Saturday 7th June at the LeeekLovesBooks Festival. Confirmed. Cosy Crime panel discussing how authors see the cosy crime genre. Tickets are available here. https://www.leeklovesbooks.com/2025programme
As a returning author, I will also host a table where all of my novels will be available for signing.
Churnet Rooms, Moorlands House. Stockwell St. Leek. Staffs. ST13 6HQ
Here they are: the official postcard and bookmark set that will be sent out with all signed copies of the Encore For Murder paperback when it arrives in June.
At 2am this morning I typed The End on the final page of the sixth Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery. Encore For Murder. The novel came in at just short of 110,000 words so pretty much the average length for an Amy book. The story is a bout a man who has been murdered twice. How can that possibly happen. You’ll be able to find out in late May when the ebook version of Encore For Murder is released. The paperback will follow shortly afterwards when signed copies will be made available.
Alice is 18. Godfrey is a 38 year old married lawyer. He has been helping Alice set up a trust for the family farm to stop it falling into the hands of the jealous Frank.
‘Well, that’s about it, Alice, our business is concluded. I do hope we will meet again soon.’
‘Wait, please, don’t go yet,’ I almost begged.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not in a rush. What did you want to discuss?’
‘Dance with me,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Dance with me, before you go. We’ve had lunch, tea, Martini’s, but we’ve never danced.’
He looked around. ‘Do you have a radio or something?’
‘Much better than that,’ I said. ‘Wait here, please don’t leave, I’ll be back in two shakes.’
I rushed from the room and grabbed my beautiful, blue gramophone from its place next to the tallboy, then I picked up my record case, and returned to the front room, closing the door behind me with my heel. To my intense relief, he was still there.
I set up the machine and selected Fred Astaire, singing Night and Day. I lowered the arm onto the record, then turned around with my arms open wide.
Godfrey smiled at me. ‘I love this song.’
We danced slowly, and properly to begin with, one of his hands in mine, one on the back of my shoulder, but as the dance progressed, I moved his hand down to my waist and put both of mine on his back. My breasts brushed against his chest and a tingle, like a tiny, electric shock, ran down my spine. My eyes sought his and I pressed even closer. He attempted to lose eye contact but mine must have contained powerful, eyeball-magnets, because his gaze only left mine for a millisecond.
‘Alice. This can’t happen,’ he said, huskily.
I snuggled into his chest and laid my head against his shoulder. ‘I know,’ I replied softly.
‘It’s wrong. I’m old enough to be your father,’ he said, brushing his lips against my neck.
‘I know,’ I repeated.
His hot breath breezed past my ear, then he kissed my neck gently, from the ear to clavicle.
I thought my knees were going to give way. I pulled my head back and looked him in the eye again.
‘Alice… I’ll hate myself…’
‘I won’t,’ I said, truthfully. I moved my head forward hesitantly, then his lips found mine and my heart melted.
Tracy’s Hot Mail, the hilarious first book in the Tracy’s Hot Mail series is FREE to download until Jan 9th.
Tracy’s the new girl in the office. A sassy nineteen year old with an eye for cloned fashion and an ear for the latest gossip, she reveals all in a series of emails written to her friend, Emma. Tracy doesn’t spare anyone’s blushes as she dishes the dirt on friends, family, and foes. If something is worth hearing, it is worth telling… Everyone gets the Tracy Treatment, her benefit-fiddling father, her porn obsessed boyfriend, even her pocket billiards champion boss. Not forgetting the office’s serial bum pincher and his latest conquest, the office tart. Behind Tracy’s wide eyed innocence and reassuring smile lies a muck spreader of the highest calibre. No secret is safe.
I’m delighted to announce that the third book in the hilarious Tracy’s Hot Mail series. What Tracy Did Next, is now FREE to download from Amazon.
A lover of cloned, market stall fashion and the Primark sales rail, Tracy is still working the promotions circuit under the guidance of her uber-iffy agent, Shayne Slider.
What on earth are Faliraki Flaps? What really happened when Tracy went on holiday with her best friend, Emma? Get an insight into what she got up to in her last year at school as Tracy dips into her personal diaries and lifts the lid on her most intimate secrets. Download from Amazon FREE
Hot News! All the books in my Dual Timeline Family Saga series are now only 99p for the eBooks. Sale ends in the New Year so get a bargain while you can, Linky Thingy here. UNSPOKEN SALE OFFER
Written with my children’s author hat on a good few years ago, this is a story related to climate change.
When Faylinn Frost is woken up in the middle of the night by a fairy tapping on her bedroom window she thinks she is dreaming. The fairy turns out to be very real however, and she begs Faylinn for help. The fairy kingdom of Coldhaven is under attack from the evil Nathaniel and his creature, Sniffle. Nathaniel is capturing fairies and harvesting their magic dust to sell to the greedy people of the south lands. He has taken so much golden dust that the fairies can’t make enough magic to control the weather and Coldhaven is warming up.
I am beyond delighted to announce that Death at the Lychgate, the second Amy Rowlings mystery has been released in audiobook format by Ulverscroft, the biggest distributor and audiobook producer in the UK. Produced and recorded by Soundings and Isis Audio, the recording is available at all audiobook retailers. Following Murder at the Mill, the first book in the series, the role of Amy Rowlings is reprised by the wonderful actress, Gemma Lawrence who really nails the character. I am delighted with her performance.
The audiobook will also be distributed to UK libraries via Ulverscroft’s Ulibrary service.
Ten Years After, the fifth book in the Amy Rowlings Golden Age Mystery series has been released by SpellBound Books Ltd.
The eBook was released on the 25h September. The paperback will be released shortly. Find Ten Years After on Amazon. here. AMAZON LINK
The book can be read as a standalone but if you would like to catch up with the rest of the series you’ll find the previous books here in eBook, Audiobook and on KindleUnlimited. AMAZONUKLINK
Amy and her best friend Alice are seventy. It’s 1989 and the world has changed out of all recognition from when they were growing up together in the old town of Spinton in Kent.
This new series will detail the daily lives of the two friends as they reminisce about their earlier lives. Amy will also record some of the shorter mysteries she was involved in. Mysteries that never made the Amy Rowlings Golden Age crime series.
So, here’s chapter one to give you a taste of what to expect. There will be two short mysteries per book. The first is The Jazz Singer.
Seventy Summers
Chapter One
Reunion
‘Mollison Farm, Alice speaking.’ A series of beeps sounded in her ear, then a female voice was heard.
‘Hello Alice speaking, this is Amy speaking.’
‘AMY!’ Alice almost shouted. ‘Have you come home? How long have you been back? When can you come to see me…? Or I’ll come to see you… it’s been so long.’ Alice’s voice cracked as she spoke.
‘One year, two months and six days, not that I’ve been counting,’ Amy said. ‘How are things at the farm?’
‘Oh, never mind the farm. I’ve got so many questions.’
‘I don’t have enough change for questions, dear heart. I’m using my last twenty p coin. I just wanted to wish you a very happy birthday.’
‘At least tell me where you are. Are you back home in Nottingham? No, of course you aren’t or you wouldn’t be calling from a telephone box… How is Alicia? Has she rec…’ Alice stopped speaking as she heard a series of pips, then the line went dead.
‘Damn,’ Alice said as she replaced the handset on the base.
I’ll wait a bit. She might call again if she gets hold of some change.
Five minutes later, she got to her feet as she heard the back door open. Hurrying through the kitchen doorway from the lounge, she threw her hands up in delight as she saw her lifelong best friend standing by the big oak table in the farmhouse kitchen. ‘Is it really you?’ she yelled as she scurried across the kitchen and threw herself into Amy’s open arms.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she sobbed.
Amy squeezed tight as her own tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry it’s been so long. I’ve thought about you every day.’
It was a full three minutes before the two women let go of each other and began to wipe the tears from their faces.
‘Happy seventieth birthday, dear heart,’ Amy said, patting the gaily wrapped present she had placed on the table. ‘Is the kettle on? I’m parched.’
Still dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, Alice crossed the kitchen, picked up the electric kettle and shook it. Then, deciding it needed a top up, she filled it at the tap above the big Belfast sink that had been in place for over sixty years. ‘It’s not fair. I didn’t get to see you on your seventieth.’
‘I was hoping to have been back for that, but Alicia’s recovery took longer than they thought it might. She was in a bad way after that road accident.’
Alice dropped three tea bags into the pot and tapped her foot as she waited for the kettle to boil. ‘Is she all right now? I so wanted to fly out to see her myself, but I couldn’t leave the farm. I was in the middle of negotiating selling off the top pastures to the council. They want to build a new school.’
‘Alicia’s made a remarkable recovery. She won’t play netball at top flight level again though, but as she said, that’s a small price to pay. She was lucky to survive the impact.’ Amy’s face lost a lot of its colour as she thought about how close to death her daughter had come. Continue reading
The storm broke mid-afternoon, finally bringing an end to the oppressive humidity. The heavy, lead-coloured clouds that had hung over the town for days, holding in the heat like a vast, iron, saucepan lid, swirled and churned, lit up here and there by flashes of lightning as if announcing the appearance of the Valkyrie from Wagner’s opera.
Torrents of water ran down the hill from High Street onto Middle Street, washing away the accumulated dust and cigarette ends that had lain undisturbed for weeks. At the Ironworks, sweaty, grime-covered men stepped out into the rain, removed their shirts and raised their hands in the air to welcome the downpour.
In Witchy Wood, a four-acre mass of holm oaks, lindens, sycamores and aspens, interspersed with thick tangles of blackthorn and hawthorn, a lightning strike hit the eaves of a long abandoned cottage causing the eastern end to collapse, opening up an old storeroom that had been hidden away behind a crumbling stone wall and a thick covering of wisteria for decades.
‘Thank goodness!’ Amy Rowlings exclaimed as a deafening thunderclap sounded overhead. Even with every available window open inside the London Connection fashion shop, the customers and staff mopped their brows with already sodden handkerchiefs. The atmosphere had been oppressive since the doors opened at nine o’clock that morning. The humid air enveloped her like a heavy shroud as the strategically placed electric fans whined and strained, only moving the sultry air from one place to another.
Amy resisted the urge to wring out her sopping handkerchief and dropped it instead into the waste bin at the side of the counter. She still had a clean one in her bag after buying two new ones from Jimmy Cousins’ market stall earlier in the day.
Amy worked two and a half days a week at the shop where her keen eye for fashion and her sympathetic manner when quietly explaining to a customer that the particular tight fitting dress she had her heart set on buying wasn’t quite the dress for her, was greatly appreciated. The rest of the week was spent behind her sewing machine at Handsley’s Garments, a clothing factory known locally as ‘The Mill’ because it was once a cotton mill driven by a long-dismantled water wheel that had powered the factory in the late eighteenth century.
Amy wasn’t a clock watcher by any means and thoroughly enjoyed both of her jobs, but today had been stressful, with a stream of bad-tempered customers, all intent on finding someone to complain to about the conditions inside the shop.
At five-thirty, Amy breathed a big sigh of relief and after ushering the last grumbling, sweating, middle-aged lady of the day out of the front door, she hurried through to the staff room, where she half-filled the sink with lukewarm water from the tap and plunged her face into it.
‘Move over,’ Jill, the trainee seamstress said, nudging Amy aside in her hurry to get her own face into the water.
Amy put her head back, looked up at the ceiling and allowed the refreshing water to run onto her neck. After reaching for a towel, she dried her face and stuck her head out of the open window, relishing the cooling breeze that had replaced the stagnant heat. ‘If it’s your turn to lock up tonight, Jill, don’t forget to close all the windows or Josie will arrive to find she has no stock left on Saturday morning.’
Jill pulled her head out of the sink and reached out for the towel that Amy was offering. ‘You’re so lucky getting every Saturday off, Amy. I’d like just one Saturday a month to myself.’
‘Ah, but you get every Wednesday afternoon off,’ Amy replied. ‘When I leave here at one, I have to get the bus straight to The Mill. I have to be at my machine for half past. I don’t even have time for lunch.’
‘It’s still better than working on Saturdays.’ Jill patted at her damp hair as she looked forlornly at Amy. ‘Everywhere closes for half a day on Wednesdays. There’s nothing to do except walk around the blooming market. My young man, Sidney, works through the week, but he gets Saturday afternoons off. Not that he can see me until the evenings. He has to spend his half day watching Spinton United playing blooming football.’ She sighed. ‘He’d much rather be spending that time with me.’
Amy shook her head and smiled to herself. ‘I bet the poor lad has to go to the pub at lunchtime too, just to pass the time.’
Jill sniffed. ‘Yes, but I know he’d much rather be spending time with me than with his mates. He gets to see them all week at work.’
‘Who has the keys tonight?’ Josie, the manager said as she walked through from the shop.
‘Me, madam,’ Jill said, holding out her hand for the large bunch of keys.
‘Make sure you close all the windows. Don’t forget what happened when Jenny Harris forgot to lock up properly. We found a tramp on the floor of the fitting room when we opened up the next morning.’
‘I’ll make sure everything is safe and secure,’ Jill replied, giving the Guides salute. She dropped her hand to her side quickly as Josie gave her a stern eye.
‘Make sure you do.’
At the front of the shop, Amy waited as Josie used her spare set of keys to unlock the half-glass doors, then stepped smartly outside as the manager prepared to lock them again.
‘I’m tempted to wait across the road and check that she has locked up properly,’ Josie said as Amy hung her bag over her arm and turned towards the street. ‘She’s meeting her young man later tonight, so she’ll be in a hurry to get away.’
‘She’ll do a proper job, Josie,’ Amy said with a quick nod of her head. ‘She knows she’s lucky to be working here.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Josie replied. ‘I still haven’t forgotten that tramp though. I had to get Elsie the cleaner to disinfect the entire shop. I almost convinced myself that I’d picked up head lice.’
Amy laughed. ‘Right, I’ll get off then. See you next Wednesday.’
Josie put her hand on Amy’s arm. ‘I really wish I could convince you to work here full time, Amy. You know how much the customers love you.’
‘You wouldn’t think so today. I took the worst of the flak from ill-tempered so and sos.’
‘The customer is always right. Isn’t that our motto?’
‘It is,’ Amy replied flatly. ‘Even when they insist they can fit their size eighteen frames into a size twelve dress.’
Josie grinned. ‘Ah, but you explain why it isn’t possible so inventively.’
Amy smiled back and turned to walk across the street to get her bus. ‘Oops, sorry,’ she said as she bumped into a tall, dark-haired man, wearing a shiny suit and an extremely crumpled shirt.
‘Just the lady I was hoping to find,’ the man said. His eyes lit up as he smiled at her.
‘Bodkin? What are you doing here? I didn’t think I was seeing you until tomorrow.’
‘That was the plan, but things can change quickly,’ Bodkin replied. ‘Especially when there’s an unexplained death to investigate.’ He paused, nodded to Josie, then took Amy by the arm. ‘You know your way around the Witchy Wood, I take it?’
‘Of course. Alice and I spent a lot of our summers in there when we were young.’
Bodkin grinned. ‘Good, you’ll know that long abandoned cottage on the west side of the wood, then?’
Amy nodded. ‘We used to call it the Creepy Cottage. No one’s lived there in my lifetime. It’s pretty much a ruin.’
‘It’s even more of a ruin now,’ Bodkin said. ‘An end wall has fallen in during the big storm this afternoon. When it was over, a dog walker and his pooch discovered something very interesting.’
Bodkin was silent as he led Amy towards his Morris car that he’d parked just around the corner.
Amy dug him in the ribs. ‘Come on, Bodkin, stop teasing. What did they find?’
‘A skeleton,’ the inspector replied. ‘A skeleton that may have suffered a brutal attack while it was still attached to a living body… or at least, that’s how it appears. There is severe skull damage.’
‘’How it appears?’ Couldn’t the wall have done the damage when it collapsed?’
‘I doubt it,’ Bodkin said as he unlocked the passenger side of the car and opened the door to allow Amy to climb in. ‘There’s a rusty old pickaxe buried in it.’
The last week in August is always the worst week of the year for me as it holds so many sad memories. In two days time it will be nine years since I came home to find that Doreen had succumbed to the hypertension neither of us knew she had. It was the worst moment of my life. There was no preparation, I had only nipped out for twenty minutes. We didn’t know she was ill. The worst thing was not having the chance to say goodbye.
Three days before I found her I had released Out of Control. I was a children’s writer back then and that was my first attempt at a story for adults. I gave up writing that day and didn’t write a word in anger until five years later when I was off work with an internal injury that would keep me housebound for three months, and someone started whispering in my ear with an idea for a brand new series.
So, nine years on I’ve moved back to a cheap little terraced house in my home town and I still talk to her photograph a few times a day. I was never a believer in the afterlife, at least not the one promised us in the bible and (apologies to the God Squad) I still think that’s a load of nonsense, but… I have become a bit of a believer in multiple universes and the quantum theory that says there are an unlimited number of them and what happened to us in this one won’t have happened in millions of others. Maybe when we die we slip into one of these alternative universes or to another dimension. I don’t believe death is the end anymore. That spark of electricity.. the soul… whatever, has to go somewhere.
I know Doreen is watching over me somehow. I can feel it and I know she is helping me get through. We’ll meet again one day. Until then, she’s up on the shelf or slipping in to see me when I’m asleep. I’m sure she’s doing what she can to inspire the Amy mysteries as she was such a big fan of Agatha’s characters and Amy exists in the same timeline as them. I’m wondering if it’s her that talks to me in the strange dimension between sleep and wakefulness. I’ve always blamed Amy for it.
I’ll mark the day as usual with a short post but this week I’ll be trying to get the ideas down that have been whispered in my ear over the weekend for inclusion in the Seventy Summers book that I started to write last week. Last night I was given the plot for the first of the short mysteries that will be included and I’ve now worked out the structure of the books. There will be at least six of them and they’ll all be shorter than the Amy mysteries, around 60k. Each book will contain two short mystery stories that will slot in alongside the story of Alice and Amy’s daily lives at 70 years old. Doreen sadly never got anywhere near that age but she seems keen for me to get these books written before I slip into whichever universe or dimension it is, to join her.
Thanks Dor. I hope you know how much people enjoy the stories you help me with. See you soon.
Amy Rowlings on the Spinton Saturday Market. Summer 1939.
Amy Rowlings. Locations.
I hope that any of my regular readers will find this article of interest but it is especially aimed at readers from my hometown of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, who might have a feeling in the back of their minds that one or two of the locations in my books feel rather familiar. There’s a reason for that. They almost certainly are.
I am an Ilkeston born writer who came back to live in the old industrial town after a forty-year absence and although the place has obviously changed during that time; I was delighted to find that many of the locations I remembered from my youth were still there, albeit repurposed.
When I set about writing the Unspoken series, and soon after, the Amy Rowlings mysteries, I needed a place to set them in. The obvious answer would have been my hometown, but I had a few problems with that as both series would eventually move from the nineteen thirties into the nineteen forties when, of course, the country would be at war and although Stanton Ironworks was regularly targeted by the Luftwaffe, I wanted to be able to feel closer to the events when I wrote about how my characters lived during those dreadful years. Kent seemed to be an ideal location to set the books, as, being right on the English channel, the people living there would have been on the front line had the Nazis ever managed to invade. It was also the ideal place for my characters to find the odd unexploded bomb or watch the aerial dogfights that took place during the battle of Britain, something that is mentioned in the Unspoken series by way of diary entry from the farm owner, Alice.
All this was in the future.
The first book, Unspoken, was a dual timeline family saga set in both 1938 and 2019. The characters came easily to me. What I needed now was a setting.
I chose Kent, north of Gillingham, quite close to the banks of the River Medway and as this was going to be a series of stories that revolved around an old mill factory, I decided to call it Spinton.
Spinton grew in my mind as I began to write the first book and by the time Murder at the Mill, the first Amy Rowlings novel had been written, the town had enlarged considerably as I drew inspiration from old Ilkeston to bring it to life.
Spinton has a lot of garments and hosiery factories, just like Ilkeston. The Mill, the factory Amy Rowlings, supersleuth works at, is based on Rutland Mill (Rutland Garments) on Market Street in Ilkeston. I used to walk past the place every day on my way to Hallcroft School. I considered using Charnos as it was in Hallam Fields and I was born and grew up there, but that factory was only built in 1932 and I had something a little older in my mind when I was writing about it.
The Sunshine Café that Amy has a coffee in every Saturday morning is based on Ilkeston’s oldest traditional Cafe, The Corner Café although it is still known by many as Doug’s Café. Doug was the owner when I spent my early teenage years listening to the 60’s music on the jukebox.
The Carnegie Library on the marketplace was lifted up and transported all the way to Kent, as was the Town Hall. The buildings are right next to each other in Spinton, but they are on opposite sides of the market square in reality. The taxi rank outside the library is in exactly the same spot in Spinton.
St John the Evangelist Church is St Mary’s, although I had to add a larger graveyard that could hold a couple of broken down mausoleums. I also needed a lychgate, but as St Mary’s doesn’t have one, I stole the one from Holy Trinity at Mapperley Village. The slate and gravel paths and walkways are an invention. We don’t have ragstone here.
The canal is our very own Nutbrook canal. I grew up very close to it and it was always going to be in the books. I remember swimming in ‘ot waters,’ at the side of the ironworks when I was very young, and we spent a lot of time playing daredevil, running across the lock gates.
The Spinton Ironworks are, of course, Stanton Ironworks. I was born on Crompton Street slap bang in the middle between the ironworks and the coke ovens. I transported the lot to Kent, ready for the murder mystery series. There is also an abandoned brickworks just like the one I used to play in. Crompton Street became Ebeneezer Street in the process.
The Silverstream, mentioned in Murder on the Medway, is the Nutbrook which used to meander across the fields at the back of our house when we moved from Crompton Street to Kirk Hallam after the flood of 1960.
The Roxy cinema is the Scala cinema, although I moved it and put it where the Ritz is.
For High Street, Main Street and Middle Street, look no further than Bath Street, South Street and Market Street. The police station on Middle Street in the books is actually based on the old police station that used to be on Wharncliffe Road.
Long Lane, where Alice’s farm and Amy’s cottage are located, is based on a mix of Low’s Lane and Quarry Hill, and the Old Bull pub, although not the same internally, is the Bull’s Head on Little Hallam Hill. Other pubs mentioned in the books are loosely based on the Ilkeston pubs in the market square.
Spinton Station is what used to be Ilkeston Town Station at the bottom of Bath Street.
Spinton Post Office is wholly based on the old Ilkeston Post Office. Now Hogarth’s pub.
Spinton Market is Ilkeston Market, complete with the bus stops we used to have back in the day.
Witch Wood, in the latest Amy Rowlings mystery, is based on Shipley Wood.
Russell Park (Murder on the Medway and The Murder Awards) is an amalgamation of Manor Floods nature reserve and the Ilkeston Recreation ground.
Whilst none of the characters in the books are based on real people and none of the storylines are based on actual events, I have used the memory of my time growing up on Crompton Street to help generate them. I particularly remember how strong the women were back in the day. How they coped with the daily struggle to put food on the table for their families. The menfolk used to think they wore the trousers and boasted about it in the Stanton Hotel on payday, but in reality, it was the women who ran things. They made all the major decisions; whether the rent could be paid, whether the slate at the shop further up the street could be utilised that week, and whether a shilling or two could be paid into the club for a hamper and presents at Christmas. Those women were the pillars of the community. They put their family in front of any personal ambition. The men just went to work and came home to find a dinner on the table as soon as they opened the back door. Many were also guilty of lashing out if their wives had the temerity to speak up for themselves when their partner got back from the pub.
I have yet to incorporate the Ilkeston Charter Fair into the books, but it will make an appearance one day.
Brigden’s Nearly New women’s fashion store and the London Connection fashion shop aren’t based on anywhere in Ilkeston.
There are probably a lot of other Ilkeston references in the books. If you find one, please feel free to mention it.
T. A. Belshaw
Flood. Crompton Street where I was born.Copyright Ilkeston Pioneer
Flood Our family was evacuated that day.Copyright Ilkeston Pioneer
Flood Dec 1960. Crompton Street next to a flooded ironworks.Copyright Ilkeston Pioneer
Baptist Church Will be mentioned in book 7
Corner Cafe. Amy;’;s Saturday morning treat.
LIbrary Entrance
Library. All the Rowlings family are big readers.
Market Place. Mentioned in every book.
Old Post Office. Amy has a savings bok.
The Ritz cinema; Location of the Roxy.
Rutland garments. The Mill, where Amy works.
Rutland Mill
Scala Cinema. The Roxy.
St Mary’s. Ancient church but I needed a lychgate for book 2.
South St. High Street in the books.
Town Hall
Nutbrook Canal
Nutbrook Canal. mentioned in 2 books so far, described in detail in Death at the Lychgate.
Lock
Footbridge over railway Hallam Fields. Will be mentioned in book six.
Seventy Summers, the short story novella about my characters Amy Rowlings and lifelong friend Alice Mollison will be started on soon. Look out for posts and clips from the book on this page.
Amy Rowlings and Alice Mollison her best friend for life are reunited on Alice’s 70th birthday. The book will share snippets of their lives and mysteries that Amy was involved in that were not covered in the two series, Unspoken and The Amy Rowlings Mysteries.
Seventy Summers (An unbreakable bond) is the new short story compilation featuring conversations between a seventy year old Amy Rowlings and her lifetime friend Alice Mollison. The stoirs will feature snippets of their lives not covered in either the Unspoken or Amy Rowlings Mysteries series.
Amy Rowlings, the star of the 1930s based murder mystery series now has her own website. The site is live, but a lot more will be added over the next few weeks. Readers can look forward to news of future releases and glimpses inside the plot for the next book in the series, Ten Years After. There will also be a new short story serial featuring Amy and Alice 50 years on from the events detailed in the novels.
It’s here. The first copy off the presses of Murder on the Medway in paperback. My bulk author copy order will be going in tomorrow so if there are readers who want a signed copy just get in touch.
On Saturday, June 1st I will be signing books at the inaugural Leek Loves Book Festival at the Churnet Room in the town centre. I’d love to see you there if you can make it.
I am delighted to announce that the paperback version of Murder on the Medway, the FOURTH instalment of the Amy Rowlings Mysteries is released today. Linky thingy https://mybook.to/D0WVXG To celebrate I have released a new poster. Signed copies available from me on request. In other news my occasional author newsletter will be dropping into inboxes today. If you’d like to subscribe, there’s a popup link on this website. If you miss that, please get in touch with your email address.
Murder on the Medway, the FOURTH Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery is now available in eBook form on Amazon. The paperback will follow in the next couple of weeks. As always, signed copies will be available on request.
The book tells the story of amateur sleuth Amy, a Hercule Poirot fan and Inspector Bodkin with whom she has begun to form a relationship outside of the investigations. In Murder on the Medway, a young woman’s body is found in the reed beds on the banks of the Medway River. WHODUNNIT? WEll, you;ll have to read it to work your way through a number of possible susupects.
I’d like to thank Sumaira and Nikki at SpellBound books for all their hard work. A book isn’t just a solo project, it’s a team effort and I’m very thankful to these two fabulous ladies.
I’d also like to thank my Arc readers for getting a few of those all important early reviews in. I’m so pleased you enjoyed the book.
Released on April 30th by SpellBound Books. Here’s a little video I made of my seven days of promotion for the fourth Amy Rowlings mystery, Murder on the Medway.
The latest promo material for the upcoming release of the FOURTH Amy Rowlings Mystery. Murder on the Medway are now available. They will be sent out with signed copies of the paperback version of the book but collectors can get hold of them by getting in touch. Postal charges will apply.
All Amy Rowlings Golden Age Crime mysteries are only 99p on Amazon. Free to read on Amazon Prime or with a Kindle Unlimited account. Murder at the Mill, the book that introduces Amy Rowlings is also available in audiobook read by the wonderful actress Gemma Lawrence. Linky Thingy here
Murder on the Medway, the fourth book in the Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery series is now available to pre-order from Amazon.
The book will be officially released on April 30th 2024 so if you’d like to pre-order a copy so you’ll be sure to get it on release day, here’s the back of the book blurb and the pre-order link.
MURDER ON THE MEDWAY.
An Amy Rowlings Mystery.
July 1939
WHODUNIT?
Amateur sleuth, Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin are spending a pleasant afternoon at the side of the gurgling, Silverstream, when the body of young Effie Watkins is discovered in the reed beds.
An overstretched Bodkin is desperate for some extra help at the police station and the last thing he needs is another murder to solve.
All the early clues point towards the exclusive Highwater Boat Club and against the wishes of Bodkin, Amy and her best friend Alice decide to go undercover at the club’s posh annual ball.
Amy soon finds that party girl Effie wasn’t exactly the flavour of the month, especially among the wives and girlfriends. Hercule Poirot fan Amy, builds a list of suspects which includes the club captain and some of the pillars of the local business community.
As the investigation intensifies, Bodkin is forced to confront the ghosts of his own past and Amy is left to reflect on the strength of their relationship.
Today, Sumaira, my publisher, received the first-ever copies of the Murder at the Mill audiobook in CD format. This is the version that Ulverscroft, who took up the rights to the book will send to UK libraries via its Ulibrary service. The digital version of the book will be available through Audible and all other audiobook online companies on Monday April 1st 2024. Readers who bought, or decide to buy, the eBook version for 99p will be able to add on the audiobook for just £2,99. The book is narrated by the wonderful Gemma Lawrence who you may have seen on TV in episodes of Luther, Casualty, Holby and Father Brown amongst many other appearances.
I’d like to thank Ulverscroft for taking up the option on Murder at the Mill but I’d like to thank Nikki East and Sumaira Wilson from SpellBound books in particular for all the work they put in to make this possible.
Hi everyone. If you’d like to download my short story which was featured in the charity anthology 100 Stories For Haiti, please click the link to get the PDF Dinner for Two
A) Murder on the Medway is the fourth book in the Amy Rowlings, Golden Age, Cosy Crime Mystery series.
Q) What’s it about?
A) The book tells the story of the murder of a young party girl, Efie Watkins whose body is found in the reed beds at the side of the river Medway.
Q) Okay. So, who is Amy Rowlings?
A) Amy Rowlings is a young amateur sleuth who works at the Mill, a clothing factory in the fictional industrial town of Spinton. Amy is a movie buff. a collector of American records and a huge Hercule Poirot fan who uses his techniques when investigating crimes alongside the handsome police inspector, Bodkin.
Q) What era are the books set in?
A) The books are set in the late 1930s.
Q) What were the previous books in the series?
A) Murder at the Mill, Death at the Lychgate, and The Murder Awards. All published by SpellBound Books Ltd. You can find them here. Amazon Linky thing.
Q) What formats are the books available in?
A) The books are available in eBook, priced at an incredible 99p. They are also available in paperback (signed on request) and are FREE to read with a #KindleUnlimited account. On April 1st, the first book in the series will be released in audiobook format by Soundings, part of the Ulverscroft group. The book is narrated by the wonderful TV, stage, and film. actress, Gemma Lawrence.
Q) When will the new title be published?
A) Murder on the Medway will be published by SpellBound Books on April 30th 2024.
The audio version of Murder at the Mill read by the fabulous Gemma Lawrence will be released by Soundings on April 1st. It is available to pre-order from amazon or audible
Here’s a first look at the initial promo images from the upcoming Amy Rowlings Mystery. Murder on the Medway which will be released in April.
The scenes are from the Highwater Boat Club Ball which Amy and her best friend Alice are invited to. The two girls are the stars of he show but where on earth did those fabulous dresses come from? The Amy Rowkings Mysteries. On Amazon. Click here.
I am beyond delighted to announce that SpellBound Books Ltd has revealed the wonderful cover for the latest Amy Rowlings mystery. Murder on the Medway. The cover was designed, as usual by the hugely talented, Nikki East and is the perfect continuation of the art deco theme that graced the earlier books in the series.
Murder on the Medway is the fourth book in the Amy Rowlings, Golden Age, mystery series and will be released in the spring of 2024.
Thank you Nikki and thank you Sumaira Wilson of SpellBound books for all she does.
I haven’t seen much of Mrs 3DU over the holiday as, once I’d done my Christmas shop, I parked the car up outside my house and left it there for a week. I did another small shop on the Saturday morning before the New Year but she had already dragged Mrs 4DU around the supermarket on the Friday, though she did get her to ‘nip out’ for a few last-minute bits for her on New Year’s Eve.
I have news about Mrs 3DU’s daughter’s car, but I’ll add that bit at the end.
As usual, I received all the news from the street gossip collective which includes, Mrs 4DU, Mrs 5DU, MRs 2DD and Mrs ATSADAB (Across The Street And Down A Bit.) Surprisingly, we have recently had a new member added to our ranks. I say surprisingly because she lives right down at the bottom of the street, so she has now become Mrs BOTS. I have no idea how she gets all the news as she’s miles away from the rest of us. We are all pretty much clustered together near the top end of the street. She must be getting the gossip via tom-tom drums or something… mind you, Mrs 4DU does have a log burner, so she might be sending out smoke signals. Continue reading
I am delighted to announce that Soundings, the huge audiobook company have taken up the rights to publish Murder at the Mill. Soundings is owned by Ulverscroft, the biggest audiobook distributor in the UK. They also own ULibrary, a company which connects to every library in the UK providing them with audio and large print books. They distribute and make audiobooks for all the biggest book publishers and have many imprints of their own. It doesn’t get much bigger than them. Thanks so much, Sumaira Wilson from SpellBound Books Ltd for negotiating with Ulverscroft and getting me such a fab deal. They did mention the Amy series so MATM may just be the start for Amy Rowlings on audio. Soundings use the biggest names for narration so I can’t wait to see who they ask to read for them. oh… there was also a tidy advance on royalties as part of the deal. Whooo! Amy is taking off https://www.ulverscroft.com/ .
It’s finally here. The THIRD book in the Amy Rowlings Mystery Series, The Murder Awards was released in the early hours of this morning. (Nov 5th 2023) in eBook format by SpellBound Books. I’d like to thank Sumaira and Nikki from SpellBound for all their hard work, the lovely production and the fabulous cover. The books is available at present in eBook format and is free to read on Kindle Unlimited with a subscription. The paperback version will be available in a couple of weeks.
In The Murder Awards, Amy and her handsome crime fighting partner (are they an item or aren’t they) Inspector Bodkin, are on hand at an awards presentation at the Spinton Town Hall, when the recipient of the Businessman of the Year award, Nelson Kelly, is found stabbed to death after leaving the stage to answer a telephone call.
Will Amy and Bodkin be able to find a way through the morass of lies and corruption to bring to justice a brutal killer?
The 2024 calendars and bookmarks for the next Amy Rowlings and Unspoken books have arrived. Please get in touch if you’d live anything signing and posting.
Today marks the day that The Murder Awards, the third Amy Rowlings mystery is made available to pre-order for eBook and Kindle Unlimited. The paperback version will be available during the third week in November. Hopefully signed copies will reach you by Christmas.
About the Murder Awards.
The Murder Awards
May 1939
When Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin are invited to a black-tie civic awards ceremony at the Town Hall, they expect to be met with the usual boring speeches and toe-curling sycophancy, but when the recipient of the night’s ‘Businessman Of The Year Award’, Nelson Kelly, is found stabbed to death after being called from the stage to answer the telephone, the evening begins to liven up.
Nelson’s company has just won a lucrative contract to build a new armaments factory and many of the town’s elite, having backed a rival bidder, aren’t happy at missing out.
When the CID department at the local police station is suddenly reduced in manpower, Bodkin is told he will have to manage the murder investigation alone.
Into the breach steps young Amy Rowlings, the twenty-one-year-old with a mind every bit as sharp as her fictional hero, Hercule Poirot.
Amy, an avid crime fiction reader, movie buff and collector of American records, brings her insight and intelligence to the aid of the overstretched inspector as he attempts to find a way through the morass of lies, deception and corruption.
Once again, Amy must utilise all the investigative techniques she has learned from Agatha Christie’s famous detective to help bring a brutal killer to justice.
Trixie. Amy’s mortal enemy. The blonde bombshell lives in the same apartment block as Inspector Bodkin and she always flaunts her assets whenever he’s around.
The Murder Awards. book three in the Amy Rowlings Mystery Series. Available to pre-order from Amazon on Tues 17th October 2023.
The Murder Awards is published by SpellBound Books on November 5th 2023.
The Murder Awards is the third Amy Rowlings mystery. Catch up with the first two, Murder at the Mill and Death at the Lychgate for just 99p on Amazon Uk. Also available in eBook, paperback and on Kindle Unlimited.
Work is well underway on the latest addition to the Unspoken series. Relative Strangers is set a year after the events in my last Unspoken book, Betrayal. The new story will appear as a novella and will feature many of the characters from that novel. Jane Dixon-Smith, my fabulous cover designer has come up trumps again and I’ll share the cover with you when it is finalised.
The Unspoken series is a dual timeline family saga told over four books so far. The novels can be found on Amazon UK.
Amy Rowlings, the feisty, fiercely independent young amateur sleuth. Amy is a movie buff, a collector of American music and an avid crime reader. Particularly the novels of her hero Agatha Christie.
The Murder Awards is published by SpellBound Books on November 5th 2023.
The Murder Awards is the third Amy Rowlings mystery. Catch up with the first two, Murder at the Mill and Death at the Lychgate for just 99p on Amazon Uk. Also available in eBook, paperback and on Kindle Unlimited.
Crooner PC Ferris. Friend of Amy and Bodkin, singing in the Milton Cocktail Bar.
The Murder Awards is published by SpellBound Books on November 5th 2023.
The Murder Awards is the third Amy Rowlings mystery. Catch up with the first two, Murder at the Mill and Death at the Lychgate for just 99p on Amazon Uk. Also available in eBook, paperback and on Kindle Unlimited.
The announcement of the publication of the third Amy Rowlings Mystery, The Murder Awards by SpellBound Books on 5th November 2023 means my mailbox is once again pretty full of questions from my readers about the forthcoming book.
For those unfamiliar with the mysteries, Amy Rowlings, our amateur sleuth is a machinist at a North Kent factory nicknamed, The Mill. Amy is a collector of American music, a movie buff and an avid reader of crime fiction, particularly the novels of Agatha Christie. Amy is 21, pretty, and has formed a close relationship with the handsome inspector Bodkin of the fictitious, Spinton Police. The first three novels are set in pre-war England in 1939. War is looming, though the events leading up to the Second World War only play a small part in the back story of the books.
So, on to the questions.
Q. What is the best thing about writing crime stories during this period in history?
A. I like the freedom an author gets when he/she doesn’t have to worry about using, DNA, CCTV or Social Media and phone records, all of which seem to provide the clues that lead to the capture of the perpetrator. None of those things existed in 1939, so it’s always down to the voracity and ingenuity of the investigating team to find the clues without the use of modern technology. I also like the fact that the post mortems of the time only gave investigators a limited amount of information about the deaths.
Q. What is the worst thing about writing crime stories during this period in history?
A. Getting the facts right. A lot of research has to be done before the book can be sent to the publisher. Attitudes, living conditions, retail products, fashion, music and the films of the day all have to be meticulously researched. Because Alice, Amy’s best friend, lives on a farm, particular attention has to be taken regarding farming practices, equipment, machinery, and even the vehicles that were in use at the time. The method of dispatching the victim also has to be carefully researched. It’s no good allowing the murderer to use a poison or medication that couldn’t be detected in the body back then, for instance.
Q. Do you find it difficult to describe the attitudes and language used by the characters in the story?’
A. Not really, as I was born only 14 years or so after the events I’m describing, so social attitudes, much of the language used, and even the food we ate was very similar. Smoking was rife and many characters in the books smoke cigarettes or a pipe. I deliberately chose to make all of my lead characters, non-smokers, though all of them like a drink or two on a Saturday night. Attitudes to women didn’t really change at all until the 1960s when the fledgling women’s liberation movement began to put pressure on the lawmakers. In the late 1930s a woman’s place was in the home and any money they did make from their employment, although desperately needed, was looked upon as pin money. Domestic violence was rife, and even in the better off households, the man was considered the master of all he surveyed, although it was universally acknowledged in private that it was women who held everything together at home.
Q. Why doesn’t Amy join the police force?
A. Simple answer. She would only have been allowed to join as a female policewoman and her main duties would have been making tea, standing silently by when women suspects were being questioned, or being assigned to look after the children of crime victims while the investigation went on around them. At that time, women couldn’t question witnesses and had no power of arrest. Amy would not have been happy in that role and she would never have been allowed to join the CID. This did not really change until the 1970s, but even then their presence was only grudgingly accepted by the men in the force, and their pay was well below what male officers earned when performing the same roles. Amy was far too independently minded to accept such constraints.
Q. Which part of the novels do you enjoy writing the most?
A. As has been said in a few of my reviews, these stories are as much a social commentary as murder mysteries. I do enjoy watching the investigation evolve in front of my eyes, but I also enjoy writing about the dire conditions a lot of people had to endure during that period. Slum housing was the norm in many of the industrial towns at the time. Spinton was no different and I do like to get myself, and Amy involved in their struggle for survival.
You can find the Amy Rowlings mysteries here. Ebook, Paperback and Kindle Unlimited. The Amy Rowlings Mysteries.
If you have a question for the author, please get in touch in the comments section of find me on Facebook.
Businessman Francis Drake and Advertising Agent Lorna Wetherby. The Murder Awards, the third Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery. OUT NOV 5th. ‘The stories are as much as social commentary as a murder mystery.’
The Murder Awards. The third Golden Age, Cosy Crime Amy Rowlings Mystery. Published by SpellBound Books. Nov 5th 2023.
Living in abject poverty. Karen and her daughter Beth scratch a meagre living doing other people’s washing. Read their touching back story in The Murder Awards, the third Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery. OUT NOV 5th. ‘The stories are as much as social commentary as a murder mystery.’
The Murder Awards. The third Golden Age, Cosy Crime Amy Rowlings Mystery. Published by SpellBound Books. Nov 5th 2023.
Today, 15th Sept 2023 marks the eighth anniversary of my beautiful wife’s funeral. Doreen, if you’re reading. You’re still missed as much as that first day.
I’d like to mark the anniversary by posting the poem that I wrote for her. It was read on the day by my daughter, Tamsyn who did a wonderful job. I was a gibbering wreck and couldn’t have got the title out let alone the rest of the poem.
Anyway, here it is. To you, Doreen. Until we meet again in one of those multi-universes or dimensions we all move into after we pass.
In just under 8 weeks time, Amy Rowlings will be setting about solving the latest mystery to cross her path. The eagerly awaited, Murder Awards will be released in eBook format by SpellBound Books Ltd on November 5th. The paperback will follow shortly afterwards which means there should be plenty of time to order author signed copies for Christmas.
Every Amy Rowlings story is as much a social commentary as a murder mystery.
If you haven’t yet met Amy, you will find her previous mysteries here. At only 99p they’re a bit of a bargain. https://bit.ly/3UgN6hc
Here’s the back of the book material to give you a taster.
The Murder Awards
May 1939
When Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin are invited to a black tie, civic awards ceremony at the Town Hall, they expect to be met with the usual boring speeches and toe-curling sycophancy, but when the recipient of the night’s ‘Businessman Of The Year Award’, Nelson Kelly, is found stabbed to death after being called from the stage to answer the telephone, the evening begins to liven up.
Nelson’s company has just won a lucrative contract to build a new armaments factory and many of the town’s elite, having backed a rival bidder, aren’t happy at missing out.
When the CID department at the local police station is suddenly reduced in manpower, Bodkin is told he will have to manage the murder investigation alone.
Into the breach steps young Amy Rowlings, the twenty-one-year-old with a mind every bit as sharp as her fictional hero, Hercule Poirot.
Amy, an avid crime fiction reader, movie buff and collector of American records, brings her insight and intelligence to the aid of the overstretched inspector, as he attempts to find a way through the morass of lies, deception and corruption.
Once again, Amy must utilise all the investigative techniques she has learned from Agatha Christie’s famous detective to help bring a brutal killer to justice.
I would like to thank the organisers, support staff, the book buying public and my fellow attending authors for making the Tales on Trent Author Book Signing Event such a fantastic experience. It was truly wonderful to get to speak to so many people and I know I have made some new friends in the author community.
Special thanks go to organisers Claire Birkin and Hayley Bibbey. Also to author, promoter and panel host, Donna Morfett who, despite the loss of her voice, still managed to host all those meet the author sessions on stage.
Much fun was had at the after event party in the Glebe. As if he hadn’t been noticeable enough in his flouro-yellow suit during the evet, Author Darren Walker upstaged everyone again by appearing at the party in a kilt. Well done mate.
I can’t end without mentioning the forces of nature that are James Biddulph and his wonderful nine year old granddaughter, Nunu, who stole all our hearts. Amongst her other remarkable achievements, Nunu runs her own library from a telephone box, she also does a lot of work in the community getting books to families that otherwise would never get to see one. She is quite a remarkable young lady and has the wonderfully supportive grandfather she so thoroughly deserves.
Thanks for the company my fellow writers, Esther Chilton, her partner Greame Cummings and the fabulous author Jon Richter among many others. Many thanks to the members of the public who took time to speak to me at my table, big wave to Isobelle Cate, and last but not least, huge thanks to Claire’s mum for supplying me with the copious amounts of coffee that helped get me through the day.
Looking forward to next year already.
My table
The wonderful Nunu with her new books donated by the authors at the event.
Nuno with her fantastically supportive, flamboyant grandad, James Biddulph and the always understated, Darren Walker
Over the years I’ve read hundreds of murder themed novels. My favourites were from the Golden Age of murder mysteries, books set in the twenties, thirties and forties. One thing about the vast majority of the famous authors at the time, was the disparaging attitude they took towards the working class. No one had a good word to say about them, they were always portrayed as, rude, subservient, uneducated or just plain criminally minded and I include the wonderful Agatha Christie in that criticism. It’s easy to see why they did it. The working class wasn’t their intended audience. Their books were aimed squarely at the middle classes. Dorothy L Sayers even made her investigator a lord and he hated anything to do with the smelly, unwashed. They have to be forgiven though, they were all wonderful writers and their books were just, of a time.
The first 50 copies of Betrayal have arrived and I’ll be signing and posting them out to my fab readers over the next few days. A second order will be placed soon if anyone else would like a signed copy of my latest novel, the fourth book in the Unspoken series.
My latest author newsletter (August 2023) is now available to download.
This month I talk about the uncertainly I felt when I was writing my latest novel, Betrayal. There is also news of a book signing event I’m attending in September. If you’d like to subscribe there is a button on the top left hand side. To easily unsubscribe, lick the link at the bottom of the page.
BETRAYAL. Unspoken Family Saga. Series two, book one.
I am delighted to announce the release of the eBook version of my latest novel, Betrayal. The Unspoken saga continues with book one of the second series.
Betrayal.
Jessica Griffiths is in a relationship with police sergeant Christopher Kent, and for once, things are going well, despite the country being placed into lockdown by the government as they attempt to slow down the spread of Coronavirus.
Great Aunt Marjorie is back from her ill-fated cruise. Now living alone, she is visited by Iris of the Afterlife Society, who is convinced that the spirit of her dead sister, Martha is attempting to make contact. As lockdown approaches, she is befriended by her kindly neighbour, Selena who moves in with Marjorie, after all, two can live almost as cheaply as one, especially when you aren’t the one paying the bills. Jess is initially delighted at the arrangement, but is Selena really the sweet old lady she appears to be?
Nicola Griffiths, Jessica’s mother is still battling her alcohol demons but finds love in the form of Lenny Relish, an ex-con, jailed for manslaughter, but freed from prison on licence. Nicola is besotted but Lenny has some seriously dodgy acquaintances.
As the country eases into lockdown, Jessica gets news that will test her relationship with Christopher to the limit. Is he really the lover that will finally break the circle of the Mollison family man curse? Will she finally rid herself of her ex, the narcissistic, Calvin? And why has the beautiful, but menacing, Leonora, suddenly reappeared?
Today, I started work on Book1 of the second Unspoken series trilogy. The novel will be called, The Betrayal and will continue the adventures of Jessica, Nicola and Aunt Marjorie as the family begin to heal after the ill fated cruise that Marjorie and her older sister Martha had embarked upon.
I’m hoping to see publication of the new novel sometime in the mid to late summer, 2023.
As an appetiser, here’s the short, opening chapter.
THE BETRAYAL
Chapter One
Here she is now,’ Jessica Griffiths said excitedly to Detective Sergeant, Christopher Kent as they stood behind the flimsy metal barrier at the arrivals point at Heathrow airport’s terminal three.
Jessica stood on her tiptoes and waved at the confused-looking elderly woman as she came out of the exit, followed by a young man pulling a caged, trolley containing five large pieces of luggage. Perched precariously on top, was a huge, florescent orange travel bag.
Aunt Marjorie was seventy-six with short, silver hair. She wore an unbuttoned, knee-length beige mac over a pretty, flower-patterned, print dress. She was carrying a small, clear, plastic fronted box which contained a helmeted, London police doll. Perched on top of her silver hair was white, baseball cap with a picture of Mount Fuji and the famous Bullet Train. Underneath, in inch high letters was the word Shinkansen.
Marjorie stopped so quickly that the young man pushing the trolley almost crashed into her. She stood under the arrivals sign with her hand shading her eyes as she looked into the crowd of friends and relatives that had come to meet the passengers arriving on the Japan Airways flight.
‘She looks so lost and lonely,’ Jessica whispered to herself as she pushed her way past an excited, Japanese family group and shouted at the top of her voice.
‘Auntie Marjorie! It’s Jessica.’
Marjorie did a double take when she heard the familiar voice, and as Jessica appeared out of the crowd, her eyes filled with tears and her lip began to tremble.
As the latest Amy Rowlings mystery, The Murder Awards hurtles towards its conclusion, SpellBound Books Ltd have issued a publication date of November 5th 2023. Thank you Sumaira Wilson from SpellBound for the social media reveal yesterday.
I am now in the happy position to be able to reveal the cover, designed once again by the fabulous Nikki East.
The Murder Awards
May 1939
When Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin are invited to a black tie, civic awards ceremony at the Town Hall, they expect to be met with the usual, boring speeches and toe-curling sycophancy, but when the recipient of the night’s ‘Businessman Of The Year Award’, Nelson Kelly, is found stabbed to death after being called from the stage to answer the telephone, the evening begins to liven up.
Nelson’s company has just won a lucrative contract to build a new armaments factory and many of the town’s elite, having backed a rival bidder, aren’t happy at missing out.
When the CID department at the local police station is suddenly reduced in manpower, Bodkin is told he will have to manage the murder investigation alone.
Into the breach steps young Amy Rowlings, the twenty-one-year-old with a mind every bit as sharp as her fictional hero, Hercule Poirot.
Amy, an avid crime fiction reader, movie buff and collector of American records, brings her insight and intelligence to the aid of the overstretched inspector, as he attempts to find a way through the morass of lies, deception and corruption.
Once again, Amy must utilise all the investigative techniques she has learned from Agatha Christie’s famous detective to help bring a brutal killer to justice.
I am absolutely delighted to announce that I am one of the attending authors at the Tales on Trent Book Signing Event at the King’s Hall, Stoke on Trent on Sept 2nd 2023. Don’t be shy, come and say hi if you are attending.
I am delighted to announce the release of my first ever audiobook. Hopes and Fears, my wartime, home front, winter themed novel, narrated by the wonderful Deborah Balm, was released on the 17th January 2023. The audiobook is available on Amazon and iTunes at £7.99 and for 1 credit for Audible members.
FEATURING AMY ROWLINGS!
Christmas 1940. Despite the rationing and the Blackout, excitement at Mollison Farm is building as Alice and her workforce prepare for the annual Christmas Eve party. The snow has arrived, bang on time.
And this year, Alice has a big secret.
She has invited her evacuee children’s mother to spend a few precious days with her kids at Christmas, but disaster strikes and Alice is given the shock news that Rose’s home is now nothing more than a pile of bricks and the woman herself is missing, lost in the Blitz.
Amy, Alice’s best friend is despatched to the capital in a race against time, to find Rose and if possible, get her out of London.
As the search intensifies and the bombs start to fall again, Amy meets Rose’s sleazy husband Terry, a draft dodger, and Kevin, the ARP man with something to hide.
Meanwhile, on the farm, Stephen and Harriet discover the truth about their mother’s disappearance and Alice finds herself having to deal with the consequences.
The snow will fall and the farmyard carols will be sung, but will it be a happy Christmas on Mollison Farm?
Reviews
‘A very sweet and heart-warming read, perfect for the Christmas period, but enjoyable at any time. I loved the story and the cosy mystery vibe. ‘ Lynda Checkley.
‘In short, this is a race against time, with the backdrop of World War 2, and heavy snow, interspersed with wonderful characters a brilliant story and great ending. I may have shed a tear.’ Donna Morfett.
‘I loved the settings which were described so perfectly that I could have jumped into the book in amongst everything and not felt out of place.’ Kirsty Lock.
Hopes and Fears is the perfect audiobook to listen to in your favourite chair with a hot drink as the ice and snow covers the streets outside.
My author newsletter for January 2023 is now available to view. Should you wish to subscribe there is a link to do so. You will not be bombarded with spam and your email details will be safe. This month you have a chance to win a signed paperback copy of my novel, Hopes and Fears. Please follw the link
I am delighted to announce the book tour for the third in the Tracy’s Hot Mail series, What Tracy Did Next, The Kiss and Tell Diaries.
Organised once again by the fab Zoe-Lee O’Farrell and her wonderful team of reviewers, the tour kicks off on the 9th January 2023. http://zooloosbooktours.co.uk
What Tracy did next is the usual mix of emails sent to her best friend Emma but this time we also get a few WhatsApp messages and posts copied from her last year at school diary and her first ever holiday diary.
TRACY RETURNS!
The gossip machine is back with more juicy titbits as Tracy casts her all-seeing eye over the lives of the people around her.
Tracy is in a quandary. Should she accept Detective Sergeant Neil Hartley’s marriage proposal? Is she truly ready for a life of domesticity while there are so many men she hasn’t met yet, so many places she hasn’t been, so many clothes she hasn’t tried on.
A lover of cloned, market stall fashion and the Primark sales rail, Tracy is still working the promotions circuit under the guidance of her uber-iffy agent, Shayne Slider.
What on earth are Faliraki Flaps? What really happened when Tracy went on holiday with her best friend, Emma? Get an insight into what she got up to in her last year at school as Tracy dips into her personal diaries and lifts the lid on her most intimate secrets.
What Tracy Did Next. An eye-opening giggle fest.
I am delighted to announce that the audiobook version of my Unspoken Christmas novel, Hopes and Fears is now complete.
Narrated by the extraordinary Deborah Balm, the title should be available on Audible by mid January.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Deborah for all her hard work and the speed with which she delivered such an exceptional production.
She is a very talented lady and I cannot recommend her highly enough.
For those thinking of putting their own books on audible, here’s a sample of her work on my book below. Her website, which contains many more samples can be found here. https://www.deborahbalm.com/
The book is also available in eBook and paperback formats. AMAZON LINKY THINGY You can also read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited account.
I am delighted to announce the release of the fourth Tracy’s Hot Mail novella. Tracy’s 20’s Hot Mail.
HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!
Tracy is shocked to find that she’s hit her mid-twenties. Worried about her sagging boobs and her broadening bottom, she has scary visions of being thirty, middle aged and unable to get any celebrity work.
Fed up of the endless battles between her Marxist father and a grandmother that makes Attila the Hun look like Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies, she decides it’s time to flee the nest and moves into an ex-council flat on the rough side of town.
Deciding to hold a sophisticated dinner party, Tracy struggles to compile the perfect guest list. More problems arise when she is unable to follow a Nigella Bites recipe.
Will the party go with a bang? Will the people on her hastily assembled guest list hit it off? Why is that ‘tart’ Olivia suddenly in her thoughts? And what could possibly go wrong when Tracy lands a starring role in a remake of the pottery scene from the film, Ghost?
Tracy’s 20’s Hot Mail. Older doesn’t always mean wiser.
The book is available NOW on Amazon. eBook or paperback. FREE on Kindle Unlimited.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my wonderful readers a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
I’d also like to add a little bit of exciting news.
My Winter themed novel, Hopes and Fears is, at this moment, being recorded as an audiobook by the hugely talented, Deborah Balm. The recording should be available early in the New Year.
2022 has been a good year for me book wise. I have released four books including two, new Tracy’s Hot Mail novellas and two Amy Rowlings mysteries that were published by SpellBound Books and sales have gone pretty well.
As a bonus, this month I got a mention in the fab Donna Morfett’s books of the year list and I was the recipient of an award and trophy, bestowed by the wonderful, Tales on Tuesday book group. I was honoured to be awarded the title, Professor of Poisons, following my authors talk to the group earlier in the month. The title was awarded because of my collection of research books on the subject and my use of three different poisons in my cosy crime novel, Death at the Lychgate.
Huge thanks to Donna for her support and to Claire Birkin and all the wonderful members of the Tales on Tuesday group for the fab award. Professor of Poisons has now been added as a by-line to my author name.
This was my fist effort at romance writing and was included in the bestselling, charity anthology, 100 Stories for Haiti, back in the day.
Dinner for Two
Has that clock stopped? No, my watch says the same time. Stop looking every thirty seconds, will you?
Maisie Connolly, this is your bloody fault. If it all goes wrong, I’ll never speak to you again.
Right, check the food, Sarah, it’s fine, you know it’s fine, you only checked it two minutes ago. Wine, where’s the bloo…okay, it’s on the table, should be room temperature by now. Maisie Connolly, if this wine isn’t as good as you promised you’ll be wearing it tomorrow. At twelve quid a bloody bottle it ought to be dynamite.
Check the mirror, sigh, I’m sure those lines round your mouth are getting deeper; you’ll need cement to fill them in if they get any worse.
What’s that? Was that a car? Dare you peek through the window? You don’t want him to catch you looking. Count to thirty and listen for the car door closing… thirty, no, can’t have been him.
I hope he likes classical music; those free CDs from the Sunday papers were worth keeping after all. Classical is a bit more sophisticated than Simply Red.
Hang on, daft girl; Simply Red is fine for that close up chat on the sofa later in the evening. Damn, where the hell is it?
Had to be in the bloody car, didn’t it? Right then, that’s Mozart for dinner and Mick Hucknall for afters, lovely.
Twenty-five past eight. This has to be the longest night of my life, are we stuck in a time warp or something?
Hope he likes the dress; check the mirror, not too much cleavage, not too short. Come on, Sarah, you’ve been through all this; it took you two hours to choose it. What if he comes in a suit though? Are you formal enough? No time to do anything about it now. I bet he wears a sodding suit.
Let’s hope it goes better than last time, eh? Note to self, if you spill the red wine over his trousers, don’t dab at his crotch with a napkin.
Why did you do that? You should have left it at a horrified, ‘sorry.’ It was his house; he could quite easily have nipped through to change. He ended up being more embarrassed than you did, and why did you keep bringing it up throughout the meal? Oh my God, then you go and lose a contact lens in the Beef Stroganoff.
I am one of the authors appearing at the 2023 Tales on Trent Multi Genre Author event. Signing opportunities on the day may be limited to how many books I can realistically take with me, so if you are attending and would like to pre order any of my novels I’ll make sure you get your copy at the event.
Books
Unspoken Trilogy.
Unspoken. the Legacy. The Reckoning,
Hopes and Fears. Unspoken Christmas story. Featuring Amy Rowlings
Amy Rowlings Mysteries.
Murder at the Mill. Death at the Lychgate.
Tracy’s Hot Mail Series.
Tracy’s Hot Mail. Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail. What Tracy Did Next. Tracy’s twenties Hot Mail.
The Little Christmas Tree and Other Stories. The first new Trevor Forest children’s book to be published for five years is now available in eBook priced 99p and on Kindle Unlimited for FREE. Also available in paperback. Signed copies on requeast. A separate version of Faylinn Frost and the Snow Fairies is also available.
A small collection of short stories for kids of reading age or for parents to read to them at bedtime.
Stories include.
The Little Christmas Tree
Horace the Ogre
Harry’s Present
A Boxful of Wishes
Celia’s Question
Old Tom The Catnip King. (A poem about a lazy cat)
Clicking Gran. (Halloween Poem)
Faylinn Frost and the Snow Fairies (Full Book)
The Little Christmas Tree and Other Stories will be released on Amazon within the next few days. The book is for kids of reading age or kids too young to read themselves but like a good story read to them in bed.
The book comprises of Five short stories and One funny poem.
The Little Christmas Tree (the last pine tree before the north pole. A 3300 word Christmas story.)
Horace the Ogre.
Harry’s Present. (a very short Christmas story.)
A Box Full Of Wishes.
Celia’s Question. (a short Christmas story.)
Clicking Gran (my almost famous Halloween poem.)
Faylinn Frost and the Snow Fairies (Complete Book)
The paperback version of my Golden Age, cosy crime mystery, Death at the Lychgate was released by SpellBound Books Ltd on Oct 14th priced at just £8.99.
Signed author copies will be available on request by the beginning of November.
I’m delighted to announce the release on Amazon of What Tracy Did Next, the third book in the Tracy’s Hot Mail series.
TRACY RETURNS!
The gossip machine is back with more juicy titbits as Tracy casts her all-seeing eye over the lives of the people around her.
Tracy is in a quandary. Should she accept Detective Sergeant Neil Hartley’s marriage proposal? Is she truly ready for a life of domesticity while there are so many men she hasn’t met yet, so many places she hasn’t been, so many clothes she hasn’t tried on.
A lover of cloned, market stall fashion and the Primark sales rail, Tracy is still working the promotions circuit under the guidance of her uber-iffy agent, Shayne Slider.
What on earth are, Faliraki Flaps? What really happened when Tracy went on holiday with her best friend, Emma? Get an insight into what she got up to in her last year at school as Tracy dips into her personal diaries and lifts the lid on her most intimate secrets.
What Tracy Did Next. An eye-opening giggle fest.
Priced at a mere £1.99 for the eBook, that’s around a penny a chortle.
The sequel to Murder at the Mill is finally here. Death at the Lychgate was released by SpellBound Books Ltd on Sept 30th. Many thanks to Zoe from http://zooloosbooktours.co.uk for putting together such a fabulous collection of book bloggers for the tour.
AMY ROWLINGS RETURNS!
The book is set in Kent, during the spring of 1939.
AMY ROWLINGS RETURNS!
Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church’s lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned.
When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer, Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.
Amy, a huge Agatha Christie fan is determined to get involved in the investigation and despite a stern warning from the detective’s boss, Amy and Bodkin team up again to try to solve the most complex murder case he has ever been involved in. When the toxicology report comes back from the lab, the results only add to the mystery.
Meanwhile, Amy looks to her favourite Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot for help, and using his techniques, she narrows down the list of possible murderers to just nine suspects.
Never one to pass up on an exclusive (nor Thornton’s Continental chocs for that matter, but that’s another story) Maureen Vincent-Northam was delighted to be asked to dig deep into Tracy’s sack of fan mail for Writelinkers. Disregarding the less genteel communications (toad in the hole will never seem the same) Maureen has chosen letters from typical Tracy fans and the star herself tells her many, and varied, admirers what they really want to know.
Tracy is a rarity in this day and age: a young woman whose underwear is not always in free-fall. The woman whose Hotmail exchanges with best friend Emma is about to take the literary world by storm is driven by the same modest ambitions all young women have: fame, fortune and an alphamale celeb hanging onto her arm.
Which celebrity would you say is most in need of a make-over?
Chelsea Trumper, Broadbottom, Cheshire
Tracy: Hello Chelsea. Is your dad one of those annoying people like David Beckham who name their kids after places they’ve visited? It’s a good job little Brooklyn wasn’t conceived in Peckham isn’t it?
Are we talking hair, clothes, or everything?
I think Janet Street Porter’s teeth could do with a serious file down. If I was her, I’d have them pulled and get a nice, new, even set of dentures put in. She could sell her real teeth to ivory poachers. That might save an elephant’s life and not only would she look better, she’d have something to feel good about.
Kim Kardashian really should do something about that arse and Brad Pitt looks like he’s been dragged through a dozen hedges, backwards. I wouldn’t mind having the job of tidying him up though.
If I had to choose someone that needs a total makeover, I’d go for that tart, Olivia. She looks like a slut on drugs at the moment. Her clothes look like she’s slept in them for a month and her makeup looks like its been applied with a pastry knife. That hair has to go; I bet there’s at least a dozen combs, two styling wands and a colony of bats in there. I saw her once in the queue outside Slappers nightclub. It was pissing down with rain but she didn’t need an umbrella, nothing got past that hair. I heard a rumour that David Attenborough is going in with a film crew soon.
Another one I’d like to see sorted out is Russell Brand. He’s a right scruffy bugger and has exactly the same hair as Olivia. What is it with these people, have they never heard of shampoo?
Why do you think you’ve been so unlucky with romance?
Ron Lovall, Herts
Tracy: Hi, Ron. Unlucky? I think I’ve been incredibly lucky. I’ve managed to get rid of the useless swine without too much trouble. Some women get stuck with a bloke for life. Imagine what Simon will be like in a few years time? He’s already porn obsessed. By the time he’s twenty-five he’ll be sneaking around in the fog wearing nothing but a dirty old mac and a pair of trainers. I reckon I had a lucky escape there.
As for Tim, I think I was lucky there too. He wants to be a farmer. That would mean me being a farmer’s wife. Sod that for a lark. I really can’t see me in wellies and a smock, can you? Some people are meant to wake up at the crack of dawn to the smell of cow shit, and some aren’t. I’m definitely in the second category. I would look ridiculous trying to dodge the cowpats in my fake Lanvin sandals, and the closest I ever want to come to a pig, is when it’s been sliced and fried and lying in a roll with some brown sauce.
You’d make a perfect WAG. Have you ever pursued a gorgeous footballer – or even Wayne Rooney?
Tiffany Pratt, Isle of Dogs
Tracy: Hi Tiffany. I think I’m too young for Wayne, he’d be more likely to go for Gran, and I’m not on the game so he wouldn’t be interested in me. I did go out with a footballer once, but he only played for the local pub team and I only went out with him because I wanted to prove a point to the Ginger minger he was seeing at the time.
Dad says I should become a WAG, but Gran says there’s a reason they call them that. They’re all dogs.
Given these two choices, would you rather be stinking rich or mega famous?
Windsor, London
Tracy: Is that you Prince William? Nice to hear from you again. How’s the chopper? Still getting it up, I hope.
Hmm, tough question. I suppose if I had to choose I’d go for mega famous as I could always drop in on a celebrity mate if I had no money and I needed somewhere to crash for the night. Not that there would be many nights like that. Most celebs seem to cop-off with someone after they’ve been to one of those glitzy parties and I don’t think I would be any different. Anyway, if I was mega famous and skint, I could always go to a party wearing something a bit naughty and get interviewed by the Sun for a few quid.
Mega famous people probably get lots of free stuff when they open things, so I’d make sure I opened lots of supermarkets…and shoe shops of course. Stinking rich people tend to want to keep it all to themselves. That would rule Olivia out; she can’t keep anything to herself, especially her vagina.
When you go on Celebrities on Ice in the Jungle, what will you miss most about everyday life?
Precious Little, Watchet, Somerset
Tracy: Hi, Precious. I’d probably miss daydreaming about going on Celebrities on Ice in the Jungle.
What is your beauty routine and do you have any tips for your uglier fans?
Poppy Belcher, Diss, Norfolk
Tracy: Hello, We used to have a dog called Poppy but we got rid of her because she farted all the time and Dad was sick of getting the blame.
I don’t spend much time in front of the mirror because my housemate, Kiwi, will almost certainly be using it every time I want it. I’m lucky in that I can get away without having to do too much. Kiwi spends hours tarting herself up, and she still ends up looking like she’s let her seven-year-old sister do her face for her.
My best tip would be to buy the best make up you can afford. Don’t go for that crappy stuff they sell on the market, most of it doubles up as paint stripper. If you can’t afford good stuff, get some new friends who can. Girls are always on the lookout for ugly friends, as they make them look better on a night out. They’ll almost certainly let you use their make up if it means they’ll stand out in a crowd of munters.
Spotty Irene doesn’t look too good at times because of the terrible acne she suffers from. It doesn’t stop her trying to do something about it though. She once went to a fancy dress party, with a brown paper bag on her head. She told them she’d come as shopping.
There are a few ways of hiding your hideousness. You could be mysterious and wear a dark veil, but then people might just think you like going to funerals.
If you’re really ugly and desperate for a bloke, my tip would be to find one who wears specs like the bottom of beer glasses. If their eyes are that bad, they probably still won’t be able to see out of them properly. Of course you could just do what Olivia does, let blokes know you’re available, that always works after they’ve had ten pints.
If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play you?
Scarlet Shufflebottom, Hollywood, Birmingham
Tracy: It would have to be Lady Gaga or someone classy like that.
What do you keep in your handbag?
Tarquin DeVere, Odness, Orkney Islands
Tracy: Hmm, you ought to know, Tarquin. It was you that opened it up in front of everyone at that student’s party. Playing mousy on a string with a Tampax wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be, funny.
For anyone who doesn’t know though, apart from the usual girly things like panty liners, a sanitary towel and a spare pair of knickers, I have a my iPhone, lip gloss, mascara, compact, needle and thread, a condom, hair scrunch, brush, comb, purse, bus pass, pen, notepad, tissues, mints, tube of superglue, attack alarm and mace spray.
What possession could you not do without?
Billy Lillycrap, Quidhampton, Hampshire
Tracy: My TV. I couldn’t live without Strictly and X Factor. If I’m allowed more I’d have to say my laptop and my fake Gucci bag…Oh and my signed photo of Beckham in his Speedos.
If you were a type of vegetable, what would you be?
Moonchild, a field in Glastonbury
Tracy: You’d have to ask Kiwi that, she’s the hippy, and she’s named after a fruit.
If you were abducted by aliens, what would be the first question you’d ask them?
Prof. Mycroft Nutt, Lower Piddle on the March, Glos.
Tracy: Do you get the X Factor in the Vernuvian Quadrant?
Who do you think you were in a past life?
Napoleon Bonaparte, Crackpot, North Yorkshire
Tracy: I sometimes have strange dreams about snakes, so Cleopatra probably.
Out on the eight, back on the ten-fifteen which came at ten-twelve and almost made me run to catch it. In the end I just performed a sort of quick shuffle down the street and made it with seconds to spare, who says this gym thing doesn’t work?
Tonight’s mission was to explore the sights and sounds of Parliament Street in Nottingham. There are lots of dens of iniquity to choose from, so I stepped off the bus and launched myself into the first of many pubs blasting out old seventies’ hits to their aging clientele. No pub or aging clientele names will be mentioned in this piece, partly to protect the innocent, but mostly to protect me the next time I go in any of them. I wrote a Saturday Night Live about my home town, Ilkeston once and it didn’t go down well in the Neanderthal Arms I can tell you.
The disco was in full swing as I walked into the pub. The queue at the bar was so long I had to queue to get into the queue. I thought I’d got the wrong bus and ended up in London at one point.
Finally, armed with a pint of John Smiths Extra Smooth bitter I fought my way through the melee and grabbed a foot of prime real estate next to the door where I could see the dancers giving their all, in front of a thirty-five-foot flat screen TV on which the old nineteen-seventies videos were being shown to accompany the music. They need a screen that size so the people who haven’t had their cataract operations yet, and came out without their hearing aids (AGAIN!) can join in with the fun.
I nearly shat myself when Phil Collins’ massive balding pate suddenly hit the screen. I was thirty feet away but it felt like he was right on top of me. Now, me and Phil don’t get on, so I tore my eyes away from the screen as Phil did his Voldemort impression whilst singing, ‘You can’t hurry love.’
You can hurry love, actually, Phil, I’ve managed to do it for years.
Sadly, Phil couldn’t hurry the song either, so I concentrated on the elderly dancers as they cavorted across the dance floor, waving arms, swinging hips and other body parts. One poor old sod was knocked clean off his feet by a pair of low-slung boobs that hit him right in the kisser as the owner of the said breasts, swung around to scream, ‘love don’t come easy,’ to the wrinkly old gal who was swinging her own bits, a few feet away.
I never did get Phil, but by the looks of it most of the geriatric gyrating ensemble did. The dance floor was heaving, a plethora of nineteen sixties style mini dresses, stocking tops, caked on makeup, slipping wigs and zimmers on wheels, and that was just the men.
I hung around, alternating between sips of my pint and mouthing the words to the Drifters, Saturday Night at the Movies. Mouthing to songs is a tradition in that pub. Everyone does it, even the people, like me, who actually know the words. The ones that don’t just open and shut their mouths like goldfish, as I said, it’s a tradition in there, no one wants to be seen flouting the rules.
From there I wandered across the road to the pub near the Theatre Royal. A DJ was installed at the end of the bar and I was treated to the rousing chorus from the Killers hit, Mr Brightside as I entered. This bar is populated by the late forties, early fifties set, you know the sort I mean. Men with shaved heads and women wearing push up bras so load bearing that their boobs are almost under their chins. There was so much bare flesh is on show, that they look like they’ve got a couple of the bald heads stuffed down their dresses.
The weird thing about this group of piss heads is their love for the Ibiza club anthems. It’s a scary sight when the first, boom boom, bass notes thud out, people don’t head for the dance floor, they just start thrashing around where they stand. Beer, gin and bald head tits are suddenly flung into the air as the middle-aged revellers relive their 1980s Spanish holidays.
I didn’t last long in there I can tell you. I’d already washed my hair before I went out, I didn’t need a beer shampoo.
The streets very packed as I stepped out of the bar and made my way down the slight incline towards the famous Motown pub. On the way I passed a few ‘homeless,’ people who were propped up in blankets calling out for loose change, gripping their cans of special brew as though it was their prized possession. I always give at least one of them a few coins as I pass by. I don’t judge. I’m about to get pissed so why shouldn’t they?
I haven’t been to Nottingham for about a year now, but I still recognise some of the ‘pro beggars’ that only ever show up on a Saturday. Their blankets are always spotless so it’s easy to pick them out.
The Motown pub was rammed, as usual. I spent a while in another long queue and looked around for David Beckham. Sadly, he wasn’t in this part of the queue so I smiled at the woman next to me and said,’ busy, isn’t it?’
She curled up her lip and looked at me like I’d just asked her for a shag. Turning to her flat faced mate, she flicked her head towards me and rolled her eyes. Her mate was not only flat faced, she had an incredible turned up nose. Now, I don’t mean one of those cute little noses you see in those period dramas, this one was turned up so much, she could look directly into her flared nostrils with just a slight movement of her eyes. I’d hate to be her if she got a bad cold. She’d be blinded with snot every time she sneezed. I got my revenge for the sullen looks by pushing in front of them at the bar. I won’t repeat the insult that flat face used when I turned away smirking into my pint, but it rhymes with punt.
I found a six-inch square piece of territory at a table near the front windows and spent an enjoyable ten minutes watching the septuagenarians swing their hips to the proper version of, you can’t hurry love. There were some younger women in there, but they were all surrounded by groups of bald, Junior Soprano lookalikes, who looked like they were waiting to dive into the buffet at a wedding. Lips smacked, saliva drooled and hands were reaching out in expectation. The women didn’t seem to mind, they were obviously used to being slavered over like some tasty morsel presented on a plastic platter.
Just then I was poked in the ribs by a bony elbow. I looked to the side where a woman wearing glasses as thick as the shatter-proof front window was looking up at me.
‘Sorry,’ she lied.
I smiled and went back to watching the men of the musical, meat market, stick out their chests and attempt to muscle the competition out of the way.
Suddenly the bony elbow found its target again. I winced. It felt like I had been skewered. She looked me in the eyes again. ‘Sorry,’ she lied, again.
She was a painfully thin woman of about sixty-five, wearing a tight-fitting dress that showed of her skeletal frame to perfection. She had a mop of red-dyed hair that perfectly matched the daub of lipstick that was smeared across her face. She looked like The Joker from the Batman movie.
‘Are you gay?’ she asked as I turned away again. ‘Only I’ve been trying to get your attention for ages and all you do is look at those men.’
I was sorely tempted to tell her that I was indeed, gay, and hope the news would encourage her to piss off. Like a fool, I told her I wasn’t.
‘Really,’ she replied. ‘You look gay.’
By now her three mates had become interested. They surrounded me, looking me up and down, pulling faces as they tried to make up their minds whether I was or wasn’t.
I gulped down my pint as fast as I could and headed towards the door.
‘He is,’ I head the chorus of crackly voices call as I stepped away.
Back on the street I found a doddering, ancient, foul mouthed, excuse for a man, trying to negotiate the price of a blow job with a middle-aged, blanket covered, greasy-haired woman whose mouth was ringed with scabs and sores. Apparently, he felt that a quid was a fair price. She wanted a tenner. I hope he raised his offer. She deserves the money and he deserves whatever disease he’ll wake up with in the morning. I shuddered at the thought of them performing and headed up the hill towards the bus stop.
The bus was pretty full but I managed to get a seat opposite a couple of pretty young girls. I didn’t smile at them; I’m a modern man and I know I’d only be accused of being an old pervert if I did.
One of the girls was wearing jeans and a crop top thing that left the bottom quarter of her breasts, exposed. The other was wearing a strip of fabric, so flimsy, it looked more of a waist sash than a dress. I gave her a cursory glance for five minutes, then looked to my side where a fifty-something woman with a mouth so small she would struggle to even make the ‘ooh,’ sound, was giving the girls a withering look.
‘Disgusting,’ she said, suddenly staring at me.
I didn’t know if she meant me or the girls to begin with. Then all became clear.
‘When I was young, I wore more than that when I had sex.’
I looked from her back to the two girls. That was another vision I desperately tried to push out of my mind.
The girl in the sash noticed that I was looking at her and gave me the finger. I blew out my cheeks. I didn’t have a lot of choice really as she was sitting directly opposite and I had to look somewhere. It was either that or pretend to be asleep but even then I’d probably be accused of thinking filthy thoughts.
The old codger on my right didn’t seem to care what the young girls thought of him.
‘KINNEL,’ he gasped as the girl crossed her legs. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw anything like that.’
‘I’ve NEVER seen anything like that,’ muttered his wrinkly mate on the seat next to him. ‘And I lived in Coventry for years and they used to give it away for a drag from your fag there.’
The girl gave them both the finger, then looked back at me as if she thought I had instigated the whole thing.
‘Pervert,’ she spat.’
I shrugged. I’ve been called worse and she was probably right anyway. So, not giving a flying one any longer. I stared straight ahead and gave her my best smile.
I ended up back at my local in Ilkeston where I am among friends… Mostly. I had a few more pints and managed to grab the last slow dance with a nice blonde lady of about my own age who, thankfully, wasn’t wearing either a wig, two inches of makeup or a nineteen sixties Mary Quant mini dress.
As I mentioned earlier. I am a modern man. I didn’t even try to copy a crafty feel.
I suppose you’ve heard the news about the Queen dying, it’s such sad news, isn’t it? She’s been on the throne so long that everyone on TV seems to have a different memory of her. I’ll always remember her producing a marmalade sandwich from her handbag when she had tea with Paddington Bear. That just shows what a good sense of humour she had. I mean, that sandwich must have made a right mess in her bag. Her lippy must have been covered in it.
She was a really lovely lady, wasn’t she, Emma? It was like the sun coming out from between dark clouds when she smiled and her eyes were piercing, even when she got a bit old and doddery.
What are we going to do without her, Em? I mean, she’s always been there hasn’t she. No matter how bad things got in the world she was there, giving us that smile and telling us everything was going to be okay. And it always was in the end. Remember in the pandemic when she said, ‘We’ll meet again?’ Even Gran cried at that. Apparently, she nicked the line from an old war time song, but so what? She can’t be expected to use a Taylor Swift song at her age, can she?
Mum says she’ll be back with Prince Phillip again now, so that’s something good to come out of it. I hope there’s someone waiting for me when I go, Em. As long as it’s not my ex, Simon. I can’t think about spending another hour in his company let alone eternity. I hope there’s someone else waiting for the queen too. I mean, she’ll be really happy to see Phillip I would imagine but she’ll want some friends around to have a good girly goss with, won’t she? Blokes never talk about anything other than football and politics, so she’d need a break from that. I’m sure she’ll want to know what her mates thinks about the latest episode of TOWIE or Love Island. That’s if they can get FREEVIEW up there… they must be able to… it’s beamed down from space, so she’ll probably get to know what happens before we do.
Mum has been crying a lot. She bursts into tears every time the BBC newsreader repeats the headline. Gran, an arch royalist, is made of sterner stuff. She took herself off to her room for a few moments of quiet reflection, then came back wearing a Sex Pistols t shirt she bought for the jubilee in 1976 and her union jack bloomers. Dad said she was being disrespectful, but Gran called him a commie fifth columnist. who had never liked, ‘Little Lizzie,’ and should be hung as a traitor.
Gran always calls the queen, ‘Little Lizzie as though she’s a girl that lived on her street when she was growing up. When we were having our tea, she told us about VE night in London on the day the war officially ended. The area outside Buckingham Palace was swarming with people and Gran, although she was only thirteen, went out to join them. She reckons she saw, Little Lizzie and her sister Margaret, dancing and singing along with the crowd on the Mall.
Gran told us about how she got snogged by a sailor that night. (Her not Little Lizzie). Dad said, that would have been the first of many over the years. Gran narrowed her eyes and said Dad was just jealous because even the most desperate of sailors wouldn’t snog him.
Dad is in a bit of an awkward place. He’s always been a republican and has often said, (mainly when under the influence of drink,) that the lot of them will be put up against the wall and shot when the revolution comes.
‘I didn’t mean her,’ he bleated when Gran reminded him of his drunken rants. ‘If she had stood for president, I would have voted for her.’
The news has hit Dad a lot harder than he will admit to. His voice keeps going croaky and he claimed the tears that were running down his face were the result of Mum putting too much chilli powder in the dinner. He finished his meal in silence, then said he was going to organise a whip round for her at the Labour Club. She has a lot of fans down there. He thinks they’ll easily raise enough to get a decent painting of her to go in the refurbished bar.
Mum and Gran are going to get the train to London tomorrow to lay some flowers outside Buckingham Palace. Dad said he hopes she’s going to put some clothes on before she goes but Gran said she intends to show her patriotism, so she’s going in her bloomers. Mum said she ought to wear a mac at least, just in case it rains.
I’m worried about money now, Emma. I got paid £300 cash in hand for judging that wet t shirt competition in Norks night club last Saturday and it might not be worth anything now she’s gone. I wonder if they’ll have an exchange scheme to swap the old coins and banknotes for ones with King Charles’s face on them when they’re minted?
It’s going to be really weird for Charles, isn’t it, Em? I mean, he’s going to have to stand at public events singing God Save The Queen even though he’s the King. I think they might bring out a new anthem for him to save him having to do that. I hope they make it something a bit livelier. Maybe they could get Ed Sheeran to write a new tune, he’d soon knock up a jolly ditty. I hope they don’t ask Adele; her songs are more dirge-like than our old anthem.
Right, I’m off now, Emma. I’m going to start a campaign to see if we can get our street renamed to Queen Elizabeth Way.
R.I.P. Little Lizzie. Thank you for everything you did for us.
The back matter for book four of the Tracy’s Hot Mail series. Look out for the cover reveal. OUT SOON!
HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!
Tracy is shocked: she’s hit her mid-twenties. Worried her boobs are sagging and her bottom broadening, she has scary visions of being thirty, middle aged and unable to get any celebrity work.
Fed up of the endless battles between her Marxist father and a grandmother that makes Attila the Hun look like Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies, she decides it’s time to flee the nest and moves into an ex-council flat on the rough side of town.
Deciding to hold a sophisticated dinner party, Tracy struggles to compile the perfect guest list. More problems hit when following a Nigella Bites recipe as her culinary idol only, ‘cooks in French.’
Will the party go with a bang? Will the people on her hastily assembled guest list hit it off? Why is that ‘tart’ Olivia suddenly in her thoughts? And what could possibly go wrong when Tracy lands a starring role in a remake of the pottery scene from the film, Ghost?
Tracy’s Twenties Hot Mail. Older doesn’t always mean wiser.
I’m delighted to reveal the back of the book blurb for the third book in the Tracy’s Hot Mail series, What Tracy Did Next.
TRACY RETURNS!
The gossip machine is back with more juicy titbits as Tracy casts her all-seeing eye over the lives of the people around her.
Tracy is in a quandary. Should she accept Detective Sergeant Neil Hartley’s marriage proposal? Is she truly ready for a life of domesticity while there are so many men she hasn’t met yet. So many places she hasn’t been, so many clothes she hasn’t tried on.
A lover of cloned, market stall fashion and the Primark sales rail, Tracy is still working the promotions circuit under the guidance of her uber-iffy agent, Shayne Slider.
What on earth are, Falaraki Flaps? What really happened when Tracy went on holiday with her best friend, Emma? Get an insight into what she got up to in her last year at school as Tracy dips into her personal diaries and lifts the lid on her most intimate secrets.
I’m delighted to announce the revamp and relaunch of my ever popular, Tracy’s Hot Mail series.
The books are being re-themed to give Tracy a new fresh look. The cover has been designed by the uber-talented Zoe O’Farrell from ZooloosBookTours https://zooloosbooktours.co.uk and I couldn’t be happier with what she came up with.
Their are now four books in the Tracy series. Tracy’s Hot Mail, Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail, What Tracy Did Next and Tracy’s Twenties Hot Mail. All the books will be released in September 2022.
Here’s the cover of the first book. Zoe imagined Tracy exactly as I do when I’m writing the books. She’s perfect.
September not only sees the release of my second Amy Rowlings cosy crime, murder mystery: Death at the Lychgate but also two BRAND NEW Tracy’s Hot Mail books.
What Tracy Did Next and Tracy’s Twenties Hot Mail will be released very soon. The two existing books in the series, Tracy’s Hot Mail and Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail are having a revamp and all four books will now be seen with brand new, series themed covers designed by the wonderful Zoe O’Farrell.
Hello everyone. Thanks for dropping by on the publication day for Murder at the Mill, my Agatha Christie era, cosy crime novel.
Firstly I’d like to thank everyone at SpellBound Books for making this possible. Hon mentions must go to Sumaira, Nikki, Dee, Zoe and Kate, thank you for making this such a pleasant and easy process for me.
The sequel to Murder at the Mill is called Death at the Lychgate and once again stars Amy, our twenty one year old amateur sleuth, and DS Bodkin, the policeman with more of a heart than he admits to owning. The book will be released by Spellbound Books in November 2022.
Finally I’d like to thank all of my lovely, loyal readers who have stuck with me through thick and thin. You are all wonderful.
Murder at the Mill is only 99p for the kindle version. A true bargain. Buy link below.
The story begins in January 1939, in the fictional Kentish town of Spinton.
Who Is Amy Rowlings?
Amy Rowlings is a vivacious, quick-witted collector of imported American music, a movie buff, a buyer of nearly new fashion and an avid reader of crime fiction. Unlike many of the amateur sleuths of the era, Amy is a working class, twenty-one-year-old who works at a clothing factory known locally as The Mill.
Who is DS Bodkin?
Bodkin is a rugged, no nonsense, untidy-looking detective sergeant in the Spinton police who would look scruffy in a tailormade suit. His mantra is, everyone is a suspect until they aren’t.
So, what’s the story about?
The book features some of the characters from the dual timeline novel I wrote during lockdown, the Family Saga, Unspoken, but this time one of the minor characters is promoted to the lead role. The novel is set in Kent, in January 1939 and is the first of what I hope to be a long series of books featuring the same characters. 1939 was such an historically interesting year that would eventually see the country in a war that will give me a myriad of future storyline opportunities.
Amy Rowlings is a twenty-one-year-old machinist at Handsley’s Garments, known locally as, The Mill. On her way to work one snowy, morning she meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin, at the scene of a break in. After pointing out an obvious clue to the police, Amy goes to work, but on the following day, she meets the detective again, this time at the Mill where the owner’s son, an almost universally despised philanderer, has been found dead.
Amy offers to help the police inquiry by providing some local knowledge to Bodkin, who is new to the area but is soon drawn into the murder investigation.
Provisional back of the book blurb for the new Amy Rowlings cosy crime murder mystery.
Set in the spring of 1939.
AMY ROWLINGS RETURNS!
Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church’s lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned.
When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer, Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.
Amy, a huge Agatha Christie fan is determined to get involved in the investigation and despite a stern warning from the detective’s boss, Amy and Bodkin team up again to try to solve the most complex murder case he has ever been involved in. When the toxicology report comes back from the lab, the results only add to the mystery.
Meanwhile, Amy looks to her favourite Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot for help, and using his techniques, she narrows down the list of possible murderers to just nine suspects.
Can Amy fit together the jigsaw of clues to solve this, the most complex of cases?
If you are a fan of cosy crime, Agatha Christie era novels, you might like my Amy Rowlings mysteries.
The first two, Murder at the Mill, and Death at the Lychgate are to be published by SpellBound Books this year. Murder at the Mill is due for release on July 7th 2022
There are also more Amy mysteries in the pipeline.
The Murder Awards
Amy and Bodkin are asked to attend a civic event at the town hall. where an awards presentation is being conducted. Things go awry when one of the recipients is found crawling away from the gent’s cloakroom with a knife in his chest.
Deadly Anniversary
Amy is drawn into a murder investigation when a friend of her uncle dies suspiciously on her silver wedding anniversary.. A few days later, another body is found, again on a date when the victim should have been celebrating his sixth wedding anniversary.
A Model Murder
Amy’s photographic portrait has been entered into a national photographic competition by the local photographer and his picture reaches the final at an event held in London where all the short listed models have to appear. On the day of the event, one of of the favourites is found dead, shot through the heart in her hotel room. . As Bodkin is at the event with Amy, he is asked to investigate by the local police.
So, that’s it. Death at the Lychgate, the new, 107500 word Amy Rowlings mystery is with my lovely editor for its final read through. It’s been edited as it was being written so there shouldn’t be a lot to do before I send it off to my fab publisher, SpellBound Books Ltd. Maureen loved it, so if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.
I’d like to thank my wonderful, comma nuking, editor, Maureen for all her hard work as usual. Chapter one of the next book in the Amy series, The Murder Awards should be with you next week.
Next time you’ll hear about it will be for the cover reveal.
I have just typed The End on the second of the new Tracy’s Hot Mail novellas. This one is called Tracy’s Twenties Hot Mail and the story, as the title hints, takes Tracy from her wild teens and into (as she sees it) a more mature and sophisticated era. As the panto line goes, Oh No It Doesn’t.
The first of the novellas has yet to be given its final title. At the moment it has a working title of Tracy’s Hot Mail, The Missing Years. The book takes a look at Tracy’s life and what happened to her after the final chapter of Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail which was published in 2016.
Both books will be published by Spellbound Books Ltd at a date yet to be announced.
An Interview with Tracy, conducted by y fab editor Maureen Vincent-Northam
Never one to pass up on an exclusive (nor Thornton’s Continental chocs for that matter, but that’s another story) Maureen Vincent-Northam was delighted to be asked to dig deep into Tracy’s sack of fan mail for Writelinkers. Disregarding the less genteel communications (toad in the hole will never seem the same) Maureen has chosen letters from typical Tracy fans and the star herself tells her many, and varied, admirers what they really want to know.
Tracy is a rarity in this day and age: a young woman whose underwear is not always in free-fall. The woman whose Hotmail exchanges with best friend Emma is about to take the literary world by storm is driven by the same modest ambitions all young women have: fame, fortune and an alphamale celeb hanging onto her arm.
Which celebrity would you say is most in need of a make-over?
Chelsea Trumper, Broadbottom, Cheshire
Tracy: Hello Chelsea. Is your Dad one of those annoying people like David Beckham who name their kids after places they’ve visited? It’s a good job little Brooklyn wasn’t conceived in Peckham isn’t it?
Are we talking hair, clothes, or everything?
I think Janet Street Porter’s teeth could do with a serious file down. If I was her, I’d have them pulled and get a nice, new, even set of dentures put in. She could sell her real teeth to ivory poachers. That might save an elephant’s life and not only would she look better, she’d have something to feel good about.
Jennifer Saunders really should do something about that arse and Brad Pitt looks like he’s been dragged through a dozen hedges, backwards. I wouldn’t mind having the job of tidying him up though.
Why do you think you’ve been so unlucky with romance?
Ron Lovall, Herts
Tracy: Hi, Ron. Unlucky? I think I’ve been incredibly lucky. I’ve managed to get rid of the useless swine without too much trouble. Some women get stuck with a bloke for life. Imagine what Simon will be like in a few years time? He’s already porn obsessed. By the time he’s twenty five he’ll be sneaking around in the fog wearing nothing but a dirty old mac and a pair of trainers. I reckon I had a lucky escape there.
As for Tim, I think I was lucky there too. He wants to be a farmer. That would mean me being a farmer’s wife. Sod that for a lark. I really can’t see me in wellies and a smock can you? Some people are meant to wake up at the crack of dawn to the smell of cow shit, and some aren’t. I’m definitely in the second category. I would look ridiculous trying to dodge the cowpats in my fake Lanvin sandals, and the closest I ever want to come to a pig, is when it’s been sliced and fried and lying in a roll with some brown sauce.
You’d make a perfect WAG. Have you ever pursued a gorgeous footballer – or even Wayne Rooney?
Tiffany Pratt, Isle of Dogs
Tracy: Hi Tiffany. I think I’m too young for Wayne and I’m not on the game so he wouldn’t be interested in me. I did go out with a footballer once, but he only played for the local pub team and I only went out with him because I wanted to prove a point to the Ginger minger he was seeing at the time.
Dad says I should become a WAG, but Gran says there’s a reason they call them that. They’re all dogs.
Given these two choices, would you rather be stinking rich or mega famous?
Windsor, London
Tracy: Is that you Prince William? Nice to hear from you again. How’s the chopper? Still getting it up, I hope.
Hmm, tough question. I suppose if I had to choose I’d go for mega famous as I could always drop in on a celebrity mate if I had no money and I needed somewhere to crash for the night. Not that there would be many nights like that. Most celebs seem to cop-off with someone after they’ve been to one of those glitzy parties and I don’t think I would be any different. Anyway, if I was mega famous and skint, I could always go to a party wearing something a bit naughty and get interviewed by the News of the World for a few quid.
Mega famous people probably get lots of free stuff when they open things, so I’d make sure I opened lots of supermarkets…and shoe shops of course. Stinking rich people tend to want to keep it all to themselves. That would rule Olivia out; she can’t keep anything to herself, especially her bed.
When you go on Celebrities on Ice in the Jungle, what will you miss most about everyday life?
Precious Little, Watchet, Somerset
Tracy: Hi, Precious. I’d probably miss daydreaming about going on Celebrities on Ice in the Jungle.
What is your beauty routine and do you have any tips for your uglier fans?
Poppy Belcher, Diss, Norfolk
Tracy: Hello, We used to have a dog called Poppy but we got rid of her because she farted all the time and Dad was sick of getting the blame.
I don’t spend much time in front of the mirror because my housemate, Kiwi, will almost certainly be using it every time I want it. I’m lucky in that I can get away without having to do too much. Kiwi spends hours tarting herself up, and she still ends up looking like she’s let her seven year old sister do her face for her.
My best tip would be to buy the best make up you can afford. Don’t go for that crappy stuff they sell on the market, most of it doubles up as paint stripper. If you can’t afford good stuff, get some new friends who can. Girls are always on the lookout for ugly friends, as they make them look better on a night out. They’ll almost certainly let you use their make up if it means they’ll stand out in a crowd of munters.
Spotty Irene doesn’t look too good at times because of the terrible acne she suffers from. It doesn’t stop her trying to do something about it though. She once went to a fancy dress party, with a brown paper bag on her head. She told them she’d come as shopping.
There are a few ways of hiding your hideousness. You could be mysterious and wear a dark veil, but then people might just think you like going to funerals.
If you’re really ugly and desperate for a bloke, my tip would be to find one who wears specs like the bottom of beer glasses. If their eyes are that bad they probably still won’t be able to see out of them properly. Of course you could just do what Olivia does, let blokes know you’re available, that always works after they’ve had ten pints.
If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play you?
Scarlet Shufflebottom, Hollywood, Birmingham
Tracy: It would have to be Lady Gaga or someone classy like that.
What do you keep in your handbag?
Tarquin DeVere, Odness, Orkney Islands
Tracy: Hmm, you ought to know, Tarquin. It was you that opened it up in front of everyone at that student’s party. Playing mousy on a string with a Tampax wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be, funny.
For anyone who doesn’t know though, apart from the usual girly things like panty liners, a sanitary towel and a spare pair of knickers, I have a my phone, ipod, lip gloss, mascara, compact, needle and thread, a condom, hair scrunch, brush, comb, purse, bus pass, pen, notepad, tissues, mints, tube of superglue, attack alarm and mace spray.
What possession could you not do without?
Billy Lillycrap, Quidhampton, Hampshire
Tracy: My TV. I couldn’t live without Strictly and X Factor. If I’m allowed more I’d have to say my laptop and my fake Gucci bag…Oh and my signed photo of Beckham in his Speedos.
If you were a type of vegetable, what would you be?
Moonchild, a field in Glastonbury
Tracy: You’d have to ask my flatmate, Kiwi that, she’s the hippy, and she’s named after a fruit.
If you were abducted by aliens, what would be the first question you’d ask them?
Prof. Mycroft Nutt, Lower Piddle on the March, Glos.
Tracy: Do you get the X Factor in the Vernuvian Quadrant?
Who do you think you were in a past life?
Napoleon Bonaparte, Crackpot, North Yorkshire
Tracy: I sometimes have strange dreams about snakes, so Cleopatra probably.
Hi, I’m Tracy of Tracy’s Hot Mail fame and I’m so excited to tell you about the new book that’s going to be written about me.
If you can remember that far back, I was first seen in a book called Tracy’s Hot Mail where I shared all the office gossip from when I started my first job. The second book was called Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail and that was all about me and my new career as a D list celebrity, appearing at my local Asda store with a plastic knife and a stock of inch-long chunks of crusty bread, posing as Mary from the Dairy, (Mary Spreads Them For You) trying to persuade people to buy their new tub of soft butter. I also appeared in a Get Me Out of Here clone event called Babes in the Wood with that hot lesbian celebrity, Fanny Tickle.
The new book is all about me as I leave my wild teen years behind and hit my twenties (though there will be a few revealing extracts from the diary I kept in my last year at school. ) I’m going to let you have a bird’s eye view into my doings. (That sounds like something Gran might say after spending an hour on the loo, grunting and cursing. Her bowels aren’t what they used to be, bless her.)
You’ll find I’m a lot more sophisticated now, at least I think I am. I’ll still be dishing the dirt on that old tart, Olivia though. Did you know some fool actually got her pregnant and married her? Not that it lasted, the old slapper was caught in fragrant … is that how you say it? in the back of a van with an East European painter and decorator called Ivan. Once a tart…
There’s even more exciting news to come, but I’ll leave that until my new publisher, Spellbound Books Ltd announce it. Suffice to say, you’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more about me on all social media platforms.
If you’d rather read the story on your tablet, phone of computer, you can download it from the link above.
Journal: 1st November. 2011.
I’m sick to death of these bloody Zombies, they are everywhere now. I can’t walk down the street without being accosted by them. They’re in the library, my local pub, and the gym. When I’m at home they squash their faces up against my windows and peer through my letterbox. I can’t escape them. They don’t want to bite me, eat me or rip off bits of my body, it’s much worse than that. They want to recite poetry to me.
It’s a waste of time trying to hide from them, they smell my fear. They know that as soon as I hear the opening line of ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ I break out in a cold sweat. They could sniff me out hiding in lead box in a disused tin mine.
I wasn’t always afraid of poetry, I used to quite like Pam Ayers on that TV talent show. It’s the repetition that gets to me, the dreadful monotone chanting. Hearing one Zombie do it is bad enough but when there are thirty, fifty…
That’s how they turn you. They don’t need to bite. It’s a slow brainwashing process and its effects are devastating. My girlfriend and my two best friends have already succumbed. One day they were normal people headbanging to Metallica, the next they were sticking their heads through my open bathroom window mumbling some Scottish nonsense about a wee timorous beastie.
I bumped into then again when I went to steal supplies from the looted supermarket. They were staggering along the High Street with about half a dozen others, arms held in front, fixed stare, bits of rotting flesh dropping everywhere. Pam spotted me as I came out with my box of scavenged food. I started to run but tripped over a discarded foot and went my length on the tarmac. Before I could get to my feet, my ears were assailed by an horrific recital of a Lord Byron lament.
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth,
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon returned to Earth!
After the tenth reprise I could stand it no longer and I kicked, spat and fought my way from beneath their fixed eyes and cruel tongues. I ran like the hounds of hell were on my tail and made it back home, bruised and soiled, but still able to sing Stairway to Heaven.
An enjoyable tale of secrets, ambition and obsession.
Claire thinks she has everything. A beautiful house in the exclusive Sandbanks area of Dorset, a ten-year-old son she dotes on and a successful, if too often absent, husband, Max.
Happy to play the role of the stay-at-home mum Claire gets involved with a local community choir and spends her time working on the final touches to their newly refurbished home as she looks after Julia, her mum who is staying with the family after suffering a mini-stroke.
Max is the ambitious owner of a successful leisure company who is conducting a passionate, secret affair with the scheming, Anabelle, the beautiful owner of a rival leisure-based business who is intent on keeping the secret of her dark past, away from Max.
Anabelle feels a desperate need to control the lives of everyone that comes into her orbit, including the love life of her company manager. Jealous to the point of obsession, Anabelle plans her wedding without consulting her, ‘fiancée’ Max, whilst plotting to be rid of. ‘Clingy,’ her nickname for Claire.
Into the mix steps Adam, the strikingly handsome landscaper who has been brought in to clean up Claire’s extensive gardens that had been damaged during the house renovations.
With Adam causing more than a flutter in the chest of both Claire and Julia, and with Anabelle’s interference reaching new heights, can Claire’s marriage survive the increased tensions?
As usual with a Joy Wood novel, the characters are both believable and consistent. The plot is solid and intriguing. I read this enthralling book over two nights, reluctant to put it down, even for much needed sleep.
My review of Carfax House. A Christmas story by Shani Struthers.
Not your run of the mill ghost story.
Carfax House is not your usual run of the mill ghost story, but then Shani Struthers is not your usual run of the mill author.
Set in the desolate winter landscape of the Leicestershire countryside, Carfax House sits alone in its overgrown, briar tangled acres. Neglected for too long, the big house has fallen into disrepair and is badly in need of more than a little TLC.
Step in, Lizzie and Al, a London journalist married to a criminal lawyer who see an opportunity on a property website. Sure, the old house will need some work and it will cost, but with the money they can get from selling their nicely appointed London apartment and their combined incomes, they should be able to afford to restore the old house to something close to its former glory. Besides, Lizzie thinks to herself, what woman wouldn’t want to saunter down that beautiful open staircase wearing a designer creation to the wide-eyed acclaim of her party guests?
So, the flat is sold and the deal is done. Carfax House, bought unseen, awaits their arrival.
I won’t go into too much detail of the story as I don’t want to spoil it for future readers but what I will say is that Carfax House has great depth and tackles issues that other authors steer well clear of. As I said earlier, this is not a run of the mill ghost story, it is a story of loss, of isolation, of desperate emotions.
Carfax House is all about memories. The repressed memory of childhood, dreadful memories of a shameful family secret that a mother and daughter weave a web of lies to attempt to hide, and the memories of an old house, memories that are baked into the bricks and mortar. Memories that make the floorboards creak, memories hidden behind a small but strong, oak door built into the walls of bedroom six.
You will be able to read this one in bed without scaring yourself silly. It’s not that kind of book, but by the time you reach the end, you will have been so eloquently informed about the brutality of mental illness and how it was endured by two families born a hundred years apart.
This book gets a well-deserved five-star rating from me. I lost myself in this short novel for a few hours, reading it in one session, broken only by my need to fuel my long-standing coffee addiction.
After posting up a free download of my kid’s Christmas Story, The Little Christmas Tree, I was asked if I had one for adults. So here it is; A Christmas story for grown ups.
At twelve o’clock we sat in the tea shop in town looking out of the fogged-up window as we sipped our hot drinks and nibbled at the dry cake that tasted as though it had spent a day too long under the glass counter. Stephen, bored as usual, began to draw with his finger in the condensation on the shop window. After twenty minutes I put him out of his misery and we got to our feet and made for the door, moving aside to allow a pair of elderly ladies to enter.
‘Thank you, dears,’ the first of the pensioners smiled at the children. ‘I’m ready for a cuppa, I’m parched.’
‘I wouldn’t bother with the sponge cake,’ Stephen advised. ‘You’ll be even parchder.’ He looked at me quizzically as I tried to usher him out of the café before he got us into trouble. ‘Is parchder a word?’ he asked.
Outside, the Saturday lunchtime streets were full of shoppers. Jam-packed buses trundled along the narrow town roads as the half day Saturday workers made their way home from the factories. The bustling market place echoed with the shouts of, ‘Plums, get your lovely plums, they’re big, they’re beautiful just like your… mums,’ and ‘sprouts and cabbage, fresher than your lodger, put it on a plate for him, girls, he’ll love you for it.’
Just to frighten even more readers away I’ve had some professional author photos done. Many thanks to Paul Haynes from the Old Mill studio, Belper St. Ilkeston for the fabulous images.
My October Newsletter is now being sent out. If you’d like to subscribe please click the following link to get regular updates on new books, competitions and a few fun facts.
As publication day approaches, I’m delighted to reveal the full cover of my Christmas novel, Hopes and Fears, designed as always by the wonderful Jane Dixon-Smith of JDSmith-Design
Set in Christmas 1940 the story tells the tale of Alice and her best friend Amy who are determined to reunite Stephen and Harriet, Alice’s evacuees, with their mother, Rose, who is lost in the Blitz.
Christmas 1940. Despite the rationing and the Blackout, excitement at Mollison Farm is building as Alice and her workforce prepare for the annual Christmas Eve party. The snow has arrived, bang on time.
And this year, Alice has a big secret.
She has invited her evacuee children’s mother to spend a few precious days with her kids at Christmas, but disaster strikes and Alice is given the shock news that Rose’s home is now nothing more than a pile of bricks and the woman herself is missing, lost in the Blitz.
Amy, Alice’s best friend is despatched to the capital in a race against time, to find Rose and if possible, get her out of London.
As the search intensifies and the bombs start to fall again, Amy meets Rose’s sleazy husband Terry, a draft dodger, and Kevin, the ARP man with something to hide.
Meanwhile, on the farm, Stephen and Harriet discover the truth about their mother’s disappearance and Alice finds herself having to deal with the consequences.
The snow will fall and the farmyard carols will be sung, but will it be a happy Christmas on Mollison Farm?
I am delighted to announce that the Unspoken Trilogy, consisting of The Dual Timeline Family sagas, Unspoken, The Legacy and The Reckoning have now been released as a single box set volume on Amazon.
I am beyond delighted to reveal the fabulous cover for my work in progress, the Unspoken Christmas Novella, Hopes and Fears.
As usual, the cover has been designed by the wonderfully talented, Jane Dixon Smith of JD Smith Design
The story is set at Christmas in 1940 where Alice is at the farm with her young daughter, Martha and her two evacuee children, Harriet and Stephen who are both excited at the prospect of receiving a visit from their mother, Rose, who still lives in blitz ravaged London.
The village of Kirkby Sutton is a conglomerate and an enigma. Formed by the merging of two villages that had outgrown their ability to remain separate as an entity, it nevertheless retains two extremely different and specific identities. One half, as its name suggests, is built around the church and is a (mainly) well-to-do haven of respectability with its Georgian Manor, leafy wide-verged streets lined with large, detached houses, driveways, off road parking and a library. There is also a small 1960s estate, a mix of three bedroomed, privately-owned houses, with an enclave of housing association tenants bolted on for political expediency.
Down the hill, the other half of the village contains a higgledy-piggledy, hotchpotch of stone cottages, modern town houses and rows of Victorian terraces, originally built for the employees at the local lace factory, brewery and estate workers, who made the short trip up the road to toil on the farms of Lord Beresford on the other side of the village. Nowadays, the descendants of those workers still live in the red brick terraces but are mostly employed by industries in the nearby cities of Nottingham and Derby.
The rivalry of its residents compares to any found in much larger towns and cities. You would be hard pressed to find as much animosity at a local Derby football match in Liverpool or Manchester. The annual village fair, which includes a fiercely fought tug-of-war competition, held on a boozy bank holiday weekend, regularly turns violent. For years, a police sergeant from the small town of Higton was paid to referee the event, but when the ageing sergeant retired and the police station was closed down to save money in the 1950s, the residents were left to sort out their own mess, so a committee, made up of the vicar’s wife and a group of teetotal residents from both sides, sat in sober judgment over the proceedings. To this day, the committee still rules on complaints and accusations made by one side against the other. Most of the grievances are easily dismissed, but on a few occasions a vote has to be taken with the chairperson, a lady with no connection to either side of the village holding the casting vote.
I am delighted to announce the release of the eBook version of my new novel, The Reckoning.
The Reckoning is the third and final part of the Unspoken trilogy, following on from the original Unspoken novel and the sequel, The Legacy.
The Official back of the book blurb.
Unspoken Book Three. The Reckoning.
After a fractious few months trying to appease her dysfunctional family, Jessica Griffiths realises that her great grandmother Alice’s legacy has become a millstone around her neck.
With her feisty elderly relatives cruising around the South China Sea she is hoping for a less stressful time, but when Leonora, the meddling ex-wife of her lawyer boyfriend begins to plot and with her own ex, Calvin unable to accept that their relationship is over, she begins to feel the pressure mounting again.
Into the mix walks Josh, the handsome young café owner. Jess is drawn to him immediately. Will he be the one to finally break the Mollison man curse?
Jessica discovers new family secrets as she continues to read through Alice’s wartime diaries but more shocks await as Martha hands over her own disturbing memoirs.
With the cruise ship in trouble and problems nearer to home, Jess finds herself at the centre of another family maelstrom.
Feeling desperately alone and with the weight of the world on her shoulders, can she weather the storm with her family and sanity intact?
I am delighted to announce that The Reckoning is now complete and will be published in eBook format during the week beginning the 18-7-21. The paperback version requires more time to proof for printing so will be a couple of weeks later.
The Reckoning is the third and final book in the Unspoken series and follows on from, Unspoken and The Legacy. It will also be the final time you see this set of characters together in a book.
The back of the book blurb.
Unspoken. Part Three
After a fractious few months trying to appease her dysfunctional family, Jessica Griffiths realises that her great grandmother Alice’s legacy has become a millstone around her neck.
With her feisty elderly relatives cruising around the South China Sea she is hoping for a less stressful time, but when Leonora, the meddling ex-wife of her lawyer boyfriend begins to plot and with her own ex, Calvin unable to accept that their relationship is over, she begins to feel the pressure mounting again.
Into the mix walks Josh, the handsome young café owner. Jess is drawn to him immediately. Will he be the one to finally break the Mollison man curse?
Jessica discovers new family secrets as she continues to read through Alice’s wartime diaries but more shocks await as Martha hands over her own disturbing memoirs.
With the cruise ship in trouble and problems nearer to home, Jess finds herself at the centre of another family maelstrom.
Feeling desperately alone and with the weight of the world on her shoulders, can she weather the storm with her family and sanity intact?
‘Don’t forget we’re all going to Old Jack Tanner’s funeral tomorrow. They’re having a special evening service to allow as many people as possible to pay their respects.’
‘I haven’t forgotten, Barney. It’s not often we get to say goodbye to a local hero.’
‘The funeral is taking place at six-thirty. It’s family only in the church but we’re all allowed to line the path from the lychgate to the front porch. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t get half the town turning out.’
I walked slowly back to the farmhouse, deep in thought. Old Jack had been almost eighty. He had part-owned a small fishing boat that was kept at Margate. During June, Jack and his younger brother, Cecil, answered the government call and had met up with the rest of Operation Dynamo’s little ships at Ramsgate where they sailed across the channel to Dunkirk to rescue our army that was besieged there. Not satisfied with rescuing a dozen men, as soon as they had disembarked, he set off again to bring back another dozen, but on that trip, he caught a bullet in his back, a wound from which he never fully recovered.
On Wednesday evening, we arrived at the church to find hundreds of people lining the pavements waiting for the horse-drawn carriage carrying Old Jack’s coffin to arrive. Barney, Miriam, Stephen, Harriet and all of our remaining farm workers, found a place on the paved avenue that led from the lychgate to the church. By the time the hearse arrived, the crowd was three deep on either side of the path. We broke into spontaneous applause as Jack’s younger brother, Cecil, led Old Jack and his family down the hill towards the church. At the entrance, on either side, a dozen soldiers stood to attention and saluted as the coffin was carried in.
Forty minutes later, the soldiers saluted again as Jack was carried out. By now, as Barney had predicted, it seemed that half of the residents of the town were lining the pathway, or standing among the gravestones to see our own hero off.
No doubt, over the next few years, many a local hero will pass through the lychgate, or will be remembered in our prayers at the cenotaph on Armistice Day, but today was special, we buried our first.
I had managed to hold it together until, as the coffin passed us by, Stephen, our child evacuee, stood rigid and saluted as though the king himself was standing in front of him. I placed my hand on his back and wept as I thought about the fathers, husbands and sons that Old Jack had rescued and how grateful they and their families must be feeling to an old man who had done his bit. Then I thought about our farm’s own heroes, the lads who had signed up on the first day of war and had been sent off to fight and maybe die in some foreign land. We had heard nothing from any of them since July, when Benny’s pregnant wife received a heavily redacted letter, saying he was alive and well and looking forward to seeing us all again.
I’m not a particularly religious person, but as Old Jack’s coffin was lowered into his newly dug grave, I sent up a prayer to God, asking him to receive our hero into his care, then I begged him to ask his angels to keep an eye on our farm boys, wherever they were in the world.
It’s here at last. The Legacy has been released on Amazon UK. Amazon.com are a few hours behind and the book will be released shortly.
The Legacy
In Unspoken, Alice is the feisty, almost 100-year-old who shares a dark secret with Jessica, her great granddaughter. She is also the naïve 18-year-old who, following the death of her father in 1938 is forced to take over the running of the family farm, whilst single and pregnant. In The Legacy, her voice crosses the decades again as she gives her take on the events leading to the start of WW2.
Jessica
Jessica is a journalist researching a novel based on Alice’s memoirs. She is in a relationship with the narcissist, Calvin. In The Legacy, we find out how that relationship has evolved and whether either of them can move on.
Martha. The Matriarch
In Unspoken we learned about Martha’s strained relationship with her mother, Alice. In The Legacy we find out much more about Martha and her motives.
Marjorie The Mouse
Marjorie is Alice’s youngest daughter. A spinster who hides behind her older sister’s skirts.
Nicola and Owen. Addicted to drink, gambling, and each other.
In Unspoken, Jessica’s parents have their own issues, both with Alice and Jessica. In The Legacy, their problems burst like an untreated abscess.
Bradley
The handsome lawyer with a link to Alice’s past.
Ewan
The charity worker who has been in love with Jessica since their schooldays.
In Unspoken, Alice is the feisty, almost 100-year-old who shares a dark secret with her great granddaughter. She is also the naïve young girl who, following the death of her father in 1938 is forced to take over the running of the family farm, whilst single and pregnant. In The Legacy, her voice crosses the decades again as she relates the events that lead up to the start of WW2.
Jessica
Jessica is a journalist researching a novel based on Alice’s memoirs. She is in a relationship with the narcissist, Calvin. In The Legacy, we find out how that relationship has evolved and whether either of them can move on.
Martha. The Matriarch
In Unspoken we learned about Martha’s strained relationship with her mother, Alice. In The Legacy we find out much more about Martha and her motives.
Marjorie The Mouse
Marjorie is Alice’s youngest daughter. A spinster who hides behind her older sister’s skirts.
Nicola and Owen. Addicted to drink, gambling, and each other.
In Unspoken, Jessica’s parents have their own issues, both with Alice and Jessica. In The Legacy, their problems burst like an untreated abscess.
Bradley
The handsome lawyer with a link to Alice’s past.
Ewan
The charity worker who has been in love with Jessica since their schooldays.
The Legacy continues the story of Jessica Griffiths and her fractious relationship with her grandmother, Martha, her gambling addicted father and her narcissistic ex, Calvin who refuses to accept that their relationship is over.
Jessica an aspiring novelist, is writing a book based on her great grandmother’s hand written memoirs. Still grieving for Alice, she receives a telephone call that will change her life, and her relationship with her family, forever.
During the process she meets Bradley, a handsome young lawyer. Calvin, meanwhile, believes he can work his way back into Jess’s life by fair means or foul.
When Martha, the matriarch, complains that she hasn’t been treated fairly, she puts pressure on her granddaughter to ‘do the right thing.’ Meanwhile, Jessica’s father returns with the loan sharks on his tail.
As Jessica prays that the ‘man curse’ which has plagued the women in her family for generations, has finally been vanquished, she meets the beautiful, calculating, Leonora, a woman with a secret and a fondness for mischief.
I am delighted to reveal the fabulous cover for my next novel, the sequel to the family saga, Unspoken. I’d like to thank the wonderful Jane Dixon Smith, http://www.janedixonsmith.co.uk/ for the stunning artwork. I am truly delighted with it.
The Legacy, is still a work in progress, but I hope to release the book in late March early April, hopefully on the Authors Reach platform.
The novel continues the story of Jessica Griffiths and her ongoing relationship and family problems.
I am delighted to announce that my new, cosy crime novel, Murder at the Mill is released today on the KDP platform. The paperback version will follow shortly and the audiobook, sometime in the New Year.
The book features a few of the characters from my last novel, Unspoken and is set in the English county of Kent in 1939. Amy, a machinist at The Mill, a clothing factory, is drawn into a murder investigation when she meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin on her way to work one morning.
I’d like to thank two wonderfully talented ladies who have helped me produce the novel.
Maureen Vincent-Northam, my fab editor and Jane Dixon-Smith my brilliantly creative cover designer. You can find her here should you need a beautifully designed cover for you own book. www.jdsmith-design.com
Cosy Crime is a new genre for me but I hope Murder at the Mill will be the first in a series of Amy Rowlings mystery books. For those waiting for a sequel to Unspoken, I hope this book will keep you going until Unspoken 2 arrives in 2021.
The Cover for my upcoming novel, Murder at the Mill is revealed today. Once again, it has been designed by the fabulous Jane Dixon Smith. http://www.jdsmith-design.com/
To say that I’m blown away by it is an understatement. Murder at the Mill is my first cosy crime novel and is a spin off book using one of the minor characters from my Family Saga, Dual Timeline, novel, Unspoken and will be published in early December in both Kindle and Paperback formats.
Murder at the Mill. A Gripping New Cosy Crime Series with a light hearted touch.
January 1939 and the residents of the snow-covered streets of a small Kentish town awake to horrific news.
When young Amy Rowlings meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin at the scene of a burglary on the way to work at The Mill one snowy January morning, she is blissfully unaware of how much her life is about to change.
She is drawn into the murky world of murder when the body of Edward Handsley is found lying on the floor of the clothing factory.
Edward, the son of factory owner George is a libertine, philanderer, and a young man with a lot of enemies, many of them female.
Twenty-one-year-old Amy is a vivacious, quick-witted collector of imported American music, a movie buff and an avid reader of crime fiction. A girl who can spot whodunnit long before the film star detective gets an inkling.
Bodkin is new to the area and accepts Amy’s offer to provide local knowledge but she soon becomes an invaluable source of information.
When Adam Smethwick is arrested for the murder, Amy, a family friend, is convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove that the detective has arrested the wrong man.
Amy befriends Justine, the young French fiancé of the elderly George, and soon discovers that it was not all sweetness and light in the Handsley family home. Meanwhile, back at the factory, Amy is sure that the foreman, Mr Pilling, has something to hide.
As the investigation proceeds, Amy finds that her burgeoning relationship with Bodkin is pushed to the limits as the detective becomes even more convinced that he has arrested the right man and while Bodkin relies heavily on the facts as they are presented, Amy has a more nuanced approach to solving the crime, born out of her beloved Agatha Christie books and the crimes she has witnessed in the movies.
The Unspoken blog tour continues apace with a fantastic review from Neats, part of the Damppebbles Blog Tour.
‘If family saga’s and dual time novels are your thing, you’d be hard pushed to find a more enjoyable one than Unspoken. It’s got drama, love, intrigue, revenge and secrets – so basically everything you need for a captivating read and that’s exactly what I thought it was.’
Both Amy and the detective turned towards the sound of the angry voice. Walking towards them was a fifty-year-old, thickset man, wearing a light-grey trilby and a heavy, double breasted, overcoat. He stamped his booted feet on the cold concrete of the loading bay floor and scowled at Bodkin.
‘This had better be bloody good, Bodkin. I’m supposed to be driving my wife to her mother’s in Tunbridge Wells this morning and, if Mrs Laws isn’t happy, then you can guarantee, Inspector Laws won’t be happy, either.’ A look of pain came over his face. ‘It’s a long drive to Tunbridge.’
Bodkin straightened and pushed his feet together. Amy thought he was going to salute, but instead he snapped out a quick report.
‘There’s a body inside, Sir. The deceased is the factory owner’s son, one Edward Handley. He appears to have been attacked in the repair shop, which is to the left of the loading bay doors. The body is in the spare-parts section, which is connected to the main repair room. We don’t know yet how long the It has been there as the night shift maintenance team had no reason to go into that area during their stint, so Mr Handley could have been lying there since the shifts changed over, yesterday evening.’
Bodkin stopped his report, waiting for a response from his superior, but when nothing came, he continued.
‘The deceased is lying on his front; he has suffered a traumatic head wound on the right hand side of his head. There is a large, adjustable pipe wrench, lying at the floor at his feet.’
Bodkin stopped again.
‘That’s about it so far, Sir.’
Laws looked past Bodkin to the interior of the loading bay.
‘Who reported it?’ he asked without looking at the sergeant.
‘One of the maintenance crew, Sir. He discovered it at six thirty this morning when he turned up for work. The two teams meet in the repair shop for a shift report before they begin their daily checks. The night crew let the new team know of any incidents they encountered with the machinery during—’
‘I think I can guess what sort of things they report, Sergeant,’ snapped Laws. He turned his attention to Amy. ‘Who is this? Don’t tell me the bloody press have got hold of it already.’
‘No, Sir. This is Miss Rowlings. She works here.’
‘Here! Outside in the freezing cold?’
Bodkin did his best not to bite. He allowed Inspector Laws to get under his skin, far too easily.
‘Miss Rowlings is a machinist, Sir.’
Laws pushed his head towards Amy. ‘Then, why aren’t you at your machine, doing what they pay you to do?’ he barked.
‘I’m just going,’ replied Amy, quietly. ‘I was…’ her voice tailed off, not wanting to add to Bodkin’s problems.
Bodkin, spotting Amy’s nervousness under the inspector’s scrutiny, came to her assistance. ‘I was just asking Miss Rowlings when she last saw Mr Handley alive, Sir.’
Laws shrugged. ‘And…’
Amy responded quickly. ‘Five-thirty yesterday evening, Mr Laws. He was standing by those doors as the staff were clocking out.’
‘Inspector Laws,’ the detective corrected her.
‘Inspector,’ repeated Amy.
‘Right, get to your machine. There will be a team of officers deployed to take statements from all members of staff later this morning so, if you remember anything else, that’s the time to bring it up.’ The inspector narrowed his eyes and issued a dire warning. ‘If you breathe a word of what you have just heard out here, to anyone, and I mean, anyone, I will have you up for accessory to murder. Do I make myself clear?’
Laws dismissed Amy with a flick of his head and turned back to Bodkin.
‘Let’s have a look at the scene of the crime, Sergeant.’ Laws pushed his way past the stragglers, still being directed to their places of work by the foreman, and stepped into the loading bay looking at his wristwatch. ‘Today, of all days,’ he muttered.
Bodkin beckoned PC Davies towards him.
‘I want you outside the door of the maintenance room, Davies. No one goes in or out without my express permission, do you understand?’
Davies nodded and took a quick look at the figure of Laws as he entered the factory.
‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘Constable, if you had met Mrs Laws, you’d know that whichever side of the bed you got out of, it would be the wrong one.’
Bodkin turned to follow his superior officer into the building. At the entrance to the repair shop he stopped and looked back at Davies. ‘Once those few are in, shut those doors. Parkins and Wallis can keep watch over the yard, and cheer up, man, you’re inside in the warm this time.’
When Amy reached the changing room, she found it to be a hotbed of conspiracy theories. Everyone seemed to have a different idea of who had killed Edward, and by what means he had been dispatched.
Margaret Beech, a seamstress of some forty years’ experience, claimed to have, ‘cast-iron, proof’ that that Edward’s sister, Beatrice, had done the deed, whilst the twin sisters, Sarah and Louise Keddleston, both thought that he had taken his own life after being outed as a homosexual. Neither of the rather portly, forty-five-year olds had been the subject of Edward’s amorous attentions and that fact formed the basis of their theory.
Jennifer and a few other trainees, were under the impression that Mr Handley had been shot. Rachel, another trainee, even claimed to have heard the bullet being fired when she took a toilet break at three-thirty the previous afternoon. No one contradicted her, even though he was seen alive on the loading bay at five-thirty.
Katie Hubsworth, who worked on the machine behind Amy, insisted that he had been repeatedly stabbed, while her next-door neighbour, Wilhelmina, told everyone within earshot that she had been informed by the policeman on the door, who was a Saturday drinking partner of her husband, Bernard, that he had been strangled with his own cravat.
Carole twisted the handle of her locker, pulled it shut, and ambled over to Amy.
‘Well, this is a strange state of affairs isn’t it? Hark at this lot. He’s already been stabbed, garrotted, shot, battered, choked, decapitated and disembowelled, not to mention committing suicide. You’d think they’d have more sense than speculating like this. A man has lost his life for pity’s sake.’
‘You can’t blame them,’ said Amy, looking around the room. Twenty conversations were taking place at once. She had to raise her own voice to be heard amongst the babble of noise. ‘It’s the most excitement they’ve had in years. The last time they got so animated was when old George Blenkinsop fell under a bus, and that was five years ago. Some of them are still adamant that he was pushed.’
Carole rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘He was drunk, wasn’t he?’ She leaned closer to Amy. ‘Look, I don’t want to add to the mountain of conspiracies, but what have you heard?’
‘I can’t tell you. I’ll be in trouble if I do.’
Carole’s eyes opened wide.
‘You do know something then? Come on, out with it, you know you can trust me.’
‘I’ll tell you later on, when all the witness statements have been taken,’ replied Amy. ‘I do know how he was killed… and I do trust you, honestly, but that grumpy inspector out there told me that if I breathe a word of it to anyone, I’ll be in court myself. I can’t risk being overheard, Carole.’
Carole was appeased. ‘Fair enough, but if you tell anyone before you tell me, you’ll be up in the court of Carole and I’ll be the judge, jury and executioner.’
Before Amy could reply, the door burst open and an angry, red-faced, Mr Pilling stood in the opening.
‘What the hell are you lot doing in here. Get to your machines this instant or the whole shift will be docked an hour’s pay.’
Locker doors slammed and the foreman was unceremoniously brushed aside as thirty women, still chattering among themselves, rushed past him to get to their work stations. Amy and Carole were last out. As she walked by him, Mr Pilling grabbed her elbow.
‘I don’t know how you managed to hang around out there for so long, Rowlings, and it’s a good job that police sergeant vouched for you, because I was about to issue you with a verbal warning. That’s the second time in twenty-four hours he’s done that. He seems to care more for your employment status than you do.’ The foreman pointed to the shop floor. ‘Now, get on that machine, I expect ten percent more from you by way of finished garments today, and there had better be no shoddy work, either.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a common or garden machinist, Amy, not an amateur sleuth. Stay away from those policemen.’
At nine o’clock, the first of the machinists was called into the canteen to give a statement about their whereabouts and actions the previous day. Mr Pilling began with the workers in line five, the closest to the canteen. That week, Amy was working on line two. She kept a watchful eye on proceedings as she stitched together the parts of her allocated garments. By ten o’clock, she was well up on her usual rate, she was determined to get the extra ten percent done, it was a matter of honour. The bonus pay she would receive for producing the additional dresses, would be welcome too. Her uncle, who imported the latest records from America, had managed to get hold of a copy of the new Al Donahue release, Jeepers Creepers, and he had put it aside for her.
Amy hummed an old Bing Crosby song as she worked. She was brought out of her reverie when she felt a tug at her sleeve. It as Emily Frost, who was working on the second machine on line two.
‘They want you next, Amy,’ she said.
‘Me? but there are a couple of dozen to go yet.’
‘I know, but they told me to get you. I couldn’t say no.’
Amy stood up, brushed the loose pieces of cotton from her pinafore and walked smartly along her line of machines. At the end she turned left and crossed the room to the wide, blue painted, double doors at the far corner of the workshop. She felt forty pairs of eyes burning a hole into the back of her head as she went. The buzz of sudden conversations seemed to rise about the noise of the machines.
Amy walked slowly down the three steps to the floor of the canteen. On the front row of tables were a line of uniformed policemen scratching details into notebooks as they questioned the factory workers. In the centre of the second row, sat Inspector Laws. Next to him was a police constable with an open notebook and a pen in his left hand. He seemed eager to be writing. Standing behind the constable was Bodkin. He raised his hand and gave her a quick wave and a nervous looking smile.
‘Ah, Miss Rowlings.’ Laws beckoned her towards him. As she approached, he stood and addressed the policemen on the front row. ‘When you have finished this batch of statements, get yourselves a cup of tea, go to the back of the room and wait until I give the order to resume.’ He turned back to Amy, who was standing patiently at the side of the Formica-topped, table. He reached across and pulled a low-backed chair towards him. ‘Sit,’ he commanded.
Amy sat. The inspector tapped his foot impatiently until the last of the interviewees had left the canteen and the policemen had lined up for their drinks.
Laws studied a hand-written sheet from the notebook on the table, flipped a page, then turned it back again.
‘Miss Rowlings,’ he said, sternly. ‘We have been given evidence that you had a confrontation with Edward Handley as recently as yesterday.’ A cold look came across his face. ‘Is this true?’
Amy silently cursed Carole, who had been the only person she had told about the incident. She was puzzled as to how the inspector had got hold of the information, as her best friend hadn’t yet been called in for questioning. Something was amiss.
‘Yes, that is true,’ she said. ‘He came into the changing room at lunchtime, while I was there.’
‘I see,’ Laws read the statement again. He flipped over two more pages as he saw Amy twist her neck in an attempt to see who had given the evidence. ‘So, this altercation. What brought it about?’
‘I don’t really want to speak ill of the dead, Inspector.’
‘You’ll tell me what occurred, and you’ll tell me in detail, or I’ll have you carted off to the nick right now.’ Laws made a fist and slammed it down, hard.
Amy sighed and took him through the details of the attack.
‘And was this something out of the ordinary?’ he asked.
‘He wasn’t called Wandering Handley for nothing,’ Amy replied.
The policeman at the inspector’s side, snorted. Laws gave him a withering look.
‘Wandering Handley? I’ll be honest with you, Miss Rowling, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that nickname this morning. Didn’t anyone think to report him?’
‘HA!’ Amy retorted. ‘And just what would have you lot have done about it. We’d have been risking our jobs and you wouldn’t have done a thing to help.’
‘You seem to have a very low opinion of the police, Miss Rowlings.’
‘Not at all. I think the police have an extremely difficult job and they do it very well in the main. But, when it comes to the abuse of women, you always seem to turn a blind eye. My best friend, Alice reported—’ Amy stopped, not wanting to bring Alice’s former relationship with her abusive partner into the conversation.
Laws made a note on a clean page of the notebook.
‘So, he allegedly attacked you. What then?’
‘There was no allegedly about it,’ snapped Amy. ‘He did it, I’ve probably still got the bruises.’
‘All right, let’s assume this attack actually took place. How did you get yourself out of the situation?’
‘I elbowed him in the throat and he went down like a sack of… coal,’ she replied.
Laws put down his pen, laid his forearms on the table and looked hard at Amy.
‘Is that when you threatened to kill him?’ he asked.
Amy rushed into the factory and found the foreman in the stock room, tallying the different bales of cotton materials that the machinists would be working on that week.
‘Sorry I’m late, Mr Pilling, but there’s been a burglary over the road. There’s a detective at the staff entrance who would like a word with you.’
The foreman checked his pocket watch.
‘Ten minutes late, you know the rules, you’ll be docked fifteen and if it happens again this month, you’ll lose a full hour.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, no excuses. Get to your machine now or you’ll be docked thirty minutes and receive a verbal warning. You can make up for this morning’s tardiness in your lunch break.’
Amy walked quickly to the staff changing area, took off her big coat and hung it on a peg along with her hat. Then she took a pinafore from her locker and wrapped it around her body, tying it off at the back. She hurried through to the factory floor and slumped down on her seat, before letting out a deep sigh and reaching down to her side to pick out her first garment of the day.
‘It’s not like you to be so slack,’ said Dora, who worked the machine next to Amy.
‘I was assisting the police with their inquiries,’ replied Amy, knowing that it would be the talk of the workshop before morning break. She smiled to herself and slid the part-finished cotton dress onto the plate of the overlocking machine and pressed her foot onto the pedal.
Amy was a diligent, hard working machinist and soon made up the time lost. When the bin on her left was almost empty, she called for the runner to bring her a new supply of dresses from the cutting room. By lunchtime her finished bin had been emptied twice and she was in front of her daily target.
To keep on the right side of Mr Pilling, Amy stayed at her machine for an extra fifteen minutes before heading off for lunch. By the time she reached the canteen, the other workers had eaten their sandwiches and were mostly sipping hot tea while they gossiped and lit cigarettes.
Amy bought a cup of tea and a buttered scone at the counter and not liking the smoky atmosphere of the canteen, she took her tray into the changing room, pulled a twice-read magazine from her locker and sat down to peruse the stills from the latest Hollywood movies.
After eating her scone, she stood up to shake the crumbs from her pinafore. There were a couple of stubborn ones stuck to her bosom, so she rubbed at them to shake them loose.
‘Let me give you a hand with that,’ said a voice she recognised instantly.
‘I’ll manage, thanks, Mr Handley.’ Amy forced a laugh and brushed down her clothes again. Before she could turn to face him, his hands came around her sides and he squeezed hard on her breasts.
‘You can call me Edward when there’s no one around. Ooh, you do have a nice pair, Amy.’ His breath felt hot on the back of her neck.
Amy struggled to move away but his grip was too strong. The next thing she knew, one of his hands had found its way up her dress.
‘GET OFF ME!’ Amy shouted and twisted in his loosened grip.
‘Come on, Amy, you know you like it.’ He pulled one leg back and kicked the door shut. His hand reached the bare area at the top of her stockings. She shoved her hips forwards before his groping fingers found their intended target.
‘Don’t struggle. You tried to defend your honour, so you can relax now. I won’t hurt you.’ His fingers pushed inside the elastic at the leg of her knickers.
Amy bent over and pushed her backside into him as hard as she could. Her movement caused him to lurch forwards, and as he straightened, her sharp elbow caught him in the throat. He fell back clutching at it, struggling to breath.
Amy left the cup and plate on the bench and hurried past the gasping factory owner’s son.
‘Never try anything like that again, or I’ll kill you,’ she spat.
Amy tore open the door, marched back to the canteen and dragged out a seat next to Carole, one of her closest friends at work.
Carole took one look at the furious Amy. It took her seconds to work out what had happened.
‘Wandering Handley?’
Amy stuck out her chin, bit her bottom lip and nodded quickly. ‘He caught me in the locker room.’
‘The filthy bastard needs teaching a lesson,’ said Carole with a frown. ‘It’s not right, he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it just because he’s the boss’s son.’
‘He grabbed my chest, then shoved his hand up my skirt. I was lucky to get away this time,’ Amy wiped away an angry tear. ‘He’s picked on me once too often.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I met a police detective this morning. He seemed a nice man, I wonder what he’d make of Edward sodding Handley? Surely there’s something the law can do to stop him.’
Carole patted her hand.
‘They won’t do anything, love. Don’t get your hopes up. Men, especially rich men, can do what they want with the likes of us.’
Amy sniffed and turned her hand over to squeeze Carole’s.
‘I know. But it’s wrong. Why do they allow them to get away with it?’
‘Men looking after other men,’ said Carole, sadly. ‘It’s always been the same.’
‘I’d report him but it would probably end up with me being sacked,’ said Amy. ‘I don’t really fancy working at Goodman’s, they’re slave drivers.’
‘Do your best to forget about it and don’t get caught alone again,’ advised Carole. ‘He tends to pick on a different girl every week. He’s left me alone since I kicked his shins.’
‘I elbowed him in the throat,’ said Amy. ‘I left him in a heap, choking.’
‘Good!’ replied Carole. ‘It’s the least he deserves.’
Ten minutes later, Amy nudged Carole and flicked her head in the direction of the canteen door.
‘Here he is, Wandering Handley himself,’ said Carole, loud enough for half the employees in the room to hear.
If he heard the remark himself, Edward Handley didn’t seem to be bothered by it. He shot a look of anger at Amy, then made a beeline to the table where the trainee machinists, most of them fifteen or sixteen years old, were sitting. He pulled out a chair, put a foot on it, smoothed back his creamed, black hair, and leaned over the table to make a comment to a girl called Ronnie, who laughed aloud and looked around to see if her friends had got the joke. The other girls, already wary of Edward, got to their feet and made their way out of the canteen.
‘Come on, Ronnie,’ called a tall girl named, Jennifer. ‘We’re on cutting duties this afternoon. Frigid Freda will be after you.’
Freda Brownlow was the factory’s skills instructor and was the owner of a sharp tongue and a fiery temper. She was nicknamed Frigid Freda because she was still single, at forty.
Ronnie stood up as Edward whispered something into her ear. She giggled, then pushed a soft hand into his chest. ‘Oh, you,’ she chuckled.
Edward turned around to see if the older girls on Amy’s table had noticed, to a woman they ignored his look and chatting between themselves, made their way out of the canteen.
Amy checked the clock and realising she had time to visit the lavatory before resuming her shift, hurried to the toilet block and let herself into a cubicle. When she came out, Edward was standing with his back to her, an arm around Ronnie’s shoulder and he was again whispering something in her ear. Amy was tempted to cough, or make some sort of noise to distract him, but after her run-in with him in the locker room, she decided not to play with fire and walked quietly back to her machine.
When Ronnie hurried across the shop floor a few minutes later, she was blushing, but had a huge grin on her face. Ignoring the caustic remarks aimed in her direction, she weaved a path through the machines to the cutting room where she knew Frigid Freda would be waiting.
The next morning, Amy stomped, slipped, slithered and skated her way along the mostly frozen pavement and walked through the factory gates. The maintenance team, who usually spent their time repairing broken machines, or setting up new ones, had spread half a ton of salt over the frozen yard in an attempt to avoid the three broken arms that had occurred during the previous winter. At the staff entrance, Amy noticed a huddle of male figures, who were speaking to each employee as they entered the building. Among them were three uniformed policemen and Detective Sergeant Bodkin.
Mr Pilling, the foreman, stood, like Lord Muck, snapping out instructions and directing the workers with a long arm.
‘Go straight to the locker room, then onto your machine. Do not linger, and keep away from the maintenance room.
‘Go straight to the secretary’s office. Keep away from the maintenance room.
‘Go directly to the cutting room, stay away from maintenance.’
As Amy reached the big, double door, Bodkin took her arm and pulled her to one side.
‘So, Miss Marple, we meet again.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Amy.
‘We’re keeping an open mind at the moment, but a serious incident has occurred inside the factory.’
‘A serious incident…Oh, my goodness… Something’s happened in the maintenance room, hasn’t it? Is that why we aren’t allowed in there?’ Amy put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
‘I’m not at liberty to—’
‘Divulge that information,’ Amy interrupted the detective. ‘Come on, Bodkin, I’ll find out the moment I get into the changing room anyway. You may as well tell me now.’
Bodkin took her arm again and led her away from the group of people at the door.
‘Fair enough, Miss… Amy. It’s the owner’s son. Edward Handley, he’s lying on the floor of the repair shop, and he’s stone dead.’
The shard of winter sun burst through the mass of black cloud like an archangel’s lance. The heavy snow that had fallen overnight, enveloped the thick layer that already covered the town, making the roads and verges indistinguishable from the pavements. January, 1939 had announced itself in spectacular style.
Amy Rowlings shielded her eyes as she trudged through the thick, white blanket, stepping into footprints made by earlier travellers in an attempt to keep the snow out of her ankle-high winter boots. Another day spent at her machine at Grayson’s Garments factory wearing cold, soggy, woollen socks, was something she could well do without. Locals called the factory, The Mill, because it produced cotton fabric back in the 1800s, nowadays the workforce spent their days manufacturing women’s clothing; anything from underwear to winter coats. Ahead, Mildred, a fellow machinist, tripped on a hidden kerbstone and fell headlong into a drift that had covered the short privet hedge that lined the pavement. Before Amy could reach her, she picked herself up, and cursing, turned through the huge, wrought-iron, gates into the factory yard, where the snow had already turned into a slushy mess by the hundred pairs of feet that had tramped over it when the night and day shifts changed over.
As Amy approached the gates, a car pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and a late-twenties, man, wearing a grey mackintosh, and a black fedora, opened the rear door and slid out in one movement.
He swore as he realised, too late, that the snow would cover his patent leather, brogue shoes, and looking up to the heavens, trudged around the front of the car before nodding to a uniformed policeman standing at the ornate, snow-tipped, iron gates that guarded the forecourt of Wainwright and Sons Builders Merchant. The policeman wiped his runny nose on his sleeve, shuffled his booted feet, and blew into his hands.
‘Cold one today, Sir.’
The man in the mac nodded and examined the police constable as he would an object left behind at the scene of a crime. The uniformed colleague stamped incessantly in the snow, his bright red cheeks and chapped lips told him he’d been there for some time.
‘Report, Davies, and make it snappy.’ He pulled his unbuttoned mackintosh tightly around himself and tied off the belt.
‘Reported robbery, Sir. Estimated at three o’clock this morning. No suspects. We don’t even know how they got in. Two men attacked the watchman, tied him up and took away the cash tin. We don’t know exactly how much was in it, but apparently, the company takes about a hundred pounds every day. Because they don’t close until after the banks, the money is kept on the premises. They bank it every morning.’
The officer stamped his feet again and blew into his hands.
‘What do you mean, we don’t know how they got in?’
‘Well, Sir, there were no footprints.’ He turned to the gates and pointed. ‘The two pairs of prints, you can see, belong to myself and PC Watkins.’
The detective rolled his eyes to the dark sky. ‘What about round the back?’
‘They can’t have got in that way, Sir. The building is tied to a twenty-foot wall that separates it from the railway. There are only two ways in and out of the premises, and they are both accessed from here.’ He pointed across the yard to a red-painted door at the front of the building. ‘That one, and the side door where the goods are delivered and collected. But, as you can see, they would have to get through the gates to reach either one, and, as I said, there are no footprints. Apart from ours, that is. Two sets going in and one set, mine, coming back out.’
‘Where is the night watchman now?’
‘He’s inside with PC Watkins, the lucky so and… Sorry, Sir. Watkins is St John’s Ambulance trained, so he’s provided a little bit of first aid. The watchman wasn’t badly injured. He’s got a black eye and split lip. He managed to free himself and ring the police at about six o’clock. Do you think he might be in on it, Sir?’
The detective sighed.
‘I have no idea, Constable. I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘No, Sir, of course you haven’t. Sorry, Sir.’
He stamped his feet again and shivered under his heavy navy overcoat.
‘Oh, for God’s sake man. Go and sit in the car. Tell the driver to come out to take your place for half an hour. His name is Hodges.’
The policeman nodded gratefully and scurried around to the black Ford as Amy carefully crossed the road.
‘Has there been a burglary?’ she asked.
‘The detective swivelled on his heels to face her.
‘I’m not at liberty divulge that, Mrs…Miss.’
Amy smiled.
‘Oh, I wasn’t trying to get any information that might help a criminal.’ She smiled again, showing off a perfect set of teeth. A whisp of blonde hair loosened itself from beneath her hat and wafted in front of her eyes. She brushed it away with the back of her gloved hand. ‘My name is Amy Rowlings and I work at Grayson’s over the road.’ She pulled up her sleeve and looked at her men’s style, leather-strapped wristwatch. ‘And, if I don’t hurry, they’ll dock me a quarter of an hour’s wages.’
Amy turned away from the detective and began to make her way back, treading carefully in the footprints that she had made originally.
‘I didn’t think you were attempting to assist a criminal, Amy Rowlings,’ the policeman called after her. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant, Bodkin. I’m sorry I was a little abrupt just then.’
Amy stopped and looked back over her shoulder. The man was in his late twenties and handsome in a rugged sort of way. He took off his hat and gave her a curt nod. His hair was thick, dark and was in need of a good cut. He had two days’ worth of stubble on his chin and the bags under his brown eyes, told her that he hadn’t been sleeping well, or for long enough. His coat had fallen open revealing a creased, white shirt with a badly starched collar, a pair of wide, striped braces, held up his baggy, black trousers that bunched around his ankles.
Unmistakeably a single man, said Amy to herself.
He smiled and his tired face lit up.
‘Don’t worry about being a few minute’s late… Miss, erm… Rowlings, was it? I’ll tell your boss you were helping me with my inquiries.’
Amy laughed.
‘I’d get more than fifteen minutes docked if they thought you’d been questioning me, Detective. I’d be given my cards. They’re a suspicious lot over there. They think everyone is stealing from them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘A lot of them are, as it happens.’
‘No need for the formalities,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Everyone calls me Bodkin.’
She raised a gloved hand and waggled her fingers at him.
‘Well, Mr… sorry… Bodkin, it’s been nice chatting but I really should be going in.’
‘Please don’t rush away. I’ll tell them you’re helping me with this case. I’ll say you’re a vital witness.’
‘Ooh, that will get them all talking in the canteen,’ replied Amy. She brushed the errant hairs away again. ‘As it happens, I can help you with the case.’
‘You can?’ Bodkin took a step towards her. He smiled again. ‘And what would you know about my crime scene, Miss Rowlings?’
‘They got in via a skylight.’ Amy pointed to the snow-covered roof where footprints were clearly visible across the gently sloping, snow-covered roof.
Bodkin swivelled around in the snow, stared at the roof with his mouth wide open and shouted to the policeman sitting in the back of the car.
‘Davies!’ he yelled.
‘It’s not his fault,’ Amy said to the back of Bodkin’s head. ‘You can’t see the roof from that side of the road and it would still have been dark when he arrived.’
Bodkin turned back towards her.
‘There are no street lights,’ she pointed out, quietly.
Bodkin appraised the roof again. The trail of footprints led across the roof from the still-open skylight, to the adjacent building.
‘Looks like they got to the roof via the fire escape,’ said Amy, pointing out the obvious.
Together, they walked the thirty yards to the entrance of Harrington’s timber yard. Any footprints made on the forecourt had been wiped out by the twenty or so staff that worked there.
‘Stay back, please, Miss. This is a crime scene; I have to protect the evidence.’
Amy ignored him. ‘I’m not going to steal your precious footprints, am I?’
She marched onto the forecourt and crouched down at the bottom step of the fire escape. Bodkin leaned over her to examine the steps himself. Two separate sets of prints were clearly visible, one much larger than the other.
‘Blimey, those are big feet,’ she said.
Bodkin laughed. ‘That’s a hell of a clue. There can’t be too many men in this town with feet that size. They must be a size twelve.’
‘True,’ replied Amy. ‘But that is assuming the criminals live locally.’
‘All right, Miss Marple. It’s time you were at work. I’ll get Davies to guard the evidence.’
The detective gave orders to Davies and the policeman muttered to himself as he trapsed through the snow to take up his position guarding the fire escape.
Bodkin walked Amy over to the factory, they came to a halt at the staff entrance.
‘Could you tell your foreman I’d like a word please, Miss Rowlings? I’ll explain the situation to him.’
‘Call me Amy,’ she replied with a quick smile. ‘And, it won’t make any difference, they’ll still stop me the quarter hour.’
Adam, once one of the beaten, church poor, had no serious religious beliefs, and had only attended church (for a friend’s wedding), once since he had left school, so he spent the rest of the morning reading a copy of Thomas Hardy’s, The Mayor of Casterbridge, that he had found, damp, but still readable, on a seat in Hyde Park, earlier in the summer.
At around 1.00 PM he heard the loud chatter of children as the Parsons family returned from church. He got to his feet and hurried across the room as he heard someone rap on his door. He opened it to find Mr Parsons standing in the hall.
‘Mr Sears, I feel I have to apologise for the behaviour of my children earlier today. They have been instructed not to disturb you by running up and down the hallway in future.’
‘They were playing,’ Adam said with a smile. ‘I wasn’t disturbed in the slightest, quite the opposite in fact. I always find something joyous in the sound of children’s laughter.’
Mr Parsons nodded, and smiled back.
‘I’m so glad you see it that way, Mr Sears. They are confined upstairs rather too much and they do tend to expend all that built up energy every chance they are given. They visit the park twice a week but I fear that is not enough to let off the steam that builds up.’
‘They are welcome to play in the corridor at any time, Mr Parsons,’ replied Adam. ‘Rest assured, I will never be annoyed by their presence.’
Mr Parsons nodded again. ‘Oh, by the way, if you spot a cat around the area, could you let us know. Our pet, Mr Dickens, appears to have disappeared again. It’s a regular occurrence, so I’m not particularly concerned, but the children do worry about him. He’s not supposed to go into the street but he manages to slip out sometimes, usually when the children aren’t as observant as they promised they would be when we allowed them to take the creature in. He’s a big furry ball of a thing. Mostly ginger with a white flash on his chest.’
‘I’ll keep my eye out for him,’ Adam said, looking to the staircase where Veronica and Catherine waited with hopeful faces.
Mr Parsons turned away.
‘Come along, girls. Mr Sears will let us know if he spots the escapee.’ He patted both girls on the back. ‘He’ll turn up, he always does.’
Adam closed the door and returned to his book.
While visiting the bathroom during the afternoon, Adam thought he heard a baby crying. He turned off the tap, waited for the drain to empty, then cocked his head to listen. The sound came again, faint, but clearer. Adam paced the bathroom pushing his ear against the marble tiles, here and there. He wondered what was on the other side of his bathroom wall. He paced out the distance from the back wall of the bathroom, past a short open space to the kitchen, then through the sitting room until he got to the doorway of the apartment. He opened the door, stepped into the passage and paced out the same number of steps, towards the back wall.
‘Ten paces short,’ he said, as he reached the painted brickwork at the end of the hall. Adam looked to the right and noticed a door, set into the panelling below the staircase. The glossy door was not locked and he opened it and stepped into the dark recess beneath the stairs. Adam squinted into the gloom and saw another door, this one much more substantial. He stepped forward and turned the handle but the door was locked. Adam retraced his steps and returned to his sitting room where he picked up the bunch of keys from the mantel, that his landlady had given him. He had taken the front door keys from the bunch so that he wouldn’t have to carry the unwieldy ring of keys in his pocket.
Adam carried the keys back to the door in the stairwell, selected one of the larger keys and inserted it into the lock. Luck was with him; he turned the key and heard the lock click open. Adam twisted the handle and pushed open the door. Daylight filled the stairwell and Adam blinked a few times as his eyes became accustomed to the light. After a few seconds acclimatisation, he stepped out through the doorway.
Outside, he found himself in a short, high walled garden area. To his left was what he assumed was the extended wall of his bathroom. In front was a paved area with an ash-pit dug into the left side. Facing him, cut into the high wall, was a roughly-painted, wooden gate that showed at least three layers of faded, flaking, paint that has been applied over the years. Along the wall, at the left-hand side of the gate were three, dented, metal dustbins. To his right was an iron built, timber-treaded stairway that led up to the back door of the apartment above. On the third step sat a large ginger cat. It stared at him through narrow, green eyes, flattened back its ears, and hissed.
‘Mr Dickens, I presume,’ said Adam with a laugh. He held out his hand in what he hoped was a cat-friendly gesture. Mr Dickens ignored the offer of a petting, leapt down from the step and ran into the house. Adam looked around his surroundings again, then followed the cat, locking the heavy door behind him.
Temporarily blinded by the darkness, Adam felt his way along the right-hand wall until he found his way back to the stairwell door. He stepped into the bright hallway, decided to leave the door ajar in case the cat was hiding in the dark, and walked back to his sitting room. As he entered the room, he saw the ginger cat watching him carefully from the dining table.
‘There you are,’ said Adam, aloud. He walked slowly around the table so as not to alarm the animal, stepped into the kitchen and returned with a small piece of sliced ham, which he pulled apart and laid on the tablecloth. Mr Dickens looked at the ham, then at Adam, and remained where he was. Adam backed away and sank into an armchair. He pointed towards the tiny pieces of ham. ‘Eat,’ he said.
The cat sniffed the air, then padded across the tablecloth and began to tuck into the unexpected treat. Encouraged, Adam got to his feet, walked slowly to the table, and made what he hoped was soothing noises. Mr Dickens turned his head towards him, then returned to the food.
Adam decided not to risk a clawing by attempting to pet the cat and instead took a step back. The cat ate another sliver of ham, then became stiff, its ears flattened against its head, the hair on its back stood on end. It stared at the open bathroom door, hissed twice then began to growl.
Puzzled, Adam looked to where the cat was staring.
‘It’s alright, puss, there’s nothing there.’
The cat obviously thought otherwise, and still growling, began to back away, never taking its eyes off the bathroom. When it reached the edge of the table, it turned and leapt in one movement. With a swish of its tail it hurtled out of the still open door.
Adam took one last look at the bathroom, shook his head, then turned and walked to the hallway. On the stairs was Catherine, she cradled a still-wary Mr Dickens in her arms.
‘Did you have him all the time?’ she asked accusingly.
‘Of course not,’ replied Adam, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘I found him out on the back stair, near the ash pit. He must have got into the yard when the dustmen came and couldn’t get out again.
Veronica seemed appeased.
‘Well, in that case, thank you for finding him. We were getting worried.’ She ran her fingers through the thick fur on the side of the cat’s head. ‘You’re a very silly cat, going into the yard. There’s nothing there for you, not even a mouse.’ She grunted as she got to her feet lifting the heavy cat. ‘Let’s get you some dinner, you must be starving.’
‘I gave him a little bit of ham,’ said Adam. ‘Not much though, so he should still want his dinner.’
Veronica began to climb the stair. ‘Thank you for rescuing him,’ she said, without looking back.
Adam returned to his flat, picked up the two, tiny pieces of ham that Mr Dickens hadn’t eaten and took them into the bathroom where he dropped the meat into the lavatory and pulled the chain, flushing it into the drains.
Adam put the kettle on the kitchen stove and made tea, adding milk from the pan he had boiled earlier that day. He carried the tea tray to the big table, placed it in the centre and sat down facing the bathroom, wondering what the cat had seen to make it act in such a strange manner.
After two cups of tea and a wasted half hour, Adam decided that it was impossible to understand cat behaviour, and laughing to himself, pulled on his jacket, went out into the quiet street, and made his way to the Dog and Duck for dinner.
The three-course meal cost nine pence, twice as much as he used to pay at the Furling public house in Paddington. The meal consisted of a thin, beef soup, mutton, potatoes, cabbage and gravy, followed by a sweet, lemon pudding. At the Boar restaurant, just up the road, the cost for a similar meal would be a shilling. Adam decided that a shilling was too much to pay for his evening meal on a regular basis, and that he would eat at the Dog and Duck four nights a week, have restaurant food on Saturdays, before visiting the music hall, and dine at home on the other two nights.
Adam remained in the bar of the pub, drinking a decent ale, until eight o’clock, then made his way back home, breathing in the still clean, summer evening air. At midnight, the destructor, a huge furnace built to burn household waste, would start up at the refuse disposal yard and heavy industry boilers and ovens would be relit, ready for the new working week.
It was a relatively short walk home. When he arrived, Adam decided to sit on the top step of the stairs outside his apartment building to watch the world go by. With a full stomach and two pints of heavy beer in his stomach, he was as happy as he had ever been.
Adam slept well on the first night in his new home. He woke early on Sunday morning and took a brisk walk through the almost empty streets. In his former lodgings, the streets would have been almost as busy as a weekday, with many children of the less well-heeled spending the early morning of the Sabbath scouring the gutters and pavements for tiny pieces of coal that has been missed by the Saturday evening search patrols. Some scoured the back yards of food shops for half-rotten potatoes, a few, bad smelling leaves of cabbage or a crust of stale bread.
Later, the streets he now walked would be littered with children heading off to Sunday School before meeting up with parents at the church for their regular Sunday morning service. All of the children in Adam’s new, more affluent area, walked to church in their Sunday best clothes to be given bible tuition and made to repeat the Lord’s Prayer and the ten commandments before listening to a guest speaker. Sometimes it would be a vicar from a neighbouring parish, sometimes a fiery, American preacher, and sometimes, more interestingly, a missionary, fresh back from Africa with tales of man-eating lions and crocodiles the length of an omnibus.
In Paddington, Adam’s previous district, only the children of the religious poor attended Sunday School. The church official in charge of the poorest of the poor handled things in a very different manner. Unruly children were dragged unceremoniously to the front of the room and beaten with either a thick leather strap or, if the offence was considered blasphemous, a three-foot cane. Threats of hell and damnation would follow the children out of the hall and into the streets where the cursing and fighting would begin anew.
Adam counted three public houses and two, small but well looked-after, restaurants as he surveyed his new neighbourhood for the first time. The chalked-up blackboards outside each establishment showed prices for two or three course evening meals. Even the pubs seemed to have a reasonable menu. They were all twice the price of a meal in the eateries less then half a mile along the road, but he knew he would be enjoying a far superior meal and would have less chance of a seriously upset stomach during the night. Following the recent licencing restrictions, the pubs in this district at least were not allowed to open until 12.00 PM while all of the shops were closed and shuttered, as people adhered to the strict, Lord’s Day rules.
Adam switched from the cobbled streets to the pavement as the private hire and privately owned carriages came onto the roads and walked back to his new apartment at a brisk pace, lifting his hat or nodding to the few fellow citizens who were taking the chance to exercise in the almost deserted streets and the smoke-free air.
Adam had precured a small loaf, some butter, a lump of cheese and an onion on the previous afternoon and when he returned home, he made a pot of tea and sat down to enjoy the first meal in his new abode. Outside, in the hall, he could hear the sound of children’s laughter. He opened the door and looked out to see two girls aged between nine and eleven, wearing smock dresses and lace-up boots, along with a red-faced, wheezy boy, some years younger, sporting a checked knickerbocker suit, acting out a game of tag up and down the long corridor. They stopped dead as he appeared in the doorframe. The older of the girls looked particularly shocked.
‘Shut the door, mister,’ she begged, and began to back her way along the polished wood panelling that lined the bottom of the staircase. She held out her hand to the other girl. ‘Veronica, quickly now, come here.’
Never taking her eyes from Adam, the younger girl edged towards, who he assumed was her sister. She grabbed at her wrist and together they ran up the first three steps to the turn of the stair.
‘Don’t be afraid, children.’ Adam held out both hands. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He turned to the boy who stood, mouth agape, only three feet away from him. ‘You’re not afraid of me, are you?’ He smiled and crouched down so he was at more or less the same height as the boy.
‘Stanley! Get yourself up here… NOW!’ the older girl commanded.
Stanley looked from Adam to the girl then back again, but remained glued to the spot.
‘Stanley?’ Adam spoke softly. He held out his hand towards the child. The movement seemed to wake Stanley from his stupor, and he spun around on one foot and hurled himself up the steps.
Adam straightened, and held out his palms again. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Please, don’t be afraid.’
‘It’s not you we’re scared of,’ said the younger of the girls. ‘It’s what’s insi—’
‘Shh, Veronica,’ the older girl put her finger to her lips, ‘you’ll entice her out, then we’ll all be for it.’
Adam looked puzzled. He half turned and pushed the heavy door, open wide.
‘There’s no one here but me. See for yourselves.’
The girls looked at each other, the older of the two stretched her neck in an attempt to see past him. Adam stepped into the hallway and stood to the side so the girls had a clear view into his sitting room.
‘See? No one. I live here alone.’
‘Catherine, Veronica. Come along now, let me brush your hair, it’s almost time for Sunday School. Is Stanley with you?’
A tall, slim woman in a grey pleated skirt and a light pink, frilled-collared blouse, descended the stairs. Spotting Adam, she paused, then held out a slender hand towards the children. ‘Come now, we don’t want to be late.’
She began to turn away but stopped as Adam spoke.
‘I’m Adam Sears,’ he said quickly. ‘I appear to have frightened your children. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.’
The woman smiled thinly.
‘I’m Felicity Parsons,’ she replied. Her face became softer. She ushered the children upstairs then walked elegantly down the stairs to the hallway. She held out a gloved hand. Adam took it as gently as he could.
‘I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ Adam said. ‘I’m new to the district, I don’t know anyone around here. I’m sorry we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Mrs Parsons replied, stretching to look over Adam’s shoulder and into the sitting room. ‘I hope you last a little bit longer than the previous tenant… previous three tenants, that is. No one seems to stay here long. It seems that just as we get to be on speaking terms, they disappear on us.’
‘I met Mr Parsons last night, he told me the same thing,’ said Adam. He looked back into the apartment, a puzzled look on his face. ‘It’s a lovely place, I really can’t understand what’s wrong with it for the life of me.’
Mrs Parsons patted his arm and walked quickly back to the staircase.
Sad Lisa. A ghost story based on the Cat Stevens song. Unedited and seen as written. Part two will be along soon.
SAD LISA
by
T. A. Belshaw
Adam Sears sat at the heavy-oak dining table and for the umpteenth time that week, wondered how he, a young man of just twenty-one years, with limited prospects, had managed to acquire such a comfortable apartment in such an elegant house, in this much sought-after district of London.
The room was tastefully decorated with a cornflower patterned wallpaper. The furniture, including the dining table and a drop-leaf side table, was made from sturdy oak. An almost new, oriental style, blue/grey rug, sat on the floor and the bay window was framed by heavy, dark-grey, velvet, curtains.
Adam got to his feet and walked across to the open, sashed-window. Outside, the well-heeled Saturday afternoon crowds strolled the pavements. Ladies, resplendent in summer hats, walked arm in arm with their heavily moustached, stiff-collared, male companions. Hanson and Landau carriages, pulled by a single or pair of horses, clattered across the cobbled street. Come autumn, the view would be restricted by the heavy smog that would hang in the air like a thick coverlet, but for now, with the sun high in the smoke-hazed sky, he couldn’t imagine a place he’d rather be. Adam stood for five minutes, wallowing in the spectacle, thinking again how very fortunate he had been to find such a pleasant place to call his home.
Adam was an accounts clerk, working for Lorimar’s Bank. His shiny coat and frayed shirt collars were an embarrassment to him, especially out on the streets of such a genteel district. He felt the eyes of the privileged on him as he climbed the three steps from the pavement to the front door of his residence. Most took him for an Insurance salesman, visiting a client, or a butler to a rich tradesman, returning from running an errand. He was determined to improve his station, Mr Robbins, the branch manager had told him that if he worked hard, he could earn a substantial promotion in the next five years. Old Mr Armitage, the senior clerk, was seventy and had begun to struggle with his sight. Adam had designs on his job, and with it, the extra fifty pounds a year.
He had found the apartment after noticing a poster in a ground-floor window as he passed by on the omnibus. The first evening he just noticed the ‘for rent,’ headline and he had travelled home, daydreaming about what it must be like to live in such a pleasant neighbourhood. The following night, a Hanson cab had lost a wheel and the omnibus came to a halt right outside the building, so Adam had plenty of time to read the entire advertisement.
‘Apartment to let. Furnished, with private bathroom and kitchen. 10 shillings per week. Professional gentlemen only need apply. Deposit and references, required.’
Adam read the poster three times, then got up from his seat, left the omnibus and walked quickly up the steps to the front door of the residence. He brought down the brass, lion’s-head knocker three times and stepped back as the door opened. In front of him was a woman of about forty years. She was smartly dressed in a blue skirt and white frilled blouse. Her greying hair was tied in a tight bun, but wisps of it had escaped and lay across her frowning, forehead,
‘May I help you?’ she asked.
‘It’s about the, umm, the… advertisment… in the window. I’m not sure I read it correctly.’
The woman looked him up and down, took in his much-repaired shirt and coat, his scraped brown boots, then half closed the door. ‘The stipulation is, professional gentleman,’ she said.
‘My name is Adam Sears, I work for Lorimar’s Bank, I look after the accounts of our more affluent clients,’ he said hurriedly. ‘If the apartment really is for rent at ten shillings a week, I can easily afford it. I’ve just had my salary increased.’
The woman looked at him suspiciously. ‘Where are you living at the moment?’
Adam thought quickly. He didn’t want her to know he was renting a tiny attic room in a run-down part of Paddington, so he answered, ‘I live with my aunt in Marylebone, but she is increasingly, frail and is moving to the coast for the sea air.’
She looked him up and down again, quite taken by his piercing blue eyes and the handsome face that was almost pleading with her to accept his word.
‘Lorimar’s Bank you say? Well, I’ll need a reference.’ She stepped back and opened the heavy, black-glossed door. ‘Come inside and take a look. I will require a month’s deposit in advance, plus the current month’s rent.’
Adam’s jaw almost hit his chest when she opened the door to the apartment and showed him around. This was pure opulence, considering the conditions he was living in at present.
‘And, and, it’s definitely, ten shillings a week, the rent won’t increase after the first month, or so?’
‘Ten shillings it is and ten shillings it will remain until the day you leave, or can no longer afford to pay. She looked him over again and sniffed. ‘Defaulter’s deposits are non-refundable,’ she warned.
‘I have to ask, why is it so cheap? I mean, my friend is paying the same amount to share a couple of dingy, rooms in Balham.’ Adam turned a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. ‘This is beautiful.’
‘I just want it let, instead of sitting idle,’ she said. A look of annoyance crossed her face. ‘No one seems to stay very long. The last two tenants left without notice, leaving all their belongings behind them. It seems to have a history of short term, tenancy. I only bought the house a couple of years ago and it has been rented out six times during that period. The rest of the apartments in the house have settled tenants, some have been living here for years.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyone would think the place was haunted.’
Adam laughed nervously. ‘Well, if it is, I don’t care.’ He looked around the beautifully decorated sitting room. ‘As long as I don’t have to pay its share of the rent.’
The woman smiled at the joke. ‘I’m Mrs Prendergast. I live just up the street at number forty-five, you’ll find me there most of the time if you need me for anything… like paying the rental deposit, or settling the monthly account.’ She narrowed her eyes, her mouth so tightly closed that her lips almost vanished. ‘Due on the first day of the month, every month,’ she added.
Adam offered his hand. Mrs Prendergast looked at it, then turned away.
‘We’ll leave the formalities and niceties until the contract is signed, shall we?’ She showed Adam to the front door and watched him onto the top step.
‘I’ll bring the deposit and the first month’s rent around tomorrow after I leave work. It will be about this time of day,’ he said.
He turned away and walked to the pavement before turning back to face her.
‘You won’t let it to anyone else before I come back?’
‘A chance would be a fine thing,’ she muttered under her breath before looking directly into his eyes. ‘The apartment is yours, Mr Sears,’ she said, firmly.
***
The following night, Adam, carrying a large, battered case containing everything he owned, arrived at Mrs Prendergast’s house. She showed him into a neat study where she studiously counted out the money he placed on the table. Adam handed her an envelope containing a reference from his employers, which stated that to the best of their knowledge he was of good character, was a diligent, trustworthy employee with some promotional prospects, and earned a salary of one hundred and seventy pounds per annum.
His new landlady read the document through a pair of narrow-lensed, reading glasses that she picked up from her desk. Satisfied, she turned to a tier of small, gold-embossed drawers, opened the top one and produced a bunch of keys. She handed them to him with a warning.
‘If you lose them, replacements will have to be paid for. I only keep one spare set and that is for my use. I may let myself into the apartment from time to time just to see if you are looking after it. I will inform you when I mean to do that.’
Adam almost ran back to his new abode. He rushed up the steps, keys in hand but as he reached out to insert the largest of them into the lock, the heavy, black door opened.
In the doorway, stood a tall, bearded man wearing a dark suit and a black top hat. He smiled at Adam and stood aside to allow him entry.
Adam put down his case and blushed as he noticed the man take in its battered condition. He held out his hand and smiled.
The man took it and smiled back.
‘Henry Parsons, at your service,’ he said.
‘Adam Sears. I’m your new neighbour.’
Henry’s smile was little more than a grimace. ‘Well, Adam Sears, I hope you last longer then the last tenant. He was here for less than a month. The one before him was only here for two.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ replied Adam with a puzzled frown. ‘The apartment is beautiful, and it’s so cheap, why would anyone want to leave so quickly?’
Henry shrugged and walked back to the door. ‘Perhaps the ghost of Sad Lisa has something to do with it,’ he said quietly.
Adam looked puzzled again. ‘Ghost… Sad Lisa? Who is Sad Lisa? he asked.
‘You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.’ Henry stepped outside closing the door firmly behind him.
Unedited. This preview is for readers to become familiar with one of the main characters of Unspoken Part Two
The name Martha means, The Lady, or Mistress of the House. Her sister is called, Marjorie, which means, The Pearl.
Chapter Four
Martha
Martha lay on her side, her turban-covered head nestled into the deep pile of down pillows. Her bedside clock read four-minutes-past-seven.
‘Late again,’ she said under her breath.
She rolled onto her back and studied the thick crack in the ceiling that she was sure had spread further over the last few days. She would have liked to get it fixed but the young man she had booked to give her a quote had looked like a bit of a rogue builder, although he claimed to be a member of the Master Builder’s Federation. Martha didn’t believe a word of it, there were a lot of rogues about these days. At one time you could get a local builder who would take pride in his work, knowing that if he messed up, the word would quickly get about, but now, all the trades seem to come from a minimum of twenty miles away and they wouldn’t give a damn about receiving a complaint. Just look at that Rogue Traders program on TV. The country was full of cowboy builders.
Only last week, old Mrs Hardy a few houses down the lane had been told by a ‘passing builder’ that the roof of her old bungalow looked in danger of collapse. After an inspection he blew out his cheeks, shook his head and told her it couldn’t be repaired for a penny under ten thousand pounds. The silly old woman had agreed to have the work done, but luckily her son came over to visit at the weekend and he had brought in his best friend, a builder himself, to have a look. Finding no fault, he suggested they ring the police. Mrs Hardy’s son, who was no saint himself, was reluctant to get them involved, so he just rang the number on the card she had been given, and cancelled the job, warning the builder that he was onto him and he shouldn’t show his face around the area any time soon.
Martha scratched an itch just below her right eye and looked towards the door.
‘Marjorie, where in God’s name have you got to?’ she muttered.
She shook her head and thought about the meeting with the solicitor later that day. With just the tiniest, and long awaited, bit of luck she so thoroughly deserved, she wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of repairing a crack in the ceiling ever again. She could afford to get the modern equivalent of Sir Christopher Wren to do the job if she felt like it. An unexpected mention in her late mother’s will could mean she would never want for money again. The old girl had been loaded when she died. The big, old farmhouse she had lived in and the couple of acres of land around it, must be worth at least three quarters of a million pounds these days. Then there were the proceeds of her land sales over the years. The farm had once boasted a hundred acres but Alice’s astute selling of parcels of land had netted her a fortune over the years. She had invested a lot of the money in London property and stocks and shares. God knows how much those assets were worth now.
‘About time,’ she said loudly as her sister, Marjorie, entered the room carrying a rattling breakfast tray.
‘I’m sorry, I, well, I dropped the pan with the eggs in and had to cook some more, by the time I had cleaned up, the tea was getting cold so I had to make another pot.’
‘I hope the eggs are properly cooked today.’ Martha scowled at her sister. ‘Yesterday, they were so undercooked they resembled mucus. How many times do I have to say, boil them for three minutes and twenty seconds, precisely.’
‘Yes, Martha, I’m sorry, but the handle of the pan was hot and—’
‘Just give me the tray and stop wittering,’ Martha scolded.
Marjorie pulled open the thickly-lined curtains to allow the early morning sun to light up the room.
‘It’s a nice day for an inheritance,’ she quipped.
‘Don’t count your chickens just yet, Marjorie,’ replied Martha. ‘You know what the tight old so and so was like. Remember the time I went cap in hand to her when Roger claimed a quarter of this house in the divorce court? She wouldn’t give me a penny to help me out of the mess.’
‘It was good job I had some savings, wasn’t it, Martha?’ Marjorie walked stiffly across to the bed and sat on the corner.
Martha coughed on the piece of toast she had just put into her mouth.
‘Don’t go digging up all that again. You’ll never let me forget that for once in your life, you helped me with something, will you? Put another record on, Marjorie, I’m fed up of hearing that one.’
‘I’m sorry, Martha,’ said Marjorie, quietly. I won’t mention it again. I might not need to after we’ve been to the solicitor today though. I didn’t think we’d get a penny from Mother, but we’re both mentioned in the will. I fully expected her to leave everything to our Jessica.’
Martha put the crust of the toast back onto her plate and sliced the top off one of the eggs with a knife. Inspecting the consistency of the yolk, she nodded, and dug a teaspoon into it.
‘Well, if we are the main beneficiaries, don’t you go throwing your share about. I’ll find some nice, safe investments for you. And, watch out for fortune seeking men. You would be taken advantage of far too easily.’
‘I’m seventy-six now, Martha, I don’t think any men will be interested in me.’
‘You’d be surprised, Marjorie,’ said Martha bitterly. ‘If I can get caught out, there’s little hope for you.’
Martha finished her egg and decided the quality wasn’t quite good enough to warrant eating the second one. Instead, she poured tea into a delicate china cup, poured in a small amount of milk, stirred it gently, and took a large sip.
‘At least the tea is made properly,’ she said.
Marjorie got to her feet. ‘I’d better get on with running your bath.’
‘Leave it for twenty minutes, I don’t want to bathe on a full stomach.’
‘Yes, Martha,’ replied Marjorie.
‘You can get in after me.’ Martha ordered. ‘We’ll share the water. Our gas bill was enormous over the last quarter.’
Marjorie walked to the door. ‘I’ll come back for the tray when you’re in the bath, shall I?’
Martha nodded, picked up another piece of toast and bit into it.
‘Off you go then. Make sure the kitchen is properly cleaned, I don’t want to be stepping on bits of egg shell when I come down.’
When Marjorie had taken away the breakfast tray, Martha got out of bed, removed her nightgown and slipped into a striped bath robe. Removing her turban, she studied herself in the dressing table mirror, running her fingers through her sparse, white hair before holding a hand mirror behind her head. Cursing the latest, seriously expensive, but useless, scalp cream, she walked quickly to the bathroom where she dampened her hair in the sink before rubbing a generous handful of the supposed miracle, steroid cream, onto her head.
Martha had always been envious of her mother’s shoulder length, chestnut curls. When Alice was young, people used to compare her to the Hollywood actress, Rita Hayworth, and indeed, there had been a remarkable likeness. Martha wasn’t as fortunate, she hadn’t been exactly unattractive when she was young, but she could hardly be classed as a beauty. Her hair had always been straight and thin, almost lank. Even in old age, Alice, her mother, had managed to keep a full head of hair, she had even retained some of her natural colour until she was well into her sixties.
Martha assumed she got her looks, and her hair, from Frank, her father, who had died somewhere in the Atlantic the year after her birth. Maybe she got the hair problems from Frank’s mother, Edna, was it? How was the hair gene passed down? She doubted it was a matriarchal thing, after all, her daughter and granddaughter both had dark, healthy, heads of hair. She decided to blame it on Alice anyway. They had always hated each other. There was talk of her mother practicing witchcraft in the attic of the farmhouse. Perhaps she had placed a curse on her first born, or simply used toxic chemicals when she washed her hair in the bath when she was a baby. Alice was capable of anything.
After bathing, she returned to the sink and rinsed out the sticky cream with fresh warm water, then she returned to the bathroom, calling to Marjorie on the way.
‘The bath’s all yours, be quick, the water isn’t too hot.’
In the bedroom, Martha pulled on a black and grey checked skirt and a white, silk blouse before opening a hat box that sat on the dressing table. She took out a steel-grey wig and pulled it over her patchy clumps of hair. She sat for a few minutes, tugging it first to the right, then the left, then the back. Finally satisfied, she applied a dab of rouge to her cheeks and went downstairs to the lounge where she turned on the radio and listened to the latest international news program. Radio 4 and the BBC TV news were her only source of information. She had cancelled the newspapers to save money some years before.
A few minutes later she heard Marjorie come down the stairs and five minutes after that, her younger sister walked into the lounge carrying a tray laden with Martha’s favourite china tea service. She was wearing a maroon skirt, a cream blouse and a navy cardigan.
‘I thought I’d use the best china as it’s a special day,’ she said.
Martha pursed her lips, looked Marjorie up and down, then shook her head.
‘You aren’t going to a solicitor’s office dressed like that, surely?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Marjorie looked down at her chest.
‘It’s not really fitting for the occasion is it? We’re attending the formal reading of a will; we’re not going to a coffee morning at the Women’s Institute.’
‘I… I thought.’
‘Don’t think, Marjorie. It seldom works out well for either of us.’
Marjorie looked confused. ‘What should I wear then?’
Martha sighed. ‘I’m not your dresser,’ she said, testily. ‘Wear the black knitted suit you wore to Mother’s funeral. That will look much more business-like.’
‘The hat had a veil on it,’ Marjorie protested.
Martha slammed her hand down onto the dining table making Marjorie jump.
‘Then don’t wear the bloody hat.’
Sniffling, Marjorie left the room.
‘And don’t take all day about it,’ called Martha. ‘Nicola is picking us up at eleven.’
Marjorie’s tear-stained face appeared around the dining room door.
‘Why are we leaving so early, Martha?’ She sniffed, pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and wiped her nose. ‘The appointment isn’t until one-thirty.’
‘We’re going to have a look at our old home, Marjorie. I want to see what state the outbuildings are in. I’ve got big plans for that place.’
I have conducted an author’s interview with the wonderful author, Louise Wise on her writer’s blog, where I talk about the writing process and how my new novel, Unspoken, was created.
Thank you, Louise. I’m really pleased with it.
What a week it has been. The first paperback copies have been bought from Amazon, the eBook is picking up a lot of interest and now has SIX 5* reviews on Amazon and TWO 5* on Goodreads with the promise of many more to come.
In October, I have a blog tour organised and in November, a one day blitz by a team of bloggers worldwide. In September I will be featured in the Ilkeston Life newspaper.
Today I heard from Reedsy that one of their top reviewers is going to give an editorial review for Unspoken and I’m seriously looking forward to reading what they have to say.
Meanwhile, on the home front, I am expecting my first batch of author copy, paperbacks to sign and send out to readers. I only ordered ten to see how they go but I’ve already had requests for more than that so I’ve placed another order which will be delivered by Amazon in the coming days.
If you would like a signed copy, the cost is £7.99 plus £3.00 postage to anywhere in the UK. International postage rates will, of course, be higher. You can order one from me via my Facebook Page, or leave a comment on here and I’ll get in touch via email.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has shown interest in Unspoken, especially those who supported me through a very tough, last few years when writing novels was the last thing on my mind.
To any future buyer, could I please ask a favour. All authors in this day and age need help to become a success and by leaving a review, no matter how short, on Amazon and Goodreads you will show to others how highly you rated Unspoken and this might encourage them to read it too.
I am delighted to announce the release of The paperback version of Unspoken. It’s a large book, 9×6 instead of the normal, 8×5 size and with the beautiful cover, designed by the fabulous, Jane Dixon Smith, it really stands out. At 408 pages it will take you a while to read it too.
The book is available now, from Amazon, worldwide. Author signed copies will be available on request in about a fortnight.
Here’s the universal link for Unspoken ebook and paperback.
Sheerness station looked pretty much like our local one, with a signaller’s building, a ticket office and a waiting-room-come-café. The sharp, swirling wind, blew the train’s smoke into our faces as we traversed the platform. We pulled our coat collars over our mouths and hurried to get out of the station.
‘I feel like I’ve just smoked a whole packet of fags at once,’ said Frank, hoarsely.
Outside the station we turned onto the aptly named Railway Road. About half way along it we found a pub, not surprising called The Railway. In the window was a sign advertising rooms with breakfast. Six shillings, double. Four and six, single.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Won’t it be a bit noisy?’ I said. The pub looked in good condition, on the outside at least.
‘It’ll be fine at this time of year,’ said Frank. ‘I have stayed here, but only for one night. I couldn’t afford nearly five bob a night out of the wages I was earning. I had to go into lodgings. It was a right flea pit too.’
He shuddered at the memory.
‘Let’s have a look at the room first,’ I said. My scalp started to itch. I resisted the urge to scratch it.
The pub was clean, and the landlady was friendly. She ordered a scrawny-looking man with a thick head of tightly curled, ginger hair to take my case and show us up to the double guest room. She noticed the anxious look on my face as he opened the door to the stairs.
‘I’d sleep in it,’ she said with a smile. ‘You’ll both be cosy in there.’
I was glad she didn’t use the phrase, snug as a bug in a rug.
Robert introduced himself as he led us up the one, steep flight of stairs. ‘I live with Irene,’ he announced, in a matter of fact way. ‘We’re not married or anything.’
I pulled my left hand up my sleeve so he couldn’t spot that Frank and I weren’t married either. I hadn’t even considered bringing a ring with me.
The room was nice, bright, and had a window facing the street, not the railway line that the rooms at the back of the pub must have overlooked.
It had a large, enamel basin and water pitcher on a shelf in the corner, clean towels, and a newish-looking double bed on the wall opposite the window. There was a single wardrobe and a round, oak table surrounded by four, rickety looking chairs.
‘The bathroom is at the end of the corridor. Just turn left, you can’t miss it.’ Robert hung around waiting for a tip, so I gave him a threepenny bit and he turned away.
‘Payment is in advance,’ he said suddenly. He spun around and looked at Frank. ‘Shall I show you the way down?’
Frank looked at me and shrugged.
‘We’ll be back down in a moment,’ I told him. ‘My husband will pay you then. Just the one night.’
When we returned to the bar, we found that Irene was in a far more business-like mood. The friendly smile had gone, and had been replaced by a steely-eyed stare.
I’d given Frank a ten-shilling note before we came down. He produced it with a smile.
‘There’s a five-bob deposit,’ said Irene. ‘In case of breakages. It will be refunded when you leave.’
I wondered what there was in the room that could be broken. There was only the bowl and pitcher and they looked sturdy enough.
‘Five bob?’ Frank exploded.
‘It’s the new rules,’ said Irene. She leaned over the bar towards us. ‘I’m already breaking one rule by letting you stay here at all. We don’t usually allow unmarried couples into our rooms.’
I pulled the extra shilling from my purse and handed it over. I leaned forward myself and whispered. ‘Where do you and Robert sleep then?’
Irene stuffed the money into a pocket in her apron and looked smug.
‘We don’t sleep here,’ she said.
We gave up arguing and went for a walk up to the town.
The High Street was a mix of Victorian and Edwardian buildings with faded, washed out shop fronts, but for someone like me, who lived in the country, it was a treasure trove of modern consumerism. On the High Street was a Boots store and behind it, a brightly painted clocktower that stood out vividly alongside the dull expanse of grimy, red brick and mortar.
We stopped for tea at a café in the town centre, but we had to drink it in a breezy garden at the back, because the café itself was under renovation. A waitress, wearing a uniform better suited to Lyons tea rooms than a tiny, underused little café in Sheerness, took our order and apologised on behalf of the café owner. The tea was well brewed and the waitress helpful, explaining to us the quickest way to the sea front. I left her a threepenny tip for her trouble.
After tea, we retraced our steps until we came to Broadway. A few minutes later we arrived at Sheerness beach, which was empty apart from a couple of dog walkers and two children hunting for shells. We walked along the Marine Parade until we reached the pier which the people walking just in front of us had called ‘the jetty’. It was built as a place for boats to unload passengers, but at this time of year there would have been little in the way of business for the boat owners. At the end of the pier was a pavilion. We never found out what entertainment it provided because it was closed, and wouldn’t open again until May Day.
We walked back along the pier, past the silent, unoccupied bandstand and headed further down Marine Parade towards Minster. The sea air had really worked on my appetite, so we bought fish and chips and sat down on the sea wall to eat them. A chilly wind came off the sea and seagulls raided inland looking for easier pickings than the hard to find fish in the Medway Estuary.
It was only about two and a half miles back to Sheerness, but it seemed more like five. Although it was March, we both removed our coats and allowed the shrill wind to cool our bodies. I was tired, even though I was a fit eighteen-year-old farm manager, who worked a fourteen-hour day, month in, month out. Babies tire you out even before they are born.
I am delighted to announce the release, in Kindle format, of my new Family Saga, Unspoken.
As many of my Facebook and Twitter friends know, this novel has been a long time coming. My last book was a noir, suspense novella, Out of Control, which was published back in August 2015.
Following the sudden, unexpected death of my wife, three days later, I pretty much decided to give up writing. She was my muse, my first reader, someone who would tell me straight, how the story was progressing and I was lost without her.
Fast forward to March 2020 and after several false starts, the circumstances of Lockdown and an unfortunate, very painful injury which meant a short stay in hospital, and a long recovery process ahead, I found myself stuck inside, with only the TV and my rescue cat, Mia for company.
So, I decided to see if I could pick up where I left off all those years ago.
There were several part-started projects I could work with and I did think seriously about finishing one of them, but in the end, I decided that the virtually unlimited writing time that lay ahead, actually warranted a brand new project, something different, something outside of my comfort zone, something that would provide a fresh challenge.
I telephoned my fab editor, Maureen Vincent Northam and had the first of many chats about the new project. Maureen was keen for me to start and with her constant encouragement, via email and telephone, she eased me through the doubts, the plot holes and the comma-ridden chapters that I sent her on an almost daily basis.
The result, some sixteen weeks later, is Unspoken, the first of a series of three novels that will detail the history of the Mollison family from 1938 to 2019.
Unspoken is a story of secrets, love and revenge. In this novel, we meet, Alice, a young girl forced into adulthood before she could properly enjoy her late teenage years.
Alice is fast approaching her one hundredth birthday and she has a secret. One she has kept to herself for some eighty years. She is aware that she has very little time left and wants to unburden herself to her great granddaughter, Jessica, a young woman who could have been mistaken for Alice had they been born in the same era. Unfortunately, Jessica has the same, dreadful tastes in men as Alice. Her partner, Calvin, once a kind, funny boyfriend has turned into a controlling narcissist.
Alice sends Jessica to the attic of the old farmhouse to retrieve her handwritten memoirs and her own relationship with a brutal, controlling man is finally brought into the light.
Unspoken is now available on Kindle at the price of £2.99 but is free for members of Kindle Unlimited. The paperback version is ready, and will follow soon.
You can buy/Download the Kinde version by clicking the link below..
I am delighted to reveal the cover for my new Family Saga novel, Unspoken.
The fabulous cover was designed by the extremely talented, Jane Dixon Smith, of J. D. Smith Design. http://janedixonsmith.com/
Unspoken will be published in Kindle EBook format later today but it may take a day or so to appear on Amazon. Paperback to follow in short order.
Keep checking back to this website for further news of the release.
Unspoken is something that cannot be uttered aloud. Unspoken is the dark secret a woman must keep, for life.
Unspoken
A dramatic family saga, Unspoken is a tale of secrets, love, betrayal and revenge.
Alice is fast approaching her one hundredth birthday and she is dying. Her strange, graphic dreams of ghostly figures trying to pull her into a tunnel of blinding light are becoming more and more vivid and terrifying. Alice knows she only has a short time left and is desperate to unburden herself of a dark secret, one she has lived with for eighty years.
Jessica, a journalist, is her great granddaughter and a mirror image of a young Alice. They share dreadful luck in the types of men that come into their lives.
Alice decides to share her terrible secret with Jessica and sends her to the attic to retrieve a set of handwritten notebooks detailing her young life during the late 1930s. Following the death of her invalid mother and her father’s decline into depression and alcoholism, she is forced, at 18 to take over control of the farm. On her birthday, she meets Frank, a man with a drink problem and a violent temper.
When Frank’s abusive behaviour steps up a level. Alice seeks solace in the arms of her smooth, ‘gangster lawyer’ Godfrey, and when Frank discovers her in another man’s arms, he vows to get revenge.
Unspoken. A tale that spans two eras and binds two women, born eighty years apart.
Two blurbs for Unspoken. The shorter one for the back of the paperback, the slightly longer one for the Unspoken, Amazon book page.
Paperback Blurb.
Unspoken
A dramatic family saga. A tale of secrets, love and revenge.
Alice is fast approaching her one hundredth birthday and she is dying. Her strange, graphic dreams of ghostly figures trying to pull her into a tunnel of blinding light are becoming more and more vivid and terrifying. Alice knows she only has a short time left and is desperate to unburden herself of the dark secret she has lived with for eighty years.
Jessica is her great granddaughter and a mirror image of a young Alice. They share dreadful luck in the types of men that come into their lives.
Alice shares her terrible secret with Jessica through a set of handwritten notebooks detailing her young life during the late 1930s. Following the death of her invalid mother and her father’s decline, she is forced, at 18, to take control of the farm. On her birthday, she meets Frank, a man with a drink problem and a violent temper.
When Frank’s abusive behaviour steps up a level. Alice seeks solace in the company of her smooth, ‘gangster lawyer’ Godfrey, and when Frank finds Alice in the arms of another man, he vows to get his revenge.
Unspoken. A tale that spans two eras and binds two women born eighty years apart.
Amazon Blurb
Unspoken
A dramatic family saga, Unspoken is a tale of secrets, love, betrayal and revenge.
Unspoken means something that cannot be uttered aloud. Unspoken is the dark secret a woman must keep, for life.
Alice is fast approaching her one hundredth birthday and she is dying. Her strange, graphic dreams of ghostly figures trying to pull her into a tunnel of blinding light are becoming more and more vivid and terrifying. Alice knows she only has a short time left and is desperate to unburden herself of a dark secret, one she has lived with for eighty years.
Jessica, a journalist, is her great granddaughter and a mirror image of a young Alice. They share dreadful luck in the types of men that come into their lives.
Alice decides to share her terrible secret with Jessica and sends her to the attic to retrieve a set of handwritten notebooks detailing her young life during the late 1930s. Following the death of her invalid mother and her father’s decline into depression and alcoholism, she is forced, at 18 to take over control of the farm. On her birthday, she meets Frank, a man with a drink problem and a violent temper.
When Frank’s abusive behaviour steps up a level. Alice seeks solace in the arms of her smooth, ‘gangster lawyer’ Godfrey, and when Frank discovers her in another man’s arms, he vows to get revenge.
Unspoken. A tale that spans two eras and binds two women, born eighty years apart.
A Thousand Years of Division.
The village of Kirkby Sutton is a conglomerate and an enigma. Formed by the merging of two villages that had outgrown their ability to remain separate as an entity, it nevertheless retains two extremely different and specific identities. One half, as its name suggests, is built around the church and is a, (mainly), well-to-do, haven of respectability, with its Georgian Manor, leafy, wide-verged streets, lined with large, detached houses, driveways, off road parking and a library. There is also a small 1960s estate, a mix of private, three bedroomed, privately-owned houses, with an enclave of housing association tenants bolted on for political expediency.
Down the hill, the other half of the village contains a higgledy-piggledy, hotchpotch of stone cottages, modern, town houses and rows of Victorian terraces, originally built for the employees at the local lace factory, brewery and estate workers, who made the short trip up the road, to toil on the farms of Lord Beresford on the other side of the village. Nowadays, the descendants of those workers still live in the red brick terraces, but are employed by industries in the nearby cities of Nottingham and Derby.
The rivalry of its residents compares to any found in much larger towns and cities. You would be hard pressed to find as much animosity at a local Derby football match in Liverpool or Manchester. The annual village fair, which includes a fiercely fought, tug-of-war competition, held on a boozy bank holiday weekend, regularly turns violent. For years, a police sergeant from the small town of Higton, was paid to referee the event, but when the ageing sergeant retired and the police station was closed down to save money in the 1950s, the residents were left to sort out their own mess, so a committee, made up of the vicar’s wife and a group of teetotal residents from both sides, sat in sober judgment over the proceedings. To this day, the committee still rules on complaints and accusations made by one side against the other. Most of the grievances are easily dismissed, but on a few occasions, a vote has to be taken with the chairperson, a lady with no connection to either side of the village, holding the casting vote.
Sutton is the older part of the village and dates back to Saxon times. Its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon term for South town, (village, or enclosure.) It was built on the plain at the bottom of a long slope, on the bend of a fast-flowing stream. They built a timber church, which, in bad winters, became a flood plain. Sick of paddling to church for their religious instruction, they erected another one, higher up the slope, using the soggy timbers from their original construction.
A hundred or so years later the Danes arrived, but instead of rape and pillage, the Vikings merely appropriated the land around the church and began to farm it. This community became known as Kirkby, or, the settlement by the church. Over time, the Danish intruders, became Christianised, improved the church building, and appointed one of their own number, a man from the nearby town of Derby, as priest. They reluctantly allowed their near neighbours to attend religious ceremonies, in an effort to re-Christianise the local population, who had, by now, become almost universally, heathen.
The church was rebuilt in stone during the thirteenth century, when the new Lord of the Manor, a distant relative of King Henry 111, was granted all of the lands around the area. Residents of Sutton sent emissaries to their new lord demanding a church of their own. The lord’s response was to add an extra tax on the ungrateful villagers, a tax that the residents of Kirkby were excused. The Sutton inhabitants were outraged and set about building a church of their own on the site of the original timber church, but on the eve of its consecration, it mysteriously burned down. A second attempt was made a year later but with the same result. Suttononians smelled a rat, and protested outside the stone church at Kirkby before Evensong. The parish priest dismissed their grievances and told them in no uncertain terms, that both instances of arson, were acts of an angry God, and if they didn’t start attending his sermons, they would be branded heretics and burned at the stake.
This threat worked to a degree, but there was always an undercurrent of hostility inside the parish.
Sutton attempted to build their own church on no less than twelve occasions over the following two hundred years with the same fiery result. When, at last, an Abbey was built on their half of the divide in the late 15th century, their joy was unbridled. That joy was soon to be bridled again, however, as in 1538 under instructions from Henry V111, the building was demolished and the land and possessions, seized by the crown.
Sutton decided that God really didn’t intend them to have a church and reluctantly fell in with their Kirkby hosts, which was a good job really, as a hundred or so years later, administrators decided that it was too much of the job administering two villages, so they combined them in a covenant and changed its name to Kirkby Sutton. The villagers only found out about it at the next census, and by then it was too late to do anything about it.
The villages expanded in the 18th century to accommodate the newly built mill on the Sutton side of the boundary, and the mill owner’s needs on the Kirkby side. New dwellings to house the relatives and administrators of the fledgling industry were built in Kirkby, whilst rows of stone cottages were erected in Sutton, meaning the dividing line between the two halves became ever closer.
When the mill closed in the mid-Victorian era, it was turned into a lace factory. Next door, the new owners also built a tannery. These budding entrepreneurs were soon followed by Barton’s Brewery, who took the crystal-clear waters of the stream to make their distinctively flavoured ales. Four streets of terraced housing were built on the southern edge of Sutton. The dwellings came complete with individual, outdoor lavatories and a series of communal water pumps. The larger houses of Kirkby, in general, became equipped with their own water supplies, albeit fed from a pump in the kitchens. This led to a near riot one summer, when, fuelled by a small outbreak of cholera in Sutton, the residents crossed the border, (a line of skinny, pine trees,) and begged their richer, and less smelly, neighbours for clean water. The gentry refused, so fuelled by the cheap, but strong, ale, supplied by the new Barton’s Brewery public house, the Suttononian men, invaded the North and smashed up the main pumping station that fed the privately-owned houses. The newly-formed, Borough Police Force were summoned, the riot was quelled and a raid was made on ‘suspect’ houses in Sutton. Several arrests were made, including that of a wheelchair bound lady of 75 years who hadn’t left her home in a decade.
During the first world war, an uneasy peace ensued with both sides of the village losing men in the fields of Flanders. When the war was over, it was decided that a small cenotaph would be built. The Kirkbyans wanted it to be outside the church. The Suttonians, outside the Tannery. A compromise was arrived at and the stone cenotaph was built on the dividing line between the two halves of the village. By now, this line was imaginary, as houses had been erected on both sides, and a tarmac road ran straight through the middle, connecting to a main road at the top end of Kirkby. An uninformed, outsider, would never have known the villages had ever been separate.
Typically, a row ensued over which side of the construction the names of dead would be carved into, so, sensibly, for once, the Sutton names were carved, facing the south and the Kirkby ones facing the north. Every year, on armistice day, the residents line up on either side of the tribute to remember their own. Villagers divided, even in death.
This story begins in the early 1950s.
Alice January 1939
At nine-thirty on New Year’s Eve, nineteen-thirty-eight, Amy and I went up to the Old Bull to see in nineteen-thirty-nine. The place was packed to the gunnels. Even the snug was so rammed that had either one of us turned around, everyone in the bar would have turned around with us. We didn’t stay long. The people standing next to the bar wouldn’t move away to allow those behind be served, so it would have been well past midnight before we got our first gin and tonic. A couple of lads from the local mill tried to chat us up, but even they couldn’t get close enough to buy us a drink, so we went back to Amy’s and played a few records until just before midnight, when Amy’s dad knocked on her bedroom door to invite us to share the big moment with him and Amy’s mum.
He just had time to pour us a glass of port before Big Ben bonged out it’s barrage of bells. Amy’s parents linked arms with us and we all sang Auld Lang Syne, with me, singing the wrong words. I have been taught the New Year’s anthem three or four times but still sing, for the sake of… Amy’s dad, who was one sixteenth Scottish, knew all of Burn’s lyrics and made sure our arms stayed linked until he had belted out the last line of the song. When he reached, and we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught, Amy looked at me, I looked at her, and no amount of lip biting or cheek sucking, was ever going to stop the hysterical fit of laughter that followed.
Amy’s dad kept going until the bitter end, then he let go of our hands, called us ‘childish’ and retired to his armchair to finish the malt whisky that a real Scotsman had sold him on their family holiday the previous Easter.
Around twelve-thirty, Amy showed me to the door.
I asked why her dad hadn’t done the first foot thing, seeing as he was so keen on the New Year rituals. My own father, who wasn’t even a hundredth part Scottish, had done it every year without fail. I never understood what was behind the custom. Mum told me it was something to do with bringing in a gift to the household, but as all he ever brought in was a lump of coal and a stale mince pie left over from Christmas, things we already owned, I was left as confused as ever. Perhaps they did it differently in Scotland.
Amy looked around to make sure no one could overhear and whispered. ‘He tripped over the step wearing his kilt a few years ago and showed his Willie Waught to the world, so Mum has banned him from doing it since then. He was off work for a month with a cracked ankle. Old Mrs Bowen, who lived next door at the time, got a right eyeful. She was going to call the police until Mum brought her inside and plied her with gin.’
‘I remember him being off work, but you never said why,’ I said, through my giggles.
Any looked at me wide-eyed. ‘Would you tell that story to anyone? It’s one of those tales you want to hear about someone else’s dad.’
‘I was still sniggering to myself when I got home. I stood in the yard for a few moments to look at the new foundations that had been backfilled and waiting for the concrete to be poured for over a week. Mr Hart, our builder, refused to tip the concrete until the weather was above freezing, as the finished slab wouldn’t be as strong. The forecaster on the radio had said the weather was going to be dry for the next few days with temperatures forecast to be around forty degrees Fahrenheit, so, Michael promised to begin mixing the stuff on the morning of the second.
I was really keen to get that process started because once the new milking parlour/winter cow-shed was ready, we could pretty much quadruple the size of our Friesian herd. I turned towards the kitchen wondering if the coming year would bring us better fortune than the previous one. It had been a year littered with secrets and lies, revelations and revenge. As I turned to close the kitchen door, I took one last look at the newly dug foundations and told myself to look for the positives. A new year always came with the promise of a new start after all. Last years’ secrets should remain buried.
Alice
September 1939
At eleven o’clock on Sunday September 3rd 1939, I opened up the kitchen for the farmworkers to enable them to hear an historic speech from our Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, or the undertaker, as Amy had renamed him. Not all the lads worked on Sundays, some were rostered to tend the animals, milk the cows etc and I called them in when I heard the BBC inform us that there was going to be a speech of national importance.
We had been edging towards war for the entire year and Germany’s invasion of Poland a couple of days before had made the prospect an inevitability. As we waited for the broadcast, my thoughts went back to the autumn of the previous year when the same man, joyfully waved a piece of paper at the cameras whilst declaring, ‘Peace for our time.’ I wondered if he had brought a scrap of worthless paper with him this time around and what was written on it. Bugger! must have been a distinct possibility.
Amy’s nickname was perfectly suited. The scrawny man with the scrawny neck and the old fashioned, turned-over collar, wouldn’t have looked out of place marching solemnly in front of a hearse.
The few whispered conversations ceased as we heard his voice over the airwaves.
I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
There was a bit more, mainly relating to Hitler’s warlike mentality, but we didn’t really take that in, the first part of his statement said everything we needed to hear. We were at war with Germany again, even though we were promised that the 14-18 conflict had been the war to end all wars.
Amy pushed her empty tea cup across the table.
‘Well, the undertaker has just assigned another few million people to an early grave. There has to be better ways to advertise your business.’
No one laughed.
Barney, our foreman, gave his thoughts.
‘Levity aside, Amy, this has been coming. Hitler is a nasty piece of work, and it’s high time someone stood up to him. We could have done it last year, but I understand that we weren’t ready to take him on back then. I’m not sure we are now; I think we might have to try to persuade the Americans to come in again or we could be in trouble.’
‘Thank goodness for the channel,’ said Benny Tomkiss, one of the younger workers. He pointed vaguely towards the Kent coast from which any attack would surely come.
Miriam, a non-practicing Jew, whose father had spent the majority of his life working on our farm, waited for a few seconds of silence before adding her own tearful thoughts.
‘I’m so pleased we’re finally telling him he can’t just do what he wants. Last year, cousins of mine were thrown out of their businesses, their homes and their jobs, just for being Jewish. Do you all remember what they did on that bloody Kristallnacht? I’m so worried about them, I haven’t had a letter since February. The Nazis are sending Jews to work camps where they are used as slave labour. How any so-called civilized society can allow this to happen is beyond me. He has to be stopped before millions of people are slaughtered, just for belonging to the wrong religion.’
No one seemed to be able to look at Miriam as she delivered her tear-filled statement. We had all heard the rumours of Jewish people being hounded out of their homes and exiled to concentration camps throughout Germany. The newsreels at the cinema had shown graphic images of Kristallnacht. The vast majority of the British population were horrified by the news reports, but there were some, even in our small town, who seemed to blame all that was wrong with the world on the Jewish race.
I turned off the radio thinking that, as head of the farm, I ought to say something. My father would no doubt have delivered a rousing speech, saying we were all in this together and it was up to each and every one of us to do our bit to ensure that Hitler was defeated. Sadly, as a nineteen-year-old mother, I wasn’t up to delivering rousing speeches.
‘Firstly, I have to say that we all knew this was coming, sad and shocking as the actual announcement was. Secondly, I’m sure the government will announce soon that farming industry workers are in a reserved occupation. The country will still need to be fed and our troops will need their ration packs so none of you will be forced to join up if you don’t want to. I will however, understand completely if any of you feel you have to do your bit for King and country and you can go with my blessing but, please, if you can, wait until the recruiting offices are set up. We’ve still got the corn harvest to bring in before you go.’
I let out a deep sigh.
‘Damn Hitler, damn Mussolini, damn Stalin, and damn Neville bloody Chamberlain.’
As the lads drifted out into the yard, I sat down at the kitchen table thinking about the past year.
The farm had done well. The wheat crop had been as good as it ever had been and we’d had a bumper crop of piglets and lambs too. The new milking parlour/barn had enabled us to house thirty cows through the bad weather and the extra animals meant that our milk production had quadrupled. The electric pumps meant that milking was now a one-man job and Miriam’s little butter and cheese enterprise had expanded. There had been a wedding in March when young Benny married his childhood sweetheart, Emily.
Martha was now a toddler with a mission to explore every inch of the farm. Her inquisitive nature was only matched by her temper, if she was stopped going into places she wasn’t allowed to go.
Our relationship still bordered on indifference. She put up with me if she was in the mood, but no amount of encouragement or proffered bribes, could get her to spend time with me if didn’t feel like it. Her vocabulary wasn’t great yet but ‘Mama’ one of the easiest words to say, was the word she used least.
Since March, I had been accompanying my best friend Amy to the local picture palace to watch the latest Hollywood exports. To my delight and embarrassment, my movie star lookalike, Rita Hayworth, appeared in more and more of the movies on offer. I looked like Rita; my rolling shoulder length curls made the similarities almost photographic. We were so much alike that the owner of the picture house, a Mr Wallington, even offered to pay me to stand outside the cinema greeting prospective movie goers whenever one of her films was on show.
Future wise, financially at least, the farm would be better off. The government tended to look after us during times of conflict. They would almost certainly subsidise the crops and give us more money per ton for producing it. That wouldn’t necessarily transmit to farm workers’ wages and if we lost any of our men to the fighting, we might have to recruit from the elderly residents of the town, then again, the local factories would almost certainly switch to war production and that would mean the skills of the town’s women and elderly men, would be much sought after.
I could never understand the government’s attitude to farm workers. On the one hand they wanted them working at home producing for the country, but on the other hand, they were reluctant to pay them a little extra in order to keep them in our fields instead of fighting in foreign ones.
Amy, as a mill worker, wouldn’t be allowed to leave to do any other work. Her skills would be needed in the manufacture of uniforms, parachutes or anything else the forces might require.
‘I do hope this thing doesn’t go on as long as the last one,’ she said, sipping at a fresh mug of tea. ‘I promised myself I’d be married before I was twenty-five and there will be a severe shortage of eligible bachelors once this bloody war gets going.’ Amy was just coming up to twenty-one.
‘You’ll be all right if the Americans do come in,’ I replied. ‘Imagine Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart turning up at an army camp nearby?’
Amy rested her chin in her upturned hands and sighed.
‘Imagine,’ she said.
He walked across the veranda and stopped just behind her.
‘Jodie?’
The young girl stared into the darkness and said nothing.
‘Jodie, I…’
‘Don’t talk to me.’
‘Come on, Honey, I just…’
The girl whistled tunelessly and studied the darkness.
‘Jodie don’t…’
‘You left us.’
The man bowed his head. ‘I know, Honey. I didn’t want to.’
‘You just left, without even saying goodbye.’
‘I couldn’t, Jodie, there wasn’t time, your Mom…’
‘Mom was hurt real bad. Do you know that?’
‘Yes, Honey, I know that. Do you miss me too, just a little?’
‘No, I got over you, it took a while, but I made it.’
‘I never got over you, Jodie. Never will.’
The girl got up from the step and turned to face him.
‘You haven’t changed much.’
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t suppose I have.’ He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.
She stepped back quickly. ‘Have you seen Ryan?’
‘Not yet, I don’t know if he wants to see me.’
‘Probably not. He calls Jim, Dad, now.’
‘And you? Do you call Jim, Dad?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s not my Dad. I call him Jim.’
‘Is he looking after you Okay? Does he…’
‘What do you care? You left us. He wouldn’t be here but for that.’ She sat on the step again and wiped away and angry tear.
He placed a soft hand on her hair. She snapped her head away, then dropped her chin to her chest and began to sob. ‘You went… without…saying…goodbye.’
He sat on the step and placed his arm around her shoulder. A few seconds later she buried her head in his chest.
‘I would have given anything to stay, Sweetheart. You know that. I would never do anything to hurt you.’
The sobbing slowly subsided. When she spoke again her voice was soft, all the anger gone.
‘Christmas was bad, and Thanksgiving. I didn’t celebrate my birthday, not properly.’
‘I couldn’t send you anything, Jodie. It wasn’t possible.’
‘I know, Dad. I’m older now, I understand.’
A voice called from inside the house. ‘Jodie? Dinner’s ready. Come wash your hands.’
She stood up slowly. He crouched and took her hands in his. ‘You had better go or you’ll be in trouble.’
She threw her arms round his neck and hugged him. ‘Thanks for coming, Dad. Will I see you again?’
‘He sucked on his teeth and tipped his head to the side. ‘Never say never. It’s difficult, but I’ll try to come over now and then. It might be a while ’til next time though.’
She stepped back and gave him a smile. ‘I love you Dad.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I know, Honey, and I love you, never forget that.’
She smiled again. ‘Sorry for behaving like a brat.’ She turned away and crossed the veranda as Jim appeared in the doorway.
‘Jodie, how many more times…’
‘Sorry, Jim. I was just thinking about Dad…it’s three years ago today that he died.’
It began with a trivial moment of carelessness, but the shockwaves that reverberate from this seemingly insignificant incident, spread far and wide.
Ed and his heavily pregnant wife Mary are on an errand for Ed’s ailing father before the pair depart for warmer climes. But the winter of 1962 comes early and one innocuous event and a hastily taken decision will have devastating consequences for the family of young Rose Gorton. Mary’s already fragile mental state is put under further stress while Ed tries to make sense of events that are spiralling massively, Out of Control.
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