‘Nearly everything that happens to you in life you forget. Should have kept a journal.’ I came across those words while reading Ian McEwan’s latest novel, ‘Lessons’, and they lifted my mid-winter spirits astronomically. Why? Because keeping a journal is at least one New Year’s Resolution I don’t have to worry about, seeing as I’ve [...]
Does that ever happen to you? Does the strain of a particular song or a scene in a particular film, or perhaps the atmosphere captured by a particular painting, ever bring a kind of pang to your innermost being? A gush of nostalgia, longing, wishing you could be back there, or still in there, in [...]
Guilt-ridden au pair Kitty O’Hara urgently needs to atone for a wrong done to her best friend Dianne Lenore, who lives in an isolated state at the top of the sea-view Cliff House. Before turning out my bedside lamp in the small hours, I decide to do something very bold. Even by Kitty O’Hara standards. [...]
Generally speaking, I don’t like making sweeping statements. But I’m going to make one now. The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett is one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read. There. I’ve said it. And that’s coming from someone who has read lots and lots of books. I used to think it [...]
You’re in my bed again, at last, tonight. You’re in my home again - or maybe prison to you, but home to me - at last, tonight. The moon is out, as it was that first night; but tonight only one pair of eyes is watching it. Yours are closed as you lie fast asleep, [...]
On her first day working as an au pair at Cliff House, Kitty discovers the true colours of the family pet, Boris the Mad Belgian Malinois. .......... “BORIS!” I yell as the sodding animal wrenches the lead out of my hand and bounds off after a large ball that appears out of nowhere. “Boris! Come [...]
In my last extract, traumatised Kitty O'Hara gate-crashed the graduation ball of her ex-colleagues at St Andrew's University. Reaching rock bottom, she now realises that something has got to change in her life. CHAPTER TWO Okay, let’s take a step back. For the first six months after the incident, I fought bitterly against the idea [...]
Wendy Skorupski 