Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Barbara Taylor Bradford 2018
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Barbara Taylor Bradford 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 © January 2018 ISBN: 9780007503438
Version: 2017-11-02
For Bob, with all my love always.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Aftermath
Allison
The Beginning
Allison and Jimmy
Mike
Allison and Mike
The Jones Family
Allison and Peter
Peter
Allison, Kevin and Mike
Mike, Peter and Allison
Mike and Allison
Kevin
Allison and Mike
Mike
Allison and Peter
Defeated
Allison
Renewal
Mike
Allison
Allison
Mike and Allison
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Books by Barbara Taylor Bradford
About the Publisher
Aftermath
2017
Allison
Manhattan
Allison needed a drink. Her brother, Jimmy, had made his usual foray to her rented room, picked the lock, and dumped her precious stash of Tullamore Dew down the drain. It felt like Jimmy and her dad were on speed dial at every liquor store in New York’s Five Boroughs. The minute she cobbled together enough money to pick up a pint of cheap whiskey, the proprietor would pick up the phone and rat her out. After she had paid, of course.
Cops! She was surrounded by cops. It was the Jones family’s curse. You were either a cop or a drunk; her father, her brother, her uncle, three cousins … all were cops. Even her mother, her beautiful, iconoclastic mother, had been a cop. Shot dead by a sixteen-year-old punk trying to make a name for himself. The whole family were cops, except for Allison. She was the drunk. Someone had to do it.
And drunks needed to drink.
That need was not the only thing propelling Allison Jones towards West Forty-Fifth Street on this bitingly cold November night. She needed to be with people. She needed the rowdiness of an Irish bar, the smell of shepherd’s pie mingled with corned beef and cabbage, and beer. She needed to hear laughter. When, she wondered absently, as she waited for the light to change, had she last laughed? Not just pretended she was having a good time so some guy would buy her another drink.
Never, maybe.
But even as that bitter thought came, she knew it wasn’t true. There was a time, not long ago, when joy and laughter and love were as familiar to her as the emptiness was now. Once she had a big, loud, loving Irish family. Once she had had a career, owned a thriving business.
Once she had had Mike. If you had him, there was nothing more to want from a life.
A car horn blared and she realised she was standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue, tortured by memories and regret. Those who said, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, didn’t know what they were talking about. For her, loss was a physical sensation. Loss tore at her heart, denied her sleep.
Most likely it was because she knew in her heart she hadn’t lost Mike. She had thrown him away. The only thing that made the pain of this feeling stop was oblivion. She was headed there now.
Allison picked up her pace. The familiar light emanating from O’Lunney’s looked, at that moment, like salvation. Her heel caught in a crack in the pavement and she stumbled and nearly went to the ground.
Careful, she told herself, hanging onto a parking meter, unsteady in heels way too high for her condition. She was already buzzed. What Officer Jimmy didn’t know was that his baby sister always carried a little something in her purse, something to get her through one of his purges.
Allison bent and pressed her forehead against the frigid meter until the cold cleared her head. No falls tonight. No mysterious bruises, no being carried out of a bar, no waking up next to someone she didn’t remember meeting. She had promised herself that would never happen again.
Slow and steady, she whispered to herself, letting go of the meter. Ten yards more and she was pulling open the heavy oak door to the pub. Laughter rolled out into the street and Allison forgot how cold it was. She was home.
Slow and steady quickly turned into fast and furious. Before long, Allison was perched on the barstool, sloppy drunk, singing maudlin Irish songs that made her cry. She had inherited her mother’s voice, if not her rock-solid sense of decency.
She didn’t care right now. Now she was surrounded by men she had charmed before she went over the edge; men who had already ordered more drinks for her. Enough drinks to seal the deal. Even if they lost interest, Charlie, the bartender she had known most of her life, had collected the cash and would dole the booze out on demand.
She wasn’t positive, but she thought she had promised to go home with what’s-his-name with the blond hair. It would be good not to be alone. Soon she would feel nothing. All in all, it was a good night.
She stopped singing as she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the bar. The golden light in O’Lunney’s added a special glow to her curly red hair. It looked as if it hadn’t been brushed in a week. Her violet eyes no longer held the sparkle Mike used to dote on. At this moment they seemed buried in a once-beautiful face bloated from too many nights like this.
She made a face at herself in the mirror. Make-up streaked her cheeks from the crying jag her own singing had brought on. She had lipstick on her teeth. No one would believe she was only twenty-nine years old. For some reason the image of her ruined visage struck her as funny.
She was laughing as she slid off the barstool, knocked over two more stools and landed on the floor. She still laughed as she lay there, her skirt up around her hips, tights torn, make-up still streaming down her face. And then, she was sobbing. That broken, self-pitying drunk’s cry for rescue. One of her would-be suitors helped her struggle to her feet.
The blond one, the one she thought would be her comfort for the night, stepped around her and headed for the door. No matter. She would rather be alone with her memories.
That was when she saw Mike. He was standing on the other side of the bar, just looking at her, staring. Mike. It was Mike!
Her mouth went dry. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Mike was dead. Killed in action in the M
iddle East two years ago. He was dead.
It flashed through her mind that she was hallucinating, but she knew better. She wasn’t that far gone. Mike was here. And he was seeing what had become of the woman he once had loved.
He hadn’t changed a bit in the two years since she’d last seen him. The same steel-blue eyes, military bearing, and rugged good looks. And the same look of pain he’d had on his face when she said all those terrible things the last time they were together. Before he died. Before she died with him.
But this was Mike! Alive! She started towards him, a thousand questions, a thousand apologies forming in her brain.
His stare stopped her in her tracks. His eyes were dead, filled with pity. Or was it disgust? He turned and walked away.
She had to hang onto the bar to keep from running after him. She loved him too much to beg for one more chance, to embroil him in the hell her life had become. She had long since used up her second chances.
Allison looked back at her reflection in the mirror. What she saw there was no longer funny. The shock of seeing him had cleared her mind enough for her to see what Mike had seen … a loud, blowsy, desperate drunken woman.
‘Charlie,’ she said to the bartender when she could finally speak. He started to refill her glass but she waved the bottle away. ‘Call Midtown South Precinct. Ask them to tell Jimmy to come and get his sister. Tell him she wants to come home.’
The Beginning
2014
Allison and Jimmy
Breezy Point
‘It looks like somebody robbed the place.’ The massive shoulders of a police officer with copper-coloured hair almost filled the doorway of the little shop.
Allison Jones, whose hair was the identical colour, made a face at her brother. ‘Fat chance of that with you and Dad patrolling the street out there, day after day, like the Crown Jewels were on display.’
‘We weren’t patrolling,’ Jimmy said defensively. ‘We haven’t been on patrol for years. We just happened to pass by and thought we’d see how things were going for you.’
‘Gee, Jimmy,’ Allison said, her big violet eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘Seems to me the two of you have been “passing by” since I opened the doors last week. Tell Dad he might as well come in. The store’s closed. Nothing left to sell.’
A carbon copy of Police Lieutenant Jimmy Jones, a little greyer and with a few more lines in his face, stepped through the door. He picked up Allison and swung her around and around.
‘That’s my girl! The only reason we’ve been hanging around is because we were afraid you’d get trampled by all those people fighting to get in the door.’
‘Dad, put me down! What if someone sees? I’m a mogul now, don’t-cha-know! An entrepreneur. I can’t be your little girl any more.’
‘Says who!’ Detective First Class Riley Jones roared, giving her another whirl for good measure. He looked at the empty shelves. ‘So, people really bought all that junk?’
Finally on her feet, Allison smoothed her navy-blue velvet tunic over colourful patterned leggings. ‘It took me six months to assemble the collection and eight days for it to be gone. Clearly not junk, Dad. Accessories.’
Jimmy imitated his younger sister. ‘Daddy, they’re bags, scarves, jewellery! Essentials of life. All handmade by desperate housewives who serve as slaves for me, the Entrepreneur Jones.’
‘They’re hardly slaves,’ Allison said. ‘They’re stay-at-home moms and every one of them is a graduate of a design programme!’
Allison tried to look annoyed but she just couldn’t pull it off. Laughing with delight, she pulled them both into a joyous family hug. ‘Thanks for all your help getting the shop set up. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Or, for that matter, what I do now. I sold everything but once I pay the overheads, I’ll have barely enough left to buy supplies to make more.’
Detective Jones inspected the shop like it was a crime scene. A couple of scarves, a few pairs of earrings, a purse made of faux fur. Other than that, the place was empty. He held the fur handbag like it was a piece of roadkill. ‘Did you really think this thing up?’
‘All by myself,’ Allison said. ‘We made ten, sold nine. I kept this one for a pattern.’
Riley looked at the label on the bag: LYDIA’S CLOSET. ‘Amazing what people will spend money on,’ Detective Jones said gruffly, walking away.
The fact that his daughter had named her shop after his beloved wife never failed to move him. He put the bag back on the shelf and barked at his son. ‘Let’s get some supper and figure out how your sister is going to support herself and all those stay-at-home moms with nothing to sell. And a ridiculous rent to pay every month.’
‘I could always get a push cart,’ Allison said, fully aware of her father’s struggle to keep his emotions in check. ‘Or drive around SoHo selling things out of my car.’
‘First of all, you don’t have a car,’ Jimmy shot back. ‘And secondly, I’ve already figured out what you’re going to do.’
‘And what might that be, Lieutenant Jones?’ Although Allison and her brother delighted in their verbal battles, the baby of the family always bristled at being told what to do.
‘It’s not a what, it’s a who. Mike Dennison.’
‘Not him again.’ It was a defect of character, she knew, but her lifelong struggle for independence had made her balk at even the smallest suggestion from her big family of men. ‘Nice try, but no way!’
‘Who’s Mike Dennison?’ Riley demanded.
‘Some guy Jimmy’s been trying to fix me up with for the past six months. If my brother is willing to allow me to go out with a guy, he’s probably a Sunday School teacher who reads self-help books and bakes his own bread.’
‘Hardly,’ Jimmy said. He was checking the windows Allison had just locked to make sure they were really locked.
Allison watched, shaking her head. Cops.
‘And he’s hardly a bozo,’ Jimmy said. ‘Chopper pilot, two tours in the Middle East, Captain in the National Guard, and in his spare time he’s a copywriter at an ad agency. He wins those awards for funny TV commercials.’
‘Clios,’ Allison said. ‘See what I mean, Dad? Sound a little too good to be true? I suppose he’s handsome too.’
‘I don’t know what he looks like,’ Jimmy said, satisfied that the windows were locked. ‘I don’t look at guys and think about stuff like that.’
‘I knew it,’ Alison said. ‘Homely.’
‘I’m telling you, if you want to figure out how to make this business work without all your profit going into rent, Mike’s your guy,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’ll know just what you should do about your business.’
Allison turned off the last light, plunging the shop into darkness. ‘You said it yourself. It’s my business. I’ll figure out what to do. Now, get out of here, both of you, before I call the cops!’
Allison stood up from her stool and stretched. She had been working on new designs at the big work table overlooking Jamaica Bay since her dad and Jimmy had left for work at precisely five forty-five this morning.
They had the route to Manhattan South Precinct timed to the second. Fifty-eight minutes, door to door. Leave later, they’d hit traffic and be too late to grab coffee and two doughnuts each from Manny’s food truck before roll call. Leave earlier, Manny wouldn’t be there yet. It was all about the doughnuts.
There was another part of their routine that Allison pretended to hate, but secretly cherished. Even though she was twenty-six years old, trained in self-defence by a family of police officers, every morning before they left for work, one of them would check her room, to make certain she had made it through the night unharmed.
This vigilance, the watchfulness, had begun after her mother was killed twelve years ago, when Allison was thirteen. Since that day, their primary focus had been making sure Allison was happy and safe. But most of all, safe.
That morning, like all mornings since she realised why they were checking on her, she had preten
ded to be asleep. Prickly as she was about any challenge to her ability to take care of herself, in this one matter she acquiesced. She wouldn’t embarrass them by acknowledging she was aware that these two big tough cops were marshmallows when it came to her.
That’s why she always let them know where she was and what time she’d be home. That’s why she agreed to let them build her a private apartment atop the family home, rather than moving out to live in a loft in SoHo. She had been dreaming of doing that since her mom began taking her prowling through the quirky boutiques that were tucked away in that neighbourhood.
Not that she would ever be able to afford such a luxury, if she couldn’t figure out how to sell her designs without putting all the profits into overheads. She had taken a risk when she quit her job as junior designer at a SoHo chic fashion house. But she had big ideas. Selling out in eight days told her she was on the right track with the designs.
But if her ideas were a ten, her business plan was a two.
Allison did what she always did when she needed to think something through. She grabbed a jacket and headed for the beach.
Breezy Point in Queens, New York, was known as the place where cops lived. The peninsula was between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean with a population of about twenty-eight thousand. Over sixty per cent of the residents were Irish-American, a whole lot of them police officers and firefighters. With a private security force and no easy access in or out, it has been said there was no safer place to live in any of New York City’s Five Boroughs.
It was no coincidence that Breezy Point was where Riley Jones moved his family after his wife was killed.
It was April, but with the wind coming off the water from two directions, it felt like November. Allison put her head down and took the path towards the ocean. Four o’clock was the time the residents started getting home from their shifts at the precinct or firehouse, so there was activity on the usually quiet streets. She waved at everyone she knew and she knew almost everyone.