ELAINE BEDELL was a BAFTA award-winning TV producer before becoming Controller of Entertainment at the BBC and Director of Entertainment & Comedy at ITV. She has commissioned and produced some of the UK’s most popular entertainment shows, including The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Take Me Out, Britain’s Got Talent, The One Show, Top Gear and Saturday Night Takeaway. She lives in Hackney and has two children. She is currently Chief Executive of the Southbank Centre. About That Night is her first novel. About That Night Elaine Bedell ONE PLACE MANY STORIES An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019 Copyright © Elaine Bedell 2019 Elaine Bedell 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. E-book Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008297695 This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings: Change of font size and line height Change of background and font colours Change of font Change justification Text to speech Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008297688
In memory of my dear dad Bert who should have lived to see it all.
Contents
July 2017
Elizabeth Place is packing up her life. The protesting screech of duct tape and the thwack and swoosh of folding cardboard corners have been the soundtrack to her day. She’s surrounded by sealed brown boxes. Two muscular men arrived first thing in a white van with its big red boast ‘We’ll Make the Earth Move For You’ and stomped up the stairs to her first-floor flat, Where do you want us, love? Between them they carried a sofa, four chairs, a chest of drawers and her double mattress – up a bit, right a bit, upsy-daisy, there she goes, easy does it – 
