Happily Ever After Read online

  FEATURING A GALLERY READERS GROUP GUIDE

  In her blockbuster international bestsellers, Harriet Evans perfectly captures the complex lives of young twenty-first-century career women with an “effortlessly readable… comic style and loveable characters” (Marie Claire, UK).

  At twenty-two, Eleanor Bee is sure about three things: she wants to move to London and become a literary superstar; she wants to be able to afford to buy a coffee and croissant every morning; and after seeing what divorce did to her parents—especially her mum—she doesn’t believe in happy endings.

  Elle moves to London. She gets a job at Bluebird Books, a charmingly old-fashioned publisher. She falls out of bars, wears too-short skirts, makes lots of mistakes, and feels like she’s learning nothing and everything at the same time. And then, out of the blue, she falls in love, and that’s when she realizes just how much growing up she has to do.

  Ten years on, Elle lives in New York, and you could say she has found success; certainly her life has changed in ways she could never have predicted. But no matter where you go and how much you try to run away, the past has a funny way of catching up with you….

  Praise for Harriet Evans

  “I love Harriet’s combination of great writing talent and a wonderfully warm heart.”

  —Jilly Cooper, author of Polo and Riders

  “Sparkling prose and unforgettable characters— Harriet Evans writes irresistible books.”

  —Jill Mansell, author of Nadia Knows Best

  HARRIET EVANS is the bestselling author of Going Home, A Hopeless Romantic, The Love of Her Life, I Remember You, and Love Always. She lives in London.

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  THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS

  COVER DESIGN BY ZOE NORVELL • COVER PHOTOGRAPH OF STOREFRONT BY

  GIUGLIO GIL/HEMIS FR./GETTY IMAGES; OF WOMAN BY RANDY FARIS

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  Praise for internationally bestselling author Harriet Evans

  Happily Ever After

  “If you’ve been suffering from chick-lit fatigue, this is the book to give you back the love.”

  —Heat (UK)

  “This funny but thought-provoking book follows our heroine as she tries to find her way in a world tainted by her own cynicism…. An absolute must-read.”

  —Cosmopolitan (UK)

  “Evans’s stories are modern, absorbing, and compelling.”

  —Lovereading.co.uk

  Love Always

  “Evans keeps the reader turning pages to see what Natasha will do next because they will identify with a protagonist who strives to pick apart the lies in her life and piece together a truth.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A poignant tale of self-discovery…. Wonderful.”

  —Marie Claire (UK)

  “A writer of top-drawer popular fiction…. A dose of escapism that brings with it the promise of custard yellow sands and hot summer sun.”

  —Independent (UK)

  “Written in the author’s usual warm, witty style…. Perfect for a cozy night in.”

  —Cosmopolitan (UK)

  “Complex storylines, flawed characters, and cupboards that positively rattle with skeletons. If you’ve yet to add Harriet Evans to your ‘must-read’ list, now is a great time to start.”

  —Daily Record (UK)

  “An effortless and deeply satisfying romantic tale.”

  —Glamour (UK)

  “An engrossing novel of jealousy and forbidden love.”

  —Woman & Home (UK)

  I Remember You

  “A satisfying summer read.”

  —Library Journal

  “A compelling story complete with mystery, unearthed secrets, and longing for new adventures and old comforts.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “The perfect girly read.”

  —Cosmopolitan (UK)

  “A fabulous feel-good love story of friendship lost and love regained.”

  —Woman & Home (UK)

  The Love of Her Life

  “A heart-tugging tale…. Peopled with well-rounded characters and compelling dilemmas, the story will have readers sighing, hoping, and finally smiling. A read both entertaining and emotional; tissues at hand highly recommended.”

  —BookPage

  “Evans captures the essence of the young twenty-first–century career woman…. Delightful.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A poignant twist on the usual tropes of chick lit.”

  —Booklist

  “An unputdownable, gripping story of life, loss, and one girl’s search for happiness.”

  —Glamour (UK)

  “Brilliantly observed and emotionally charged throughout.”

  —Daily Mirror (UK)

  “Page-turning escapism.”

  —Woman & Home (UK)

  A Hopeless Romantic

  “A delicious romcom, surprisingly believable.”

  —Marie Claire (UK)

  “Hard to resist.”

  —Elle (UK)

  “Touching, engrossing, and convincing…. A rollicking ride of joy, disappointment, and self-discovery, which you’ll want to devour in one sitting.”

  —Daily Telegraph (UK)

  “Harriet Evans has scored another winner…. Witty, entertaining, self-reflective, and full of characters you’ll grow to love.”

  —Heat (UK)

  Going Home

  “Fabulous…. I loved it.”

  —Sophie Kinsella

  “A brilliant debut novel…. A delightful romantic comedy with self-effacing humor and witty dialogue.”

  —Romantic Times

  “An engaging first-person recounting of a watershed six months in one young woman’s life.”

  —Booklist

  “A lovely, funny heart-warmer…. Evans’s heightened comic style and loveable characters make it effortlessly readable.”

  —Marie Claire (UK)

  Also by Harriet Evans

  Love Always

  I Remember You

  The Love of Her Life

  A Hopeless Romantic

  Going Home

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Harriet Evans

  Originally published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Gallery Books trade paperback edition June 2012

  GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Catalogi
ng-in-Publication Data

  Evans, Harriet, 1974–

  Happily ever after / Harriet Evans.—First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.

  p. cm.

  1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Adult children of divorced parents—Fiction.

  3. Publishers and publishing—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6105.V347H36 2012

  823’.92—dc23

  2011053487

  ISBN 978-1-4516-7726-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-7727-0 (ebook)

  For Lynne

  with thanks for everything and love x x

  CONTENTS

  Prologue • August 1988

  April 1997

  September 1997

  March 1998

  November 2000

  June 2001

  May 2004

  September 2008

  Epilogue • Four Months Later

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Group Guide

  She read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

  Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

  PROLOGUE

  August 1988

  A Happy Ending for Me by Eleanor Bee

  They laugh at me, the girls in the canteen,

  But one day I will laugh at them.

  Black boots jack boots they are everywhere

  But I won’t wear them just because they are trendy.

  Oh, you treacherous night,

  Why won’t you take flight?

  For I am like a little red spot that

  That…

  ELEANOR BEE PUT down her pen and sighed. She stretched her arms above her head, with the weary movement of one who is wrestling with her own Ulysses. Unfortunately, this action inadvertently caught her hand in the gleaming yellow headphones of her new Sony Walkman. The plastic case was yanked abruptly into the air, dangling in front of her face for a brief second before falling to the ground, with a loud crack.

  “Oh, no,” Eleanor cried, talking to the floor in a tangle of long limbs, simultaneously pulling off her headphones and thus further entangling herself. “No!”

  The sound of Voice of the Beehive’s “Don’t Call Me Baby” from Now That’s What I Call Music 12 in her ears was abruptly silenced. The Walkman lay on the floor, the lid of the cassette player snapped off and lying several feet from her amongst a nest of dust and hair in the corner of the room. Eleanor picked it up and stared at it in despair. The door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she could hear the sound of glasses clinking, cutlery scraping on plates. And raised voices.

  “You said you’d take her tomorrow, John. You did.”

  “I did not. That’s utter rubbish.”

  “You did. You just weren’t bloody listening, as per usual. It’s fine. I’ll take her.”

  “Not if you’re still in that state you won’t. God, if you could see yourself, Mandana—”

  “You sanctimonious shit. Listen—”

  Eleanor jammed the headphones on again. Pressing her hands against her ears, she crawled across to the dusty corner and snatched the plastic tinted cover, brushing herself off as she stood up. She stared out of the window at the pale lemon evening sun, sliding into the clear blue sea. On the beach, the last few swimmers were coming out of the water. An intrepid band was building a fire, getting a barbecue ready, for this far north in August, the sun didn’t set till well after ten.

  But Eleanor did not see the view or the people. She stared blindly at the rickety wooden path down to the sea and wondered if she should burst into the kitchen, tell them she didn’t want to go to Karen’s in Glasgow anymore. But she was also afraid of interrupting them; she didn’t want to hear what they were saying to each other.

  Mum’s dad had died, two weeks before they’d come to Skye. At first it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. Eleanor felt bad about it but it was true. He lived in Nottingham and they lived in Sussex, and they hardly ever saw him and Mum’s mum. Mum didn’t get on with him, and Eleanor and Rhodes had been to the house in Nottingham only twice. The first time he’d smelled of whisky and roared at them when they played in the tiny back garden. The second time he’d had a go at Mum, shouted and told her she was a disgrace. He’d smelled of whisky that time, too. (Eleanor hadn’t known what it was, but Rhodes had told her. He loved knowing everything she didn’t.) Their granny visited them in Sussex instead or saw them for day trips to London, which Eleanor loved, even though nowadays it was annoying Granny didn’t understand she was fourteen and didn’t want to go to babyish things like Madame Tussauds; she wanted to hang out by herself at Hyper Hyper and Kensington Market.

  But Mum had been much more upset about Grandpa dying than Eleanor would have expected. Everyone’s parents argue, she reminded herself. Karen had said that last week, when Eleanor had cried all over her and said she didn’t want to go on holiday with her parents and her brother. Not like this, they don’t, Eleanor had wanted to say. She was so used to worrying about things—whether she would break her arm falling off the horse at gym, just like Moira at school, whether her mum or dad would die of a terrible disease, whether she herself was dying of a secret disease because she was sure her periods were heavier than everyone else’s, and the letter in Mizz magazine had said if you were worried about it you should definitely go to the doctor—all these things kept her awake at night, till her heart pounded and then she worried that her heart rate was too fast and would explode and she had never noticed that all of a sudden her parents seemed to hate each other. Suddenly something was, she knew, wrong, terribly wrong, and it was only when she played her music really loud or curled up on her bed with a book that the tide of fear seemed to recede, for a little while.

  They’d had an OK day today. A walk along towards Talisker Bay where the whisky was made; Dad had told Rhodes he could try some at the distillery, since he was nearly eighteen. The air was fresh and clear, the sky was a perfect powder blue, the last of the midges really had gone, and Eleanor was almost glad to be out of her room for once, outside with her parents and her brother. Just like a normal family on a normal holiday.

  The trouble had started today when they got back and there was frozen pizza for lunch. Dad had had a go at Mum because it wasn’t properly defrosted, soggy in the middle, and she’d shouted at him. Eleanor and Rhodes were used to this at home, but Dad was a GP who worked late and often didn’t notice the burnt pasta, the half-cooked chicken Kievs.

  “It’s disgusting,” he’d said eventually, pushing the plate away. “I can’t eat it, Mandana. You should have defrosted it before we went for the walk.”

  Mum was on her second glass of wine. “Right. Of course, it’s beyond the realm of possibility that you’d make lunch, John, isn’t it? It’s a holiday for me, too, I’ve had a bloody hard time and you don’t even—”

  Dad had stood up, pushing the table away, and stalked off into the sitting room; he’d stayed there with the door shut, watching the cricket till Mandana had gone in to remind him about driving Eleanor the next day.

  A knocking sound made Eleanor jump. Her mother opened the door, slowly. “Ellie, love?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Eleanor took her headphones off. “I just—”

  Mandana came into the room. She wiped her face with one hand, tiredly. “I’m sorry for the yelling. Just a misunderstanding, your dad didn’t realize about driving you, you see….”

  Adolescent rage, made up of anger and fear, boiled inside Eleanor. “I know, you didn’t ask him. You drank too much and forgot. Again.”

  “Ellie!” her mother said sharply. “Don’t be rude. Of course I didn’t. It’s not that. Your father and I just aren’t getting on very well at the moment, that’s all.”

  “Are you going to get a divorce?” Eleanor heard herself asking the question, and held her breath.

  “Love, of course not! What makes you think that?” Mandana patted her soft dar
k hair, rather helplessly, and said before Eleanor could answer, “Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for all that noise. Daddy’ll take you to the station tomorrow, it’s no problem.”

  Mandana’s voice was trembling, and her cheeks were flushed. Eleanor rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?” Mandana said.

  “You’re different since Grandpa died. I don’t understand, you always said you hated him.”

  “I didn’t really hate him,” Mandana said. “I just feel bad. I never saw him. He was a sad man, and it makes me sad, and it makes me think about things. It’s just a hard time at the moment, that’s all.”

  “Why was he a sad man?”

  “Look,” Mandana said, in the brisk way she sometimes suddenly had. “Just be ready, get your things ready. It’s…” She trailed off. Eleanor stared at her mother. “Oh. I lost my train of thought, Ellie. Just be ready, won’t you?”

  “Don’t call me Ellie.”

  “OK,” Mandana said, one hand on the door. “Supper’s soon. We thought we’d watch a video tonight. Won’t that be fun? I’m making lasagna.”

  It was pointless trying to talk to her. It was just pointless. “Fine,” Eleanor said. “Thanks, Mum. See you in a bit. I’ll pack.”