Secret Schemes and Daring Dreams

Rosie Rushton
lives in Northampton. She is a governor of the local Church of England secondary school, a licensed lay minister and passionate about all issues relating to young people. Her hobbies include learning Swahili, travelling, going to the theatre, reading, walking, being juvenile with her grandchildren and playing hopscotch when no one is looking. Her ambitions are to write the novel that has been pounding in her brain for years but never quite made it to the keyboard, to visit China, learn to sing in tune, and do anything else God has in mind for her, with a broad grin and a spring in her step. Her many books for Piccadilly Press include
Friends, Enemies and Other Tiny Problems; Secrets of Love
and several series including
The Leehampton Quartet
and
What a Week.

ROSIE RUSHTON

Piccadilly Press
London

First published in Great Britain in 2008
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk

Text © copyright Rosie Rushton, 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

The right of Rosie Rushton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 85340 942 4 (paperback)

eISBN: 978 1 84812 223 9

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD
Cover illustration by Susan Hellard
Cover design by Simon Davis
Text design by Carolyn Griffiths, Cambridge
Set in Goudy and Caslon

 

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

For Celia Rees, whose writing is inspirational and whose support for this book was unfailing; and for all those members of the Scattered Authors Society whose encouragement kept me going when none of the characters would behave themselves. Thank you. And to Vince Cross, for initiating a totally uncool author into the mysteries of the gig circuit!

CHAPTER 1

EMMA WOODHOUSE HAD, FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS AND TEN
months, had pretty much everything in life her own way (if you overlook the unfortunate death of her mother before she was out of nappies, and that large spot on her right cheek on the night of the South Downs Ball), and she saw no reason at all why the situation should ever change. She was of the opinion that, if you wanted something enough, you simply applied all your energies to getting it. She had no time for wimps, and even less for people who started sentences with ‘I can't'. But she was above all a caring and considerate sort of girl, who was well aware of her own good fortune, stunning looks and talent for getting the best out of other people. Which was why, when she met someone with untapped potential, she put all her own interests to one side and set out to change their lives for them. Whether they liked it or not.

Her most recent triumph had been the sorting out of
her best friend's love life. Lucy Taylor was the kind of girl who made choosing the wrong guy into an art form. She either got herself mixed up with total losers because she felt sorry for them and couldn't say no when they asked her out; or else she fell dramatically in love with guys who were way out of her league, and hardly noticed her existence, with the result that she cried for days and went round with puffy eyes and snot on the end of her nose.

So, when Emma discovered that India Hood from the tennis club had dumped the super-fit Adam Weston in favour of some geek she had met on a field trip to the Orkneys, she had seized the moment and organised a double date (even enduring the company of the slimy Simon Wittering for a whole evening for the sake of her friend's future happiness, and that was sacrifice in anyone's book). As she had expected, her ploy had worked. Adam was perfect for Lucy – he had a great bum and a cute smile; and while Emma would have found his intellect seriously unchallenging, she had reckoned – correctly, of course – that he was well within Lucy's comfort zone. What's more, he was doing a sports degree at Bournemouth, which meant that every weekend he bombed up the A27 in his lime-green Beetle to see her in Brighton. This was something of a relief all round, since by Thursday mornings, Lucy was pining big time and playing ‘he loves me, he loves me not' with any unfortunate flower that happened to be within her grasp.

They had been an item now for five whole months, which broke any record Lucy had ever achieved. She went around with a permanent grin on her face, even after a weekend of watching basketball, or cricket or
whatever sport was Adam's module for the month; she kept O
₂
in business with her constant text messaging, and repeatedly told Emma that she had never been so happy and owed it all to her.

Her only complaint was that she was strapped for cash.

‘Adam pays for almost everything,' she had confided to Emma after she had been with Adam for six weeks, ‘but it's not like he's loaded and, somehow, it doesn't feel quite right.'

‘Absolutely not!' Emma had agreed. ‘You need to show him that you are an independent, self-supporting woman of the twenty-first century.'

‘I guess you're right,' Lucy had said reluctantly.

‘Of course I am.' Emma had refrained from letting on that she was quoting, almost verbatim, her own father's words. Despite being extremely wealthy and perfectly capable of funding Emma, he had refused to contribute to her gap year unless she earned at least some of the money. There had been a lot of talk about the world not owing her a living and the country going to ruin because of a lack of committed work ethic. Emma had nodded obediently and told him that she'd get a job just as soon as A-levels were over. She had then decided, quite firmly, that burger bars, department stores and seaside cafés were not on her agenda; but that, if she could find a job with good networking opportunities and hours flexible enough to accommodate all the social events that were already stacking up in her diary, she would give it her best shot. And then she put the whole thing out of her mind.

Over the weeks since exams had finished her father had made a few ridiculous suggestions about jobs, all of which she had rejected out of hand. Who in their right mind would work eight hours a day dressed as a Regency housemaid and handing out guidebooks at the Royal Pavilion? And as for packing organic veggie boxes for the local farm shop, forget it: as she explained to her father, you don't pay zillions for a French manicure and then deal with unwashed carrots. It was when he began talking about cleaning up graffiti on run-down housing estates and mending hedges in Northumberland that she realised she had to do something to get him off her back.