Prepare to fall in love with beautiful village of Burley Bridge.
Growing up in a quiet Yorkshire village, Roxanne couldn’t wait to escape and find her place in the world in London. As a high-powered fashion editor she lives a glamorous life of perennial singlehood – or so it seems to her sister Della. But when Roxanne gets her heart broken by a fashion photographer, she runs away, back to Della’s welcoming home above her bookshop in Burley Bridge.
But Burley Bridge, Roxanne discovers, is even quieter than she remembered. There’s nothing to do, so Roxanne agrees to walk Della’s dog Stanley. It’s on these walks that Roxanne makes a startling discovery: the people who live in Burley Bridge are, well, just people – different from the fashion set she’s used to, but kind and even interesting. Michael, a widower trying to make a go of a small bakery, particularly so. Little by little, cupcake by cupcake, Roxanne and Michael fall into a comforting friendship.
Could there be a life for Roxanne after all, in the place she’s spent 46 years trying to escape?
Something peculiar had happened to Marsha Kennedy.
She had found herself editor of Britain’s most popular fashion magazine. While she had already edited several publications, they had been in the diet and fitness markets, promising taut bodies and rapidly shed pounds; she knew virtually nothing about fashion and had even less interest in it.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Rufus had said when he had first suggested she step into the role. ‘In fact, view it as a positive. You’re commercial, Marsh – you know how to sell copies and that’s what this lot need. A kick up the backside, a wake-up call. They’ve had it too good for far too long, floating about and creating their . . . pretty pictures.’
As publisher at Walker Media Inc., Rufus was in charge of a whole raft of magazines, and as he said the words ‘pretty pictures’, his nostrils seemed to flare in distaste. Unconcerned by the creative aspects, his job was to ensure that his magazines raked in maximum profits. He was also Marsha’s married boss with whom she was having a somewhat frenetic affair.
‘We need to be radical if the magazine’s going to survive,’ he’d added, twitching as Marsha traced a finger through the reddish, sweat-dampened hair on his slightly paunchy stomach.
They had been lying on plastic sun beds on the rectangle of Astroturf that covered her south-facing roof terrace in Dalston in East London. It was an uncharacteristically hot April day, and the pair had spent most of it massaging sunscreen into each other. Rufus had muttered that he would have to shower it off so as not to return home to his wife smelling of sickly shea butter. (His rather sunburnt hue would be a trickier matter, he realised, glancing down in alarm at his chest. He was supposed to be visiting his mother at her care home in Stroud, so how would he explain why his chest was the colour of bacon?)
‘I want to put you in there,’ he’d said, ‘like a heat-seeking missile. If anyone can sort things out it’s you, Marsh, sweetheart.’
‘You really think so?’ She’d twisted her shoulder-length chestnut hair into what she hoped was a cute little braid.
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Because it’s not my market, darling.’
‘Oh, come on. I know what you’re like. You can do anything when you put your mind to it.’ He winked, and she laughed. ‘And believe me,’ he’d added, pulling her close to his clammy chest, ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’
He had, too – financially as well as in other, more immediate ways. Marsha had now been installed at the helm of Britain’s best-loved fashion magazine for two weeks. Although sales had dipped over the past couple of years, she was confident that this would soon be rectified. Rufus had been right: of course she was capable of running a glossy fashion magazine. She just needed to scare everyone senseless. And, so far, this was working a treat.
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