KAREN ALDOUS enjoys village life on the edge of the north-downs in Kent with easy access to the buzz of London. Not only does she love the passive pleasures of reading and writing but craves the more active pursuits: walking, cycling and skiing, especially when they involve family, friends, food, and … wine!
Much of Karen’s inspiration comes from her travels. The UK, France, Switzerland and USA are just some of the places you’ll be transported to in her books, but wherever she goes, new characters invite themselves into ‘Karen’s World’ screaming at her to tell their stories; strong independent women who are capable of directing their own lives – but struggle to control them … especially when temptation strikes!
As a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and The Write Place, Karen feels she owes so much of her success to the love and support of her fellow writers.
You can follow Karen on Twitter at @KarenAldous_
Thank you to my fantastic editor Charlotte Mursell who is a superstar.
Also to the beautifully warm Ivana at Fattoria La Loggia who inspired this book.
For Gemma & Sam
Love and happiness forever xx
It was so much more than an image. Olivia Montague’s finger stroked the ageing photograph of the elderly couple gazing, not at the camera, but intensely at one another even after all those years. And even in sepia tones, glints of love and passion sparkled in their eyes. Olivia’s skin prickled looking at them standing huddled among the vines, their chemistry radiating from the now dulled, once glossy paper almost as if it were present in her Bermondsey sitting room.
More significantly for Olivia, her Italian grandparents represented family – solid, the roots of her being, an impenetrable foundation. Nonna Elena and Nonno Angelo had such adoration for each other, just like her mother and father in those brief years before her father’s death.
She picked up the other photograph her mum had given her just before Nonna’s funeral. The one in colour, two sunburned hippies blazoning sun-bleached hair against a lapis blue sky and pink sand, eyes lost in one another. So much longing and love dazzling between them. Sadness gripped Olivia’s throat. Was it real or was she imagining it? Was it an Italian gene that had by-passed her? Why couldn’t she have that love? She and Will Parks had never looked at one another like that.
Lowering the image, she glanced up, her eyes seemingly fixed on wooden shutters encasing the bay window, but they stared vacantly, imagining the inscription on her headstone.
‘Sadly, she was never loved, nor could ever love.’
In her mind a sinkhole appeared, a huge void spreading fifty feet or more on a wild meadow splashed with blue crocuses and daisies. Sliding into it was Nonna, Nonno, her mum and dad, her gran, grandad, Will. Then her. She lurched violently forward then quickly grabbed a long twine, then clutching tufts of long grass and a thread of tangleweed, she scrambled on her knees to save herself.
On her knees on the bank, she twisted herself reaching out in the hope one of them would be close enough to pull her to safety. Instead she watched each slowly sink into the blackness, tumbling in different directions, not one of them reaching for her. It was a nightmare imitating life, reinforcing the abandonment she constantly felt: that hollow space she’d locked inside her that no one could
