A Girl Called Summer: Part One, Chapters 1–6 of 28

By Lucy Lord

Island life is just one step away…

Lucy Lord’s new novel, A Girl Called Summer, has been serialized into 6 parts – this is PART 1 OF 6 (Chapters 1 to 6 of 28).

*The first five parts of A Girl Called Summer are being released weekly from 12th June 2014, before the full novel is published. The final part will be released on 17th July 2014, when the full novel will also be available to buy in ebook and paperback*

A new start…
Bella and Andy have escaped the rat race for the sun-drenched, relaxed lifestyle on the island of Ibiza. But with a run-down house to make habitable and a distractingly gorgeous neighbour, is their island idyll all that it seems?

A holiday adventure…
Tamara Gold has been Hollywood’s most notorious car crash since she was a child star. Now clean and sober, and engaged to Tinseltown’s hottest leading man, it seems like she’s finally conquered her addictions, if not her bratty behaviour. But a summer in Europe with all the hedonistic lures of Ibiza beckons…

A girl called Summer…
Summer Larsson has always known Ibiza as home: a haven of hippies, yoga and healthy eating – and loneliness. But in Bella, she’s found the friend she always needed, and when Bella’s glamorous Hollywood friends come to visit, it looks like she might have found true love as well…

This could be the summer that everything changes…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jun 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780007597109

Lucy Lord

Lucy Lord’s food philosophy is simple: if it makes you happy, you should eat it. Splitting her time across Australia and the UK, Lucy is known by her Instagram following for her deliciously healthy recipes – packed with fresh ingredients and full of flavour, yet accessible for the average office worker or busy family. Food for the Soul was Lucy’s first bestselling cookbook.

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘Are we completely bloody insane?’ asked Bella, as the jeep lurched along the uneven dirt track that led to their new home. It was pitch-black outside, and raining, the downpour so heavy that the water bounced right off the jeep’s roof, sounding inside like a volley of gunfire.

‘Bit late to start thinking about that.’ Andy smiled at her, and took one hand off the steering wheel to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.

Bella looked anxiously over her shoulder to the back seat, where their daughter, Daisy, was sleeping soundly, utterly oblivious to the noise and bumpiness of the journey. Her heart swelled with love as she gazed at the perfect, untroubled little face, and she smiled too. Daisy had just turned one, and her birthday-cum-farewell-to-England party, a pretty riotous affair, had been the last time they’d seen all their London friends. Had it only been a week ago?

‘See?’ said Andy. ‘Daisy’s completely unfazed by it all. Stop worrying – everything’s going to be fine.’

‘Daisy’s not fazed by anything.’ Bella smiled again. ‘And I’m not fazed, really, either. But it would have been nice not to have been arriving in the dark. Bloody MonAir.’ The plan had been to arrive shortly before sunset, but their flight from Gatwick had been delayed by four hours. ‘And bloody rain. This is meant to be Ibiza!’ It came out as a wail. ‘This is what we emigrated to escape from!’

‘It’s April, Belles. It’s a freak storm. It’ll pass. Now come on, old thing, where’s your sense of adventure? This is the beginning of a whole new chapter in our lives. It’s meant to be exciting.’

‘Less of the old, please! But yeah – sorry. It is exciting.’ Bella used to be up for anything, but the responsibilities of motherhood had somewhat tamed her sense of adventure – which was probably just as well, considering some of the things she’d got up to in the past. ‘I can’t wait to see Ca’n Pedro again.’

Ca’n Pedro was the four-hundred-year-old finca that Andy and Bella had first laid eyes on the previous summer, their first holiday with little Daisy as a newborn. It was set in incredibly picturesque surroundings, in the middle of nowhere, and they had fallen in love with it immediately. Such was its state of disrepair that when they’d idly asked a local estate agent how much she thought it was worth, the price had been so low that they’d realized they could actually afford to buy it if they sold Bella’s tiny Notting Hill flat, which had soared in value in the years she’d lived there, and was far too small for a couple with a baby. There was even some money left over to do the finca up themselves (apart from the kitchen and bathrooms – for all their attributes, neither Andy nor Bella could claim much knowledge of plumbing).

And so what had been the germ of an idea, conceived excitedly over a long, lazy lunch on a beach, had now become reality.

Gulp.

Eventually they drew to a halt, the jeep’s headlights the only illumination for miles around.

‘Well, here we are then,’ said Bella. The ancient finca looked less romantic than daunting and terrifyingly remote in the darkness and pounding rain. ‘Our new home.’

‘Our new home,’ Andy repeated. ‘Right then, I’ll go and open up, put some lights on, and then you can bring Daisy in.’

‘God, I’m glad we got the rewiring done in advance. Imagine turning up on a night like this with no electricity.’

‘That would have been grim.’ Andy smiled. ‘OK, I’ll make a run for it. I’ve got the torch, but can you keep the car’s lights on until I’m in?’

Bella watched as he ran towards the heavy wood front door, jacket pulled up over his tousled head of dark hair to protect him from the rain, and put one of the keys that Carmen the estate agent had left them at the airport into the lock. After three attempts, he found the right one. As he opened the door, he turned back and waved at her, grinning, before disappearing into the house.

Bella waited, properly excited now at the prospect of seeing their new home’s interior again. She vividly recalled the ancient wooden beams, flagstone floors and whitewashed (if distinctly grubby) walls that more than made up for the dilapidated old kitchen and bathrooms that hadn’t been updated since the Seventies.

And she waited.

Just as she was getting slightly worried, Andy emerged into the beam of the headlights, and ran back towards the car. Bella leaned over to let him in. He was panting and soaked already.

‘Well?’

‘I can’t get any of the lights to work. I don’t know – maybe there’s a central switch somewhere . . .’

‘. . . or maybe the storm’s buggered up the electricity?’

‘Good point.’

‘Shit.’

They both stared at the dark old house, which was looking more spooky by the second.

‘Well, we’ve got the torch,’ said Andy, and Bella nodded. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t exactly how she’d envisaged their first night in their new home. ‘Shall we brave it, then? Get Daisy tucked up, go to bed and sort it all out in the morning?’

‘As long as the bed’s been delivered . . .’ They’d had the pretty wrought-iron French antique shipped over weeks ago, but you never knew.

‘Carmen did tell us it had.’

‘Carmen also told us the electricity’d been sorted.’

They looked at one another.

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘OK, let’s go for it.’

*

Bella sat in the dark as she waited for Andy to return with the rest of Daisy’s stuff, and anything else that might make their first night a bit more comfortable. He had offered to leave her the torch, but she’d said no. Sitting with your baby in the dark wasn’t as bad as negotiating your way up unfamiliar and slippery stone steps, encumbered with nappies, bottles and the rest of the gubbins, with bugger-all illumination. They couldn’t keep the jeep’s lights on all night.

Their bed had arrived, thank God. And thank God, thought Bella, that her daughter was such a heavy-sleeping little angel. Like mother, like daughter, she supposed (angel bit aside). The only sounds in the creepy darkness were Daisy’s steady snuffling breath from her carrycot, and the rain still pounding down outside. Bella longed to pick her up and cuddle her, to smell her sweet powdery baby smell, but knew she shouldn’t break her blissful slumber.

Despite everything she’d read (and been told by her own mother), she hadn’t believed it was possible to love another creature so much. From the minute the slimy, wriggly little thing had been put in her arms, the previous agonizing twenty-four hours all-but-forgotten, her life had changed for ever. She knew she was biased, but Daisy was an enchanting little girl, with an extraordinarily sunny disposition. She rarely cried, preferring to observe things solemnly through her enormous brown eyes, until something made her gurgle with spontaneous giggles.

What with the bonus of Andy being a pretty good approximation of a hands-on father (he had his moments, but then, he was a man), and now their move to Ibiza, her

Reviews for A Girl Called Summer

[jamespurcell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kydd taken down and seeks to redeem himself as a privateer. Lots of excellent Channel Island background nicely frames his and Renzie's new ventures. A good entry in an excellent series. Author's notes as always an insightful peek into the Age of Fighting Sail and His Majesty's Nary.