Page 1 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

Prologue

Twenty-two years ago

The wind whipped into Daisy Anderly’s face as soon as she pulled open the large, creaking front door and stepped into a day that was not just windy, but raging. A mishmash of dark and white clouds scudded across the sky, and even on the front porch of her home, Mistingham Manor, she could hear the waves crashing all the way down on the beach.

Daisy wrapped her coat tightly around her, the extreme weather so unexpected this early in September, and strode across the grass, trying to ignore the whining screech as tree branches clashed against each other. It was like something out of a horror film, an ominous story where the threat level only grew: a strange, glowing-eyed creature in the woods or a many-tentacled sea monster sliding its way out of the brine onto the beach. It wasn’t how she had wanted her last morning here to go. Despite everything, she wanted to leave with one last, good memory.

Halfway across the grass, she turned to look at her house.

It was still grand, standing like a sentry with its grey stone façade, a thick cluster of trees behind it and a wide gravel drive in front. But it looked forlorn, too. Or maybe she thought that because that was how it felt, being inside? Her school friends envied her, living in the village’s grand manor, but she would have swapped the draughty living room and gloomy study for two parents; a warm and loving home.

Mistingham Manor, without her in it, was empty. Harry, her older brother, had moved to London a couple of years ago, had stayed here longer than he should have, not wanting to leave her behind with Dad. But she had known he was itching to get out, because she was too, and he’d already deferred his place at university once, so she had sent him off with her blessing.

Now it was her turn. A place in design college, a tiny room in the halls of residence – a square, soulless apartment block on a busy London street. She was leaving behind the sea and the quaint village with its green and hotel; the little bakery and Fiona in the clothes shop; the community spirit and the Christmas festivals and summer fetes and nosy neighbours. The parkland and the woods that surrounded the manor, where she had explored to her heart’s content as a child.

But now she was eighteen, and everything had changed. Her mum was dead, and her dad, in his grief, had thrown himself into running the bookshop. He was mostly up and out before Daisy woke, and even when he was at home, he drifted through the rooms like he’d already become one of the manor’s apocryphal ghosts. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper conversation with him.

The wind whipped her long blonde hair into a frenzy as she got closer to the cliffs, the estate demarcated from the public footpath by a fence that had seen better days, and had at least two breaks in it that she used to escape. It wasn’t the best for safety, but the little seaside village of Mistingham wasn’t exactly rife with crime, and sometimes Daisy wished for an intruder so she had someone to talk to. Except, she realized, as she found a gap and twisted through it, then put her head down against the blustering winds, she had spent so long tucking herself away, avoiding the pitying looks from the other villagers, that it was mostly her fault she felt so isolated.

The sea was a deep, fathomless blue, covered in fluffy white horses, its surface churning rather than smooth. She inhaled the fresh, sea-salt scent, walked along the craggy path to the place where the cliffs were lower, the slope gentler, and she could easily wend her way down to the sand. The sea was wild but the tide was out, the waves crashing onto the beach impressively large. Daisy loved it like this, because it made all her problems feel smaller. The world was vast – even the water she could see from this one point on Mistingham beach was endless – and she was a tiny, insignificant speck.

But she was a speck with plans and dreams and a fierce determination to work hard, to get everything she desired, to get back everything she had lost: a family, a warm home. And she wanted a job, purpose, something to keep her days and her mind busy.

She couldn’t do that here. She would have to leave it all behind, and even though there was a giddy excitement, a rush of relief whenever she thought about being away from the huge, empty house, her dad’s grief, the lonely spaces where her family used to laugh and talk and love each other, she would miss some of it. She would miss Mistingham.

She pressed her hand against the cool damp stone of the rock face, then walked slowly along, her boots sinking into the sand, until she reached the protruding part of the cliff; until she could see the pattern in the rock that looked like a smiling face, and found the hole, carved out by years of wind and waves and weather. She slipped through it onto a section of the beach most walkers never reached. Here, there were rock pools full of crabs and whelks and sea snails and, with the shelter from the rock and Mistingham behind her, it felt like her secret.

This was where she came when everything was too much. When her mum’s illness had got too overwhelming, when Harry was off with his friends and didn’t want to include her, when she had tried talking to her dad and he had snapped at her or waved her away or simply stared into space, as if there was a soundproof wall between them. Here, with its deep golden sand and the blue of the waves, the creatures scuttling about in their holes and the wild horizon, she didn’t mind that it was just her.

Daisy pressed her lips together, willing the tears away, because it was good what she was doing. It would be a fresh start, a new chapter of her life where she would feel fully present, a part of something. Where she wouldn’t be forgotten or ignored. She would remember the beach, and she hoped – somehow – that the beach would remember her; that it would notice her absence, wonder why she hadn’t come. She would suck out the sadness deep inside her, leave it behind in the village she’d grown up in, and she would start again.

Mistingham used to be her favourite place, her safe haven. She felt lucky to live here, to grow up in such a beautiful, special part of the country. But now she needed to get away. The train would take her to Norwich later on today, and from there, she would travel to London. She didn’t know when, or if, she would ever come back.

Chapter One

Now

Daisy woke up in a room that wasn’t the newly decorated bedroom in her recently purchased London flat, but it also wasn’t the bedroom that she’d grown up in. It was, however, in Mistingham Manor, with its high ceilings and large windows, the grey November day slipping through the crack in the curtains. It was one of the things she’d been silently grateful to Harry for when she’d arrived, with three large suitcases, the day before. He’d assigned her the room she’d been in for his and Sophie’s wedding last December, and not her old childhood bedroom.

Harry, her older brother, had returned to the North Norfolk village of Mistingham after his own stint in London. He’d taken over the manor after their dad died, had embarked on a renovation project – without asking for her help – and was now living here, blissfully happy, with his new wife Sophie. A happy-ever-after that he’d found in his mid-forties.

He had picked her up from Mistingham’s tiny, antiquated train station the previous afternoon, when it was already dark, the lights of his Land Rover spotlighting the drizzle in the air. He had given her a tight, wordless hug, and then, without even raising his eyebrows at the amount of luggage she’d brought with her, loaded it into the back of the car.

Mistingham Manor was no longer the shabby, familiar home she’d lived in until she was eighteen. Everything had been upgraded. The doors had all been sanded, varnished, and hung again; the Seventies wallpaper had been replaced with luxurious, natural paint colours, blues and greens and greys that contrasted beautifully with the wood finishes, along with pops of bright colour – sunshine yellow, orange and cobalt blue – in accents that were eye-catching but still tasteful.

Daisy’s current room was at the front of the house, on the other side of the wide landing to Harry and Sophie’s bedroom, and was decorated in soft blues and pinks. The furniture was pine, the bedspread a perfectly kitschy blue-and-white floral pattern that wasn’t too busy for the large room with sea-facing windows.

Last November, she had accepted the invitation to Harry’s wedding, and had spent three days overwhelmed with emotion. Happiness at her brother’s contentment had warred with the grief that had inevitably resurfaced because she hadn’t properly grieved her dad. Deciding she had already done too much of that when her mum had died, she had pushed the feelings back down.

Seeing Harry last year – less abrupt, softened and happy – with a new wife and a pet goat, of all things, had been … good, if a little unsettling. But she had returned to London as soon as she could after the wedding, even though she was still dealing with the fallout from her divorce, and despite the fact Harry had asked her to stay longer – had perhaps noticed how much she was struggling.

She stood at the window now, her dressing gown wrapped around her, looking over the expanse of parkland. The sea was a dull grey-blue, the sky almost colourless, and the sun nowhere in sight, as if, now it was November, the autumn sunshine had sneaked away for good.

Mistingham, and the manor’s grounds, were beautiful. She had never thought otherwise. They had just become tarnished with bad memories, a childhood that slipped from joy to sadness, to dusty neglect when her dad hid his grief in the village bookshop, leaving Harry and Daisy to fend for themselves. But Daisy was forty now. That had all happened a long time ago, and it wasn’t as if London held many recent happy memories for her either. Especially not yesterday.

She pictured her beautiful new flat on the river. Her luxe velvet sofa. Her expertly painted mere green wall, the water-toned colour palette fading seamlessly into the view of the Thames. Yesterday, though, all the care and expense she’d put in had been ruined by water coming through the ceiling. And not just a dribble, but a torrent, as if the sky had cracked open and was dumping its contents into her personal space.

Fortunately, Daisy was an interior designer with years of experience, so dealing with aesthetic building issues was her forte, and she had a contacts app full of people she could call on to help her. Unfortunately, when Pete and Mo – plasterer and plumber respectively – arrived and assessed the situation, they discovered the issue wasn’t just aesthetic, and when Mo got into the empty upstairs flat, and Daisy finally got hold of her building manager Mr Bertram, everything got a whole lot worse.