Chapter 1
Emily sighed as she drove past the sign of her childhood home town. It had been five years since she had jumped in her car and driven as far as the petrol in the tank would take her. Now, she was back, a successful software engineer, to bury her mother, Isabella Garcia, who had succumbed quickly to stage four cancer. The cancer had been found too late for any intervention to be performed. Isabella had had an extremely rare Cancer, Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia, which had not portrayed symptoms in her. Emily had been in Japan when her parents found out and told her. They had waited a week to inform her, waiting for the test results to come back in hopes that some intervention would help, but no such luck. By the time, Emily had found out, her mother had deteriorated so much so, that by the time Emily landed back on English soil, her mother was gone.
However, Emily’s mind was not on the present as she drove into the town, it was on the past. Specifically, the day five years ago when she had left suddenly. She remembered the day as if it were only yesterday. Emily had come home from University two days early to surprise her long-term boyfriend of seven years, Adam Parker. She had gone straight to his house and let herself in, she had planned to hide in his bedroom until he got home from working on his family’s farm. Instead, she had opened the bedroom door to find Adam fast asleep in bed, naked with her supposed best friend, Hannah O’Connor. She had not stopped to question them; the proof was in front of her eyes. While she had been at university, studying to better her and Adam’s future, they had been behind her. She fled, stopping long enough to explain why she was not staying with her parents. They had not stopped her, knowing she would go anyway. She had spent the last five years, paying for her parents to travel to her, just so she could avoid coming back here. She shuddered, realising there was no way she was going to be able to avoid Adam and Hannah now.
Her parents had made sure that she knew that neither Adam nor Hannah had left the little town, she had expected that. Hannah had worked in the local supermarket since the age of 18, while Adam had taken over his family’s farm and shop. It had not taken long for the town to notice that Emily was never coming around anymore, her parents had fielded the questions, saying she had got a job abroad and had taken it, despite the lie. It had stopped most people from asking. That was part of the problem of living in a small town, everybody knew everybody. Hannah had been ostracised by the community of her own volition. She had been found by a cousin of a member of the local chess club having sex with all the male members of the said chess club at the same time. At least, according to what her father, Ethan, had picked up from the gossip in the Parker’s Farm Shop, he only shopped there at her mother’s behest, she loved the gossip. Especially after Emily left.
The farm shop was the heart of the town, the locals all shopped there, especially since you could guarantee that the twins, Emma and Chloe, Adam’s younger sisters, would keep you enthralled in conversation until the next customer came in. Simultaneously, gathering and distributed gossip, as readily as they did the groceries of the customers. Emma and Chloe had been in the same year as Emily at school, and though they had never been particularly close friends, they had got on well. It was through them she met Adam, who was a few years older.
The twins had hosted a party in one of the barns on the farm, for their eighteenth birthday. They had invited the whole of year thirteen from the local sixth-form college they all attended. Adam had been there as well with a few of his mates from university. At the time, eighteen-year-old Emily had never dreamed that a twenty-one-year-old university student would be interested in her, or that she would be interested in a guy from their small town when she was working so hard to leave. Adam had changed that dream until five years ago. Her mind drifted to the party, she’d never been a party girl, so after about an hour and more than a few drinks, she stumbled outside for a breath of fresh air. Adam had followed her outside, seeing her leave he’d taken the opportunity to approach her, bringing a bottle of water for her. She had sipped the water between answering his questions and they’d eventually fallen into easy conversation. The time had flown by, and they only knew the party was wrapping up when Hannah came stumbling to find her.
Emily had been dragged off by her supposed friend only managing a quick wave of goodbye before she had to steady Hannah. She had not had a chance to think about the encounter until a few days later when Adam had tracked her down at the library the next town over to ask her out. He had been the perfect gentleman, picking her up on Friday night and taking her to the next town over, away from prying eyes for a meal and a late-night walk. The rest had been history, until that fateful afternoon.
Emily was brought out of her reverie as she realised, she was sitting in front of her parent’s house and her father was opening the front door. She felt tears prick her eyelids as she saw him. He’d aged twenty years in the month since she had last seen him. She hurriedly unclipped her seatbelt, stumbling in her haste to reach him.
“Oh dad, I’m so sorry.” She cried as she tumbled into his arms.
