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Four Christmases and a Secret ZARA STONELEY One More Chapter a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019 Copyright © Zara Stoneley 2019 Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Zara Stoneley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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. Source ISBN: 9780008363161 Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008363154 Version: 2019-09-11 Table of Contents Prologue – Mistletoe Kisses Act 1 – Must Try Harder
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Act 2 – New Year, New Me
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Act 3 – Nothing’s Going to Stop Me Now
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgements
Also by Zara Stoneley
About the Author
About the Publisher
For everybody who has felt at some time in their lives ‘not good enough’. Believe me, you are!
24 December 2004
‘I flung open the curtains and shouted look at my hedgehogs!’ Oh my God, I knew it. My mother is going to totally embarrass me. Here, at Uncle Terence’s Christmas Eve party, in front of everybody. Want to be able to embarrass your kids as they get older? Get your own back for every little slip up? Well, bring them up in a village where everybody will know them, and nobody will forget anything they have ever done. And never ever move house. I am eighteen years old, for heaven’s sake. I need to stop coming to family and friends’ parties so that I can avoid total embarrassment. Nine months, that’s all. I just have to stick it out for nine more months and then I’ll be free. I love my parents to bits, I sometimes even like them, but I cannot wait to go to university. My own place, nobody watching my every move and I will be able to snog who I like, when I like, where I like. I will be able to leave crumbs in my bed, read until 4 a.m., spend the weekend in my pyjamas. I straighten my antlers self-consciously, set my jumper to ‘flashing’ mode as a distraction and glance at Dad, who just shrugs apologetically, because we both know that mother in full flow is unstoppable. ‘Wendy, darling?’ He does try, but like I say, she’s unstoppable. ‘And Stuart switched the patio light on and there they were!’ ‘Hedgehogs?’ I hear somebody say, hopefully. I edge back, try to sidle behind a bookcase before anybody notices me. One more step and I’m heading towards the ‘Narnia’ display. Another step and I’ll be safely hidden behind a giant White Witch. ‘Oh no, no! Our Daisy and a boy. Horizontal on the lawn, searching for slugs they said! I didn’t even know Joshua the postman’s son was interested in hedgehogs. I never even realised that Daisy knew the boy, she’d definitely not introduced him, had you dear? Daisy?’ I lean back against the bookcase and close my eyes. I am mortified. I mean, wouldn’t you think that when your parents are holding a dinner party, you’d be safe having a quick snog in the back garden? If Josh had had his way, we would have been naked and have more in common with rabbits than hedgehogs, but the full moon, dew sodden grass and nip in the air had dampened my ardour (as well as my best jeans) a bit. I mean he’s okay, he’s quite a lot of fun actually but I’m not about to marry him. And
