The Summer We Ran Away

JENNY OLIVER is a bestselling author of contemporary fiction. She has been an elf in the Disney Store, a personal trainer, journalist, editor and, by far the best, a writer. Twice nominated for the RNA Best Contemporary Novel Award, Jenny’s books explore the ups and downs of relationships and an unwavering belief in happily ever after. In her spare time, she can be found cajoling her family out to car boot sales, trying to reign in her competitiveness on the netball court and subtly eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations as inspiration for her next book.

Follow her on Twitter @JenOliverBooks, Instagram @JenOliverBooks, and Facebook @JennyOliverBooks.

Also by Jenny Oliver:

The House We Called Home

The Summerhouse by the Sea

The Sunshine and Biscotti Club

The Vintage Summer Wedding

The Little Christmas Kitchen

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

The Summer We Ran Away

Jenny Oliver

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Jenny Oliver 2020

Jenny Oliver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008297558

Version 2020-05-28

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008297541

For Kate and Becky, thank you.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

It was the start of the bank holiday weekend and the air was abuzz with Lexi and Hamish Warrington’s summer party. Music was already drifting over the street to announce the lavish annual event.

The weather was steaming. Clouds had been holding in the heat like a pressure cooker for days. Everyone with their own theory on when it might break, whispering about who was using their hose even though there was a ban. On Thursday’s bin night all the blue recycling crates up the street were full of Dyson fan boxes and paddling pool packaging.

Across the road at number nine Cedar Lane, Julia Fletcher was busy icing fifty-five vanilla cupcakes, baked at Lexi Warrington’s behest, before the party started. There was white frosting and white sugar stars everywhere to fit with this year’s white-hot theme. Last year it had been unicorns. Lexi had dyed her hair like a rainbow and worn a tail which Julia, who had moved in last autumn, only knew because she’d found the picture on Instagram.

The party was all anyone had been talking about for months. Lexi had sent a save the date to the Cedar Lane WhatsApp group in mid-January when there was still frost on the pavements: Guys, so sick of this weather!! Only thing keeping me sane is SUMMER PARTY–yay!! Lxxx Everyone marking it in the diary months in advance so the date wouldn’t be double-booked.

Now the party was due to start in half an hour and Julia was nowhere near ready. There was icing everywhere. The crappy oven had burnt half the cakes and under-baked the other half. There was a wasp buzzing furiously against the window. Inside the house it was like an oven. The red-brick Victorian houses on Lexi’s side of the street kept naturally cool, whereas the pebble-dashed post-war terraced houses on Julia’s side were built with walls as thin as bible pages so they heated up like furnaces in the summer and turned to ice in winter.

Julia’s husband, Charlie, strolled casually into the kitchen. ‘God, I love a bank holiday,’ he sighed, the relief of the extra day off lifting his whole being as if at all other times he wore the job he hated heavy on his shoulders. He’d been for a cycle already that morning and changed out of his sweaty cycling kit into an old pair of turquoise shorts and a green T-shirt. ‘Does Lexi know you’ve gone to this much effort?’ he asked, watching Julia frantically trying to finish the cakes.

Julia looked up, pushing her hair out her eyes with the back of her hand, she was not in the mood for chat. The mid-morning almost tropical heat was making the frosting curdle. ‘Try this,’ she said, handing him one of the cupcakes that had caught in the oven. ‘Can you tell it’s burnt?’

Charlie examined the little cake, then popped it into his mouth whole. ‘Nice,’ he said, voice muffled with cake, nodding with approval.

Julia wasn’t so sure and took a bite of one herself. It definitely tasted burnt, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it now. If she covered them with enough silver balls and sugared white stars, hopefully no one would notice.

Charlie might very well be shaking his head at Julia’s clear distress re the cakes, but the thing about Lexi Warrington was that she made you want to impress her. She was Queen Bee of the road with the perfect house and the perfect children – little blonde twin girls. Everyone loved Lexi. She had a buoyancy. A story to tell for every situation, an emoji reply for every one of the hundred Instagram comments she receives, an effortlessly understated outfit for every barbecue or Cedar Lane WhatsApp group drinks.

Since moving in, Lexi had taken Julia under her wing – inviting her round for a coffee and to do yoga in the living room, including her in the cocktail nights with the girls – and because of that, Julia didn’t mind doing things for her, like making the cakes or, as was Lexi’s current bugbear, helping campaign against the new Sainsbury’s planned for development at the end of the street: Julia, you’re in marketing aren’t you? Could you knock up a good template letter of complaint for the whole street to use? Thanks, sweetie! L xxx

Julia wasn’t stupid, she knew that in some ways Lexi was using her – she made you feel special so you’d do things for her – but it didn’t matter. That was the thing about Lexi, there was something magnetic about her, something powerful. She made you want to do things for her.

Charlie had gone over to the window to let the wasp out and was now standing by the kitchen table that was stacked high with paint charts, decorating catalogues and tile samples, leafing through the mess to find something. ‘Do we need all this stuff?’ he asked, gesturing to the decorating paraphernalia.

Julia shook her head. ‘I have no idea. Probably not.’ Renovations on their property had somewhat stalled recently with the depletion of their bank balance.

Charlie said, ‘Do you know where my seed catalogue is?’ nosing his way through the stack.

Julia looked over at him in disbelief. How could Charlie be thinking about seeds when they were about to head out to the party of the year? She checked the time on the oven clock. ‘Oh God, it starts soon. Shit, I haven’t even got changed. You’ve got to get changed.’

‘I am changed,’ Charlie said without looking up. ‘I think my tomatoes might have blight,’ he mused, nudging paint charts out of the way with his finger to find the seed catalogue, ‘but I’m pretty sure I ordered Mountain Magic which are blight-resistant.’

Julia paused her icing, wondering if she could somehow subtly ask him to please not talk solely about his vegetable patch while they were at the party, but she knew if she did that then she’d offend him because it was his current pride and joy and they’d have a row. But really, no one wanted to talk about tomatoes. Especially no one at Lexi and Hamish’s.

She iced the last cupcake. ‘Charlie, you can’t go wearing that,’ she said, gesturing to his turquoise and green colour combination. ‘It’s a white-hot theme. You need to wear white. Haven’t you got a white shirt?’

‘I hate white shirts. I look stupid in white,’ he said, ‘like I’m going to school.’

‘You don’t,’ Julia replied. He did. But she didn’t want him to stand out in his green T-shirt. She wanted them to blend seamlessly in. Julia had been immersed in Lexi’s all-consuming outfit planning for weeks and as a result had found herself panic scrolling for outfits during work meetings, shopping in her lunch break and scouring Pinterest for good hair ideas, all especially for today.

She looked over at Charlie, trying to ignore the mess on the table and the cracked bare plaster wall behind him. ‘You must have a white T-shirt, surely? Don’t you have a polo shirt?’

‘It’s really old.’ Charlie came over to the kitchen counter, picking an apple from the fruit bowl and taking a bite. ‘This is fine,’ he said, pulling at his T-shirt. ‘Honestly, I just want to relax this weekend.’

Julia sprinkled tiny white sugar stars all over the cakes. ‘Please, Charlie, please go and put the polo shirt on. For me.’

Charlie sighed. ‘OK, fine, whatever.’ Munching on his apple, he skulked out of the room.

‘And you need your swimming trunks!’ Julia called after him. ‘They’ve hired a hot tub.’

From the hallway Charlie shouted back, ‘There is absolutely no way I am taking my top off at this party.’

Julia went back to her cakes, pincering silver balls into the centre of each one. It was hypocritical of her to roll her eyes at Charlie because he was just reflecting back her own insecurities. She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of being in just her swimming costume at the party either, but she didn’t want to be that couple. Hamish and Lexi wouldn’t have any qualms about stripping off; they’d probably get naked given half the chance.

Julia’s phone beeped on the kitchen counter. It was a WhatsApp from her work friend Meryl. She reached over with icing-covered hands to read it.

Meryl: Had any more Hot Hamish fantasies?

Oh God. Julia leant over the counter to see that Charlie was definitely no longer around, her heart racing.

On Thursday night, Julia had gone for after-work drinks to celebrate Meryl’s new job in Hong Kong. A bit pissed on countless glasses of Pinot Grigio Blush in the boiling sunshine, and sad that Meryl was off on a new adventure, Julia had admitted to the fact that, over the last few weeks, she’d been having erotic dreams about Lexi’s husband, Hamish Warrington. Julia had never had erotic dreams before. Even the fact she used the word erotic suggested to her that this was not her normal territory. As she’d told Meryl, dimly aware of her uninhibited insobriety, ‘I’m not an erotic sex-dream person. I have quiet, nice sex. I can’t even believe I’ve said the word sex so many times in this conversation, I’ve never talked about sex this much in my life.’

Meryl, who talked about sex a lot, had guffawed. Congratulated her even for this unexpected candidness. Then insisted on seeing Hamish’s Instagram page which was all pictures of him with his top off; six-foot-two, washboard-stomached, dirty-blond hair, on holiday in the Maldives or sweating through a HIIT workout. Meryl had highly approved and the sex-dream conversation had segued into Meryl disappearing down a Hamish Warrington Instagram wormhole.

Later that night Meryl had WhatsApped Julia with a drunken diagnosis:

I think the problem is that you’re trapped in normality. On paper you have everything but maybe you’re feeling constrained by convention. Your bored brain is seeking excitement, Mx P.S. Never let me drink Blush again

Julia had pondered the notion. When she and Charlie had bought the house on Cedar Lane last year it had all seemed very exciting. Charlie’s granny had died and left him enough money, along with their savings, to make up the deposit. They had attained what had been deemed unattainable, a rung on the housing ladder. Even her parents had been impressed. Julia had splodged each wall with Farrow & Ball tester pots and made a Pinterest board for every room. She had dreams of pale grey Scandinavian kitchen cupboards, high stools and a snazzy hot water tap.

But now, after spending out on a new boiler, a new bathroom because the shower leaked, having the Asbestolux all over the top floor removed, and experiencing the nauseous horror of being told they needed a new roof that they couldn’t afford and paying to patch it up instead, they were at a cash flow standstill. They were having to hold out on further renovations till they could afford them. The Farrow & Ball paint had been immediately downgraded to Homebase own-brand, but even that was sidelined when it was revealed the bedroom wall needed replastering. It meant they were living in depressingly wallpaper-stripped rooms with orange swirly carpet throughout and a half-torn down kitchen with bare plaster walls. They had sucked every last pound of their savings and interest-free credit. Their joint income was now spreadsheeted and accounted for for the next three years, including adjustments for possible interest rate rises and a freeze on bonuses, so that with every eight to ten months came the possibility of decorating a room, bar any further disasters. Charlie had weighted the spreadsheet to include a baby next year but, looking at the figures, possibly the year after would be better financially.

Even thinking about it made Julia feel claustrophobic.

She thought about how when Meryl had announced she was going to Hong Kong for a year’s secondment – essentially to escape from a vile, harrowing break-up – Julia had actually felt a stab of envy at the excitement of it, even the relationship turbulence and anguish that went with it.

It had made her conclude that Meryl’s drunken WhatsApp diagnosis was probably correct.

Now, in the sweltering kitchen, Julia wiped the icing off her hands and typed a message back to Meryl:

Don’t! I’m being plagued by them! I had another Hamish dream last night. We did it in the middle of the day, in the bushes by the children’s playground in the rain! I feel so bad. It’s like my brain is having an affair that my body has to keep quiet. It’s awful.

Lol. Doesn’t sound awful ;-)

Meryl

Julia rolled her eyes at Meryl’s reply. It was awful. Lately, she found herself night after night, lying in bed next to Charlie, feeling like a traitor.

Standing in the kitchen, she was suddenly jolted by a flash of the dream. Hamish all rain-slicked, pressing her tight to him with bulging muscles, eyes all lust and adoration, grinning down at her with his dazzling teeth.

From upstairs Charlie shouted, ‘Have you seen my white polo shirt anywhere?’

Julia’s cheeks immediately flamed with guilt. She fumbled her phone, dropping it onto one of the fairy cakes. ‘Damn.’ She hastily wiped the frosting off. ‘Hang on, Charlie,’ she called, trying to sound normal. ‘I’m just coming up to get changed. I’ll find it for you.’

Chapter Two

Across the road in Lexi’s front garden, the ancient olive tree was festooned with white fairy lights and white concertina lanterns. Faux tealights in white paper bags lined the garden path. And white bunting hung from window to window. They even had a light projector that made snowflakes dance over the front of the house.

The heat blazed down on Julia’s Tupperware full of cakes, the white clouds a laughable barrier to the ferocity of the midday sun. Charlie was frowning at a battered yellow VW camper van parked in the space outside Lexi’s house. On the windscreen was a sign that read: PLEASE DON’T PARK THIS VAN OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!

‘Did Lexi write that?’ he asked, even though it was obvious she had.

Just the week before, Lexi had WhatsApped the Cedar Lane Group the message:

Sorry to do this, guys, but re parking. I know the space outside MY house is not technically mine but I think we should RESPECT people’s right to park in front of their OWN houses. In my last street we did this as an unwritten rule and it worked REALLY well!!

Charlie shook his head. ‘She can’t stick things on people’s vans. She doesn’t own the street.’

Normally Julia would agree, but she knew the effort Lexi had gone to for this party and she could forgive her for wanting it all to be perfect. As Julia’s father would say, woe betide anyone who got in her way.

They walked up the path together, Julia wowed by the effort of the decorations, Charlie still shaking his head, incredulous about the van sticker.

Charlie had changed his top to the polo shirt and only after a massive row had conceded to wear his green shorts that doubled as swimming trunks, but still flatly refused to get in the tub. Julia had her new bikini on under a new white dress with a floaty skirt – both of which she’d bought in H&M but they were exact copies of more expensive ones she couldn’t afford – and a new pair of white Superga plimsolls that she had stumbled upon in TK Maxx and almost wept for joy. She had tried to thread a white ribbon into her hair like she’d seen on Pinterest but she’d run out of time to do it properly and in the time she had it looked a shambles. As a result of being overworked, her hair had gone annoyingly flat.

‘I’ve never seen that dress before,’ said Charlie as they waited for the door to open.

Julia shrugged. ‘Oh I’ve had it for ages,’ aware that they weren’t meant to be spending.

Charlie nodded, still studying her.

‘What?’ Julia asked, conscious that she was being watched.

‘Nothing,’ he said, then after a second’s contemplation added, ‘It’s just not very you.’

Julia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re meant to say I look very nice.’

‘You do look nice. Just not very you.’ Charlie shrugged.

Julia was about to reply when the door was thrown open and suddenly Hamish Warrington was there, arms thrown wide as he called, ‘Julia! Charlie! Come in! Come in!’ And Julia found that she couldn’t speak – all hot suddenly and flustered by the sight of him and the memory of her dreams – as he pulled her into a big warm hug.

Hamish was decked out completely in white linen – shorts and shirt – with white flip-flops. Charlie looked him up and down as he pumped Charlie’s hand in greeting, and said dryly, ‘That’s a brave outfit choice.’

Hamish barked a laugh, bright white teeth chewing on something or nothing as he gave Charlie a hearty pat on the shoulder, ‘Good to have you here, Charlie old boy.’

Julia was still all flustered, pulling awkwardly at her dress, trying to balance the Tupperware of cakes which had the effect of making her feel a bit frumpy and self-conscious in front of Hamish. At the same time, she steadfastly avoided Charlie’s sideways mocking glance as he tried to get her on side with regards to Hamish’s white linen ensemble.

They followed Hamish as he led them through the hallway with its hot pink walls and acid yellow staircase – 954 Instagram likes the day it was painted – and into the kitchen.

As they walked into the room, it was apparent that there had been no scrimping on the decorations. Puffballs of tissue paper hung from the ceiling like giant pompoms, vases of white lilies graced every table and surface, on the floor were big glass urns of coiled fairy lights. Impeccably dressed waiting staff and caterers were busy arranging platters of food and uncorking champagne.

In the centre of all the action was Lexi, in a spaghetti-strapped, figure-hugging, floor-length gown of shimmering white sequins that she’d had shipped over from the States. She was leaning up against the pale turquoise herringbone tiles of her kitchen island, selfieing with Alicia Fox from number twenty-four and Nicky Merryweather from number seventeen, their matching blonde hair intertwining as they all pressed their cheeks together.

Julia had to pause to take a courage-mustering breath. She was really regretting arriving with a giant Tupperware now. They were all so glamorous, so effortlessly cool. They made her feel like the awkward new girl at school, desperate to belong. Nicky Merryweather was nice enough, but Alicia Fox always made Julia uncomfortable. Like there was a joke she’d missed. Whenever she saw Lexi, Julia definitely preferred it when Alicia wasn’t there.

‘Julia, darling! You look gorgeous.’ Lexi sprang forward from the embrace with the other two blondes, her dress catching the light like a glitter ball. ‘Are those my cakes?’

Julia nodded, handing over the cakes, grateful to relinquish the Tupperware. ‘You look amazing,’ she said to Lexi.

‘Ohh,’ said Lexi, waving away the compliment with faux-modesty. ‘Well I never get to dress up nowadays. Two kids will zap away that kind of sparkle!’

Everyone smiled and nodded even though they all knew it was a lie – Lexi had a wardrobe bursting with designer dresses and festival fancy dress, and never failed to wow with her Halloween costumes – but she had the power to make everyone happily complicit.