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.
So there are words on paper, and three times I’ve tried to fix it, or, perhaps just make it sound better because reading it in my head, there’s too little background and too many questions.
The flow of the story isn’t working for me, so I guess it’s time to sit down and work out what it is I’m trying to say.
The notion that our main character, Graham, is a loser seems to shine through, and that’s not what I’m trying to portray him as. No, far from it, it’s been a lifetime of bad choices that have put him where he is, and he knows it.
So, in part, this is about owning your mistakes, and it’s my job to make him come across as a hero in waiting. There’s good in him, perhaps too much, but there is also that attitude that led to all those bad choices, the one that can get him into trouble, and a sort of intransigence inherited from his father, that has more or less got him ostracised from the family.
I want this character to be a chop off the old block, both of whom are the type not to back down, not to say sorry, and, to quote a rather apt allegory, would cut their nose off to spite their face.
Graham’s intransigence led to his refusal to follow his father into business, refusal to go to University despite having the necessary qualifications, and just to round out the defiance, his choice of women whom he knew would meet with family disapproval.
And these factors, over a period of time, saw him bounce from a low-paying job to jobs with no prospects, and a string of failed relationships, until this moment in time, where he was basically on his own, working the graveyard shift as a security guard. The sort of job where qualifications weren’t looked for and workmates looked like and probably were ex-cons.
There are a few more details like the older brother, Jackson, politician and schemer, the same as his father before him (the seat was passed down through the family), like the younger sister who is a highly successful surgeon, married into immense wealth. His brother had been less successful in the marital stakes but what he lacked in a wife was more than made up with a string of highly eligible and beautiful women.
And, no, he doesn’t resent the fact they’re rich, or that his parents were, too, just that they treated him with contempt.
It was almost five years since the last time he had seen any of them, that last time he attended the family Christmas in Martha’s Vineyard, the ‘Stockdale Residence’ an ostentatious sprawling fifty-room mansion that, in a drunken rage, he’s tried to burn down.
Once again, he had not received an invitation to the next, due in a few days, and it was not entirely unexpected.
Graham has his faults, but that even, five years ago, had pulled him off the road to self-destruction, helped along by a year stint in jail where he learned a great many lessons about life itself, and survival.
The four years since?
A lot of regrets, and a lot of repentance. Life after jail was a lot worse than life trying to defy the family and the system. There were two roads he could have gone down, and thankfully for him, it was not the wrong one.
So, he’s back on the path, a whole lot wiser, a whole lot tougher.
That might not have been exactly what I was thinking for him over the first three attempts. I don’t think any character really begins to shine until halfway through, as you find him meeting various challenges in ways even you, as the writer, find quite unexpected.
Is that the end result of being a pantser over being a planner?
I don’t think, even as a planner, you can create a character that’s not going to change, or even surprise you, as the story evolves.
And somehow I don’t think I’m about to change from one to the other.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
I was in the middle of a large building, sitting on a chair, a single light on above me creating a weird shadow in a circle of light. Beyond that circle was darkness.
But I was grateful there was no blindfold or gag.
It had to be one of the buildings on Benderby’s factory site. There were a number of older warehouses on the perimeter of the site, boarded up and in disrepair. I had heard rumours they were going to be refurbished or demolished, no one seemed to be able to decide what to do with them.
It was deathly quiet, but if I strained hard, I thought I could hear the sound of a generator not far away. Benderby’s had their own mini power station in case the main power grid went down, and I remembered that it was round the time for the six-monthly testing of the generators. I was definitely inside the Benderby complex.
So, did that make my captor one of Benderby’s men? Or was it Alex himself, trying to make a bold statement. I didn’t think he had that sort of aggressive behaviour in him, but he was a Benderby, and they all had violent streaks somewhere in their makeup.
“Good. You’re awake.” The distorted voice could be either male or female. I’d know more when I saw my assailant, bit it came from beside me and I tried to look in that direction. It was difficult because whoever tied me up did a good job.
There was also an echo, brought on by the emptiness of the building.
“What do you want? I’m not much good to you if you’re trying to break into the main building. I don’t have night access.”
“I’m not interested in the main building.”
“What are you interested in?”
“You.”
I had expected to hear the word treasure, not me.
“Sadly, I’m not that interesting.”
“So you say. But maybe it might have something to do with that friend of yours, Boggs.”
“Then it’s the treasure you’re after.”
“Me, personally, no. The people I work for, I guess. The word is that Boggs has a treasure map that his father left him.”
This person had to be acquainted with Rico, because only he could possibly know about that particular map, that is, if Boggs had told him, or told his mother, and Rico had overheard him.
Or Boggs had told this person, under duress, that I had the map, holding it for safekeeping. My mind started conjuring up all sorts of terrifying scenarios, all of which ended badly.
“If Rico told you that, then he was only trying to save his own skin. He’s been trying to barter a copy of something to the Benderby’s, a map he didn’t have and hadn’t been able to get off Boggs. If there is such a map, then Boggs has it.”
“I’m sure he told you about it, didn’t he?”
“What are best friends for, but whether I believed him is a different matter. He told me about a map his said his father had in his possession, and I know he’s been hunting high and low for it, but if he’s found it, then he hasn’t told me about it yet.”
I was trying to sound sincere, but fear has a way of making you sound, well, afraid.
My captor took a step forward into the fringe of the light. Dressed in black, with a mask, the body shape looked more like a woman than a man, a figure that could be disguised by the bulky outer clothing.
“Who are you?”
“That’s irrelevant. What I will do to you if you do not tell me the truth, is. Boggs told me you had the map. I believe he was telling the truth.”
So, this person had interrogated Boggs. It would not have taken much. Boggs was not the bravest soul I knew. At school, Boggs had always been the first to capitulate in any confrontation.
I wondered if they had searched him. Of course they had, and he didn’t have the map on him, which made it easier to deflect the onus to me.
But I didn’t have the map on me either. I took the precaution of hiding it away in a place no one would find except me. Now it was a matter of withstanding whatever this person decided was needed to extract ‘the truth’.
The problem was, I didn’t handle confrontation any better than Boggs had.
“And I’m telling you the truth when I tell you I haven’t got the map. But I do have one of those being peddled at Osborne’s bar. You can have that one if you like.”
I saw my captor shake their head. Disdain, or disappointment?
Two steps further into the circle of light, and the two slaps, either side of my face, very hard. The paid was instant and stinging, bringing tears to my eyes. It should have brought acquiescence, but deep down defiance was building. It surprised me.
My captor took a step back and looked down on me. “Don’t make me have to hurt you. All I want is the map.”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
Closed fist this time, and aside from the teeth jarring, possible jaw-breaking, nose bleeding effect, I was starting to consider how long I could withstand this sort of beating.
“The map?” Patience was running thin, anger was building.
“I can’t…”
Several punches to the ribs and stomach, taking my breath away and making it very difficult to breathe. Pains where I’d never had pain before. I’d had beatings at school but never like this.
Once more a step back, I could now only see the black figure through blurry eyes.
Time to plead to deaf ears, “You can beat me to within an inch of my life, but I can’t give you what I don’t have. It’s as simple as that.”
And then I waited for the next round of punches.
A minute. Two.
Then a new voice, out in the void, said, “He doesn’t have it. This is a nothing but an elaborate hoax.”
It’s an extravagant statement and not necessarily true, but often used by relatives when one of their numbers says they’ve written a book.
My brother said that when I told him I’d written one
I didn’t tell him that I’d written a dozen and published five, it seemed irrelevant at the time.
But as easy or hard as it may be to write one, writing a second is so much harder.
One of those five was ‘What sets us apart’, a story about a retired ‘problem solver’ who meets a girl, marries her, and she then disappears.
It’s not long before he’s dragged back down the rabbit hole of ‘problem-solving’, this time a problem of his own.
Needless to say, there are endless espionage undertones along the way, meeting up with old friends, new friends, and enemies alike.
And his wife was not who he expected her to be, but something else entirely.
Oh, and just for good measure, the girl is the daughter of an old friend of his ex-boss, Prendergast, the legendary spymaster.
It was fun writing the first, weaving the story through many unexpected twists and turns, and arriving at a point where he finally gets her back.
Or has he?
As I was writing that first book, it occurred to me there was scope for a second book, a sequel, that could explore the theme that she might not be the real Susan. After all, in the first, our hero has to contend with several clones that are almost impossible to separate from the real Susan.
What if he hadn’t rescued his Susan?
Thus, a sequel was born, “Strangers We’ve Become’, and over the next month, I’m going to incorporate the last-minute changes requested by the editor and we’re going to get this thing published.
When we first planned to stay in Tuscany for a few days, we wanted to be in a central area. We had thought of staying in Florence and making daily treks, but the tour operator we selected told us it would be better if we stayed closer to Arezzo.
We picked Greve in Chianti, and a place called Antico Pastificio, we booked a standard apartment with two bedrooms, and it was about as authentic Italian you could get. The building we stayed in was the yellow pasta factory, and the apartment named ‘Iris’.
It was only steps away from the main square, shops, restaurants, and at the opposite end, the quaint ringing of church bells at various times during the day.
Gaining access was through a very narrow arch which required some deft driving and then up the road. There were villas and two large apartment blocks.
You can just see the archway at the end of the road. This was the entrance to our room,
along a passage and up the stairs, turning left at the top.
Going straight ahead through the gate to the car park,
and access to the grounds behind the buildings.
This was the view from the lounge/living room. The days were hot, and on several evenings it rained, breaking the heat and making the evenings sitting by the window cool and refreshing.
And the last view is looking towards the town piazza and the church
Who can sleep when you’re stressing over whether the girl of your dreams is or isn’t the girl of your dreams? Yes, it can be that confusing.
It’s obvious the father doesn’t think it’s over, yet.
And when he gets the call, in the dead of night, it’s a ridiculous question to ask him if he’s still awake, especially when he answers the phone.
Yes, the heart does flutter at the sound of her voice.
And a meeting, in the middle of the night. At the diner. A diner that was once a den of iniquity and now just an empty reminder of what the city was before it was bypassed with the new interstate.
Looking for the chauffeur he figures she hasn’t arrived. He doesn’t believe she drove herself.
Does that come under the category, you learn new things every day?
He finds her already there, nursing coffee, and looking like an unmade bed. In other words, she is definitely the most beautiful girl he has ever met.
And the kiss tells him this thing is far from over.
Perhaps it’s worth it when he tells her she will be coming with him, and learning the ropes.
The girl was still waiting. To me, it was risky to do so, but it depended on her peers, and if she had been told not to lose me, then I could understand. Myself though, I would have kept an eye from the foyer or outside the building depending on where the exits were.
I sat next to her, which I could see was a little unsettling.
“Not finished yet?” She asked, trying to move a little bit further away from me.
“Yes, I am. But I was wondering, Francesca, why have you taken an interest in me?” I gave her a curious look and tried not to look threatening.
She seemed disconcerted that I knew her name, and was going to respond but instead said, “I think you have mistaken me for someone else.”
She stood.
“Perhaps I have, but if the names of Antonia and Giuseppe mean anything to you, I suggest we go have a cup of coffee, my treat, and talk about it.”
I saw the fear in her eyes, and I knew she knew I had leverage. It was, for a field agent, which I didn’t think she was, the worst-case scenario. The fact she wasn’t was underlined by the amount of information found. Field agents, like myself, were ghosts.
She nodded.
Once we were seated, and coffee delivered, I said, “Whatever you might be thinking right now, I am not interested in causing anyone harm. If what I suspect is the case, then you have nothing to worry about unless your employer expects you not to tell me or anyone anything, but we’re past that. You are not a proper field agent, are you?”
“No.”
“Why then?”
“They were short two people and I had done the training, and they asked if I could fill in.”
“To do?”
“Surveillance.”
“You do realize surveillance is carried out from afar.”
“In London or New York maybe but here it is a little more difficult.”
“Did they ask you to get close?”
“Only if an opportunity presented itself. I was to find out what you were doing, with whom, and why.”
“Are your employers looking for the countess?”
She looked at me sideways, summing up what she could and couldn’t get away with. “Yes. She has gone missing. The team in London lost her at the hotel. You were there, and with her at the opera, that’s how you became a person of interest.”
That told me she was not working with the kidnappers. And quite possibly her employers were working for the Burkhardt’s.
“You usually work in the stolen art department, well, not so much stolen art as identifying fakes. I noticed one case where the owners of several very expensive pieces had them copied, sold the originals to private collectors, and then tried to claim insurance when the copies were ‘stolen’. Why would you want to go out into the murky world?”
“There aren’t any cases at the moment and a change was good.”
“You do realise that if I was not retired and only doing a favour for a friend, you’d be dead, or at the very least in hospital. The world I lived in was very, very dangerous. And information on you and your family is too easily accessible. I suggest you address that when you go back to the office. As it stands that might not be for a while. You will tell your bosses I have taken a shine to you, and you will be coming with me to Sorrento.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Do you know what collateral damage is?”
She nodded.
“That can still happen. I don’t need you running around in the shadows where I’ll trip over you. I believe the countess had been kidnapped, and the fact we haven’t got a ransom means that we are dealing with some very nasty people. At least that way you can keep your people updated. It’ll be easy for you to say you overheard me reporting in. It’s that or a dark hole somewhere for several days. Your choice.”
I didn’t want to take her with me, but she was going to stay on my tail. Better to know where she is rather than have her blunder her way into a possible tense situation.
We have visited this town on a hill, famous for its fourteen towers, twice. The first time we stayed in a hotel overlooking the main piazza, and the second time, for a day visit, and return to a little restaurant tucked away off the main piazza for its home cooking.
No cars are allowed inside the town and parking is provided outside the town walls. You can drive up to the hotel to deliver your baggage, but the car must return to the carpark overnight.
This is one of the fourteen towers
I didn’t attempt to climb to the tower, which you can do in some of them, just getting up the church steps was enough for me. Inside the building was, if I remember correctly, a museum.
Looking up the piazza towards some battlements, and when you reach the top and turn left, there is a small restaurant on the right-hand side of the laneway that had the best wild boar pasta.
Another of the fourteen towers, and through the arch, down a lane to the gated fence that surrounds the town. The fortifications are quite formidable and there are several places along the fence where you can stand and look down the hill at the oncoming enemy (if there was one).
Part of the main piazza which is quite large, and on the right, the wishing well where my wish for a cooler day was not granted.
Officially, the Piazza della Cisterna is the most beautiful square of the town, San Gimignano. The well was built in 1273 and enlarged in 1346 by Podestà Guccio dei Malavolti.
And not to be outdone by any other the other old towns, there is an old church, one of several. It is the Collegiate Church or the Duomo di San Gimignano, a monument of Romanesque architecture built around 1000 and enlarged over time.
Next door is the Museum of Sacred Art.
And I guess it’s rather odd to see television aerials on top of houses that are quite literally about a thousand years old. I wonder what they did back then for entertainment?
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
