The Home for Broken Hearts

Praise for Rowan Coleman’s
Touching Books

The Accidental Family

“Winning… turns up the heat on Coleman’s trademark romantic humor.”

—
Booklist

“Rowan Coleman weaves a tale of romance and love that is fast-paced and sure to keep you speculating until the end.”

—Fresh Fiction

Mommy By Mistake

“An entertaining view of motherhood that will have readers laughing and crying along with the inimitable heroine and her band of appealing friends.”

—
Booklist

The Accidental Mother

“Fun, poignant.”

—
OK
magazine

“A disarmingly sweet tale of motherhood and reluctant love.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Coleman creates witty and endearing characters and delivers an exceptional and touching read about loss and love.”

—
Booklist

“Brilliant… moving and funny.”

—
New Woman
magazine (U.K.)

“A charming tale… sophisticated.”

—
Heat
magazine (U.K.)

The Home for Broken Hearts

is also available as an eBook

Also by Rowan Coleman

The Accidental Family

Mommy By Mistake

Another Mother’s Life

The Accidental Mother

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Rowan Coleman

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Arrow Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition September 2010

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

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.

Designed by Kate Moll

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coleman, Rowan.

   The home for broken hearts / Rowan Coleman.—1st Gallery Books trade pbk. ed.

     p. cm.

   1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Boardinghouses—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. I. Title.

   PR6103.04426H66 2010

   823'.92—dc22

          2010007878

ISBN 978-1-4391-5685-8

ISBN 978-1-4391-8250-5 (ebook)

Ellen braced herself against the unforgiving expanse of faultless blue sky that stretched endlessly above her head and wondered if such a perfect day was quite seemly on an occasion like this. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the oak trees that surrounded them, and the warmth of the sun prickled through her cotton shirt and suit jacket, causing a trickle of sweat to drip between her shoulder blades. The sheer weight of the heat seemed to compress her, squeezing her ribs together, imprisoning her heart. Struggling to catch each breath, Ellen had to fight the urge simply to run away, to find some small, quiet, dark place where she could breathe again and close her eyes and pretend that none of this was happening. If her younger sister hadn’t been there, gripping her arm so tightly that she would have bruises in the morning, then perhaps she would have. But Hannah was there, supporting her, restraining her, helping her—
forcing
her—to get through it, no matter how much Ellen wanted to turn away. It was Hannah who had told her to wear something lightweight and comfortable, a dress or a skirt, but Ellen had stuck to her guns and stuck to a suit. It was fitting, respectable, and suitable for such an important occasion.

Funny, Ellen thought without a trace of amusement, focusing with determination on a single blade of bright green grass that lay against the toe of her shoe, it had rained on her wedding day. A cold, drenching drizzle had sheeted from a steely spring sky in a relentless onslaught.

They had laughed, Ellen and her brand-new husband, when they had looked at their wedding photos, the pair of them standing outside the church, teeth gritted in rigor mortis grins against the cold. Ellen hadn’t minded the weather that day, the chill that had raised goose bumps on her bare arms or the needles of fine rain that had consistently assaulted her face, teasing her heavily applied mascara loose from her lashes. On that day, all that she’d needed to fight off the elements was the knowledge that the man who was now her husband, the man she still could not believe had chosen her above anyone else, was standing by her side, his hand in hers, and that from that day on, he always would be. That sodden, foggy, miserable day had been her friend.

This day, this perfect July day that wheeled so recklessly around her, was her sworn enemy, a predator waiting for her to break cover and bolt for safety, waiting to pounce and rip her to shreds, because this was the day of her husband’s funeral, and a world without her husband in it became her enemy, determined to assault her with every weapon in its armory. As the business of burying her husband went on around her, Ellen thought of home, of the cool, clean stone tiles of her kitchen floor, the shelter of her shadowy bedroom, curtains still drawn as they had been since the day Nick died. At home it was easier to believe that he had not gone; at home she still felt safe.

Finding every single further second that required her to stand at her husband’s graveside intolerable, Ellen gasped for breath, drenched from the inside out by the suffocating heat, flinching as she felt her son pry open her clenched fist and slide his fingers in between hers. Ellen looked down at ten-year-old Charlie and mustered a smile for him; he squeezed her fingers in return. He was supporting her, Ellen realized, ashamed. He was coping when she was not, fearless, bearing the unbearable with the kind of valor that her husband would have had. Ellen took heart from Charlie, determined not to let
him see how frightened she was, how lost, panicked and confused, hurt and bereft she felt. She wouldn’t let him see that at that precise moment, standing under that blazing sun next to Nick’s grave, she had no idea how to live from one minute to the next, let alone another day, another week, or another year without her husband.

That all she knew was that she longed to be at home.

Slowly the tip of his sword slid between the laces of her bodice, each breath from her heaving bosom forcing the opening a little farther apart, revealing ever more of the milky white flesh concealed beneath…”

“Mum.”

“‘Please, Captain, if you are any kind of gentleman don’t—oh, please…’ Eliza begged, her heart fluttering with both fear and undiscovered longing as the captain’s dark gaze roamed over her tender form.”

“Mum?”

“‘You are mine now,’
he rasped, his voice husky with desire. ‘Just like this house is mine now, just as this sword always has been!’ Eliza gasped, her eyes widening as she laid eyes on the captain’s burgeoning weapon. ‘Reconcile yourself to the knowledge that you are mine and I will have you at my will, first body, then soul…’”

“Mu-uuuuuum!”

Ellen’s head snapped up as finally the voice of her son dragged her out of the seventeenth-century darkened chamber with a locked door, where a young puritan maid was about to be ravished by her rakish royalist captor, and back to her kitchen table in Hammersmith. Discovering Charlie at her side, she slipped a folder on top of the latest Allegra Howard
manuscript that she had been sent to proofread by the publishing company she freelanced for and fixed her gaze on him.

“Yes, love?” she asked, mildly.

“What does ‘burgeoning’ mean?” Charlie asked with wide-eyed curiosity. Ellen squirmed. How long had her eleven-year-old been standing there reading over her shoulder?

“Burgeoning?” It means… um, to, um, grow rapidly or sprout—like… um, like buds in the springtime.”

“How can a weapon, like a sword, burgeon, then?” Charlie asked, his level blues eyes searching out her gaze and holding it. “Because it’s made of steel, isn’t it? Hard steel. Steel doesn’t burgeon.”

“Obviously it doesn’t!” Ellen agreed. “I’ll be correcting that! I don’t know—these writers, they haven’t got a clue about metaphor. I swear I could do it better myself. Now, what would you like for tea?” Ellen asked, even though she knew the answer, because it was the same every day.

“It might be a metaphor,” Charlie said, casually loosening his school tie. “Maybe the writer is using his burgeoning sword as a metaphor for the man’s erection, for example.”

“Charlie!” Ellen exclaimed, folding her arms across the offending manuscript as if she might somehow stop any further indiscretions from escaping it.

“What?” Charlie said. “I’m only discussing literature with you, Mum.”

“Yes, but… Charlie, you’re only eleven—you shouldn’t be discussing…”

“Erections,” Charlie repeated. “I shouldn’t be discussing erections with my mother? Who should I discuss it with?”

Ellen’s mouth opened and closed as she fought for an answer. For the millionth time, at least, in the last eleven months, the thought
If only Nick were here
flashed across her mind. But Nick wasn’t here, and Ellen had to try to learn again how to manage without him—something else that she felt she had to learn and relearn many times.

“Well, because you’re only eleven and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a boy of your age…”

“I’m nearly twelve,” Charlie reminded her.

“Your birthday’s not for two months. Don’t wish your life away, Charlie.…”

The pair held each other’s eyes for a second, an unspoken thought passing between them.

“James Ingram’s mother talks to him about sex all the time,” Charlie challenged her, papering over the gulf that stretched between them with practiced ease. “James Ingram’s mother told him he could ask her anything he liked, and she’s an
accountant
. She doesn’t read porn for a living, like you.”

“Por… Charlie, you know full well that I don’t read anything of the sort. I copyedit romantic fiction for Cherished Desires, you know that. And if… if you have any questions about anything, you can always come to me, of course you can.” Ellen felt heat color her cheeks. “Is… is there anything you’d like to talk to me about? Sex-wise.”

Charlie stared at her for a long time, and finally Ellen detected the spark of mischief in his deadpan eyes; he was teasing her in that way he had. Deadly serious, edged in equal measure with humor and what Ellen often thought might be anger. Or perhaps frustration that he was changing so rapidly and she was failing to keep up with him.

“Er—no—that would be too weird!” Charlie grinned. “I think James Ingram is a freak anyway.”

How Nick would laugh,
Ellen thought. He’d come in from work sometime between nine and ten and they’d stand in the kitchen, he leaning against the counter while she cooked for him, she telling him every last thing that Charlie had said or done, and he would laugh and say something like, “That’s my boy.” With some effort, Ellen held back the threat of tears and smiled at Charlie.

“So how was school today?”

“Same as ever, only I have to get my permission slip in, you
know, for the skiing trip—so can I go or not?” he asked, and Ellen realized that she would have preferred the most explicit question about sex that he could think of compared to that one.