What happens when your past finally catches up with you?
Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.
Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.
This time, however, there is more at stake.
Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.
With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.
But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.
It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Nor does it help when his old mentor walks through the door.
I don’t like surprises. This dislike had started with a surprise birthday party about 10 years ago and since then I’ve assiduously tried to avoid them.
Of course, there are also surprises you have no control over, and I liked them even less.
Bluff and bravado would only carry me so far. These people whoever they were would not accept that I knew nothing about what had just happened.
Which I didn’t.
It was not the A interrogation team with a chest full of torture tools and dressed in hazmat suits, but when the harbinger of my fate walked into the room, it was something a lot scarier.
A man I knew well or thought I did until he walked in the door, I had the utmost respected for.
Colonel Bamfield. My first Commanding Officer, the man who cut me some slack, and made me into a soldier.
Now, all I had was questions, but I was on the wrong side of the table.
The first, what the hell was going on here?
My first inclination was to stand and salute a superior officer, but he was not wearing the uniform, not the proper uniform I was used to seeing him in. My second inclination was to ask him what he was doing in that room with me, but I didn’t.
Speak when spoken to, and don’t volunteer information.
He too tried the silent treatment, or maybe it was that he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
Then, still standing behind the table, looking down on me, he said, “That was some jump you made from a moving helicopter.” Was there a touch of admiration in his tone?
“Life or death. Anyone one else is that situation would do the same.”
“Less than you’d think.”
Establishing camaraderie. Or trying to. I waited for the next question.
It wasn’t a question but a statement, “We have a problem Alan, and it’s not just with you.”
My idea of shutting myself away in my lonely garret and writing, coming out into the fresh air every now and then, just to make sure neither North Korea or the United States haven’t turned the world into a nuclear holocaust, was simply a pipe dream.
Being single again doesn’t abrogate you of the same responsibilities you have before you became single. You still had children, and those children have children, and, yes, you can see where this is going.
The mobile phone, so silent for the past few days, makes the unusual sound it makes when a message arrives.
Thank heaven for tech-savvy granddaughters!
And before you say, quite casually, that I would be better off without technology, after all, all Hemingway had was a typewriter, I’m afraid to say there is no Luddite in me.
In fact, do Luddites still exist?
So, as I said, the phone dings, and as I’m not expecting anything, I try to ignore it. Three minutes later it dings again, and it’s a warning. The Gods are getting impatient.
It’s a message to pick up the grandchildren from school and deliver them home. It’s something I haven’t done in a while, but it’s an opportunity to see them, and they always have words of wisdom as only a thirteen and ten-year-old can.
It’s a while since I have. I suspect my involvement had been curtailed somewhat because their nanna had been available, and the more preferred option.
Or maybe they had just asked their mother to get me to pick them up so I could see them. I had said, a while back, I was relatively reluctant to go around to see them because of how awkward it might be, and to give them time to adjust to the new arrangement the divorce had brought about.
And since I’ve been spending all my time recently immersed in conspiracies, was this one perpetrated by my daughter in law?
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester. Now we’ve cleaned up the room there’s nowhere to hide.
That might just become a real problem for our furry friend.
The girls are on a mission, as we’ve set them a series of tasks in order to earn some pocket money during the school holidays. And keep them out of mischief.
But, what does Chester think of all of this?
Not happy at all.
He was apprehensive at their arrival as he always is, and tries to hide away while they are here, but all that rummaging and boxes moving hither and thither, it’s not long before he comes out to see what’s happening.
The office is clean, the hiding spots are gone. I watch him slink from spot to spot, the look of dismay lengthening.
This is wrong, he says, coming up and sitting at my feet. You know I need to get away from time to time, spend some alone time to contemplate new ways to catch mice.
Right.
There were seven different spots where I know Chester hides away, and these are spots in cupboards and under beds, places that need cleaning and we can’t get to.
His ears prick up, hearing a noise from the other end of the house, and he’s off like the flash. A few minutes later he’s back. Another hiding spot is gone.
Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.
The blurb:
Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!
Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.
But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.
In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.
From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.
We were in London in Summer, it was a fine afternoon, going into the evening and we decided to get on the London Eye. As you can see from the clock it was near 7:00 pm.
This photo was taken as we were coming down.
Those long evenings were quite remarkable, not in the least going to a pub and sinking a few pints! There was one such pub not far from Charing Cross Station
There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a set up.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman the pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
It seems that we can be completely focussed on a single task to the detriment of all else, and, when that task is complete, suddenly we feel totally drained.
That’s how I feel right now.
The end of one year, and soon the start of another…
All I have to do is get past the publication of my next two books, take a few days off, and then I should be invigorated. Perhaps COVID will have something to do with it because it will be more of the same, rather than a brave new world, we will be counteracting new surges and variations with resultant isolations, so it will be more of a case of head down, tail up, with nowhere to go, no travel to plan, and not able to go anywhere other than the shops, the doctor or the chemist.
For computer programmers who never leave their semi darkened lair, ordering in pizza and Coke, it must have been a Godsend.
Given that I prefer to be at home, working on any number of stories, it usually is for me.
But, have I been working too hard, and it’s finally got to me. I mean, you can only write so much before the brain starts to fry?
But, at the very least. I have been working on two novels that needed to be completed, not that they are exactly there yet, and other that NaNoWriMo kicked along, and I’m still writing a few pages a night, and two others that are now ready for the final edit.
This has all happened to the detriment of my episodic stories, which have lain idle since October, and then I picked up one, and wrote two or three more episodes, just to keep it ticking over. The other two still have five spare to publish soon.
And I know it might show signs of panic but April is coming rapidly into focus, and there will be the A to Z Challenge, 26 more stories in 30 days. I’d like to get a head start on this, but time….
Something else that pleases me, and is entirely unexpected, is that I have sold a number of copies of my books in the last month or so. I know I’m not about to be vying for the top of the bestseller list, but it’s satisfying.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 