Good Reading dips into the first few paragraphs of new books to give you a taste of what’s to come.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Melbourne, 1927. The summer flowers smell like Christmas the night Zara Dickins meets Harry Holt. Zara is wearing a dress she has designed and made herself. White organdie over a short black slip, with black embroidery and a crimson taffeta sash. It is party season and the university crowd are celebrating end-of-year exams. Zara loves dancing with the boys and flirting with them, but it’s a game to her. Nothing serious. Until Harry.

He plans to be a politician once he finishes law. She, a fashion designer, if she can find a way to break out of the secretarial pool. When he takes her hand, she doesn’t want to let him go.

The spark they ignite that night will last forty years.

Portsea, 1967. When Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming, his wife Zara loses herself in the memories of their volatile relationship. She always believed Harry when he said no matter what happened, he’d never leave. Their bond has stretched to London, Europe, India, America. It has survived anger, loss and heartbreak, media scrutiny, secrets and lies. But now all Zara wants is for Harry to come home.

Inspired by the fascinating life of fashion designer and businesswoman Dame Zara Bate, The Secret Year of Zara Holt is a vibrant and compelling novel of fashion, passion, love and loss.

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Prologue

Portsea, December 1967

She wakes (had she slept?) to the familiar sound of the shower running. Relief floods her body, warm and liquid. She turns on the lamp next to the bed and reads the clock. Three in the morning.

‘I knew you’d be back,’ she says as he enters the room, a towel wrapped around his waist, his silvery chest hair damp. ‘I said to Vieve, it feels as though he’s going to walk in the door any moment and have a laugh at us all for crying.’

‘I always come back to you. You know that.’ He sits on the bed, picking up her hand.

‘Why all the fuss then? I was beside myself. There must have been over a hundred people looking for you.’

‘I’m tired. The world is with us all the time. I’m done with it.’

‘You must let me call the children. They’re devastated.’

He shakes his head decisively. ‘No-one can know. Just you and me.’

She doesn’t push the point. He’s right – this can’t work otherwise. The boys were adults now anyway; they had their own lives to be getting on with.

‘Come to bed,’ she says. ‘It’s late.’

‘Early,’ he corrects her, smiling. The towel is on the floor and the lamp is extinguished, and it’s just the two of them in the dark. She curls against his warm body, hand across his upper arm, trying not to hold too tightly. That was the trick with him; it always had been.

‘What will we do?’ she asks.

‘We will work it out in the morning. You’re clever. You’ll figure out a solution.’

‘The whole country’s in uproar. This will be impossible.’ The weight of the task ahead is suddenly too much for her. Her imagination can’t support it.

He rests his finger gently across her lips. ‘In the morning,’ he says. ‘I’m tired.’

She kisses his finger. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘So am I,’ he replies. ‘You know how sorry I am, don’t you?’

She has never needed him to say sorry; she always finds a way to forgive. She sees past his betrayals to his gentle heart, his blazing intellect, his good soul.

‘No more of that,’ he says, as if reading her mind. ‘I am back and nobody knows except you, and if we are to keep it secret then there can be no other women.’

She says nothing.

‘I’m tired,’ he says again. ‘Tired of all of it.’

‘Tired of me?’ she asks, hearing her voice waver.

He kisses the top of her head. ‘Never tired of you,’ he replies. ‘Never.’

Sometime around dawn, on the day they run away, she drifts back to sleep.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kimberley was born in London and her family moved back to Australia when she was three years old. She grew up in Queensland where she currently lives.

Kimberley has written for as long as she can remember and she is proud to write in many genres. She is an award-winning writer in children’s, historical and speculative fiction under her birth name Kim Wilkins. She adopted the pen name Kimberley Freeman for her commercial women’s fiction novels to honour her maternal grandmother and to try and capture the spirit of the page-turning novels she has always loved to read.

Kim has an Honours degree, a Masters degree and a PhD from The University of Queensland where she is also a senior lecturer. She lives in Brisbane with her kids and pets and lovely partner.

Visit Kimberley Freeman’s website