WE MET IN DECEMBER
Rosie Curtis
Published by AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Rosie Curtis 2019
Emojis © Shutterstock.com
Rosie Curtis 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 e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008353551
Ebook Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008353544
Version: 2019-08-23
To Archie, with all my love
(and thank you for all the cups of tea, darling).
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: Jess
Chapter One: Jess
Chapter Two: Jess
Chapter Three: Jess
Chapter Four: Alex
Chapter Five: Jess
Chapter Six: Jess
Chapter Seven: Alex
Chapter Eight: Jess
Chapter Nine: Jess
Chapter Ten: Alex
Chapter Eleven: Jess
Chapter Twelve: Jess
Chapter Thirteen: Alex
Chapter Fourteen: Jess
Chapter Fifteen: Jess
Chapter Sixteen: Alex
Chapter Seventeen: Alex
Chapter Eighteen: Jess
Chapter Nineteen: Alex
Chapter Twenty: Jess
Chapter Twenty-One: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Two: Alex
Chapter Twenty-Three: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Four: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Five: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Six: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Alex
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Jess
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Alex
Chapter Thirty: Jess
Chapter Thirty-One: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Two: Alex
Chapter Thirty-Three: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Four: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Five: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Six: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jess
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Alex
Chapter Forty: Jess
Chapter Forty-One: Alex
Chapter Forty-Two: Alex
Epilogue: Jess
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
22nd December
Christmas and London are a match made in heaven. There’s a man on the street corner selling hot chestnuts by the bag, filling the air with the smell of cinnamon and vanilla. The ornate wooden windows of Liberty are glittering with lights and decorations. I stop to look at a huge tree swathed in ribbons and hung with a million dancing fairy lights and—
‘Watch out!’
A woman crashes into me, giving me a furious look and weaving past, muttering loudly about bloody tourists.
I am not a tourist, I think. I am – or will be, in just a couple of hours – an official Londoner. I step out of the way of the thronging crowds, pasting myself against a carved wooden window frame, and watch as a sea of people scurry past.
I add ‘stop dead on the pavement’ to my mental list of Things London People Never Do. I know that already, really, but it’s easy to forget when everything is so sparkly and festive. I pause for a moment and take a photo to share on my Instagram stories, because it’s just so ridiculously perfect and my life has been so beige and boring for months – it’s lovely to have something interesting to put on there. And then I take another of the street scene, because it’s just so … London-y and Christmassy and perfect.
I look at the flowers in the doorway of Liberty, thinking that it would be a nice idea to take Becky some as a thank you (again) for offering me a room in a house that would otherwise be completely out of my reach. There doesn’t seem to be a price anywhere though, which I think is weird, then I hear my Nanna Beth’s voice saying, If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But they’re only flowers, surely. How expensive can a bunch of flowers be?
‘Can