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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2014

Cover design © Emma Rogers 2014

Fiona Gibson 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.

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Ebook Edition © November 2014 ISBN: 9780008124717

Version: 2014-11-20

Contents

Read on for an exclusive extract from As Good As It Gets?

We are driving through a perfect village. I mean it: if you were to imagine the prettiest of English villages, this is how it would look. Thatched pub, hanging baskets filled with winter pansies, a boutique window hand-painted with the white silhouettes of Christmas trees.

‘It’s so … perfect,’ I marvel, realising I sound like someone who’s never been let out of the city before.

Ben chuckles. ‘It is, I guess. It’s all very tidy and well-behaved. ’

‘There’s no litter,’ I add. ‘Not one bit of it.

‘No, well, there are committees that patrol that kind of thing. A dropped fag end and you’re looking at two years. A take-away carton and you’ll be shot …’

I smile, wondering how it was to grow up around here. The only teenagers I’ve spotted were hanging out in a good-natured group. There were hugs and laughter and girls tossing their hair about, photogenically, as if in a film. I haven’t noticed any aimless loitering. It’s the kind of village where you might expect to see a young, attractive couple laughingly carrying a real Christmas tree through the streets.

We drive past an old-fashioned butcher’s, a cheese shop and a shop selling ‘curios and collectables’. The shops are subtly decorated for Christmas with artful arrangements of natural foliage. No fake snow or tinsel. There’s nothing as brash as the six-foot flashing plastic Santa – I mean flashing in both senses of the word, i. e. he opens his red coat to expose a furry reindeer G-String – which currently fills the window of the 99p shop round the corner from my house. There’s been a little snow this morning. When we left my South London street where I live it had already turned to grey mush; here it has speckled the slate-tiled rooftops and pavements in icing-sugar white.