This Changes Everything

Helen Mcginn

Description

'Escapist, warm, witty and wise' Daily Mail

Should first love be left in the past, or is first love, forever love...

Sisters Annie and Jess are used to their mother Julia being spontaneous. But when Julia announces she’s flying off to Rome to meet her first love Patrick, whom she hasn’t seen for fifty years, it's an adventure too far. So, her daughters decide the only way to keep Julia safe, is to go too – without actually telling their mother she has chaperones!

Julia and Patrick’s love story was everything – epic, once-in-a-lifetime, with a tragic ending and life-long consequences. First love is hard to forget, but sometimes, just sometimes, life delivers a chance to rewrite your story.

As the eternal city of Rome works its magic, old secrets, old friends and old loves become new possibilities and new dreams. And when the four travellers return home, nothing will ever be the same again.

Join Helen McGinn for a timeless, joyous, unforgettable journey through love, family, and long-forgotten dreams. A novel to hold to your heart and treasure, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Noble, Cathy Kelly and JoJo Moyes.

Praise for This Changes Everything:

'This is a lovely, uplifting book that transported me away, firstly to the beautiful city of Rome and then to gorgeous Cornwall. It’s a moving and emotional story of families in all their messy wonderfulness, of people losing one another, and then coming together again - sometimes in unexpected ways. A hugely enjoyable family tale, it was exactly what I wanted to read at this time.' Louise Douglas

‘This Changes Everything is the perfect tonic. An uplifting, forget-about-everything-else read that I couldn’t put down. Romantic, emotional and page-turning, Helen McGinn’s debut novel can’t fail to cheer you up!' Zoe Folbigg

'I loved reading this book. I needed escapism - don't we all need escapism right now - and it gave me Rome, Cornwall and a family who immediately felt like old friends. I took it to the bath, to bed and had finished it within 24 hours. It was the perfect antidote to tough times.' Victoria Moore, The Daily Telegraph

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Holidays
• Siblings
• Humorous
• Women
• Roma (serie de televisión)
• Friendship
• Contemporary history
• Romantic Comedy
• Sibling
• General officer
• Woman
• Italy
• My Last Duchess
• The Women
• Rome
• General
• Holiday
• Contemporary
• Family Life
• Romance
• Fiction
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 05 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800483460
• Langue: English

Extrait

This Changes Everything


Helen McGinn
For Ross
Contents




Part I


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10


Part II


Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18


Book Club Questions

Questions with answers from Helen

Acknowledgments

More from Helen McGinn

About the Author

About Boldwood Books
Part I
1

Annabel Armstrong had loved James for as long as she could remember. But on this particular morning she wanted to tip the contents of her half-full cereal bowl over his head. It wasn’t that he was being deliberately unhelpful, but rather he was so busy rushing around the kitchen asking who’d moved his keys (answer: him) he didn’t seem to notice Annie could really do with a hand. The boys had to be fed, teeth and hair needed brushing, and everyone needed to be in the car ready for the school run in the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile, chaos reigned. The noise – shouting from the boys, whining from the dogs, mewing from a hungry cat – was ridiculous. Annie contemplated sitting on the floor under the kitchen table, closing her eyes and covering her ears.
‘Come on, Rufe, eat up!’ she managed.
‘I am! I can’t eat any faster,’ Rufus replied dramatically. He really was the slowest eater.
‘I’ve finished all of mine,’ said Ned, wiping the last of the cereal from his mouth across the sleeve of his newly washed school jumper.
Annie sighed, reaching for a cloth. ‘Good boy, Ned. Now let’s get going, otherwise we’ll be late.’
‘You never say good boy to me when I finish my breakfast!’ protested Rufus.
‘If you finished it, I would,’ said Annie, immediately feeling mean.
‘Thanks a lot.’ He looked distinctly huffy.
‘What’s your plan today?’ Annie called after James as he headed down the hall.
‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ he replied over his shoulder. ‘Get in, be driven to distraction by people much younger than me. Try not to shout at people. Come home.’ James was having a work mid-life crisis of sorts. Having spent twenty years working in advertising, changing company a few times as he worked his way up to a management position, he now seemed no longer to be doing the work he loved. As he saw it, he was a glorified babysitter for (just about) grown men and women who all appeared to be younger, hungrier and better equipped to get ahead than he was. Cue resentment, inevitably leading to a ‘what’s-it-all-for’ phase. And now he’d started talking about retraining as a woodcutter, or something like that; Annie couldn’t quite remember.
‘Oh, come on, Jimmy, you love it when things are going well. Maybe this is just a, you know, down bit? Things will get better, they always do.’
‘Annie, I love you for your optimism, I really do.’ He came back to kiss Annie on the top of her head and shout goodbye to the boys.
‘’Bye, Dad!’ they hollered before careering off into the garden.
The sun was out and it was already warm, despite the early hour. They were still just under half a term away from the summer holidays but there was already a holiday feel in the air. Annie watched them run, dogs in tow, into the garden before she turned to attack the kitchen table. The boys’ cereal of choice had a habit of attaching itself to that table like barnacles. A blowtorch really would have been more appropriate than the damp cloth she held in her hand.
Her phone rang. It was her sister, Jess, the flashing screen announced.
‘You OK?’ Annie always started her phone calls with her sister with these words. Most of the time everything was, indeed, OK. But with Jess, calls often came with a generous dose of drama, sometimes with a side order of flakiness. Annie adored her only sister; eighteen months younger and a few years off forty.
‘Oh God, Annie. You won’t believe what I’ve done. Seriously, I have even surprised myself this time,’ Jess sighed, and Annie could hear her dragging furiously on her e-cig.
Annie wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear, ditched the cloth and started to throw hastily made Marmite sandwiches into lunch boxes for the boys.
‘Go on, I’m all ears.’
‘Well, you know that small, bald, irritating little man in accounts?’
‘Brian?’ said Annie, fearing the worst. ‘Oh God, Jess. Please don't say you…’
‘No! Of course not,’ said Jess. ‘But he was buying endless shots last night and I seemed to be drinking most of them. And, er, things got a little out of hand and I ended up, you know… with Rob.’
Annie’s shoulders tightened. Rob was drop-dead gorgeous. She didn’t know that for a fact – she’d never met him – but according to Jess he was. He was also married. And as much as Annie berated Jess for doing what she was doing, Jess insisted she was better off being with someone she didn’t have to be with. Basically, it meant she didn’t have to commit, which, Jess said, suited her perfectly. It was, Annie thought, a very sad situation for everyone concerned, most of all Rob’s wife who, presumably, had no idea.
‘Please don’t expect me to say anything nice. You know how I feel about it.’
‘I don’t expect you to say anything nice – I know it’s not good – but this time it was different.’
Annie’s heart sank. This was the moment Jess was going to announce Rob was leaving his wife and they were going to be together officially. Annie waited for the crashing punch line to what was, so far, one of the worst jokes she’d ever heard from her sister. Jess always had someone in tow, usually impossibly good-looking, mostly a good deal younger. She was surrounded by them at work; her job meant spending long hours in the City, followed by many more hours drinking after work. Having started as an intern in a PR company, Jess now ran a successful business of her own. She worked ridiculous hours, was surgically attached to her phone, owned one of the most envied address books in the City and was both loved and ever so slightly feared by those who worked with her. No doubt about it, Jess was incredibly good at what she did.
But years of working in such a brutal environment had left Jess with skin so thick she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried in a movie. Actually, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even seen a movie. Unless you counted the soft porn film a lovely young man called Tom (was it Tom?) insisted they watch in a hotel room in-between meetings during a recent conference. But Jess knew that didn’t really count.
Anyway, back to the punch line. Annie braced herself.
‘I realised that Rob is, in fact, a bit of a dick.’
Annie did a silent air punch.
‘Annie, are you there?’ Jess was thrown by the silence.
‘Yes, yes. I heard. God, I’m so relieved,’ Annie said. ‘I’m not saying you have to get married or anything, but getting involved with someone like that, who’s capable of doing whatever it is you do behind his wife’s back is just a complete waste of time. Not to mention potentially life-changing for all concerned when the truth comes out. Which it always does,’ she added.
Jess took a deep breath, determined not to rise to her sister’s predictably pious delivery. ‘It’s not always that simple, Annie. There’s more to it, though I don’t expect you to get it.’ But however much Jess wished otherwise, she knew Annie was right. No matter how good Rob made Jess feel, he was cheating on his wife. This was her first affair with a married man and though she had thought she could do it, she had since realised she just wasn’t able to live a lie.
It had been the sight of Rob in her flat just a few hours earlier, trying to put on his boxer shorts and tripping in the dark as he’d made his way to the bathroom to make a hushed phone call. At that moment, he had looked ridiculous rather than ravishing, as he’d done in the bar. The shots had become a distant memory, unlike the hangover she’d then nursed as a consequence.
‘I’m just so glad you’ve seen him for the slimy grease ball he obviously is. You deserve so much better,’ said Annie.
‘Well, just don’t go on about it. Let’s just pretend it never happened. And don’t, whatever you do, tell Mum.’
‘’Course not. Have you spoken to Mum?’
‘Why, what’s she done?’ It was Jess’s turn to sound weary.
‘Nothing. She’s fine, actually. But I know she’ll ask me if I’ve spoken to you in that “she-never-rings-me” kind of way.’
‘Tell her I’ll be down in a few weekends’ time. I’ll book a table at The Fox. We’ll go for lunch and have a proper catch-up.’
Annie knew there was only a very slim chance of this actually happening but the idea that it might cheered her immensely. Despite Jess’s flakiness – and serious lack of moral compass at times – Annie loved her sister deeply. And she desperately missed Jess’s company. Although separated by just a hundred miles of motorway, their worlds seemed so very far apart.
Annie hadn’t always lived in the country. Once upon a time, she had lived and worked in London, racing to the Tube in trainers, ready to be at her desk by 9 a.m. despite often nursing a considerable hangover. Having taken a temping job covering for a sick friend at an art gallery, Annie had gone on to become the first port of call for all the artists the gallery represented, a role she loved. It might be a great British artist on the phone one minute, followed by a complete unknown who hadn’t sold a painting for years the next. And Annie’s skill – not that she’d realised it – was treating each artist exactly the same. From her quietly spoken, pinstripe-suited boss, who used to tell her jokes and deliver the punch line in Latin, to the extremely beautiful, willowy PA, Caro, with whom she’d shared an office, along with all the wonderful artists she’d dealt with daily, Annie had adored everyone and everything about working there.
Now she sighed, sweeping a look across her kitchen, which, she noted, was once again liberally decorated with small pieces of stray Lego. The white-painted walls