The Years of Loving You
From the award-winning author of PIECES OF YOU comes this enthralling love story, guaranteed to make you laugh, cry and dream upon a star…What if your first love was your only love?When Molly is diagnosed with a life changing illness, it feels like her whole world has come crashing down. She hopes the news will make her marriage to Sam stronger. But why does Molly always call best friend Ed in a crisis?Ed. The very same Ed that Molly fell in love with at a party when they were teenagers, underneath a star-filled sky. Then life took them in very different directions. They could only ever be friends.Suddenly Molly starts to question every decision she’s ever made. What if they could turn back the clock? Back to the very beginning. When the only certainty they shared was each other …
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ELLA HARPER
The Years of Loving You
Published by Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015
Copyright © Ella Harper 2015
Ella Harper 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: 9780007581849
Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780007581856
Version: 2015–09–04
Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
E.E. Cummings
Table of Contents
‘Great party,’ Sam said, shaking Ed’s hand.
‘Thanks. I actually did all this myself. I reckon Saskia is re-thinking our marriage now that she knows I’m actually a girl.’
Ed gestured to the silver and white decorations adorning the walls of their local pub. There were clusters of balloons in each corner, complete with perfectly curled ribbons, there were pretty silver swathes draped between light fittings as well as glitter-dusted white bows dotted here and there. It had taken ages to put everything up and he had almost broken his elbow falling off a bar stool earlier. But Saskia wasn’t really into any of this stuff and, for some reason, Ed had a feeling people were expecting great things. Probably because him getting married was a bit of a turn-up for the books, or whatever the expression was.
‘Blimey.’ Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were the blokiest bloke around.’
‘Nope.’ Ed grinned, knowing Sam was probably wetting his pants on the quiet. Imagining Ed festooning balloons around a pub. Hanging bows and streamers everywhere. Emasculating and then some. ‘Seriously, Sam. I’m a bird. No two ways about it. Where’s Molly?’ he asked, before he realised Sam was on the phone.
Ed frowned. He hadn’t exactly been expecting to throw an engagement party, let alone one in the pub he usually frequented with his mates. Sometimes he went there with Saskia, but mostly it was a place Ed used for down time. He wasn’t sure they would ever see him in the same way now that they knew he was behind the bows and glitter.
Not that Ed was bothered. Saskia was happy, which meant that he was happy. He was content to watch Saskia in her element, floating around the pub in a cream silk dress that showed off her tanned legs, laughing and socialising.
Was Saskia a little drunk? Ed thought she might be. Nothing wrong with that, of course. He was a tad drunk himself.
Saskia’s parents were in tow, Ed noted. They were a distinguished-looking couple but they seemed somewhat bewildered to find themselves in a local pub, surrounded by a bunch of people they were mostly unacquainted with.
‘Saskia’s parents seem nice,’ Sam commented, covering the phone with his hand, following Ed’s line of vision.
‘Yes. They’re great, really great.’
Pressing a pint onto Sam and accepting one himself, Ed decided that he wasn’t entirely sure Saskia’s parents approved of him. They had been pleasant enough when he met them, but they hadn’t seemed exactly thrilled about the engagement. Ed wondered if it was his job – or rather, the lack of it – that was causing concern. Being a full-time writer and having the luxury of living off his friend Boyd’s shrewd investments didn’t show him in the best light, he supposed. It wasn’t how he had started out; it was simply the fortuitous way his life had unfolded. But Ed wasn’t overly inclined to sit Harrison and Margot (for those were the names of Saskia’s illustrious parents) down and explain his humble beginnings. Saskia knew some of Ed’s history, but not all of it and Ed thought that was absolutely fine. A partner didn’t need to know everything about a person, did they?
Molly disagreed on this point, Ed recalled, glancing self-consciously at Sam, the way he often did when his thoughts drifted to Molly – as if Sam could read his mind or something daft. Anyway, Molly had questioned him about this once and Ed had defensively justified himself. Molly was a person who felt that couples should be fully open with one another and she saw it as some sort of flaw on Ed’s part that he hadn’t completely opened up to Saskia, some sort of indication perhaps that they weren’t fully connected. Ed suspected that the reason Molly had such strong opinions on this matter was largely down to him. But shame was the perfect foil for candidness. There were just some aspects of life that were better left unsaid, in Ed’s opinion.
