Amy perrys assumptions, p.1
Amy Perry's Assumptions, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A Note from the Author
Laura Starkey
About Embla Books
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by
Bonnier Books UK Limited
4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1B 4DA
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, SwedenCopyright © Laura Starkey, 2023
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Laura Starkey to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781471411625
This book is typeset using Atomik ePublisher
Embla Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
To all the kind people who asked, ‘Are you writing another one?’ and ‘When can I read it?’
This book is for you.
I do love nothing in the world so well as you.
Is not that strange?
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV Scene i
Prologue
Amy Perry breathed in the green smell of a fading summer evening and watched the last of the day’s sunshine disappear behind Rowton Hall, the eighteenth-century stately home that stood tall and proud beyond the village of Rowton-in-Arden.
Shards of pinkish light bathed the building’s vast, slate-grey roof, illuminating its array of chimneys. As its picturesque sandstone front was plunged into shadow, the copse of trees beyond its lawns suddenly felt dense and dim.
Amy shivered slightly in the growing gloom, shifting the position of her back against her favoured old elm tree and realising that it probably would have been smart to head home half an hour ago. Gran would go spare if she popped her head into Amy’s room and discovered she wasn’t there.
Technically Amy shouldn’t be here at all, either with or without permission from her legal guardian. While the Ainsworth family – owners of this land, as well as pretty much everything else within a five-mile radius – were happy for people to walk through the little wood during daylight hours, the gate was closed at night and a sign warned that trespassers would be prosecuted.
Amy couldn’t help a derisive snort at this: it wasn’t like she’d done any harm by sitting here watching the sun go down, leafing through the latest NME and putting away most of a packet of ginger nuts. Besides, how much wealth and property did one family really need exclusive access to? As someone who’d spent much of her childhood in a two-bedroom flat with no garden, Amy had little sympathy with attempts to restrict her access to this spot.
The copse was her favourite place in Rowton, partly because she knew her dad had loved it too. He’d once confessed that – unbeknown to Gran – he’d regularly sneaked out on nights when his teenage head was too full of noise to sit still. Amy found it comforting to think of them both seeking solace in the same secret routine at different times, then creeping home undetected.
They had moved in with Gran when Dad’s doctors explained that, while treatment might keep him comfortable, there was nothing more they could do for him. Though Gran’s help had been a huge relief, the culture shock had hit sixteen-year-old Amy hard. Coming to Rowton had felt like stepping into a Jane Austen novel, and weirdest of all was the presence of an actual, real-life lord of the manor: Roger Ainsworth, aka Viscount Waverley. A member of the House of Lords, he liked to be addressed by his full title, and kept a determined distance from the commoners, many of whose homes he owned.
Amy fished in her bag for a final biscuit, and a familiar voice cut through the quiet air as she closed her fingers around it.
‘Got any more of those?’
She jumped in surprise, dropping it into the dry, dusty grass. Argh.
Sam Ainsworth – owner of the voice and heir to the very ground Amy was currently sitting on – flopped down next to her. He angled his elbows behind him and slouched back to look up at the deep navy sky.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Amy said, willing herself to sound cool and unflustered by his sudden appearance. ‘That was the last one. And you shouldn’t creep up on people like that. You should wear a bell – like the ones people put around cats’ necks to stop them killing birds.’
He grinned at her, his white teeth flashing in the shadows. ‘Well you shouldn’t be out here by yourself,’ he retorted. ‘It’s dark. You never know who might be hanging around.’
‘Apparently not,’ said Amy. ‘I suppose you’re going to head home now and dial 999, since I’m breaking His Lordship’s rules? Or find a footman to throw me off the premises?’
Sam threw his head back and laughed, and Amy averted her eyes from his long, lightly tanned throat.
‘Seriously, though,’ he said, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Why are you on your own? Celebrating the end of exams with all your dearest friends?’
He spread his hands to indicate the clear absence of other people, and Amy stuck her tongue out at him.
Unlike Sam, she wasn’t exactly popular at college – but in fact she had been invited to hang out with several of the cool girls from their English class after their papers went in earlier. She’d walked with them to the riverside park near the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and sat on the grass as a bottle of warm white wine was passed around, along with the latest gossip. The hot topic was who might pair up with who at an eighteenth birthday party that had become the big end-of-exams event that Friday – but Amy had kept quiet when it was her turn to spill.
‘Duhhh. She has her secret thing with Hari, remember?’ Amy frowned at the memory of Vicky McBride giggling, her over-plucked eyebrows raised so high they almost disappeared into her mass of brown curls. Rather than point out that there was nothing remotely romantic between herself and her best friend, Amy had soon made her excuses and left, catching the bus back to Rowton in time for tea with Gran.
Yes, Hari was the only person in Rowton that Amy felt fully at ease with, but she’d never liked him in that way – and she was one hundred per cent sure he didn’t fancy her either. Their friendship was based on a shared love of indie music, and a connection that transcended their superficial differences. At college and among the locals Hari was gregarious and well liked, whereas Amy – quiet, studious and fond of black clothes – had a reputation for spikiness. However, both had ‘lost a parent’, as their sympathetic neighbours might have put it. Their experience of grief bound them in a way their more fortunate peers couldn’t fathom.
‘Really, where’s Hari? Off answering a call of nature?’ Sam said, reclaiming Amy’s focus.
‘For God’s sake,’ she grumbled, trying not to laugh at Sam miming binoculars with his hands, aiming his face at an overgrown shrub as though Hari might be lurking behind it.
‘Hari and I aren’t a two-for-one special, you know,’ Amy went on. ‘We are occasionally seen separately.’
‘Very occasionally,’ Sam said, arching an eyebrow. He and Hari were also friends, and together the three of them – the only people in their year who lived in the village – formed a slightly strange trio: Hari the ever-affable link between the other two, whose chief form of communication was banter and sniping.
Amy’s raised voice drew the attention of Max, the Ainsworths’ chocolate Labrador. Presumably, Sam had been sent out to walk him before the family went to bed.
Max abandoned Sam to rest his warm, heavy head on Amy’s lap and, within a few short seconds, he had located her lost biscuit. She stroked his floppy ears as he munched it, loving the feel of their velvety softness between her finger and thumb.
‘Traitor,’ Sam muttered. He shook his head at the dog and then yawned, stretching his arms high above his head and lying back down on the ground, his face to the sky. Amy quickly pulled her gaze away from the sudden tightness of his T-shirt across his chest.
‘Hari has his last exam tomorrow,’ she told him, fervently hoping the dusk would obscure the ridiculous blush she could feel burning her cheeks. ‘Further Maths. I think Mrs Chauhan has him under h
‘Sounds about right,’ Sam laughed as he flipped himself onto his side to face her. ‘But tonight aside, I can’t remember the last time I saw you on your own.’
He said it lightly, but his eyes caught Amy’s and held them. Not sure what to do with his full attention, she felt her face grow hotter.
Amy found Sam infuriating and intriguing, in proportions that seemed to shift and fluctuate so frequently she could never quite be sure whether she liked or loathed him. She never missed a chance to poke fun at his insanely privileged upbringing and well-to-do accent; she’d once informed him that he sounded like a BBC newsreader from the 1930s. She had also openly berated him when she found out he’d refused to do A levels at the posh independent school he’d been at previously. Amy would have given her eye teeth to be at the sort of school where classes weren’t rammed, expectations were high and resources weren’t strained. Everybody hates a tourist, she regularly informed him. It riled her that he seemed to be cosplaying a normal person, when he was born into the English peerage and would probably never have to work a day in his life.
Amy was further annoyed by her increasing awareness of how good-looking Sam was. Until recently, his attractiveness had mostly been theoretical to her; like the date of the Battle of Hastings or the positions of the planets in the solar system, it was something she’d filed under ‘indisputable, but not of immediate interest’.
Lately, though, Amy had felt his allure as well as recognising it as fact – most recently in the exam hall this afternoon, staring up the row of single-seater desks to where he was sitting, square-shouldered and scribbling furiously in the blazing light that spilled through a nearby window.
Sam had hair the colour of something delicious you might find in the window of a French patisserie: the same shade as the warm, glossy sheen on a fresh croissant, or the gilded top of a perfectly singed crème brûlée. His eyes were a rich, chocolatey brown, framed by the sort of thick, perfectly curled lashes nature always bestowed on boys who – in Amy’s view – could never truly appreciate them. His skin was a clear, soft beige that freckled and tanned in the summer, which she also resented. At this time of year Sam positively glowed, while Amy lived in sun hats and fervently hoped she wouldn’t burn through her factor 50.
Even worse, Sam was tall and lean; a lifetime spent playing sport had given him the sort of triangular torso that effortlessly raised pulse rates. Despite Amy’s disdain for his army of female admirers – and her determination never to become one of the hangers-on who seemed content to wait around in the hope he’d notice them – she could sort of see their point.
Most disturbing of all was his mouth, from which issued many ill-formed arguments and sarcastic comments, but which was also a full, perfect pout. She’d once ranted to Hari that Sam’s lips were set in a permanently surly expression, only to realise she’d said ‘sultry’ by accident. Hari had laughed his arse off about it, and Amy’s slip of the tongue had sparked days of relentless piss-taking.
‘So you two haven’t declared your undying love for one another yet then?’ Sam asked, one corner of his troublesome mouth lifting in a wry smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘It isn’t like that,’ Amy huffed, insistent. ‘Ugh. I’m done with this topic today. And I should head home anyway.’
‘I’ll walk with you,’ Sam said, heaving himself back up to standing.
‘You don’t have to do—’
‘I need to stretch Max’s legs anyway,’ he cut in, ‘and it’ll be pitch-black out here by the time you’re over the bridge. Only a proper arsehole would knowingly let you go alone. I’ll follow you at a respectful distance if I have to, but I’d really rather not stalk you back to your gran’s.’
‘Fine,’ said Amy, and before she could register what was happening Sam had pulled her to her feet, both her hands somehow in his.
A moment later, he loosed them to bend down and pick up Max’s lead. Amy’s palms tingled.
The bracelet around her wrist jangled as she pushed her dark hair out of her face, willing herself to calm down. It was some assortment of green crystals on a stretchy band, sent to her by her mother from California. Lily Godwin, whose name had never been Perry because she didn’t believe in marriage, was what Gran called ‘a flighty type’. After a whirlwind romance with Amy’s father, John, she’d had their baby but soon decided infant Amy would be better off brought up in the sort of stable environment her aura could never provide.
Leaving Amy’s father heartbroken, she’d gone travelling and eventually settled in America, in an apartment stacked full of tarot cards, astrology charts and antiques, permanently fuggy with joss stick smoke. She and Amy – or Amaryllis, as Lily had originally named her daughter – kept in touch, but their relationship was casual rather than close.
‘So, how did you find it this afternoon?’ Sam asked as they made their way out of the little wood and walked towards the village centre.
‘Don’t tell me you want to dissect the English Lit paper,’ Amy said, laughing. ‘I didn’t think stressing about tests was your style.’
‘It isn’t,’ Sam said amiably. ‘You were the one who wanted to change the subject. Ten quid says you picked the question about the meaning of love in Much Ado About Nothing, then wrote two thousand words arguing it’s about the patriarchy’s need to control women.’
Amy felt her face flush again and sniffed indignantly. ‘So what if I did?’
‘Well, it’s a bit blinkered, in my opinion,’ Sam said, ‘and very bleak – but I have every confidence you’ll get an A star. You always make a compelling, if depressing, case.’
Amy threw him a withering look. ‘And what did you write about?’
‘I answered that one too, but in my version love is redemptive: Beatrice’s heartbreak over her cousin forces Benedick to face how he really feels – how he’s always felt about her. That love, finally declared, makes a happy ending possible for pretty much everyone. What can I tell you?’ he went on, smirking. ‘I’ve spent two years defending literary romance in the face of your committed cynicism. No reason to stop now.’
Amy’s stomach began to do something strange and utterly treacherous as he spoke. She hated slushy movies, happy ever afters and soppy songs – in fact, she loathed the whole sentimental circus of love as much as her father had adored it. At the same time, she was acutely aware of how close Sam’s arm was to hers.
For a fraction of a second, Sam’s hand brushed hers and she felt a powerful urge to grab it. Instead, she shoved her fists into the pockets of her oversized hoodie.
‘So,’ she said, to cover her suddenly shallow breathing. ‘You’re off to Cambridge in the autumn.’
‘If I get the grades,’ Sam confirmed.
‘You’ll get them. You know you will,’ she chided. Sam wasn’t just handsome and popular; sporting and academic achievements seemed to come so easily to him that they were practically automatic. He was, quite literally, the village golden boy.
Next to him, Amy felt every bit the short, somewhat weird interloper: the pale, petite nerd with no parents who was more comfortable reading books by herself than getting pissed with her peers in the park. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be so self-assured, so visible – to be comfortable with attention in the way that Sam was. She supposed it helped if people gawped at you because you were gorgeous and clever, rather than because you were an almost-orphan who dressed like a goth.
He shrugged again, oblivious to her unease. ‘Honestly, I’d be quite happy going to Sheffield instead. I haven’t admitted this to anyone else, but I might even prefer it. It’s my parents who want Cambridge – they pushed me to apply. It’s UCL for you, right?’
‘Yep,’ she nodded, her chest feeling full and heavy with the pleasure of sharing his secret.
