All She Ever Wished For

Praise for the novels of Claudia Carroll

‘An original, funny and poignant story … A very modern fairytale, full of Claudia’s trademark wit and humour’

Sheila O’Flanagan

‘Full of warmth, humour and emotion, this is a wonderfully written, unconventional love story that charms from the very first page. I adored it and didn’t want it to end. Read it – I guarantee you’ll love it’

Melissa Hill

‘It bubbles and sparkles like pink champagne. A hugely entertaining read’

Patricia Scanlan

‘An emotional roller-coaster ride … keeps the reader wondering until the very end’

Irish Independent

‘Claudia Carroll has done it again, with a heroine you just want fate to smile on’

Heat

Readers adore the novels of Claudia Carroll – here is a glimpse of just how much!

‘I was holding my breath … the story really touched my heart’

‘Fun, breezy, and kept me guessing and oohing and aaahhhing until the end!’

‘Truly captivating’

‘Will lift your spirits’

‘If you love page-turning women’s fiction with depth then this book is for you!’

‘I so enjoyed this unusual story of friendships and love’

‘Very fresh and brilliantly plotted’

‘A total page-turner with companionship, fear, laughter, and a whole bunch of other emotions that will take you on a journey like no other’

‘Officially one of my favourite books of the year!’

‘Some sobs, but lots of laughter and joy’

All She Ever Wished For

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

This ebook edition 2016

Copyright © Claudia Carroll 2016

Cover design © Nikki Dupin 2016

Claudia Carroll 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: 9780008140724

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780008140748

Version: 2016-03-17

Dedication

This book is warmly dedicated to a very special lady, who will be much missed.

For Eleanor Dryden, with love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise for the Novels of Claudia Carroll

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Bernard

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Bernard

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Tess

Kate

Epilogue

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Valentine’s Day, Dublin

Two years ago

In this day and age, is there anything that says ‘I love you’ more than a Chubb padlock fastened tight onto a bridge? And like a growing number of landmarks around the world, the Ha’penny Bridge is only coming down in them. You’ll often catch couples sneakily fastening locks to the metal grills on either side of the bridge’s arch, pledging undying love (weather permitting), then tossing the key down into the River Liffey beneath.

Every red-letter date in the calendar without fail, you can be guaranteed the Ha’penny Bridge will groan under the weight of all these tiny little love locks, with particular spikes around Valentine’s Day and New Year. After all, it’s a romantic and slightly different way to show your commitment to that someone special, isn’t it? Plus it sure as hell beats a bunch of overpriced red roses from Tesco.

But every so often you’ll see a forlorn single revisiting a lock, maybe touching it wistfully, then sadly walking away. And you’ll find yourself wondering what their story could possibly be.

Like tonight, for instance.

A woman was standing tall and proud beside one such lock and from behind you’d think absolutely nothing at all was the matter with her. She had choppy, blonde, bang-on-trend hair and stood ramrod straight with her head held high as she stared out over the Liffey swirling beneath.

It was only when you caught her profile sideways on, you could see how upset she was. This woman looked all out of place here; there was something way too regal and composed about the way she stood all alone on the bridge, while backpackers in puffa jackets and exhausted tourists barged past her on their way to and from the pubs and restaurants of Temple Bar.

No way was a lady this classy and elegant on her way to some booze-up or hen night in Temple Bar, that was for certain. She was older, late thirties at a guess, slim and elegant in red-soled Louboutin high heels and huddling a blonde fur coat around her shoulders, to ward off the icy February rain and chill. Real fur too, you could tell at a glance. She had no umbrella either, but didn’t seem to care that she was slowly getting drenched. Instead she just stood right beside the lovelocks, staring out over the river and clinging onto the coat; silent, unchecked tears running down her coldly angular face.

But if this lady thought she was passing by anonymously and completely unnoticed, she was wrong. At that exact moment, a much younger woman taking a short cut across the bridge spotted her, and even though she was running late for a movie screening, suddenly found herself stopping dead in her tracks.

Because she’d recognised the lady standing proudly beside all the lovelocks. As would anyone who’d bothered to look closely enough. This was Kate King, the Kate King. There was hardly anyone in the country who wouldn’t have known who she was, barring if they’d lived inside a cave for the last fifteen years.

Everyone knows a Glamazon like Kate King; or at least, everyone thinks that they do. She’s the type who’s forever in the papers flaunting her statement homes – and yes, that’s homes plural – or gracing high society dos, or else maybe perched on a TV sofa discussing her ‘charity work’. Always glossy and smiley and skinny, with her filthy rich husband never too far from her side. Kate King really was the woman who had it all.

But why the woman who had it all was now crying on a bridge in public in the lashing rain was quite another thing. It was a bit like stumbling across the Queen bawling her eyes out over the Thames; one of those things that you just couldn’t imagine happening.

Tess hesitated. She was dead late for the movie now and Bernard would probably be furious with her, but it felt wrong to just walk by when there was someone beside her clearly distressed and needing help. Kate King really did seem to be in a right state; supposing she was on the verge of doing something stupid like throwing herself over the bridge? Then Tess would have to read all about it in the next day’s papers, knowing that she might have been able to do something, but instead chose to keep on walking, just so she could be on time for some obscure Mexican art house movie that Bernard insisted on seeing.

‘Excuse me,’ she said gingerly, approaching the lady. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but are you OK?’

Kate King turned sharply to look at her and Tess was shocked to see two puffy, red eyes with mascara running all the way down that famously beautiful, sculpted face. You never saw a woman like this looking anything less than flawlessly composed and immaculate in magazines and on the telly. Tess almost wondered if this could possibly be one and the same person.

No response.

‘Maybe you’d like me to get you a taxi?’ Tess asked her gently. ‘You could shelter under my umbrella till we find you one?’

‘Please just go away,’ came the clipped response.

‘But you’re getting soaked!’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Oh, well … sorry to disturb you,’ said Tess, taken aback. ‘I only meant to—’

‘Look, I’d really like some privacy. Can’t you just leave me in peace?’

Her tone was brusque now, dismissive. She meant what she said. So Tess backed off, wondering what the hell could possibly have gone so wrong in Kate King’s flawlessly perfect A-list life that someone like her was left all alone and sobbing on the Ha’penny Bridge in the pouring rain. For a split second, she hesitated, overwhelmed with guilt for leaving and walking away. Should she turn back? Maybe try to engage with her a bit more?

‘Whoever you are,’ Kate King said, sensing Tess wavering right by her shoulder. ‘I’m sure you mean well, but I’d really like you to move on.’

So, left with little choice in the matter, Tess did as she was told, shook the excess rain off her umbrella and quietly went on her way.

She could barely concentrate on the movie though. Instead, all she could do was think about Kate King, and wonder.

KATE

The Present

And so it was happening. Now. Today. This morning. There was no getting out of it and certainly no turning back. At that thought alone, she felt another huge, violent stomach retch and this time barely made it as far as the bathroom. Her third time to throw up so far today.

Oh Christ, she thought, slumped against the bathroom floor – for a brief, fleeting moment savouring the cool feel of the marble tiles against her skin – have I really brought all this on myself? Have I really been that stupidly short-sighted? Isn’t there any way out of it?

She felt as weak and useless as a butterfly pinned to a card. But like a character in a Greek tragedy, the inevitable was slowly coming to get her and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

If it’s any small consolation, she thought bitterly while she waited on yet another wave of nausea to pass, you’ve got absolutely no one to blame but yourself.

TESS

The present

What would Kate Middleton do?

Easy, I thought, fidgeting with the letter that had just arrived and forcing my shaky legs as far as the bedroom window for a few nice, deep, soothing breaths. Kate Middleton would stay serenely calm and at all costs not let a potential disaster like this get to her. She’d call Carole and Pippa who would instantly rush around to her side with wise words of wisdom and support. She’d book herself in for a nice, relaxing blow dry, shoehorn herself into a neat little coat dress from Reiss, then get back out there, arm clamped onto Prince William’s with a bright smile plastered across her face.

It’s impossible to plan any wedding without a blip and it would seem that this is mine. So now I just have to figure a way out of it, that’s all.

‘Oh, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OKAAAAYYY!’ I hear my dad warbling from out in the back garden, as he waves the hedge trimmer in huge threatening swoops, Darth Vader-style. All to the soundtrack of electronic buzzing that’s only marginally more deafening than that instrumental bit in Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’, and Christ alone knows that’s bad enough.

‘Jacko? You’ll do yourself an injury!’ Mum yells from the kitchen window. ‘If you lose a limb cutting back those bushes, you needn’t come crying to me, you roaring eejit.’

‘I cut down treeeees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a braaaaaa! I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear Papa!’ Dad keeps on screeching in a surprisingly passable baritone, considering that Mum never tires of reminding him how useless he is in all other walks of life.

‘And where’s Tess gone? I thought she was out there helping you?’

‘She was meant to be, but she vanished the minute the post came,’ Dad shrugs. ‘More wedding shite, I suppose.’

I can hear the conversation as loud and clear as that. The only problem is that as I’m listening, the four walls of my bedroom tilt a bit and I suddenly have to focus very hard on breathing.

In for two, out for four, in for two and out for four …

‘Tess, are you in the loo?’ Mum yells up the stairs. ‘You’ve been up there for ages. Are you a bit constipated, do you think?’

‘No, Mum,’ I somehow manage to squawk back down at her, in a voice I barely even recognise as my own.

Stay by the window and keep breathing, just keep breathing.

‘Well I think the base of the wedding cake is nearly done, are you coming down to do a Mary Berry on it?’

‘Did I hear you say wedding cake?’ Dad butts in from the garden, switching off the hedge trimmers. ‘Ahh lovely, you can cut me a nice, juicy, big slice while you’re at it. I’m starving.’

‘It’s not for you, it’s for the guests; I wouldn’t waste it on you. Now you just pick up those branches and stop annoying me,’ is Mum’s comeback, as she slams the kitchen window firmly shut.

All this is for me, I remind myself, trying my damnedest to blank out the letter that’s just arrived; this curt, five-line letter that’s just caused my whole world to shift on its axis. Which side is it if you’re having a heart attack? I wonder. Left or right? Because right now my breath will only come in short, jagged shards and the tightness around my chest is almost making me want to black out.

Twisting the letter in my hand, I force myself to keep on breathing and look down onto the garden, to the grass, the leaves, to my mother’s petunias in full bloom, to the peaceful, lovely sight down below. To absolutely anything that might take my mind off this.

Exactly half an hour ago, I hadn’t a care in the world. There I was, out the back helping Dad with the garden, mowing the lawn and picking up dead leaves. Half an hour ago, I was happily bustling in and out of the kitchen checking on the wedding cake base and trying to convince Mum to relax and leave me to it. That I’d take care of everything. That getting married at home needn’t be the huge stress-inducing nightmare you’d think. That I could expertly organise my wedding reception in our own back garden and that I could easily manage all the catering myself. That with a bit of imagination, Bernard and I could have a simple, intimate, homely wedding and save ourselves a complete fortune in the process.

No, not now, this cannot be happening now.

I have a marquee arriving in a few weeks’ time, for God’s sake. I have fifty-five guests and counting descending on us and I still have to do all the marinades before the big day. I have to hire the glasses, cutlery and dinner plates, and that’s before I even get started on the flowers. I somehow have to get twinkly lights dangling all over our back garden, so it’ll look all magical and elegant when the sun sets. I have all my pals roped in to help me with what little free time they can spare. I have lists and more lists and daily targets that, until a short half an hour ago, I was confidently on top of.

From the minute I convinced Mum, Dad and my sister Gracie that we could have the reception here, I’ve been at pains to reassure them that a home wedding needn’t be a nightmare. That it could all be simple and stress-free and just beautiful.

‘We’ll put on one helluva show,’ I proudly told my family.

‘… and not disgrace ourselves in front of the Pritchards,’ Mum finished the sentence for me, with just a tiny bit more ice in her voice than I’d have liked. ‘Because, frankly, I could do without that snobby shower looking down their noses at us any more than they already do.’

‘Now Mum, it’s not a “who lives in the posher house” competition,’ I told her as soothingly as I could. ‘I don’t want my wedding to be about the haves and the have-nots. It’s going to be simple and small and more importantly, cost-effective. Have you even seen what hotels charge for wedding receptions these days? Thirty grand and upwards! And that’s before you even buy a bottle of water for your guests. Besides, the Pritchards will be dream wedding guests, wait till you see.’

‘Hmm,’ Mum sniffed doubtfully. ‘Well, if I have to listen to one more patronising remark out of them, I’m warning you, Tess, I won’t be held responsible.’

The Pritchards are my future in-laws, you see, and in sharp contrast to us, they live in an elegant two-storey, over-basement, Victorian redbrick statement home in Donnybrook. They’ve got about five reception rooms that they hardly ever use, including a drawing room, a conservatory and a sitting room with dusty hardback books piled everywhere which they insist on referring to as ‘the library’.

My family, however, have none of the above. And so for one day and one day only, our modest and very ordinary little semi-d in an estate full of houses just like it, is about to be transformed into fairyland; a bit like a low-budget Santa’s Grotto on Christmas Eve.

At least, until half an hour ago, that was the plan.

I stick my head closer to the window, savouring the lovely, soothing spring breeze and as the minutes tick by, gradually begin to feel more and more composed. Better. At least now my heart rate seems to be heading back down into double digits. Definitely better.

OK, I try my best to think calmly and rationally, gulping in one last mouthful of fresh air before snapping the bedroom window shut. So according to this letter a major problem has arisen, but I’m going to deal with it efficiently and with minimal stress. I’ll tell Bernard, of course, because he’s officially the most understanding man on the planet and if he can’t think of a way to get me out of this, then no one can. Then I’ll mention it to my nearest and dearest on a strict need-to-know basis only, because this is surmountable. After all, people manage to wangle their way out of situations like this all the time, don’t they?

Besides, it’s just not possible. True, there’s never a good time for an axe like this to fall, but the timing here really couldn’t be much worse. In one month’s time, Bernard and I are getting married; it’s as simple as that.

So trying my best to channel Kate Middleton, I trip downstairs with the letter clutched in my fist to somehow break the news to my wedding-planner-in-chief. Which would be Mum. I find her in the kitchen, walloping the hell out of the Magimix, busy making the icing for my wedding cake.

‘Where did you disappear off to? You’re supposed to be here helping your dad and me,’ she says crossly when she sees me coming into the kitchen. Bear in mind this is a woman who’s got about two hundred pounds of lamb cutlets in the deep freeze. You don’t mess with a woman with two hundred pounds of anything in the deep freeze.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say in a wobbly voice I barely recognise as my own, ‘but the thing is, Mum, something a bit, well, unexpected has just come up—’

‘You’re as bad as that oaf out the back garden. Now grab an apron and start making yourself useful. You can drain the rum marinade off the sultanas and dump them into the mixture. Barring your father hasn’t already drunk the rum himself, that is. Which, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t put past him.’

‘Mum, you’re not listening to me—’

‘Jesus, Tess, you’re worse than useless! What was the point in you taking time off work to help if all you’re going to do is stand there and let me do everything? May I remind you, madam, that getting married at home was all your bright idea?’ Then turning back to her Magimix, she mutters darkly, ‘getting married to Bernard in the first place was all your bright idea too, let’s not forget.’