Here is another of those three letter words that can have so many meanings that it is nigh on impossible to pin it down.
You have to use it in a sentence which all but explains it.
For instance,
A pad might be a writing pad, or a note pad, something on which you can write, notes, stories, anything really, even doodles.
Cats, dogs, a lot of animals have padded feet. I’d say, for a cat, those pads would be like shock absorbers.
You can pad an expense account with false expenditure in an accounting sense, I’m sure a lot of people are tempted to do so.
I know places, where a single man might live, is called a bachelor pad. So many men like to think they may have one, but it takes money to buy the accouterments of seduction.
Then there’s a medical dressing, a square of gauze called a pad, usually absorbent and soaked in disinfectant to help protect and repair a wound.
Shoulder pads, for broader shoulders
KInee pads, for when crashing off a bike
Shin pads for soccer, and ice hockey players
A helipad which is for helicopter landings and takeoffs, much the same as a launch pad for rockets. Unfortunately, rockets do not generally have a tendency to land, not unless they are bombs, like the V1 and V2 rockets of WW2.
It could also be someone walking around a house in socks, the man stealthily approached the thief, padding silently in his socks so he wouldn’t be heard.
And lastly,
A place for frogs to hang out, ie, the flat leaves of a water Lilly.
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:
It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.
The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.
He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.
The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent. We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.
There was nowhere for him to go.
The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on. Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.
Where was he going?
“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter. He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.
“What?”
“I think he’s made us.”
“How?”
“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing. Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain. He’s just sped up.”
“How far away?”
“A half-mile. We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”
It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”
“Step on it. Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do. The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.
Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.
Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster. We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.
Or so we thought.
Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.
“What the hell…” Aland muttered.
I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility. The car was empty, and no indication where he went.
Certainly not up the road. It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit. Up the mountainside from here, or down.
I looked up. Nothing.
Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”
Then where did he go?
Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.
“Sorry,” he said quite calmly. “Had to go if you know what I mean.”
I’d lost him.
It was as simple as that.
I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.
I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.
It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.
Christmas was a time of surprises, some of them not always pleasant. In fact, I don’t think I could remember one that was what I expected, and I had a very low level of expectation.
And, being that magical time of the year, once again, I had received my gilt-edged invitation to come visit my parents. What filled me with trepidation was the address.
They had this knack of finding places, anywhere in the world, that were, well, different.
Last year, it was a haunted Scottish castle. The year before, they had found a dilapidated mansion in Louisiana that was once a slave owner’s residence and hadn’t been lived in for years.
This year?
A recently refurbished three-story mansion that once belonged to a railway magnate, had been a boarding school, then a bed and breakfast, and now was a billionaire’s retreat.
It was also rented out for those times the billionaire wasn’t there, which apparently was most of the time, a fact my parents seized on and most likely the reason why they took the place for Christmas.
It was going to be fun; snow, Santa and his sled, and the quaint celebrations of the small town nearby, a town which I don’t think would be quite ready for the eccentrics that made up the family members.
Good thing, then, I only had to see them once a year.
Eleanor had her bags packed, and we were waiting for the driver to pick her up and take her to the airport. She, too, was going home for Christmas, only she had sane parents who lived in a normal town in a normal house and did normal things.
We had been together for a few months, and it was still a work in progress, getting used to a life living with someone else. After so long on my own, it was a big adjustment. She had just come off a bad breakup, and we were taking it slow.
I knew the last thing needed was her to meet my parents, and although the subject of family came up, more than once, I told her she was better off not knowing them. I told her, when she asked, to think of the Addams Family and then multiply it by a hundred.
As I said, early days. This girl was big on the sanctity of family.
Just before the arrival time of her driver, there was a phone call. If it was me, I would not have answered it because it had ‘ominous’ written all over it.
She answered, listened for a minute, said a few words, and then hung up.
“They’re snowed in, worst blizzards in a century. No one in or out for a week, maybe more. Change of plans. I’ll be coming with you.”
I considered objecting but inevitably knew two things were going to happen, no matter what I said. The first, that snippet in the paper’s star sign forecast, “unsettling news will cause a deep rift in a relationship” was as true as it was going to get, and the second, come New Year’s Day, I would be single again, though that was an optimistic assessment.
I just shook my head. By the calendar, there were, at best, twelve days left, and I had better make the most of them.
On the plane, I tried to give her a rundown of the family members. They were, to outsiders, very different to those who didn’t know them and those who did wisely kept their distance.
It’s why I worked and lived on the other side of the country, and overseas whenever there was an opportunity. But, sometimes, I had to go and see them. This was one of those occasions. It was a matter of getting in and getting out as fast as possible. By myself, it would be easy, with Eleanor, it would be impossible.
Only once before had I taken a girlfriend with me, the first time, and I vowed after that, never again.
I started with my father. Inherited a fortune and kept it, unlike a lot of people who inherited fortunes and lost them. He was brilliant but completely crazy. He wears crazy coloured suits, dressed as a clown because he once wanted to be a circus clown, even running away as a child.
He was always interested in what I was doing with my life, and endlessly disappointed I was not married like my two brothers and sister. His over-enthusiastic ministrations on that occasion were enough to never bring another.
Eleanor didn’t seem fazed.
Next was my mother, who once worked briefly at a circus as a trapeze artist. I never quite got the story of how my parents met, only that she was over the top with everything she did. That was makeup, clothes, speech, and flamboyance. She made entrances and then commandeered the floor, extinguishing every other light in the room.
She regularly was in a story about her or something she was doing, so I was always up to date. The latest project was a cancer wing at a hospital somewhere in Africa.
Leo, brother number one, the heir apparent, was a lazy indolent ass if ever there was one, who treated me very badly as a child and got away with it. He was the chosen one who could do no wrong.
His wife, Maisie, was a mouse, and sought as little time with him as possible, making it what I would have called a marriage of convenience. He often forgot he was married and featured with some socialite or starlet in the news or in what we called the ‘scandal sheets’.
I asked her once why she stayed, and the non-answer told me. Some people could sacrifice a lot for a life that could hardly be imagined. It was not every day you could mingle with royalty.
A word of warning, Leo would try his darnedest to take her off me. He always had, and another reason why I didn’t bring anyone.
Younger brother Tom didn’t care about anything and just did his own thing. He was an amazing painter, and one of his murals graced my lounge room wall.
The youngest sister, Francine, aspired to be a trapeze artist like her mother and actually got an audition at a circus but fell. There was a safety net, but somehow, it collapsed on one side when she landed, spilling her onto the ground and ending any aspirations. Now she had a slight limp, and a chip on her shoulder, but was my closest ally.
That relationship was forged over the six months I stayed with her in the hospital while the doctors put her back together. I gave her the nickname Humpy Dumpty, which in hindsight was in very poor taste, but she loved it.
There were eccentric aunts and uncles, some of whom were egregious, some innocuous, others not so much, but I just avoided them. By the time we touched down at the airport, if you could call it that, she knew as much about my family as I wanted to.
It was no surprise that Francine was at the airport with a card that said World’s Best Brother in that calligraphy hand that looked amazing.
So was the smile, and her general demeanour that for a long time had been sad.
Eleanor recognised her before I did.
Then I got the biggest hug, and right after that, Eleanor got one almost as big. What she whispered in Eleanor’s ear I couldn’t hear, but the smile said it was probably about me.
“Just when I was beginning to think all of his family were crazies,” Eleanor said.
“We are. Just some less so. Did he tell you about the last time he brought a friend?”
“Only that it went badly.”
“‘And then some. Just keep away from Leo. He’s a serial pest. The rest, well, I’ll make sure I’m with you at all times, and everything should be fine.”
Eleanor looked at me with a face that I recognised as ‘what have you got me into’. I shrugged. “Maybe being stuck in a blizzard had its advantages.”
“No. It had to be done. If we are going to spend the rest of our lives together, it is best to get it over and done with.”
Francine gave me the look. “Who is this girl, and where did you find her?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Good. Log fires and hot chocolate will never be the same.”
Of course, it was 20 questions plus another 200 during the drive to the mansion, another of those reputed to have a lot of paranormal activity, also famous for being used as a film set.
How my father discovered this little-known fact outside the film and paranormal investigators’ world was beyond me, but not unexpected.
“You’re going to love it. Footsteps on the creaky stairs, noises from the attic, we’ve had a couple of blood-curdling screams.”
Turning off the road and onto the driveway, the arch formed by overhanging trees made it darker than usual, and with a noticeable change in atmosphere.
I shivered, half expecting to see a couple of headless ghosts crossing in front of us. Then we came out into a clearing and the house before us bathed in sunshine.
“Well, there’s something I haven’t seen before. Usually, it’s dark and dismal with snow falling. Today was one of the few days we’ve been able to get up the driveway. The gods must know you were coming, Alex.”
She stopped just short of the portico, and we got out. It was freezing cold, sun out or not.
“Is it going to be the usual circus?” I asked.
That circus, it was tradition that the visitors already there would line up to greet the new arrivals. No one was spared the meet and greet session, which was why I’d left it as late as possible to arrive.
I had warned her of what to expect, and again, I was surprised it didn’t seem to faze her.
“Leave the bags. We’ve got house staff to help. Dad took the all-inclusive package.”
“Including the fright night show?” Eleanor chose that moment to show she had a sense of humour.
“Especially the fright night show.” Francine laughed. Perhaps it was a joke of sorts passed in whispers earlier.
I braced myself. This was going to get ugly very quickly.
Just past the hallway and where the building opened out into a very large entertaining area, perhaps the size of a ballroom, the family were spread out in a line, parents first, children and their children, uncles, aunts, and finally special guests. There were about thirty in all, and I could see we were the last to arrive. Francine stayed with Eleanor.
My father decided to play it reasonably straight, having a matching Christmas jumper with my mother, the sort no sane person would wear.
It was one of those traditions, and I was sure there was one waiting for me in our room. Francine didn’t wear one, but Leo and Tom would have to.
He ignored me and looked straight at Eleanor. “I’m glad to see my son has finally decided to bring one of his friends. How are you?”
“Why do you ask? Do you think I’m ill?”
It was not a response he expected, nor I.
“No. It’s just a normal response when you greet someone.”
“Your son told me you and everyone else are anything but normal. I hope you haven’t changed just to please me.”
He looked confused. Finally, some who was not afraid to speak their mind. And to me, it was a surprise that she would be what I would have said, annoyed.
“We are normal people, I assure you,” he said.
I shook my head. “This isn’t going to be a very long visit, Dad, so don’t spare the horses.”
“Why, are you not staying for Christmas day?” My mother decided to chime in.
“After the last time, what do you expect. I doubt much has changed in ten years. I expect that by the time I get to Leo and punch his lights out, you’ll be asking me to leave.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Perhaps, then I suggest you talk to your favourite son. The one I really feel sorry for is Tom. He has to endure the bastard all year round.”
I could see Tom skulking in line, but there was no sign of Leo. Probably he forgot I was arriving and was trying to make out with one of the staff. Maisie was there, waiting, anxiously looking for her miscreant husband.
“Well, even if you are not pleased to see us, we are pleased to see you. We would like it to be more than once a year though, now you have a friend.”
“It remains to be seen if she still is at the end of this circus.”
I felt an elbow in the ribs and looked to see that it was Eleanor, not Francine. “Play nice, Alex. I can stick up for myself.”
As we stepped sideways to greet Maisie, Leo came dashing in looking dishevelled, then slowed and smoothed out the wrinkles before stopping in front of Eleanor.
Leo at his best worst self. Maisie groaned.
“Well, what have we here, Alex?” he gushed.
All smiles, he reached out to give her a hug. She stepped back slightly and said, “You would be well advised not to invade my private space, Leo.”
He stopped almost crashing into her. “I’m sorry.” The urbane affable mantle slipped slightly at the rejection, but if I knew anything about him, it was just a minor setback, a challenge to be overcome. “You are Alex’s friend?”
“Girlfriend, yes. Alex’s girlfriend, are you that stupid that I need to spell it out slowly for you so you can understand me.” She said the last words very slowly like she was talking to the village idiot.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Francine grinning like a Cheshire cat.
The whole group had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were now focused on Leo. He was used to being the centre of attention, but not like this.
“I am not stupid.”
“Fine. Let’s run with that. Who am I?”
“You are Alex’s girlfriend.” He said it quietly.
“Louder, much Louder, Leo. Who am I?”
“You are Alex’s girlfriend.”
“I am.” She looked up and down the line. “Everyone get that?”
She had their unfettered attention. It was a side of her I’d not seen, but it was one I liked. I was hoping to punch Leo’s lights out, but this had kyboshed my moment. She had them all in the palm of her hand.
Everyone nodded.
Then it was back to Leo. “Whoever you were schmoozing before you arrived late, late, I might add to greet your brother, was just simply rude. It’s not the sort of behaviour I would expect from a brother-in-law, so from today, it stops. You can now tell everyone and, particularly, your wife that you will no longer be sleeping with other women.”
“I was…”
“Are you going to add liar to the list of your misdemeanours, Leo?”
She had that look of a woman who didn’t like men who lied or slept around, and I’m guessing that had something to do with her last breakup.
“No.”
“Then…”
He made his apology and promise. It was the biggest humiliation I’d seen him take. I doubted whether it would have any impact on his behaviour, but it was a highlight, nonetheless.
She came back to where I was standing next to my mother, who had been astonished more than anything else.
She looked my hand in hers and I looked at both my father and mother.
“Despite what either of you might think, Alex is not a failure. If you’re looking for utter failures, try Leo. You have spent far too much time pandering to a complete idiot, and in the process, you have ignored the three other children in your lives. I expect this will be the year you address that issue. Yes?”
They got a disapproving glare in their direction, so they agreed. Loud enough that everyone could hear.
“Excellent. Now let’s get on with this meet and greet.”
I saw the meaningful look between Francine and Eleanor and just put two and two together. Eleanor knew far too much about my family for her to pick that up from my briefing, so there was only one other explanation.
“When did you and Francine first meet?”
She smiled. “What gave it away?”
“I belatedly realised the hug at the airport was a little more effusive than a first meeting?”
“It was the first time we met in person, not the first time we talked. She called, I answered your phone, and we clicked. You’re her hero, you know, and would do anything for you. She wanted to shoot Leo, and I had to talk her out of it.”
“I want to kill him too.”
“I know. Now you won’t have to go needlessly to jail over a worthless piece of shit.”
“He won’t change you know.”
“He will. There’s a clause in the will that drives the inheritance. Maisie has filed for divorce, and if it goes through, he’s no longer the heir.”
“Who is?”
“You. But it won’t come to that. Unless he really is that stupid. So let’s not dwell on that loathsome creature. There are so many eccentrics and so little time. Who is that guy that looks like Uncle Fester?”
I have reworked the first part of the story with a few new elements about the characters and changed a few of the details of how the characters finish up in the shop before the policewoman makes her entrance.
This is part of the new first section that involves Jack:
Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.
He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.
He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp. His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.
It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation.
A young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack. He recognized the gun, a Luger, German, relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, or more likely a stolen weapon, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.
Jack took another second or two to consider if he could disarm her. No, the distance was too great. He put his hands out where she could see them. No sudden movements, try to remain calm, his heart rate up to the point of cardiac arrest. No point making a bad situation worse.
Pointing with the gun, she said, “Move closer to the counter where I can see you better.”
Everything but her hand steady as a rock. Only telltale sign of stress, the bead of perspiration on her brow. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.
Jack shivered and then did as he was told.
A few seconds more for him to decide she was in an unpredictable category.
“What’s wrong with your friend?” Jack tried the friendly approach after he’d taken the three steps sideways necessary to reach the counter.
The shopkeeper, Alphonse, who, Jack noted seemed to have aged another ten years in the last few months, spoke instead; “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score. At the end of his tether, my guess, and her to get some money.”
A simple hold up that had gone wrong. Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation. She didn’t look like a user. The boy on the ground, he did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.
Oddly, though, Jack had noticed a look pass between the shopkeeper and the girl.
“All you had to go was give us the money, and we wouldn’t be here, now.” She was glaring back at Alphonse. “You can still make this right.”
A flicker of memory jumped out of the depths on Jack’s mind, something discussed at the dinner table with their neighbors, something about the shop as a pick-up point for drugs.
The boy on the floor, he was not here for the money.
Jack thought he’d try another approach. “Look, I don’t want trouble, and you don’t want trouble. I’ll go, forget this ever happened. You might want to do the same.”
The girl looked like she was thinking. The gun, though, still moved between him and the shopkeeper.
Another assessment of the girl; this was not her real home. She was from a better class of people, a different part of town. Caught up in a downward spiral because of her friend on the floor.
Caught in a situation she was not equipped to deal with.
That didn’t bode well for his, or anyone else in that shop right then, health.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Things are about to get complicated…
I hadn’t realised until I said it out loud to someone who would not understand the significance of it, just how far-fetched the reason was.
But in my newly adopted world, it made perfect sense.
Spies dealt with many things, mostly the notion of a threat, and the removal of it, whether it is an object like a USB or a person, or persons, who could make the threat become a reality.
This threat started with a laboratory working for the military to produce biological weapons. Then the funding stopped, for whatever reason, and the laboratory had to cover its losses.
What better way than to hawk the formula on the dark web?
Someone perceived that the laboratory would become a threat and dispatched operatives to monitor the situation.
The worst-case scenario occurs, but from a different standpoint, the outrage of a community-conscious scientist who didn’t like the idea of people creating monstrous weapons and steals the formula to leak to the media.
The laboratory is shut down by the government before the formula could be sold, but there is a copy in play via the scientist.
The scientist, and therefore the threat, neutralised.
The threat then moves to his wife, who contacts someone in the Department, likely but not necessarily Dobbin, who then assigns O’Connell to find the wife and offer a lot of cash for the formula.
She agrees.
Somehow, the planted operatives, Severin and Maury discover the wife and O’Connell’s arrangement.
They create a surveillance group with the intention of monitoring the handover and then try to remove both O’Connell and the wife.
For what reason. The threat would have been removed unless O’Connell and Dobbin had another agenda. Why then when Dobbin rescued O’Connell, did O’Connell then turn on him?
A relationship with the wife?
Or was it simply the thought of making a huge sum of money, one both O’Connell and the wife could retire on. He would not be the first spy to sell his soul for twenty pieces of silver.
But the good news, was we had Severin’s assassin.
The plan from there was to hand her over to the Detective Inspector, who didn’t have an agenda other than getting to the truth and keeping Jan away from Dobbin, or anyone who could set her free.
That plan was quashed the moment I saw Dobbin turn up at the scene. He knew where Severin would be, he must know Severin was meeting with me, and he had sent Jan.
The fact I was still alive meant he wanted something from me.
The question was whether he knew if Jan had been taken off the playing field.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
It was the exact question in my head, though I was closer to answer than she was.
“Run interference, or worse, take over this case too.”
“I thought that was left in the hands of MI5.”
“He turned up after you left.”
She shrugged. “Above my pay grade, to be honest. He can have it. I prefer to deal with the mundane, common thieves or murderers. None of this cloak-and-dagger stuff. I’ll tell my Super about the biological stuff, but you have to admit it is a bit farfetched. There’s a more rational explanation for these deaths, you just have to look harder. Now, if there’s nothing else?”
Too late to escape, Dobbin had circled around and reached us before I could disappear.
“You seem to turn up to department crime scenes with alarming regularity, Sam. Any particular reason you’re here?”
The Detective Inspector had expected him to talk to her, not me.
“He’s just another possible witness on the periphery of a crime. You’re here because?
“It’s one of our people. I’m afraid…”
“…you’re going to have to take over? Be my guest. Your friend here is altogether far too uncooperative, like the rest of you. I am going to file a formal complaint.”
.“And I’m sure it will be seen by the relevant people.”
She just shrugged and walked away, waving her hand at no one in particular
I waited until she was out of hearing range and asked, “So, why didn’t Jan shoot me too?”
This book has finally reached the Final Editor’s draft, so this month it is going to get the last revision, and a reread for the beta readers.
…
I need a plan.
This lark of making it up as I go is getting a little more difficult because I had an idea where this was leading, and now it seems to have hit a brick wall.
We have a friend in hiding with a mysterious diary, we have a mother who is missing, we have an agent of sorts following Jack around in the hope it will lead to the mysterious diary, and we have said agent and Jack looking for Jacob.
Why?
In my book, you don’t go looking for trouble.
What these two intrepid adventurers should be doing is trying to find Jack’s mother.
That, of course, leads to the other important question, who has her, if anyone does?
OK, so let’s let loose the diary’s owner, a man named McCallister, who coincidentally is father to both Jack and Jacob.
What’s in the diary?
This needs some background, and it needs to have the seeds of the plot sown earlier in the story when Jack was investigating who Jacob was. He would find out who Jacob’s father was, and likely his own.
A part of the current plot is that McCallister calls Jack and wants to exchange the diary for his mother. So that will mean McCallister has her.
I had considered that perhaps her sister was holding her captive, but why would she after all these years?
So, from her…
The call from McCallister, Maryanne needs to draw on her organisation’s resources to find McCallister (he was in jail but escaped, ok the back story is being virtually written on the fly) because of what’s in the diary, and he needs it to stay alive. What’s in it? One would have to presume it had something to do with his life before producing children, and that was as a politician.
So, was he a corrupt politician, or did he know of one, or two, maybe? Politics can be dangerous, as well as lucrative.
I was not sure what I was expecting to see when we first arrived at the Fairmont Hotel at Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada.
I’d seen endless photographs both in Winter and in Summer, and the problem with photos is that they never quite prepare you for reality.
That’s not to say that our first impression was of incredible scenery, it was of the front door if it could be called that, where we pulled up in the car, and then, if the sub-zero temperatures, a mad rush to get the baggage out, and get into the warmth of the foyer, which was almost the size of several football fields, and then some.
Check-in was quick and easy, and then to our room on the first floor. I had hoped to be higher up but, being a corner room, when we got there, the views could not be more majestic.
I could not believe there were people who were willing to take a sleigh ride in the minus degree temperatures. Don’t let the sunny aspect fool you, it’s freezing cold, literally, outside.
The lake had frozen over, and a closer look showed there was a skating rink an ice castle, and a hockey rink as well. People were skating, and walking over the frozen surface of the lake.
No skating, or walking, on thin ice here.
Venturing outside into the cold, you have to be rugged up, and definitely, have both a hat and gloves. It was minus six degrees.
There’s this amazing hotel, just like you would see in the movies
A frozen lake where you’re half expecting to open up and a huge spaceship, or something else, come out
Mountainsides to climb, but only if you are stark staring mad. And, of course, if you don’t freeze to death before you get there.
Our room, believe it or not, is on the extreme right-hand side, just above the first roofline.
Tomorrow we will venture further out onto the lake.
If nothing had happened to Agatha, then the General would have walked away, his reputation and bankability intact.
Perhaps his biggest problem, one of many, was that he was a friend of Agatha’s father. Perhaps Agatha’s father’s biggest problem was his ego, and the fact his daughter was smarter than he would ever give her credit for.
The General had a secret, and as we all know, secrets are the hardest things to be kept. Someone knows, someone always knows, and that person cannot be trusted with secrets, cannot trust themselves with secrets.
Have you ever tried to keep a secret? It’s nigh on impossible.
Some people can. Unfortunately, none in this story can. But the problem is they are not willing to share, but will eventually because they have a momentary aberration, or it just comes out in normal conversation.
People can’t hold those sorts of secrets, not when it concerns someone as important as the General/. Someone else must be told so it doesn’t feel like they’re the only one holding down the most important and incredible fact in the world.
Pity then that Michael knows the friend of a friend of a friend who has a relative, that has that secret.
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
This morning started with a visit to the car rental place in Vancouver. It reinforced the notion that you can be given the address and still not find the place. It happened in Washington where it was hiding in the back of the main railway station, and it happened again in Vancouver when it was hidden inside a hotel.
We simply walked straight past it. Pity there wasn’t a sign to let people know.
However…
We went in expecting a Grand Jeep Cherokee and walked out with a Ford Flex, suitable for three people and four large suitcases. It actually seats 7, but forget the baggage, you’d be lucky to get two large suitcases in that configuration.
It is more than adequate for our requirements.
Things to note, it was delivered with just over a quarter of a tank of gas, and it had only done about 11,000 km, so it’s relatively new. It’s reasonably spacious, and when the extra seats are folded down, there is plenty of baggage space.
So far, so good.
We finally leave the hotel about half-past ten, and it is raining. It is a simple task to get on Highway 1, the TransCanada Highway, initially, and then onto Highway 5, the Coquihalla highway for the trip to Kamloops.
It rains all the way to the top of the mountain, progress hampered from time to time by water sprays from both vehicles and trucks. The rain is relentless. At the top of the mountain, the rain turns into snow and the road surface to slush. It’s 0 degrees, but being the afternoon, I was not expecting it to turn to ice very quickly.
On the other side of the mountain, closer to Kamloops, there was sleet, then rain, then nothing, the last 100kms or so, in reasonably dry conditions.
Outside Kamloops, and in the town itself, there was evidence of snow recently cleared, and slushy roads. Cars in various places were covered in snow, indicating the most recent falls had been the night before.
We’re staying at the Park Hotel, a heritage building, apparently built in the later 1920s. In the style of the time, it is a little like a rabbit warren with passages turning off in a number of directions, and showing it is spread across a number of different buildings.
It has the original Otis elevator that can take a maximum of four passengers, and a sign on the wall that says “no horseplay inside the elevator” which is a rather interesting expression that only someone of my vintage would understand. And, for those without a sense of humor, you definitely couldn’t fit a horse in it to play with.
The thing is, how do you find a balance between keeping the old world charm with modern day expectations. You can’t. Some hotels try valiantly to get that balance. Here, it is simply old world charm, which I guess we should be grateful for because sooner rather than later it’s going to disappear forever.
In my writer’s mind, given the importance of the railways, this was probably a thriving place for travelers and once upon a time, there were a lot more hotels like this one.
