I’m beginning to think I’ll never get to grips with my as yet unpublished Thomas Radwinter novel. Severe technical issues blighted my progress from completing the first draft to editing the poor thing. I am pressing on though – and when (yes, I must stay positive) it is published it will be the first of the series which is set in a time which is not current – pre-lockdown in fact, the age of innocence. Here is an excerpt:
Simon was packing up to leave but told me the mysterious woman had rung again. One day she might ring and I’d be here, in the meantime, we made a few brief notes about work tomorrow.
The doorbell rang – dang, I wanted to head for home! Simon answered and I heard a woman’s voice. He mouthed at me ‘it’s her!’ Intrigued, I nodded and he asked her to come up. We glanced at each other, wondering what she’d be like.
We were rendered speechless when the most stunningly gorgeous woman stepped through the door. Honestly, she was breath-taking and if I wasn’t already married to the most beautiful woman in the world, I would think that this lady was. She was Indian but wearing an ordinary business suit, with a slight petrol gleam to the grey fabric, faintly reflecting the light, and a brilliant pink scarf and pink sparkly bindi, which perfectly complimented her complexion.
Simon and I must have looked like a couple of gargoyles, our mouths open.
“Thomas!” She exclaimed. “How wonderful to see you again! I can’t say ‘oh you haven’t changed’ because of course you have, but I would know you anywhere!” She looked as if she was holding back from embracing me as I struggled to speak.
“Of course you won’t remember me. I’m Amanda, we were at school together!”
I managed to stutter a greeting, struggling to get over myself and reply how nice it was to see her again, while totally baffled. I’ve a good memory for names and faces but I couldn’t remember an Amanda. Maybe she was in a different year but the only Amanda I could think of was my cousin’s wife and she wasn’t at school with me and also she definitely wasn’t this gorgeous Indian woman.
“I can see you don’t remember me, no-one ever does, I was such an insignificant little squirt!”
Simon squeaked a laugh because it was impossible to imagine such a thing and I introduced him.
“I was Mandakini at school,” she said.
And oh my god!!! She was!!! I nearly blurted out that I’d been in love with her when I was a spotty Herbert but luckily I controlled myself.
I didn’t control my impulse to embrace her and the years fell away and we were gabbling excitedly, swapping reminiscences and news in a happy fuzz of nostalgia.
Obviously Mandakini has come to see Thomas because she has a puzzle for him to solve, but hers is not the only mystery in this story. Another friend asks him to look at the events surrounding the disappearance of her husband – assumed to have been washed away by the sea one night, and who is the drunken idiot who people keep mistaking for Thomas’s brother?
I’m pressing on with editing now, and maybe it will be finished in time for Christmas!
Lois Elsden 