My One True North

the Top Five Sunday Times bestseller – discover the magic of Milly

Milly Johnson

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781471178528
• eBook ISBN: 9781471178511
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A gorgeous read full of hope, warmth and heartfelt emotion from the Sunday Times bestselling author? 'The feeling you get when you read a Milly Johnson book should be bottled and made available on the NHS' Debbie Johnson Laurie and Pete should never have met.
But fate has pushed them together for a reason. Six months ago, on the same night, Laurie and Pete both lost their partners.
Struggling to manage the grief, they join the same counselling group – and meet each other. From their sadness, Pete and Laurie find happiness growing and they sense a fresh new beginning.
Except, the more they talk, the more they begin to spot the strange parallels in their stories.
Then Pete discovers a truth that changes everything. But, as surely as a compass points north, some people cannot be kept apart. My One True North is a story of friendship and what love means, of secrets uncovered, teashops on corners and the northern lights. Praise for My One True North:
'Funny, poignant and so uplifting' Sun
'Reading a Milly Johnson book is like spending time with a best friend - you always end up feeling better about the world. Written with genuine warmth and heart, they're an absolute treat' Lucy Diamond
'A heartfelt novel from one of our favourite authors' Bella
'A heart-warming and engaging read' Woman's Weekly
'Johnson is in a league of her own in the genre…an uplifting story unfolding from hard times, all succinctly nailed with emotional honesty in absorbing prose' The Lady
'A heartfelt and emotional story... It's another wonderful feelgood read from a talented author' Daily Express
'Milly Johnson brings her trademark warmth, humour and compassion to this tale of love, fate, second chances and the importance of giving your heart time to heal. The perfect read for a rainy day spent under a blanket' Culturefly, 8 of the Best New Books To Read This March?
'If your March reading list is all about warmth and cosiness, then Milly Johnson's latest novel should be top of your reading pile. From the writer of The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew (which is fabulous, by the way) My One True North is full of the heartfelt optimism we need at this time of year' Yahoo Book of the Month
'A dazzling, contemporary masterpiece, full of heart, soul and humour' Lancashire Evening Post

SOUTH

Chapter 1

Late August

For a couple of hours every Wednesday evening, this lovely room was Molly Jones-Hoyland’s kingdom. She’d originally planned to hold her Molly’s Club sessions in her home, but then her friend Leni had suggested she use her teashop. After all, there was plenty of parking nearby, comfortable seating inside, and more than enough tea and cake to accompany the sympathy. Plus it had the atmosphere, for the teashop had a welcoming, soothing ambience perfectly suited to people who were feeling disorientated, adrift. Indeed, the little ‘Teashop on the Corner’ had drawn Molly in like a magnet years ago and she had found not only friendship there but a true purpose. Opening the door to it had heralded the opening of a door into another life, a bigger life than the one she had been living up to that point. There was magic within its walls, she was convinced of it. The teashop might have been a newly built property put up on the site of a demolished wire factory but she had long suspected that beneath it, ancient and benign ley lines ran, because there had to be some explanation why anyone who stepped inside felt instantly calmed, relaxed, at home.

Molly was in her mid-seventies but she still had a lot of energy for her pet project: to help people through grief, to see them through their loss, their anger, their bewilderment, help them to reach acceptance just by bringing them into a safe arena where they could talk, and share their experiences. She had no formal qualification in grief counselling, though she’d known much sadness and loss in her own life, but she had personally gained so much from friendship and, above all, kindness that she felt duty bound to pay it forward. It had healed her and given her hope when she had felt none, when on her horizon were only clouds and not a peep of sunshine. It had made her see herself – and made others see her – as a strong woman behind her gentle façade. Molly emanated a tranquillity that people responded to and they opened up like flowers to her, spread their leaves as if she were a welcome of warm rain.

There were never more than six ‘guests’, as she referred to them, in her sessions; she’d found that a small group worked best, five being the optimum number for some strange reason. If Molly could help people to locate the pin-prick of light in their black pit of despair, she knew she could show them that the sun still rose in the east and she could guide them towards the dawn of a new happier existence. Every life gone south could be fixed, every compass could be recalibrated to point upwards to a north of hope.

The teashop really was a special place. Here, Molly and her circle of friends – some young, some old and all ages in between – had had many a discussion over literary works, inspired by all the wonderful book-related goods that filled the cabinets around the room. She had learned as much as taught and it had given her jaded heart a new lease of life. One of her new-found friends was a retired surgeon, a widowed Sikh gentleman who had become as close to Molly as it was possible to be without overstepping the boundary into something closer still. Friendship was enough for both of them. In Molly’s Wednesday night ‘Molly’s Club’ sessions, Pavitar Singh acted as barista. He donated his time and services for the price of refreshment and considered himself more than reimbursed.

‘I’m expecting new faces tonight, Pavitar. A Miss Laurie De Vere and a Mr Peter Moore,’ Molly called to him. Their names had reflected them well, Molly thought when they had spoken on the phone. Laurie, gentle and cultured: Pete, solid and no nonsense. She was looking forward to helping them; they were so young to be going through what they were.

‘Good, good,’ said Pavitar, checking his watch. He knew as well as Molly that the new people were often late. They had to build up their confidence to walk through the door, but they usually did so eventually, give or take a couple of false starts. Ringing up Molly and asking if it was possible to join the group was the biggest hurdle.

Two places had come up recently: Maureen wasn’t coming any more. She felt able to cope now and she didn’t want to take up a space that someone else might need. Reginald, who had been coming for nine months, had cried and said he hadn’t thought it would have been possible to feel as if he could carry on, but he could now and had taken flight into a new life – a different life – without his beloved wife. The light had come back to his horizon. He’d donated a hundred pounds for tea and cake for those who came after. That left Maurice, who had lived with and cared for his mother since he was a child, Yvonne, recently widowed and Sharon who had lost the dog she doted on: some people grieved as much, if not more, for animals they had loved and Molly saw nothing wrong in that. Pete and Laurie would join them: a young man who had tragically lost his wife in a car accident and a young woman who had lost her fiancé in similar circumstances.

The clock on the wall chimed seven and right on cue in walked Yvonne and Maurice together. Yvonne was surprisingly chipper considering she had only buried her husband two months ago. But then Molly knew that the outside didn’t always match the inner.

‘Hellooo,’ said Yvonne, in a chirpy voice. ‘I hope there’s plenty of cake.’

‘Plenty as always,’ said Mr Singh, rubbing his hands together. ‘What can I get for you, Yvonne?’

‘Chocolate, always chocolate if available,’ she replied.

‘And tea for two?’ Maurice turned to confirm that with Yvonne. Despite them both being in their fifties, Maurice had taken Yvonne firmly under his wing. It hadn’t escaped Molly or Mr Singh how much his mood had brightened since Yvonne had joined them.

The doorbell tinkled again and in walked Sharon. She was a small, round woman in her early forties who wore her grief like a coat that weighed heavily on her shoulders.

‘Hello Sharon, love,’ said Molly. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Bit rough this week, Molly,’ replied Sharon, her voice crumbling with emotion. ‘Billy would have been eight.’

‘Date anniversaries can be tough. You come and join the queue for cake,’ said Maurice, beckoning her over.

‘My husband would never let me eat cake,’ said Yvonne. ‘He said I’d get fat. If only he could see me now,’ she added, as Mr Singh handed her a wedge of chocolate cake on a china plate. A fat Yvonne was difficult to imagine, everyone thought together. She was built like a bird which had fallen out of its nest before its feathers had had a chance to sprout. Her fragile bones would never have supported fat.

‘My mother loved cake,’ said Maurice. ‘She’d have eaten a whole one at a sitting if I’d let her. “Sundays and birthdays, Mother,” I used to tell her. Towards the end, the rules went out of the window though. She had coffee and walnut for breakfast on quite a few occasions.’

Molly checked the time again just as the café door opened a fraction and a sliver of nervous person appeared: a tall, slim woman with a long white-blonde plait resting on her shoulder and a sweet, heart-shaped face.

‘Come in,’ said Molly. ‘Is it Laurie?’ She darted over, hand extended to draw the young woman in. Laurie stepped into the shop now that she had been seen and couldn’t exactly backtrack. She’d been sitting in her car for over ten minutes, building up to joining them. She never felt the slightest bit discomfited mixing with people, but this was different. Here she was expected to let people in, past the armour-plating that had been welding itself around her for six months, exposing her soft, vulnerable underbelly.

‘Yes,’ said Laurie, coughing away a croak.

‘You must have cake, it’s obligatory,’ said Molly. She smiled and Laurie responded with a smile of her own.

‘Okay, if I must, then I will. Thank you.’

‘Well as soon as you’re served, we’ll make a start,’ said Molly. It didn’t look as if Peter Moore was going to make an appearance. Maybe next week, she thought with hope.

---

Outside the café, Pete told himself not to be so bloody stupid and just open the door. It felt like the equivalent of jumping into a swimming pool; the water was always lovely once you were in but taking that initial dive was sometimes hampered by a ridiculous negative anticipation. He ran into burning buildings for a living and yet he was standing outside a café geeing himself up to walk in and have a sodding cup of tea with a pensioner. He counted down from three, depressed the handle, pushed slightly and the cheery bell above his head announced his arrival in a way that said he couldn’t possibly turn and head back to the car. His foot was already over the threshold when his eyes took in the company he was to keep for the next hour or so and his brain sighed. How the hell could this motley crew all sitting around eating cake and drinking tea even hope to help him to fit into the world again?

The Daily Trumpet was in court this week to witness Jason ‘Juice’ Hughes appearing before magistrates after pelting the mayor and lady mayoress with vegan sausage rolls on the steps of the town hall in protest at Brexit and Climate Change. Mr Juice asked it to be taken into consideration that he had not wanted to cause undue offence by lobbing meat-based products at the couple as he respected the mayor and mayoress were virgins.

Chapter 2

August, two weeks earlier

Laurie De Vere pulled up in her usual parking space at Daily Trumpet HQ. It said a lot that a visiting solicitor had her own allocated spot. Coming here was the highlight of the week for her. Much as she loved the daily grind as a general solicitor at Butler and Jubb Legal Associates, the job she did at the Daily Trumpet was more like playtime and the people who worked there like a dysfunctional family that both infuriated her and amused her in equal measures. Laurie had never had the desire to specialise in a particular branch of law; she considered herself a GP of the legal world. One minute she was sorting out Mrs X’s divorce, the next helping Mr Y take Company Z to court for constructive dismissal, but if she was ever going to throw all her eggs in one judicial basket, she would have picked defamation, libel and slander, which sounded like a firm of solicitors in itself – and which was a subdivision of litigation developing at the rate of a Triffid in a growbag. Thanks to all the errors that appeared in the Daily Trumpet, people were always trying to sue it, hoping for a multi-million pound settlement but, maybe not surprisingly, settling instead for an afternoon tea for two or a pie and pea supper at a local hostelry. At the moment Laurie needed the jolly bunch of field reporters and office staff as much as they needed her. Her duty to the newspaper fuelled a joie de vivre that she always felt guilty for experiencing, as if she were benefitting from someone else’s despair. And the editor of the Daily Trumpet, Alan Robertson, really did despair.

The hot summer sun was shining in the cloudless sky and yet it couldn’t warm the chill Laurie felt in her heart which had been there for six solid months, like an emotional permafrost that stubbornly refused to melt. It had been frozen, dark February when Laurie’s world had tipped on its axis and yet for weeks afterwards she had felt a spotlight as intense as this August sun above trained on her with unrelenting brightness, marking her as a creature to be skirted around, dashed away from because she represented an awkward encounter. However adept people thought they were with words, all of them dried up when they had, in their midst, someone recently bereaved. People had even avoided her rather than deliver a platitudinal, ‘Sorry for your loss’, or ‘Sorry to hear your bad news’. Others flapped around in a pool of clichés hoping to net something that would give comfort, but there was none to be found. Even Alan Robertson, who usually had more wise words than a monastery full of Dalai Lamas – albeit mostly invective that he attributed to his great gran – hadn’t even attempted to say anything profound to her at Alex’s funeral. He had put his arms around her and that hug said more than anything words could have conveyed, especially as he wasn’t at all an emotionally demonstrative man. She had taken much strength from the gesture; it had helped her get through a day that was saturated with sadness and one that she thought she might never properly recover from.

Laurie zapped her car shut and headed towards the front door underneath the letters that spelled ‘DAILY RUMPET’, because the T had long since dropped off as if falling in with the character of the place. Its frontage was crumbly and quaint, belying the chaos that went on within its walls. A chaos that had become incredibly profitable over the last few years, it had to be said.

The Daily Trumpet had started off as a barely breaking-even periodical pushed to the edge of bankruptcy by incompetence. Glaring editorial errors brought more complaints than the leanly manned postroom could manage. Either the reporters or printing presses must be possessed, deduced the executive management board – it turned out to be both. Then something very odd happened. The figures started to improve, as low troughs in the sales statistics began to invert to high spikes. The owner of the paper (the Trumpet being one of only a few privately owned newspapers in Britain) commissioned market research which revealed that people were buying the Trumpet for its hilarious blunders and ensuing apologies more than they were for the news. The money that it was forced to pay out in compensation became less than the gain in revenue. In short – it made good business sense for the Daily Trumpet to print crap.

That was not to say that the top brass was happy with this. Sir Basil Stamper, the owner, was initially mortified that his pride and joy had become a laughing-stock. Money was second to prestige in his world so out went all the inept equipment and personnel and he set on a proficient editor – Alan Robertson – who shared Sir Basil’s vision to restore the newspaper to its glory days.

This caused the sales to dip again.

People complained that the Trumpet had become stale, uninteresting, unentertaining. Sir Basil realised that he had to sacrifice his integrity on the altar of cash because pride was one thing but he very much enjoyed living a privileged lifestyle and driving an Aston Martin. He tried to swallow it by forcing himself to accept that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Part 1: South
• Part 2: East
• Part 3: West
• Part 4: North
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright