Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage
Read Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage Online
Authors: Milly Johnson
Milly Johnson is a joke-writer, greetings card copywriter, newspaper columnist, after-dinner speaker, poet, winner of
Come Dine With Me
,
Sunday Times
Top Ten author and winner of a Romantic Comedy of the Year award in 2014 and 2016.
She is half-Yorkshire, half-Glaswegian so 1) don’t mess with her and 2) don’t expect her to buy the first round.
She likes cruising on big ships, sparkling afternoon teas and birds of prey, in particular owls. She does not like marzipan or lamb chops.
She is proud patron of Yorkshire Cat Rescue (www.yorkshirecatrescue.org), The Well, a complementary therapy centre for cancer patients and the Barnsley Youth Choir (www.barnsleyyouthchoir.org.uk) who have conquered the world and are now moving onto other planets.
She lives happily in Barnsley with Pete, her long-suffering partner, Tez and George, her teenage lads, Teddy the dog, Hernan Crespo, Vincent and Theo the cats and Alan Rickman the rabbit. Her mam and dad live in t’next street.
Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage
is her twelfth book.
Find out more at www.millyjohnson.co.uk or follow Milly on Twitter @millyjohnson
Also by Milly Johnson
The Yorkshire Pudding Club
The Birds & the Bees
A Spring Affair
A Summer Fling
Here Come the Girls
An Autumn Crush
White Wedding
A Winter Flame
It’s Raining Men
The Teashop on the Corner
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café
Ebook only:
The Wedding Dress
Here Come the Boys
Ladies Who Launch
The Barn on Half Moon Hill
First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 2016
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Millytheink Ltd., 2016
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc.
All rights reserved.
The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Export TPB ISBN: 978-1-4711-4084-6
PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-4048-8
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-4711-4049-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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This book is dedicated to all the wonderful pets I’ve had over the years. From the many goldfish I rescued from fayres, to the battalion of beautiful cats I’ve adopted. From the budgie we had that couldn’t fly properly and used to divebomb into walls, to the gorgeous dogs who looked at me as if I was Angelina Jolie. From the hamster with the
Guinness Book of Records
stretchy cheeks, to the white rabbit who just wandered up the street and into my heart. They have brought me far more than I ever gave them and I have loved them all so much. I consider myself very lucky that they were part of my life and our family.
Author’s Note
In 1985 my path crossed with the actress Shirley Stelfox’s. I was on my summer vacation from university working in a hotel in Wales and Shirley was part of a film crew staying there. She was party to all my ambitions to be an actress and then witness to my crisis when I realised that I was totally on the wrong track. Really, all I ever wanted to do was write books but didn’t feel I would ever be good enough. So Shirley made me put down my serving tray, sit with her and not move until we had sorted out my life. She told me that it was absolute nonsense not to give my dreams everything I had to make them come true and that if I didn’t believe in myself, why would anyone else?
So I did give them my best shot – and they did come true. And I never dared to contact her and tell her what impact her kind words had upon me because I didn’t think she’d remember me. Then on 7 December 2015 Shirley died without ever knowing what she’d done for me. Learn from me and always deliver the thank-yous that grow in your heart.
And never underestimate the power of a small kindness. A ripple at one end of the ocean can cause a tsunami at the other.
God bless you, Shirley Stelfox – and thank you.
We can judge the heart of a man by how he treats his animals
IMMANUEL KANT
Contents
Chapter 1
A person could have been forgiven for thinking that by driving to the hamlet of Ironmist, they were crossing the boundaries of time as well as county divisions. Viv Blackbird half expected to see King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table in her rear-view mirror when she had passed the grey stone castle on the crest of the hill. The castle was the seat of the Leighton family, she knew. They owned most of the land around here and had done since before the Big Bang. The area from the hilltop down to the hamlet below had once been called
High-on-the-Mist,
though the name had long since been contracted to Ironmist, or so the internet told her. Viv was headed for the bottom of the dell where the Wildflower Cottage Sanctuary for Animals was situated. As the road turned sharply away from the castle and began to dip, she could see how the old name had suited it perfectly. A low mist had settled in the bowl of the valley. It was as if the ground were made of smoke. It looked both beautiful and weird; but then weird was good sometimes.
A black horse was trotting along the road. Its rider was a woman who was wearing her long hair loose and it was as black as the horse’s mane. Viv dabbed her foot on the brake, even though she was hardly speeding anyway, and swung out to the other side of the road. The woman didn’t even acknowledge the consideration. In fact, if anything, she gave Viv a look that said
what is your car doing on the road anyway?
Viv hoped she wasn’t representative of the welcome she was going to receive. She’d never lived in a place as small as this but knew they had the reputation of being cliquish. She also hoped there weren’t any horses in the sanctuary. She didn’t like the unpredictable massive things and couldn’t understand how anyone would want to climb up onto their backs and give them free licence to throw you off and then trample all over you.
Viv turned down what she presumed was the main street through Ironmist, passing a pretty row of cottages, a barber on one side of the road, a pub called The Lady of the Lake on the other. A woman was washing her front step with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. An A frame stood outside the Ironmist Stores and Post Office holding a handwritten sign which read:
MR WAYNE HAS HAD HIS OP AND HE’S FINE.
Viv smiled. That notice gave her better hope that she was about to join a friendly community.
Jesus.
She slammed on her brakes as a dog wandered into the road. A huge beast of a thing. It was larger than the dog that had played the title role in the TV adaptation of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. A tall, squarely-built young man approached the car, holding up his hands apologetically. Viv lowered her window as he indicated that he wanted to speak to her.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘My fault. I let go of his lead. Are you all right? You’re shaking like a jelly.’
Viv looked at her hands clamped onto the steering wheel and noticed that her little finger was vibrating.
‘I’m okay, thank you,’ she replied, though she didn’t entirely feel it. Thank goodness she hadn’t been going any faster.
The man stroked the big dog’s head. ‘He’s called Pilot,’ he said. ‘He’s twelve. I love Pilot.’
The man’s size had deceived Viv. Up close, she could see he must only have been about eighteen or nineteen and mentally, he seemed to be much younger.