The Days of Summer. Jill Barnett

>

      JILL BARNETT

      The Days of Summer

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

       The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      AVON

      A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      This paperback edition 2007

      First published in the U.S.A by

       Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2006

      Copyright © Jill Barnett 2006

      Jill Barnett asserts the moral right to

       be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is

       available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Source ISBN: 9781847560025

      Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007278916 Version: 2018-05-21

      This writing life I’ve stumbled through has brought me an abundance of riches, the most valuable a friendship of twenty years.

      To Kristin and Benjamin Hannah, who have stood by my side and protected my back through all the wins and losses. Only the angels could have sent you.

      Life can only be understood

      backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

      Søren Kierkegaard

      Contents

       Title Page Copyright Dedication Part One: 1957 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Part Two: 1970 Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two Part Three: 2002 Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four Chapter Twenty Five Chapter Twenty Six Chapter Twenty Seven Chapter Twenty Eight Chapter Twenty Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty One Chapter Thirty Two Chapter Thirty Three Chapter Thirty Four Chapter Thirty Five Chapter Thirty Six Epilogue Acknowledgments The Days Of Summer Questions And Topics For Discussion A Conversation With The Author About the Author About the Publisher

       PART ONE

      1957

      A hurtful act is the transference to others of

      the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

       Simone Weil

       CHAPTER 1

       Southern California

      Warm and motionless nights were natural in LA, a place where so much of life was staged and the weather seldom competed for attention. There, events and people stood in the limelight. On most nights, somewhere in the city, searchlights panned the sky; tonight, in front of the La Cienega Art Gallery. All the art show regulars were there in force, names from the society pages, old money and new, along with enough existentialist poets and bohemians to fill every coffeehouse from Hollywood to Hermosa Beach.

      Well-known