For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

nights lying awake, clawing at the palms of her hands, agonising over the reawakening memories of her childhood. In truth, that disastrous night had remained utterly black, like the silhouette of a mountain against the backdrop of a starry sky.

black hands black dripping from my hands black

The bottomless void of that night persisted in its darkness in all the decades since, with the doctors telling her it may even be better that way. Better not to disturb something your psyche obviously wants left alone, they’d said. So she did just that. She left it alone.

The evening had brought with it the beginnings of a snowstorm that would last through the remainder of the week and right into New Year. Seems like she’d made it back to the cottage just in time. She looks out at the burgeoning storm. If it’s nearly Christmas, that means it’ll soon be her tenth anniversary on Neo-Thorrach. Fifteen years in hospital

too long too long for just a crash

and ten on this bleak rock. That’s twenty-five years away from her family. It still shocks her to think of them never having visited while she was in care, yet she also feels they did her a favour. She had no longer needed a clock tower to escape from the tyrant that was Thomas Wakefield, instead having had free reign in her very own section of the hospital

isolated segregated studying you they’re studying you

She could read in her room, explore the grounds

supervised

or just pace the long, white corridors,

they’re empty just me whole section to myself why

one of her favourite pastimes. And when she’d started writing again, well, then she’d churned out her first novel, posted copies of the manuscript to literary agents, and eventually found representation, leading to her publication. Would any of that have happened in that house with that family? She suspected not.

Noah will be in his thirties by now

the spade the spade something about the spade

probably have his own family, maybe moved away and will no doubt visit Mother and Father at every opportunity. Always the perfect son.

Her initial years in care were hazy

Horror Highway Horror Highway Horror Highway

but once she’d began recovering, her years in the

mad house

hospital had been the happiest years of

pedal

her

spade

life.

blood

Pain. Searing, blinding pain. She closes her eyes and rubs the sides of her head, trying to visualise those pure, pristine corridors. Damn headaches.

She prods the fire, causing a burst of heat, then settles down at her writing desk to read the letter from her publisher. Usually, these A4 envelopes contain revised versions of her manuscripts, amended and edited for her review with handwritten notes in the margins. Her Adler typewriter produces faint type no matter how fresh the ribbon, and it’s always a joy to see her manuscript professionally reproduced by her editor, clear and crisp. What this envelope contains, however, causes her to freeze in shock.

They’d returned her manuscript, faded and unedited. The accompanying letter reads:

Dear Ms Wakefield,

Thank you for the submission of your latest novel, Love in High Places. Following our latest correspondence, I trust you understand that sales of your recent efforts have been dwindling. Although you have one final book in your current contract with Highacre House Publishing, I hope you’ll appreciate that due to all costs associated with production, marketing, and distribution of your novel, we have to ensure the work you provide is of a high enough calibre.

If I may be so blunt, Ms Wakefield, this submission is not on par with your usual output. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: I strongly suggest you come to London so we can properly discuss your future with this publishing house, and so our editors can advise you and set you off on the right track to producing a quality product. They can help you conceptualise new instalments in your Adelaide Addington series that will live up to your previous efforts and shift units.

I look forward to hearing back from you, hopefully with a proposed date for you to come to our offices so we can all work together on this. Failing that, please send a revised version of your manuscript, or a new submission.

Have a very merry Christmas.

Damian Abbott

Highacre House Publishing

She lowers the letter and stares at the typewriter. If only he knew how reluctant the words of this manuscript had been to materialise on the page. It was no longer a case of lowering her fingers to the keys and letting the stories spill out. No, something had changed. And while the rust in her creativity had taken hold, the generator had started playing up, the purifier had been breaking down, the latch on that damned front door needed fixed once and for all, and her bank balance, for the first time, stopped resembling the available funds of one who must bear the costs of living alone on an uninhabited island.

Living on an island: it sounds fancier than it is. She certainly doesn’t own it or anything. Being the sole inhabitant of a tiny, desolate islet in the Outer Hebrides boils down to a lot of learning and a lot of work. Above all, she’s found it comes down mostly to fuel. But she doesn’t want to think about the fuel situation right now.

She’d poured a substantial amount of her savings from the three novels, published while still in hospital, into structural repairs of the two-hundred-year-old cottage, meaning the building now stands mixed with brand-new beams running every which way over the ancient stone and across the ceilings. Much had needed to be taken into consideration for the outfitting of the run-down little abode into a practical living space, not to mention some serious renovation work on the dilapidated outhouse at the back. Before long, the cottage was filled with everything she needed for this