Alphabet Weekends

266 Pages·2010·1.48 MB·English

by  Noble Elizabeth

PENGUIN BOOKS
Alphabet Weekends
Praise for Elizabeth Noble:
‘I defy you not to cry at least once’ Sun
‘This powerful tale packs an emotional punch’ Closer
‘An emotional rollercoaster’ Now
‘A journey through emotionally charged mother-daughter territory… it may
kick-start the practice of letter-writing again’ Good Housekeeping
‘Her stories strike a genuine chord… an irresistible comfort read’ Glamour
‘Enchantingly clever. I cried, I laughed, I couldn’t put it down and I altogether
loved (every moment of) it’ Penny Vincenzi
‘A compelling read, with characters you’ll really take to your heart’ Heat
‘Witty, affectionate and unashamedly tear-jerking look at female bonding’ Red
‘I adored it and want my daughters to read it’ Eve
‘It’s only Noble’s second novel, but she’s already an old pro. So fluid, the pages
turn themselves’ Daily Mirror
‘Perfect stuff to chew on over a long night in’ Daily Mail
‘A witty, heart-warming read’ Good Book Guide
Alphabet Weekends
ELIZABETH NOBLE
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London , England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London , England
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www.penguin.com
First published by Hodder & Stoughton,
a division of Hodder Headline 2005
Published in Penguin Books 2010
Copyright © Elizabeth Noble, 2005
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-194171-4
Contents
Prologue: New Year’s Eve
January A for Abseiling
B for Ballet
C for Canoeing
D for Do-it-yourself
February E for Equine
F for Family Get-together
G for Gone With the Wind
H for Hotel
March
I for IKEA
J for Job Swap –
K for Kids
L for Luvvies
April
M for Meeting New People
N for Nemesis
O for Opera
P for Paris
May Q for Queen Tribute Band
R for Rock-climbing
S for Simon
T for Tattoo
U for Urgh
June
V for Vegas
W for Wedding
X is for X Marks the Spot
Y for Your Place or Mine
July
Z for Capo Zafferano, Palermo, Sicily
Acknowledgements
From the A of Abseiling to the V of Vegas
for who else but my friends
Nicola, Suzanne, Nicky, Fiona, Maura, Jenny and Kathryn,
and for Imogen and Louella Noble,
and their mum and dad, Lianne and James.
Prologue: New Year’s Eve
Natalie and Tom
New Year’s Eve. It was one of those things, wasn’t it? You only looked good in
a bikini for one summer (after breasts, before tummy), you only ever had one
first kiss (per guy, obviously), and everyone, well at least everyone Natalie
knew, had honestly truly only ever had one really, really brilliant New Year’s
Eve. Which, funnily enough, usually coincided roughly with the looking-good-
in-a-bikini and the first-kiss year. All the years after that suffered by comparison.
The summers-were-hotter-when-we-were-young principle – wasn’t everything a
bit brighter and louder and more vivid? Wasn’t I a bit thinner and prettier and
more fun? Wasn’t New Year’s Eve an altogether better experience? Like
Valentine’s Day – only really good when you were fifteen and waiting for a card
from the guy who sat in the back row on the school coach and wore the really
thin tie and listened to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’ all the time. A one-
year deal, a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Eleven fifteen p.m. on New Year’s Eve was actually a great time to be
driving. Everyone else was already ‘there’. At the place where they were going
to pretend to have the time of their lives, when actually they were thinking about
that house party they went to in Cambridge in 1988, or that time in 1967 when
they were so stoned they didn’t even hear midnight chime, or the New Year in
1992 when their boyfriend proposed to them in Times Square, or any year when
the same ten people sitting round a suburban dinner table with them didn’t seem
quite so dull, or so snappy, or so needing to get home because their baby sitter
charged double time after midnight.
There was no one else on this bit of road. ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ was
blaring out of the stereo, and Natalie changed empty lanes a couple of times in a
kind of Corsa salsa. She was cheering up a bit. Good idea. Good idea of Tom’s.
She’d been going to stay at home, having a sulky night. Rose, possibly the
only friend who could have jollied her out of it, had announced apologetically
that her boyfriend Pete had got a deal on Eurostar – two nights, three-star in Lille