The Map of Us: The most uplifting and unmissable feel good romance of 2018!

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HarperImpulse

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Jules Preston 2018

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Jules Preston 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: 9780008300975

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008300968

Version: 2018-06-04

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

the beginning

2 years ago

5 things about me

2 years ago (too)

2 years ago (still)

the marriage report

clarity

wasps

something about squirrels

G.I.T.S.

handbags

blue

sand

N

boots

oversight

name

kissed

distance of paper

more sofa

half

dreams

sorry

rainbow

tortoise

view

64.726%

same

5 things about washing machines

free coffee

agreement

more sand

NE

date night

special friend

title

volume one

praise for Galbraith’s Boot

drawn

5 things about the garden

music question

Lazy Mo

blueberry

reminder

coincidence

5 things about Jack

yes

new arrivals

trumps

start

party

tired

date night again

5 things about Grace

7 letters to Grace

E

37 words

sandwich

roses

royalty

28 minutes

finished

calibrating

brushstrokes

late

promises

5 things about Matt’s mother

hard to tell

impulsive

top bunk

where Matt was

spoilage

a ‘friend’

in-flight

south and a little west

strangers

SE

path

closer

closer still

gift

doors

tablecloth

true

output

68%

ex

couch surfing

5 things about Katherine

list

cluck

olives

3rd

layers

silence

S

walls

map

home

petunias

lucky

snoring

company

wonderful

5 things about my father

old flame

art school

bijou

view

colour

overlap

pie

blip

perspective

transformation

twit

SW

extortion

4lb 11oz

Juniper

5 things about the Norths

£1,000

important

rivers

unexpected

matches

cook

paintbrush

turning

more twit

lobster

W

witch

5 things about Abigail North

falling

awry

can’t

defined

5 things about Owen

the proposal

Ruth Pennywheal’s reply

drawer

5 things about my mother

October

tide

blub

swim

him

deep end

reservations

whisk

decision

glass

NW

cake

found

lost again

wish

broken

truth

when

eventually

mistake

soon

score

delirious

toast

not Katherine

perfect

tick tick tick

5 things about Daniel’s father

sore feet

seal

more cake

family

gloves

resilient

always

5 things that changed

tie

the Matilda Eastleigh Compatibility Index

maybe ten

merit

dark road

nice

imagine

jazz

waiting

tap water

extra

next?

lawnmower

opening

fault

errands

undone

wanted

the Matilda Eastleigh Compatibility Index

folly

ice cream

couldn’t

sketches

wheelbarrow

‘Rooks Wood to Coldbank Ruins’

3 miles

full circle

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Numbers are a poor measure of love.

Millicent Fenwick

Mathematician 1970-

the beginning

Violet North could not walk far. She had a pleasing enough disposition and an inquiring mind, but she had lost the use of her legs as a child. Polio was the cause. She was now twenty-six years of age and not expected to marry. She had other complications from her childhood illness that meant she seldom left her home without the help of company. As she was not often seen outside, there were precious few who she could call upon for such assistance.

Her family had lately abandoned her in a house with several staircases and a large garden in the hope that she would fall and die as quickly and conveniently as possible. They had told her as much when they left. She had been a burden to them for long enough. Violet could not walk far, but she was twenty-six and had her own house with a large garden and decided to be as inconvenient as possible. She did a grand job.

Violet North had many interests beyond the confines of the front parlour in the summer and the study in the winter. She sent off for maps and globes of the world and invited those she knew to send her postcards from the places they had been. It did not matter where. Places that she would never see fascinated her. She read travelogues and the biographies of great explorers. For her, climbing the stairs to the third floor was an exhausting expedition, fraught with unknown dangers.

A photograph of the nearest railway station, no more than three miles away, was a particular delight to her. She knew she would never see it in person. Even if she could somehow surmount all the difficulties of getting there alone, how could she buy a ticket? She had no destination. Violet knew no one she could visit by train.

To occupy her inquiring mind and her passion for places that would forever be a mystery to her, she invented an explorer and a place for them to explore and wrote about their adventures on a Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter that she borrowed from a neighbour. It was turquoise blue, and the ‘e’ often stuck.

The place that she invented looked very much like love.

I have seen it.

Violet North was my grandmother. And yes, that is where the journey to this started. Right there.

2 years ago

‘Where do you think we went wrong?’ Matt said.

‘10.37am, April 22nd,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said.

He put his glass down on the table and stared absently out of the window. A dog was barking at a paper bag somersaulting down the January street. I felt responsible. Not for the paper bag or the barking dog. I felt responsible because the absence that we both felt was my fault.

Sometimes people don’t want simple answers. Most of the time, in fact. They say they do, but they don’t. Not really. My soon-to-be ex-husband didn’t. Not like that. Not right then. I could see him trying to compute the information. He was struggling. It was all too clinical. Too precise.

10.37am. The exact moment when our marriage fell apart. Or started to. Or finally shattered into a million unrecognisable pieces. He wanted something else. Something vague and meaningless.

‘I don’t know.’

Would have been good for starters.

‘What do you think?’

Would have been a fairly safe follow-up.

He wanted to talk about it. I had just made sure that the conversation started without a heartbeat. I didn’t do it on purpose.

‘Oh,’ he said again, as if that would resuscitate anything. It didn’t.

I said nothing. That didn’t help. What else could I say? I had already answered his question. And with a level of accuracy that I rarely manage to achieve in my day job.

I couldn’t help myself. Me being me isn’t always easy on those I love.

Loved.

Both. I guess.

It’s complicated.

Read the report.

It’s all in there.

Read it.

You’ll see.

5 things about me

My mother always called me Matilda. Always. She was the only one that did. Everyone else calls me Tilly. It is who I am. More or less. I have an older brother called Jack and a sister that is older still called Katherine. No one has ever called her Kate or Katie. Never. They wouldn’t dare. Katherine does not respond well to familiarity.

My father makes sand sculptures. He wears shorts and sandals and trails sand around wherever he goes. He drives old estate cars that are always French and don’t like to start when it’s damp. They are full of sand, too. And buckets and trowels and brushes and tarpaulins and tent pegs and half a dozen identical straw hats in different sizes to suit the prevailing wind conditions. When my father finds a slightly younger French estate car, he gives the old French estate car to me. Then I drive it until the wheels fall off. Literally. Or sand gets into something important and the engine seizes up. Whichever comes first, really.

I like numbers, but numbers have not always been my friend. Not always. We had a disagreement. Early on. We got over it. It may have taken a reversing caravan to resolve the problem, but I cannot be sure. Numbers are beautiful and complex and do not always tell the truth even though you think they should. Numbers are not as straightforward as they seem. They have the capacity to lie and deceive and betray and confuse. That’s why I work in statistics. I like numbers. We get on okay now. Most of the time anyway.

At the time, I was working for a company called Compass Applied Analytics. Their offices were on the first floor of a recently redeveloped building that once housed an industrial-scale launderette. They were called Super Efficient Laundry Services. You could still see where their name had been painted over on the wall outside. They had a logo, too. It was hard to make out, but I always thought that it looked like a pair of sprinting underpants.

My job was to compile sophisticated market research data for product evaluation and assessment. I specialised in low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector. I didn’t eat them myself. I am health-conscious though. Not always. Sometimes. I prefer chocolate.

2 years ago (too)

‘So, what do consumers think of the name?’ The Marketing Executive from Bearing Foods asked.

‘Loved the name,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, writing something down.

‘“Seedy-Pea-Nut-Slices” got a positive 86% approval rating from the focus group of average supermarket shoppers that we interviewed.’

‘Pretty good figures,’ Helen added, eager to be involved.

Helen doesn’t usually attend my presentations on low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector. She’s a strategist for new product development in the pre-packaged smoothies segment. She can’t drink anything with pineapple in it though. It makes her tongue go numb.

Our head of department thought I might need a little moral support towards the end of the report. I disagreed, but I assumed that Helen being there was a sign that the company were taking no chances. Bearing Foods was one of our biggest clients.

‘What about the packaging?’

‘Loved the packaging, too. The packaging received a solid 75% approval. Potential customers thought it was fresh, bright and informative,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, making another note.

‘Without being too fresh, bright and informative to scare off an older demographic,’ I added.

‘That’s a big thumbs up on the packaging,’ Helen said. I nudged her with my elbow. She scowled at me.

‘What about the ingredients?’

‘Loved the ingredients. 79% approval on the ingredients. Peas, quinoa and seaweed were generally perceived as innovative, natural and nutritious. They loved the passive product claims, too. “Wholegrain.” “Additive-free.” “High in fibre.” All had excellent penetration.’

‘Great work on the ingredients,’ Helen said, pumping the air with her fist.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, thankfully not looking up from his notepad.

Pineapple, I thought.

I knew what was coming next.

‘Visual appeal?’

Now this was where things got tricky.

‘Not so good on the visual appeal of the product itself,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, looking up this time. Helen crossed her arms and looked at me too.

‘Only 29% of respondents were entirely positive about how the snack bar looked.’

‘We had a few comments, too,’ Helen said before I had a chance to stop her. ‘“Looks like squirrel poo,” mostly,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. The temperature in the conference room seemed to dip a few degrees. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was being overly sensitive. Helen took the awkward silence that followed as an opportunity to whisper in my ear.

‘Sorry to hear that you and Matt have split up, Tilly.’

‘Thanks, Helen,’ I whispered back.

Pineapple.

‘It must be difficult for you both,’ she said.

‘Yes. Thanks, Helen,’ I said.

Pineapple.

‘So, did your marriage last longer than the national average, or was it slightly less?’ She sneered.

Suddenly it all made sense. This was payback for a comment I may have been overheard making about Helen being married and divorced twice in 64.726% of the national average. It was a statistics joke. We like that sort of thing around here. It was funny at the time. Helen waited patiently for a response.

Pineapple, I thought.

‘Taste profile?’ The Marketing Executive said.

I was glad that we were moving things on. The results for visual appeal were always disappointing with any granola-type snack bar. They all looked like rabbit food, or worse. ‘Chewy’ in the name didn’t help. If it had ‘Chewy’ in the name, you could expect a further 6-8% drop in positive responses.

‘Loved the taste,’ I said. ‘Significant approval ratings for the taste.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said writing something down.

‘Once they got over the fact that it looks like squirrel poo, of course,’ Helen said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said drawing a line through the thing that he had just written down.

Pineapple.

While I tried to murder Helen with the power of my eyes, he flicked through his notes dejectedly.

‘So, what you’re saying is that we have a fantastic product that could reshape the market in low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector if only it didn’t look quite so much like squirrel excrement?’

‘Essentially. Yes,’ I said.

There was no getting around it.

‘In a nutshell,’ Helen said, trying not to grin.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said.

Pineapple, I thought.

‘Seedy-Pea-Nut-Slices.’ So many things to love. Just a few important things that weren’t quite right.

A bit like Matt really.

2 years ago (still)

The bottle of ‘sturdy’ Rioja we had chosen tasted thin and vinegary. It wasn’t our usual choice. It clung to the side of the glass in an odd way. I swilled mine around just to have something to do with my hands.

The table top was a slab of grey slate. It had a ring of wax where yesterday’s candle had burnt down. I didn’t pick at it. I wanted to though. I wondered how many other couples had sat where we were sitting now and had got together or broken up or talked about getting a dog or moving in together or celebrated or commiserated or decided to give it another go and had gone home hand in hand for the first time in months and made love and then separated for good. Maybe even while yesterday’s candle was burning down to a stub. I could see where today’s candle had been shoved into the candlestick holder on top of it and on top of other melted stubs for what looked like the passing of centuries.