You Get That From Me

About the Author
 
 A former magazine editor, Charlotte Butterfield was born in Bristol in 1977 and studied English at Royal Holloway. She moved to Dubai by herself on a one-way ticket with one suitcase in 2005 and left twelve years later with a husband, three children and a 40ft shipping container. She now lives in the Cotswolds, where she is a freelance writer and novelist. Her first novel won a Montegrappa award at the 2016 Emirates Festival of Literature, and she went on to publish three romantic comedies with One More Chapter (previously Harper Impulse), and By This Time Tomorrow with Hodder & Stoughton. You Get That From Me is her fifth novel.
 
 
 Also by Charlotte Butterfield
 
 By This Time Tomorrow 
 
 
 You Get That From Me
 
 
 Charlotte Butterfield
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 www.hodder.co.uk
 
 
 First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton
 An Hachette UK company
 
 Copyright © Charlotte Butterfield 2023
 
 The right of Jade Beer to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 
 Cover image: Poppy Loughtman
 
 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
 
 All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 
 
 A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
 
 eBook ISBN 978 1 529 35375 4
 
 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
 Carmelite House
 50 Victoria Embankment
 London EC4Y 0DZ
 
 www.hodder.co.uk
 
 
 To Team P, je t’aime, ti amo
 
 
 Contents
 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
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Chapter 40
 Chapter 41
 
 Acknowledgements
 
 
 Chapter 1
 Stella
 Hello, person reading this in the future, my name’s Stella Fairbrother. Stella means Star. It is 1995 and I am 12 years old and I like Boyzone, Chinese takeaways, watching Neighbours and chain letters. When I grow up, I am going to be a marine biologist, or a lawyer, or a scriptwriter for movies. I live here with my Mum, Bonnie and Grandma Florence. Write your message next to mine for the next person to see or you will have twenty years bad luck, even though Granny says you make your own luck. Bye.
 
 I run my hand over my writing. God, I was a precocious child. The i’s have little hearts over them and my y’s and g’s have extravagant loops that I always forgot to do, then would have to rub out the boring tails to make these more exciting ones. I vaguely remember writing this on the wall before Mum papered over it with the grey and pink diagonally striped wallpaper I’ve just spent ten days every morning before work stripping off.
 I pick up the brush and dip it in the wallpaper paste to consign my words back into the time capsule once again by papering over it. I stop, and pause, brush poised in mid-air. Even though it’s the words of an overconfident twelve-year-old, considering my current life situation, I can ill afford another twenty years’ bad luck, so on a complete whim, and in spite of not really believing in luck, I reach into my bag for a permanent marker.
 Hi, person reading this in the future, which, let’s face it, will probably still be me. Stella Fairbrother here. Again. It is 2023 and I am 40 years old and I rarely listen to music, still like Chinese takeaways, watching Netflix, and I have over 3,000 unread emails in my inbox. I have grown up and I’m not a marine biologist, lawyer, or screenwriter, but I’m the assistant manager of a nursing home. I am also mortified to confirm that I still live here with my Mum, Bonnie, and my grandmother, Florence. By the way . . . there’s no such thing as luck; good, bad or indifferent.
 
 I quickly paste the first strip of wallpaper on the trestle table to cover up both of these notes on the wall while trying to swallow down the resentment that keeps threatening to drown me. I honestly thought that by the age of forty I’d have a fabulously fulfilling and financially lucrative career, a supportive and not unattractive husband who did both his and my ironing on a Sunday afternoon while watching Countryfile, and a couple of cheerful and wholly acquiescent kids. It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation I don’t think, not like inventing the new internet or marrying a royal, or the deluded ambitions of my twelve-year-old self. I just wanted a nice partner and kids. That’s all. Yet here I am, single, in my childhood home. It’s like the last two decades have never happened.
 I didn’t have to move back in here with Mum and Florence after I rented my flat out. Kate and a few of my other friends offered their spare rooms too. But their houses have fridge doors covered in star-of-the-day certificates for ‘sitting on the carpet nicely’ and ‘taking turns with the glue sticks’ and that’s not really what I want to see every time I take out someone