow!’

  ‘Don’t be so coy. I bet you’re still in the first throes of mad shagging, what with him being away so much,’ Nina said. She tucked her currently platinum-blonde hair behind her ears then sighed a little. ‘Oh God, I miss being in the first throes of mad shagging, before you start arguing about whose turn it is to take the bins out or why he’s physically incapable of putting the loo seat down.’

  Verity took another fortifying gulp of wine. They were sitting in the pub just around the corner from the Bloomsbury bookshop formerly known as Bookends where they all worked, and now known as Happy Ever After since Posy had inherited it a few months before and transformed it into a ‘one stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs’.

  Many an evening after a hard day’s bookselling, the staff retreated to The Midnight Bell. It was a tiny pub, which still had its 1930s Arts & Crafts wood panelling intact and art deco tiles in the loos. You could also get a bottle of wine and two grab bags of crisps for under a tenner before eight so who cared that it reeked of chlorine from the swimming pool of the health club a couple of doors down and they could never put their bags on the floor because they’d get slobbered on by Tess, the pub dog? Tess could sniff out half a bag of Bombay mix or an apple lurking at the bottom of a bag at fifty paces.

  ‘Actually, talking of Peter, I don’t think we’re going to last much longer,’ Verity said hurriedly then drained the last sour dribble left in her glass and forced herself to look at Posy and Nina, who had both assumed matching expressions of goggle-eyed dismay.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You said he was perfect!’

  ‘I didn’t say he was perfect,’ Verity protested. ‘You said he was perfect. I just said that he was quite nice.’

  ‘He is perfect.’ Posy was absolutely not to be swayed. Even though Posy was a newlywed, there were times when Verity thought that Posy was more into Peter Hardy than she was. Though considering that Posy had plighted her troth with the rudest man in London, maybe her preference for Peter Hardy wasn’t that surprising. ‘Why would you not hang on to a man like that with every last ounce of strength in your body?’

  ‘Because he’ll never love me as much as he loves, um, oceans and the sea can be a very cruel mistress.’ Verity was pretty sure she’d stolen that line from Moby Dick. Or possibly Titanic. Something featuring a lot of sea. ‘He’s away all the time and if things did get serious, if we had children, what kind of security would we have, knowing that he c
ould be eaten by a shark or that his diving suit might spring a leak at any minute?’

  ‘I didn’t know that oceanographers worked in shark-infested waters,’ Nina said with a frown. ‘Aren’t there health and safety rules about that kind of thing?’

  ‘They make them sign a waiver.’ Enough was enough. This had gone on too long. Verity stood up on wobbly legs that weren’t as strong as her resolve. ‘I really have to go.’

  ‘But we haven’t even finished the first bottle!’ Nina held up the offending bottle to show Verity the trickle of wine that was left in it. ‘And it’s not even half-past seven. Are you sickening for something?’

  ‘Something like Peter Hardy, oceanographer?’ Posy asked with a sly smile.

  Verity shook her head as she picked up her bag. ‘I don’t know why you say his name like that. Like oceanographer is the second bit of his surname. Anyway, I’m sorry to bail but I did say I could only stay for a bit. You know I don’t like to go straight from work to a social situation.’

  ‘Oh my God, you’re meeting Peter Hardy right now, aren’t you? Are you going to break up with him?’ Nina looked like Marilyn Monroe’s tattooed and pierced younger sister, but she’d once told Verity that she’d been an awkward teenager (‘buck teeth, braces and bee-stings for boobs’) and had made up for it by being animated. She’d long grown into her spectacular, fifties pin-up girl prettiness but still had an exaggerated expression for every situation. Now she widened her big blue eyes, wrinkled her nose and let her mouth hang open.

  ‘I haven’t decided. Maybe.’ Verity inched herself out from where she was trapped in the corner and almost fell over Tess, a stout Staffordshire bull terrier, who’d barrelled over to see if there might be some crisps going spare.

  ‘But you can’t break up with him before we’ve had a chance to meet him,’ Posy lamented. ‘Can we come too? Just long enough to say hello …’

  ‘You don’t need to say hello to him, you’re married,’ Verity pointed out.

  Posy gave a start. ‘Oh God, so I am! I keep forgetting.’ She gathered herself. ‘Anyway, it’s not Victorian times. Married women are allowed to say hello to men who are not their husbands.’ She shook her head and let out a breath. ‘I still can’t believe I have a husband. Ugh! Sebastian Thorndyke is my husband. How the hell did that even happen?’

  It had happened during a whirlwind few weeks in which Posy had relaunched the bookshop and through some strange and bizarre series of events that Verity still couldn’t begin to process had fallen in love with Sebastian, her arch nemesis, and married him a couple of weeks ago at Camden Town Hall. There’d barely been time to chuck confetti at the allegedly happy couple before they’d hurried over the road to St Pancras station to catch the Eurostar so they could celebrate their wedding in Paris before the ink had dried on their marriage certificate. No wonder that when Posy wasn’t walking about with a blissed-out smile on her face, she looked rather dazed.

  Now Verity took advantage of Posy’s dazedness to back away from their corner table. ‘You should probably go home to Sebastian now. I mean, technically you are on your honeymoon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t go. Don’t be one of those women who forgets her friends just because she got married,’ Nina pouted and as Posy turned to her, Verity took the opportunity to hurry for the door even though Nina shouted after her, ‘But why isn’t Peter Hardy on Facebook? That’s just weird!’

  It was weird but then as Verity had explained to them, and her sister, Merry, had backed her up, being an oceanographer meant that Peter was in the employ of several governments and knew lots of confidential information about climate change so he wasn’t allowed to use social media.

  Something like that anyway.

  It had rained while she’d sat in the pub. Verity could smell the heavenly scent of petrichor rising up from the damp, hot summer pavements as she walked along the slick cobblestones of Rochester Street, past the shops she knew so well: the Swedish deli, the old-fashioned sweet shop, the boutiques. Verity did think briefly of going home but the flat above Happy Ever After, which Posy had offered to Verity and Nina rent-free, didn’t feel like home yet. Besides, it was Friday evening, the start of the weekend, and Verity had Friday evening rituals and routines that were set in stone.

  Verity rounded the corner into Theobald’s Road, hurrying past shops and offices and the estate agent with the brightly coloured Eames chairs, then turned left onto Southampton Row, which was bustling and brightly lit, full of people hurrying to meet friends or standing outside pubs in happy, chattery clumps. Verity ducked down a tiny road on her right, past a pub even more charming and olde worlde than The Midnight Bell, and stopped when she came to a small Italian restaurant. Its paintwork was red, its windows were steamed with condensation and when Verity pulled open the door she was greeted by the sound of people laughing and talking, glasses clinking, and a nose-twitching aroma of garlic and herbs.

  Verity had discovered Il Fornello one Friday night several years ago when she’d been walking the streets (not like that – she was a vicar’s daughter) to delay going back home. Home had been a double room she shared with her sister Merry in a house in Islington owned by the daughter of one of her father’s parishioners. The family had five children, a Spanish au pair, two bichon frises, one rabbit, a couple of guinea pigs and a goldfish. The noise and the smell were often overpowering. And to compound matters, Verity was also newly single after three years with Adam, her ex-boyfriend. It hadn’t been a good break-up, far from it, and it was very hard to brood in a noisy, smelly house where she didn’t even have her own room.

  So, that long-ago evening, footsore and heartsore, and even though the thought of dining on her own in a restaurant made Verity break out in a cold sweat, she’d been lured into Il Fornello by Luigi, the owner, who then, like now, was coming forward to greet her.

  ‘Ah! Miss Very! You’re late tonight. We’d almost given up on you. Your usual table?’

  ‘Had to make a quick stop on the way.’ As she made her way to her usual table (tucked away in the corner so she wouldn’t be bothered by any lone wolves hoping to strike up a conversation) Verity looked back to check that she’d closed the door only to see Posy and Nina peering in at the window.

  Oh, they hadn’t!

  They bloody well had!

  Their curiosity about Peter Hardy, oceanographer, had triumphed over common sense and they’d followed her. Now they were sure to burst in once they spotted Verity rooted to the spot amid the rustic tables and benches. Her heart quickened even as time seemed to slow down until it came to a grinding halt, much like Verity had. She let out a shaky breath. It would be all right. She could handle this; brazen it out. Except brazen was never a word that could be applied to Verity Love.

  She had only two options. Fight or flight, and Verity chose flight every time. She could race up the stairs to the ladies, lock herself in and refuse to come out.

  Except, that wasn’t a plan. It was ridiculous. She was a fully functioning adult and would simply have to stand her ground and come up with an excuse. Say that Peter Hardy, oceanographer, had stood her up and actually, she had tried to tell them that he’d been rather distant of late, oceans between them, etc. This could be the perfect opportunity to kill him off … but Verity was well aware of her own limitations and winging it was one of them.

  Think! Think! For the love of God, think!

  Verity looked wildly around the room, dimly aware of Luigi still at her side. ‘You’ve gone bright red, Miss Very. Are you all right? It’s very humid tonight, isn’t it? I hope you’re not going down with something.’

  Down with this ship, Verity thought helplessly and then she saw him.

  He was sitting at a table for two at the back of the room, an empty chair just waiting for her to skid over to it and sit down, which she did, hoping against hope that his date wasn’t in the loo.

  The man frowned and looked up from his phone. He was young enough. Thirties anyway. No noticeable neck tattoos, wasn’
t wearing anything horrible, just a plain white shirt under a jumper that almost matched the colour of his startled blue-green eyes. He’ll do, Verity decided. At a pinch, he’ll do.

  ‘Hello?’ He said it coldly, like a question. Like, who the hell are you and why are you sitting down at my table?

  Verity risked a glance back at the room to see that her worst fears had been realised. Nina and Posy had come in and were looking round for her. Then Posy caught sight of Verity and nudged Nina who waved at her. Verity turned back to the solo diner. Oh God, he didn’t look very happy.

  ‘I’m so sorry about this. Are you on your own?’

  He looked down at his phone and frowned again. Though really he hadn’t stopped frowning, it was more that his frown had deepened. ‘Apparently so.’ The frown evened out and he smiled at her tightly, perfunctorily. ‘I know the restaurant’s busy but I’d rather eat on my own, if you don’t m—’

  ‘Very! Don’t pretend that you can’t see us!’

  Verity closed her eyes and wished that not being able to see Nina and Posy would mean that they couldn’t see her either. Sadly, life was never that kind. ‘Please,’ she whimpered. ‘I beg of you. Just go along with this. Please.’

  ‘Go along with what?’ he asked, but it was too late. Verity felt hands land heavily on her shoulders and smelt the heavy rose fragrance that Nina favoured.

  ‘Very! Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

  2

  ‘I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.’

  Verity kept her eyes shut and sat there frozen in an agony of mortification. Her shame lasted for aeons or maybe only a few seconds, until she felt a slight displacement of air, then something that felt like cashmere brushed against her cheek and a voice said, ‘I’m Johnny.’

  She reluctantly opened her eyes. He, the man, Johnny, had stood up to shake hands with Posy and Nina, who pulled her confused face.

  ‘Johnny? You’re not Peter Hardy, oceanographer, then?’ Nina’s voice was breathy with gleeful horror. At some later date, Verity was going to kill her. After they’d had words, post-watershed words. There were rules about this sort of thing. You didn’t catch a friend allegedly cheating on her alleged boyfriend, then rat her out to the man she was cheating on him with. You just didn’t. It was against the basic rules of feminism.