Song of the

Skylark
Erica James

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London ec4y 0dz
An Hachette UK Company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright Erica James 2016
The moral right of Erica James to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
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 both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and 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 (Hardback) 978 1 4091 5955 1
isbn (Export Trade Paperback) 978 1 4091 5956 8
isbn (Ebook) 978 1 4091 5958 2
Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
The Orion Publishing Groups policy is to use papers that
are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made
from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and
manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the
environmental regulations of the country of origin.
www.orionbooks.co.uk

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them
George Eliot

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us

should value life more
Virginia Woolf

Chapter One
Radio Central
To: Lizzie_@gmail.com
Reply To: Tamsin_Hyde@RadioCentral.com
Re: Position of Research Assistant
Hi Lizzie Moran,
Thanks so much for your application for the position of
research assistant at Radio Central. Weve been swamped
with applications and Im sorry to tell you, you havent been
selected for an interview.
Cheers and better luck next time!
Tamsin Hyde
Lizzie knew that there would be plenty of people who would
take the view that she was the author of her misfortune. But
the blame wasnt all hers. She had been made a scapegoat and
unfairly so in her eyes.
She still couldnt believe what had happened to her: one minute
she was riding high on the crest of a wave of ecstatic happiness
and the next she was unreasonably sacked from a job she loved
and, as a consequence, separated from the man she loved. If that
wasnt bad enough, and with no money coming in, she couldnt
pay the rent on her flat and in the absence of any so-called friends
rushing to offer her a spare room to use temporarily, she had no
choice but to leave London and slink home to her parents in
Suffolk until she got herself back on her feet.
Not that she could tell her parents the real reason shed been
sacked from Starlight Radio. She shuddered even now to recall
the appalling moment when her affair with Curt had been so
thoroughly exposed. To spare Mum and Dad the sordid details
she had told them some story about the owners of the radio
1

station having a draconian attitude towards relationships in the

workplace and, with sweeping cutbacks to be made, she had
been conveniently got rid of. The only element of truth in what
shed told Mum and Dad was the bit about a draconian attitude.
Now, at the age of thirty-two, here she was in her old bedroom
surrounded by piles of bursting bin bags and boxes and effect
ively trying to squeeze toothpaste back into a flattened tube. No
matter how hard she tried, there simply wasnt enough space in
the wardrobes, drawers or shelves to accommodate what shed
accumulated in the ten years since shed left home.
As was only right, the bedroom bore little resemblance to the
room she had left behind. Just as soon as Mum had thought a
decent time had elapsed, it had been redecorated and turned into
the best guest bedroom, decked out with flowery curtains and
matching bed linen, bars of fragrant Provenal soap strategically
placed, along with neatly folded towels that no member of the
family would ever be allowed to use.
She had been home for a week now and she really should have
got the mess sorted, but the days had been mostly spent feeling
manically sorry for herself and firing off job applications, all of
them resulting in rejection emails that were irritatingly similar,
with their matey flippancy wishing her luck. Luck? She should
like some, thank you very much!
Poor Mum and Dad, it couldnt be easy having her back with
them again. Not only that, they were still a long way from understanding why shed ended her four-year relationship with Simon
in favour of a man theyd yet to meet a married man to boot.
To all intents and purposes they had treated Simon as a bona
fide son-in-law and Lizzie knew they were struggling to make the
adjustment to not seeing him any more.
As happy as she and Simon had been together, marriage had
never been discussed the nearest they got to it was when Simon
started talking about his Five-Year Plan and how he saw their
lives rolling out in the future. As Lizzie was puzzling over her
less-than-enthusiastic reaction to these projected hopes and
dreams, Curt Flynn pitched up as the new Head of Programmes
at Starlight Radio and in one fell swoop everything she had
thought shed loved about Simon paled into insignificance.
Forty-two years old, Curt was dynamic and fun dangerously
fun. He always seemed to know what she was thinking, and all it
2

took was one glance from him with those flashing, intuitive eyes
of his and shed fall about laughing, often at the most inopportune moment. His sense of humour was scathingly cutting and
delivered in a flat Mancunian accent she had originally thought
was put on, a throwback parody of the Gallagher brothers. Im
from somewhere I bet youve never heard of, much less visited,
hed said, when she had asked where hed grown up.
Try me, she said.
Levenshulme? hed told her. No, I thought not; even I would
have to admit that its not exactly a belting tourist destination.
Shed immediately made it her business to Google Levenshulme
she was a researcher, after all. Most notable people from
Levenshulme, shed said casually when shed found herself arriv
ing for work at the same time as him the next morning, the
architect Norman Foster, the actor Arthur Lowe, the comedienne
Beryl Reid and the original drummer from Oasis.
Pressing the button for the lift to take them up to the studio on
the fifth floor, hed said, Never heard of them.
Not even the Oasis drummer?
Especially not him. His expression was deadpan.
Alone in the lift, hed turned full square to face her. Im
impressed that you went to the trouble of doing a background
check on me. Do you do that for everyone you work with?
Technically she worked for him, and liking the fact he hadnt
played the boss card, shed smiled. I live by the maxim that
forewarned is forearmed.
Hed laughed; a sexily louche laugh that had bounced off the
mirror-lined walls of the lift. She had enjoyed the sound, had
enjoyed knowing that she had amused him.
I can see that Im going to have to watch myself around you,
hed said, putting a hand to the small of her back and nudging
her forward when the doors opened. The touch of his hand had
been like a bolt of electricity passing through her, a sensation
she had never before experienced. Bad Lizzie! shed reprimanded
herself that evening when she was on her way home and guiltily
replaying the moment.
A month later, and despite knowing he was married, she had
agreed to have a drink with him after work one evening. She had
known exactly what she was doing. So had he. Theres no point
in pretending we dont feel the way we do for each other, hed
3

said bluntly. Knowing that he felt the same way about her as she
did for him made her believe that it was meant to be, that his
marriage had been a classic case of marrying the wrong person
and for the wrong reasons. It happened all the time, didnt it?
One in three marriages ended in divorce.
Telling Simon that she didnt love him any more was one of
the hardest things shed ever had to do. He was devastated, just
hadnt seen it coming. But then neither had she. She did what she
thought was the decent thing and moved out of the flat they had
been renting together for the last two years. She found herself a
small flat in Hackney, and that was where Curt would come and
spend whatever time he could with her.
Initially the secrecy surrounding their affair had given Lizzie
a frisson of excitement, but it wasnt long before it became a
burden. More than anything she wanted to share her happiness
of being in love. In the end, the one person in whom she could
confide, knowing she could trust him not to tell anyone else, was
her twin brother, Luke. He was shocked and cautioned her to
take care. It was advice that was typical of her brother not
for nothing had she nicknamed him Mr Careful when they were
children. With hindsight she could see she should have heeded
his advice.
When the affair was revealed and she was summarily fired,
Curt had been in danger of losing his job too, but because he was
married and had a young child, along with a hefty mortgage, the
owners of the radio station had let him off. It was a bitter pill
for Lizzie to swallow, that she should be so unfairly treated. Curt
had promised her that it was only a minor setback, that when
the dust had settled at work he would sort things with his wife
and they would be together. In return hed made her promise
not to contact him, especially not at work. I need this job, hed
explained, you can understand that, cant you? I cant afford to
rock the boat again.
It was Curts promise that kept her going, gave her the hope
to believe the awful situation in which she found herself was
only temporary. He was adamant that, just as soon as he had the
situation under control, at work and at home, it would all come
right in a matter of months. We just have to play the game, hed
said. Can you do that for me, Lizzie? Can you?
She had said she could when she had his arms around her,
4

but now a fortnight since shed last seen him her resolve
was crumbling. She didnt feel at all like playing the game. She
wanted her job back, she wanted her flat back but most of all
she wanted to be back with Curt.
Just as tears of angry frustration rose to the surface of her
self-pity, the ugly chacker-chacker call of a magpie in next doors
silver birch tree came through the open window. It sounded for
all the world as if the bird was laughing at her and it had the
effect of giving her the strength to fight off the tears. Going over
to the window, she rested her elbows on the sill. Leaning out into
the warm, still June air, she breathed in the lemony scent of the
creamy-yellow rose that Dad had trained to climb up the back of
the house. In the distance, in the delicately pale blue sky, a pair
of swallows tumbled acrobatically above the field of rapeseed at
the end of the garden. The dazzling blaze of yellow flowers had
gone over now; come early August the harvest would begin.
And where would she be then? she wondered. Back in London,
she hoped, starting a new life with Curt.