Love makes you do things you never thought you were capable of…
Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend—but, ultimately, doomed.
When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha, to run wild.
Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.
Rachel is desperate to return to London but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home.
Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn.
And wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core…
The Garnett Girls, the captivating debut novel from Georgina Moore, asks whether children can ever be free of the mistakes of their parents.
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PROLOGUE
Margo let the heavy door slam behind her, her hand lingering on the cold brass of the doorknob. She felt the heat envelop her, the air thick and still with it, no sea breeze to bring relief. There was even a heat haze over the sea, blurring the horizon. Sasha’s small sticky hand slipped out of hers and she was off, taking Sandcove’s steep steps with hops and jumps. “Da!” she kept calling. She was chasing her father, she was always chasing her father. Margo watched as the white-blond curls shot along the sea wall above the beach, the curve of her cheek slathered in sun cream.
Margo shouted “Not near the edge!” hearing the echoes of all the times growing up this had been shouted at her. “Imi, go with her, make sure she’s okay! Your father’s too far away.”
Imogen obediently trailed down the steps, book in hand. She moved slowly, dreamily. Margo noticed how knotted her long hair was, there was a huge bird’s nest at the back. People would think she wasn’t coping if they saw it.
“Quicker than that! She’s already at the walkway.”
Margo felt Rachel lurking beside her, two enormous picnic bags at her feet. Margo looked at her eldest daughter’s face, which always seemed to be set in a scowl these days. She was wiser than she should be at nine, clever and sarcastic. She did not help the atmosphere in the house with her sharp observations.
“What’s wrong now?”
“Didn’t you see? Dad just left, he didn’t take anything for the picnic.”
Margo had seen Richard’s pale legs disappearing over Horestone Point. He’d been holding something, most likely the cooler box. He would already be on the white sand of Priory, a glass in his hand, chatting to whoever was there. On a day like this people would be coming into the bay by boat for barbecues and picnics.
“He couldn’t wait to get away from us.”
Margo wanted to go back alone into the cool and quiet of the house. But she couldn’t leave Richard in charge, she would never be able to leave him in charge. She needed to say something reassuring to Rachel.
“Don’t be silly—he went ahead to get a good spot.”
Margo ignored the world-weary sigh beside her. She picked up the two bags. “You okay to take the rug, darling?” She looked out at the horseshoe of the bay. The light was dazzling, the tide had come right in, leaving only a crescent of beach. “Look, Rach, it’s perfect for swimming.”
Later, on their striped rug, Richard handed her a glass of cold white wine. He was grinning, a ragged straw hat perched on his head, a blob of sun cream on the bridge of his nose. Margo reached up a finger to rub it in and he seized her hand, kissed it. They both leaned back on their arms, watching their girls play in the sea. Imogen was patiently leaping with a squealing Sasha in and out of the waves near the shore. Rachel was swimming along the bay, strong and sure.
“It’d be grand to have a stroke like that.” Richard’s voice was envious; he was a terrible swimmer. Margo had tried to teach him but he was too proud and impatient.
“I don’t want her to go out of sight.”
“Stop worrying so much and drink your wine.”
Margo looked up at the spindly trees leaning at an angle over the beach, sending long shadows at sunset. This beach could feel like it only belonged to her in winter; today they might as well have been by the Mediterranean, with all the smart RIBs and speedboats crowding the water, just a short swim away from the shore. There were bronzed bodies everywhere. One thing she didn’t need to worry about was Richard looking at any other woman; he only ever had eyes for her. She watched as he leaned over and sloppily tipped the last of the bottle into his glass. She knew better than to say anything.
“I’m boiling, shall we have a swim?”
Mostly it was a happy day. It took hours for Richard to get drunk, and before he did he played cricket with his daughters, threw Sasha high up in the air, made them all laugh with his terrible handstands in the sea. Then he slept it off in the shade of the trees. The beach had started to empty while Margo was fully absorbed in building an enormous sand village, with moats and shell houses. Rachel had pushed them all to be ambitious and was still there beside her, adding a turret. Imogen had sloped away to read her book. Sasha was burying her Da’s feet in the sand as he slept. When Margo looked up, the sky was streaked with vivid pink, the tide was far out, and half the sand was in shadow.
“I want a photo of the three of you with this. Come on!”
Obediently Rachel and Imogen knelt beside Sasha, the sand village behind them. Margo noticed their new freckles, their beach hair, the patch of red on Sasha’s dimpled thigh, where she had missed the sun cream.
“Come on girls, big smiles!”
Excerpted from the book THE GARNETT GIRLS by Georgina Moore. Copyright © 2023 by Georgina Moore. From Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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Photo Credit: Szerdi Nagy
Now Deputy MD of PR Agency Midas, GEORGINA MOORE is an award-winning book publicist who has worked in the publishing industry for twenty years. She has worked with a huge variety of authors across all genres and at all stages of their careers - from debuts to household names. Her most recent PR campaign for Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has won the FutureBook and PPC awards for campaign of the year and is Nibbies nominated.
The Garnett Girls is Georgina’s first novel and is set on the Isle of Wight where Georgina and her family have a holiday houseboat called Sturdy. Georgina’s main residence is a houseboat on Taggs Island in the River Thames, where she lives with her partner, two children and Bomber, the Border terrier.
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