I'm very excited to be bringing you an extract from the new novel by Caro Fraser Summer of Love, you can click here to order your copy. Here's what it's all about:
The dark days
of the war are over, but the family secrets they held are only just dawning.
In the hot summer of 1949, a group of
family and friends gather at Harry Denholm's country house in Kent. Meg and Dan
Ranscombe, emerging from a scandal of their own making; Dan's godmother, Sonia;
and her two young girls, Laura and Avril, only one of whom is Sonia's
biological daughter. Amongst the heat, memories, and infatuations, a secret is
revealed to Meg's son, Max, and soon a terrible tragedy unfolds that will have
consequences for them all. Afterwards, Avril, Laura and Max must come of age in
a society still reeling from the war, haunted by the choices of that fateful
summer. Cold, entitled Avril will go to any lengths to take what is hers.
Beautiful, naive Laura finds refuge and love in the London jazz clubs, but Max,
with wealth and unrequited love, has the capacity to undo it all.
Make sure you check out the other stops on the tour for more exclusive content!
The air was full of the fresh,
damp scents of early spring as Meg and Dan Ranscombe turned off the road and walked
up the narrow path that led to the back of Woodbourne House. They made a
handsome couple – Meg, in her early thirties, was vividly pretty, with dark
eyes and chestnut hair curling to her shoulders; Dan, a few years older, was by
contrast fair-haired and blue-eyed, his clean-cut features marked by a faint
arrogance, a remnant of youthful vanity. They walked in thoughtful silence. It
was four years since they had last been to Woodbourne House, the home of Sonia
Haddon, Meg’s aunt and Dan’s godmother.
‘I’m glad we took the train instead of driving,’ said
Dan, breaking the quiet. ‘I have fond memories of this walk.’
They paused by a big, whitewashed stone barn standing
at the foot of a sloping apple orchard.
‘Uncle Henry’s studio,’ murmured Meg. ‘I remember
that summer, having to traipse down every morning with barley water and
biscuits for him while he was painting.’
Sonia’s husband, Henry Haddon, had been an acclaimed
artist in his day, and in pre-war times to have one’s portrait painted by him
had had considerable cachet. In Britain’s post-war modernist world, his name
had fallen out of fashion.
Dan stood gazing at the barn, lost in his own
memories: that final day of the house party twelve years ago, when he had come down to the studio to say
farewell to his host. Finding Henry Haddon, his trousers round his ankles,
locked in an embrace with Madeleine, the nanny, against the wall of the studio
had been absurd and shocking enough, but what had then transpired had been even
worse. He could remember still the sound of the ladder crashing to the floor,
and the sight of five-year-old Avril peeping over the edge of the hayloft.
Presumably the shock of seeing his daughter had brought on Haddon’s heart
attack. That, and unwonted sexual exertions. The moments afterwards were
confused in his memory, although he recalled setting the ladder aright so that
Avril could get down, then sending her running up to the house to get someone
to fetch a doctor, while he uselessly attempted to revive Haddon. Madeleine,
unsurprisingly, had made herself scarce. And the painting – he remembered that.
A portrait of
Madeleine in her yellow sundress, seated on a wicker chair, head half-turned as
though listening to notes of unheard music, or the footfall of some awaited
lover. Haddon had been working on it in the days running up to his death, and
no doubt the intimacy forged between painter and sitter had led to that brief
and ludicrously tragic affair. The falling ladder had knocked it from the
easel, and he had picked it up and placed it with its face to the wall next to
the other canvases. He didn’t to this day know why he had done that. Perhaps as
a way of closing off and keeping secret what he had witnessed. To this day
nobody but he knew about Haddon’s affair with Madeleine. Had the painting ever
been discovered? No one had ever mentioned it. Perhaps it was there still, just
as he had left it.
Meg
glanced at his face. ‘Penny for them.’
‘Oh,
nothing,’ said Dan. ‘Just thinking about that house party, when you and I first
met.’
What a fateful chain of events had been set in motion
in the summer of 1936. He had been a twenty-four-year-old penniless journalist,
invited to spend several days at Woodbourne House with a handful of other
guests. Meeting and falling in love with Meg had led to the clandestine affair
they had conducted throughout the war years behind the back of her husband
Paul. Its discovery had led to estrangement with much of the family. Paul, a
bomber pilot, had been killed on the way back from a raid over Germany, and the
possibility that his discovery of the affair might have contributed in some
way, on some level, to his death, still haunted them both. They never spoke of
it. Meg and Dan were married now, but the guilt of what they had done remained.
Meg’s mother Helen had been trying for some time to persuade her sister, Sonia,
to forgive Meg and Dan, and today’s invitation to Woodbourne House was a signal
that she had at last relented.
They
walked up through the orchard, and when they reached the flagged courtyard at
the back of the house Meg said, ‘I’m going to the kitchen to say hello to
Effie. I don’t think I can face Aunt Sonia quite yet. I’ll let you go first.
Cowardly of me, I know, but I can’t help it.’ She gave him a quick smile and a
kiss, and turned in the direction of the kitchen.
About the author
Caro
Fraser is the author of the bestselling Caper Court novels, based on her own
experiences as a lawyer. She is the daughter of Flashman author George
MacDonald Fraser and lives in London.
Follow Caro
Twitter: N/A
Facebook: @CaroFraserAuthor
