Liz Fenwick's Blog, page 9

Travelling Again

A Cornish Affair

A Cornish Affair is well on its way in the UK so on Sunday night I fly back to Dubai to give the book a proper launch there. But before that I am off to visit friends who have limited connectivity...You can stand in the tower (serious) on one foot and lean 10 degrees to the east and get a phone signal. You won't be hearing from me much!



I think a quiet weekend with friends will be just what the doctor ordered as I have been going full tilt and confess to going to bed last night at eight. It's been mad but fun. My batteries were and are probably still are low.

















And I think my husband might just be missing me...these are popup posters that have been made for my talks....The cats are not impressed!





Pop Up Poster of Liz Fenwick!





On Sunday night I fly over night to Dubai and I'll be on the radio at 1:30 on Monday on Dubai Eye. Then on Tuesday I'm doing a literary lunch.. this will consist of an excellent three course meal with house beverages at Trade Centre Club and me talking about books... Please join if you can.



Lunch is at Dubai World Trade Club call 04 309 7979 or email wtc@dwtc.com to book a place

Then on Wednesday it's the official Dubai launch of A Cornish Affair at Kinokuniya (aka Book World) in The Dubai Mall at 19:00. I'm still planning on having pasties, but it may not work and I may resort to a Cornish Cream tea again or maybe just Cornish cheeses...



I woke this morning to the wonderful news that A Cornish Affair is number one in Waterstones in Truro! Finally over on my Facebook Page I've posted photos from an early morning boat trip on the Helford River and a bluebell wood walk....

A Cornish Affair is Launched...

Wow, what a day. First thank you for the amazing amount of support on Facebook and Twitter. It has been overwhelming. Thank you...



So yesterday...first was a celebration lunch with my wonderful editor  (still gives me a thrill to say that!) and sitting in reception the only book on display was A Cornish Affair (to be fair it's under renovation and they probably had mine out because they knew I was coming in...but how to make an author feel special!)



A Cornish Affair in Orion's reception area!

Then back to flat to collect DS2 who was allowed to come out early to help and boy did he! So we walked down Kensington High Street and outside Waterstones we found this...





Then inside the fabulous Michael the Waterstones Kensington High Street's events manager and my wonderful friend Georgia were already at work transforming the space for the party...



DS2 pouring the all important bubbles...





Georgia and DS2 mucking around


Then back to proper 'work'....







So wonderful to have two books on display...A Cornish Affair  & The Cornish House





Some of the delicious scones made by Emma Walker

So many friends came and this year I actually had a chance to chat to them! Also I was so touched by the the young Mt. Holyoke alums who came to the launch. They had only met me last saturday (MHC is brilliant!) And there were some fab shoes and well, I want that handbag!



Total handbag lust...




























Michael introducing me



And finally the part of the evening that scares me most...the talk and the reading...



Liz Fenwick

It was a fun evening and now off to book signings in Cornwall tomorrow and a talk at the St Ives Library on Tuesday evening...and of course working on book three, A Cornish Stranger.

When Judy Astley Ran Away

Here's Judy's story...


















I ran away the day the headmistress laughed and told me I
was “Flying a bit high” when I asked if it would be OK to apply to Oxford
university.  Humiliated, I stormed out of
school at midday, raced home to change out and went up to the corner where the road
heads for the M4 to start hitching a lift to visit my friend David at Magdalen
college, Oxford for tea and sympathy.




We all hitch-hiked in the days before central locking meant
no escape from the axe murderer.  Drivers
were kind to a girl alone and I had a rule about lorries – not to get in. Today
though, cars stopped but none were going more than a couple of miles.  So when the truck pulled up I thought, oh
just this once - it’ll be fine. 




The driver was cheerful and friendly.  He gave me a telling off and said that he
wouldn’t want a daughter of his risking her life by hitching so he’d take me
all the way to Magdalen bridge, just to be sure I was safe.




Except – suddenly he was turning off the M4 at Slough This
was NOT the way to Oxford.

He drove into a bleak industrial estate, parked outside the
massive Mars confectionary warehouse and climbed out. I considered making a run
for it but I found he’d locked the doors. I was going to be found naked and
strangled in a ditch.  My poor mum.




Then he was back telling me to hop out and get in the car
parked alongside. He’d finished his shift, was heading for home and he handed
me a big box, saying, ‘Here, a souvenir.’ It was full of Mars bars, Milky Ways and
Galaxy bars. I thanked him and the journey continued but I’d be lying if I said
I relaxed.




 David and I munched
our way through the box’s contents and he offered me his bed for the
night.  I thought about it but… back then
he risked being sent down for having a girl in his room. And it was freezing
and the loo was down two flights of stairs and across a dark, wind-blown
quadrangle. I started thinking a more modern university would have
comfort-advantages…  So I said thanks but
no.  And for once, I went home by train.




My 18th novel,‘In The Summertime’ will to be
published in hardback by Bantam in early July. 
The paperback will follow in June 2014. 
It’s a return to the characters from my first book, Just For the Summer
and has Miranda, twenty years on from when she was a teenager at her family’s
holiday home in Chapel Creek in Cornwall, revisiting the village with her
mother Clare and children Silva and Bo, to scatter the ashes of her step-father
Jack on the estuary he’d loved.  She
doesn’t expect to find there are still so many connections from the past in the
place and is particularly surprised to find one in particular – someone she’s
thought about many times over the years.




Coming July 4th Judy's nest book....and it's set in Cornwall!








It's twenty years since Miranda, then sixteen, holidayed in Cornwall and her life changed forever. Now she's back again - with her mother Clare and the ashes of her stepfather Jack, whose wish was to be scattered on the sea overlooked by their one-time holiday home.






The picturesque cove seems just the same as ever, but the people are different - more smart incomers,fewer locals, more luxury yachts in the harbour. But Miranda and Clare both find some strangely familiar faces, and revisit the emotions they both thought had disappeared.




You can find more about Judy and her books here.

When Lesley Lokko Ran Away...

Here's Lesley's story...





















Running away, when you live
in West Africa, is a tricky business. If, like me, you read a lot of Enid
Blyton as a child, it was made even trickier. The Famous Five only had to pack
a sandwich or two and hop in a boat and they were invariably back by teatime,
anyway. For us, it was an awful lot harder. To begin with, the heat made it
impossible to run, so you had to walk
away. Not very dramatic or effective. ‘I’ve had enough! I’m walking away!’ Then there were the
snakes. Back in the day, when Accra was a lot less crowded than it is now,
there were huge swathes of ‘bush’ everywhere. Our house backed onto one such
swathe and it was crawling with snakes. Dangerous ones, too. There are no grass snakes in West Africa, only
mambas. Fifteen minutes is all you’ve got between bite and death which makes it
pretty much instant. And if that weren’t enough, there were the grown-ups. In
West Africa, all adults are in loco parentis – even complete strangers
– and as such, are fully authorised
to step in at any point and deliver a
slap or a sermon if they feel you’re up to no good. The sight of three children
determinedly marching away from the
house with sticks (with which to beat a snake) and a bottle of water (to pour
over your head in case of sunstroke) is a clear indication of ‘no good’. And so
it came to pass . . .




At the age of nine, after an
argument with my father (not that you could actually argue with him. Ghanaian children do not, I repeat, do not talk back. You just listen.), I stomped
(slunk) off to my room, determined to run away. I had no idea where I’d run to, just that I’d run away. George was always running away:
why not me? I packed a bag: pair of knickers, a clean T-shirt, a book (Enid’s,
of course) and, incongruously, a box of aspirin – I’ve no idea why. I begged
the cook for a fried egg sandwich (at 5pm? Why?) and I left. But before I
reached the gate, my two younger sisters begged to be allowed to come along too.
I had to wait for half an hour for them to pack the same: three pairs of
knickers, three T-shirts, three books and three boxes of aspirin. We’d run out
of eggs so they had jam sarnies instead.




However, the sun sets in the
tropics at 6pm on the dot and by 5:45pm it was already getting dark. Suddenly
running (or even walking) away didn’t seem like such a good idea. We made it as
far as the first corner. A rustle in the undergrowth sent us shrieking back to the
gate. We decided to eat our sandwiches in the garage (don’t ask me why). It was
usually cool and dark in there and quite Famous Five-ish, in a petrol-smelling,
secretive kind of way. We dragged open the doors, determined to make the most
of our adventure and Make A Point . . . and then we froze. Curled up in the
middle of the floor, seeking a warm spot of concrete where the heat of the
tires had seeped, was a snake. I don’t actually remember what sort of snake – green, black, blue,
orange? –  we fled, screaming, dropping
the aspirins, knickers, T-shirts and sandwiches en route (but not the books).
Jabbering like idiots, we burst into the living room where my father was having
a nap.

‘What’s
the matter?’ he roared, annoyed at having been woken from his precious
pre-dinner snooze.

‘A
snake! A snake!’ My two sisters shouted, pointing to the garage.

‘What
were you doing in the garage?’

‘Running
away!’ they shouted in chorus.

‘Hmph.’
My father looked at me, frowning exasperatedly. ‘Is this another one of your
silly ideas?’

‘No.
Yes. Sort of.’

He
sucked his teeth in that way that only Jamaican mothers and African fathers can
do. A sort of ‘tshchew’ sound that combines exasperation, irritation,
disappointment and forbearance in equal measure. It’s the ultimate,
gentle-but-effective put down. ‘Next time, tell the driver to drop you.’

I
never ran away again.



Here's Lesley's latest book...








In a gorgeous beachfront mansion in Martha’s Vineyard, Annick and Rebecca have left their young children in the care of their life-long friend Tash. Tash has made millions from her fashion business and treating her friends to a luxury holiday makes all the hard work worthwhile. But by the end of the afternoon, one of the children will have vanished . . .

As the daughter of an iconic actress and an assassinated president, Annick has spent a lifetime running from the truth of her family’s wealth. For her, Rebecca and Tash have always felt more like family than friends. But can she truly trust them with the secret of her past?




You can find out more about Lesley and her books here.

When Carole Matthews Ran Away...

Here's Carole's story...






This
is a story of achieving a dream and decorating aversion. Next week Lovely Kev
is painting our hall and, at Matthews’ Towers, our hall takes in three floors.
It’s a job not to be undertaken lightly. I’m not a big decorating fan, or any
kind of DIY, come to that matter. I can wield a paintbrush well enough, but
tend to leave mayhem and chaos in my wake. I have been known to drop, from the
top of a ladder, the occasional five-litre tin of emulsion onto the dining room
floor. I also have a weird reaction to fresh paint in that it gives me the most
vivid nightmares. Really bad, being chased by an axe man nightmares. And gloss
nightmares are much worse than emulsion ones.

       So, in lieu of all this impending terror
in my home, I’m running away. I’m leaving Lovely Kev with a list of
instructions and several large cans of Dulux Almond White and am hightailing it
out of the Costa del Keynes as fast as I can. As my decorating avoidance
technique, I’ve booked on a canal boat for a week and that’s where the dream
part comes in. For many more years than I care to recall, I’ve commuted up and
down the line from the Keynes to London Euston. In fact, I went so far as to
set a book on the line - Let’s Meet on Platform 8. As you travel into London,
the Grand Union canal meanders gently from one side of the railway track to the
other, offering tantalising glimpses of its many delights. I always wondered
what it would be like to travel the entire stretch from London back to my home.
And now I’m about to find out.

       I’ve taken the precaution of going on a
hotel boat where I’ll have two gentlemen to cook, drive and do complicated
things with locks. On my part, I’m armed with lots of books, my walking boots,
some knitting and a bottle of gin. That sounds like my kind of running away.




Here's Carole's latest book...



Grace has been best friends with Ella and Flick forever. The late-night chats, shared heartaches and good times have created a bond that has stood the test of time.



When Ella invites them to stay for a week in her cottage in South Wales, Grace jumps at the chance to see her old friends. She also hopes that the change of scenery will help her reconnect with her distant husband.



Then Flick arrives; loveable, bubbly, incorrigible Flick, accompanied by the handsome and charming Noah.



This is going to be one week which will change all their lives forever... 




You can find out more about Carole and her books here.

When CL Taylor Ran Away...

Here's CL's story...








































CL Taylor, slightly scared, at the top of the Eiffel Tower
(aged 25)





I was twenty-five when I ran away to Paris. I was living in
Brighton and going out with a colleague - an alcoholic with a mean side. By
dating him I’d ostracised myself not only from my other work colleagues who
didn’t trust him but also from the friends who knew he was bad for me but
couldn’t convince me to leave him (I foolishly believed that, if I spent enough
time with him, I could help him overcome his demons).

Confused and desperate to get away to clear my head I
scraped together what little money I had and booked myself a cheap flight to
Paris and a room in a flea pit of a hotel. The plan was to spend a couple of
days there alone but when a friend (who was also an ex-boyfriend) said he’d fly
from Holland (where he lived) to Paris so we could hang out together I thought,
‘why not?’ I hadn’t seen him for several years, our relationship had ended
amicably and he was good fun to be around.

The trip got off to an exciting start. I wanted to visit the
graves of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Oscar Wilde so we went to Père
Lachaise cemetery in the afternoon of our first day. It’s an astonishing
cemetery and I found myself utterly mesmerised. We found the first two graves
relatively easily but, as the sky grew dark and night approached, we slowly realised
we’d been walking round and round in circles trying to find Wilde’s.

















published under Creative
Commons Licensing, Oliver Regelmann Flickr    















Finally we found it. I took a photograph and laid a flower
on the tomb and then said to my friend that we should probably leave as we
hadn’t seen anyone else wandering about for some time.

We headed for the exit.

It was locked shut.

We headed for the other exit, a good twenty minute walk
around the circumference of the cemetery.

Shut.

We tried more exits.

Shut. Shut. Shut.

It was now so dark we could barely see three feet in front
of us.

We were locked in Père Lachaise for the night.

Panic rose in my chest. It was February and bitterly cold.
Even if we could find somewhere to curl up and go to asleep we’d be frozen by the
morning. There was nothing for it but to go back to the main entrance and knock
on the door of one of the houses we’d seen there.

We knocked. And knocked. And knocked.

No answer.

With no mobile phone to call for help (they didn’t work
abroad back then) we had no choice but to sit on the pavement, light cigarettes
and stare desperately at the closed gates in front of us as we tried to decide
what to do next. The perimeter fence was high and, even if my friend gave me a
foot up, I knew I didn’t have enough upper body strength to make it over the
top. I was just about to go back to the house to knock some more when the
enormous double gates in front of us swung open and a car, headlights on full,
drove towards. One of us might have said “Run!” or maybe we didn’t need words.
Either way, thirty seconds later we were on the other side of the cemetery, grabbing
each other and laughing with relief.

Later that evening my friend told me he was still in love
with me.

But that’s another story.







THE
ACCIDENT 

By
CL Taylor




“Keeping this secret is killing me”




To the outside world Susan Jackson
has it all – a loving family, a successful politician husband and a beautiful
home – but when Charlotte, her fifteen year old daughter,  deliberately
steps in front of a bus and ends up in a coma Sue questions whether any of it
was real.

Desperate to find out what caused
Charlotte’s suicide attempt, she is horrified by an entry in her diary –
‘Keeping this secret is killing me’.  As Sue spins in desperate circles,
she risks everything to discover the truth and finds herself immersed in a
shady world she didn’t know existed. The deeper she delves the darker the world
becomes and the more danger she puts herself in.

Can Sue wake up from the nightmares
that haunt her and save her daughter, or will ‘the secret’ destroy them both?



















(to
be published in the UK by HarperCollins/Avon, June 2014 and in the USA by
Sourcebooks, June 2014)
























Http://cltaylorauthor.wordpress.com

www.twitter.com/callytaylor

www.facebook.com/callytaylorauthor

When Holly Hepburn ran Away...

Here's Holly's story....






The first time I ran away, I was seven years old. The exact reason for packing my bags and leaving home forever is lost in the mists of time but I expect it involved my parents being grossly unfair over something that completely was not my fault. I mean, it always does when you're seven, right?




Anyway, I gathered the essentials - a saucepan, some matches, the only tin opener, some Heinz cream of tomato soup, a bowl, a spoon and my bendy legged Sindy doll - and packed them into my Strawberry Shortcake tote bag. Then, having scrawled a suitably dramatic note, I left home.




We lived at the time in a small village on the Scottish border, the kind of place where everyone knew everything you did, and the village policeman was called Andy Apple, which these days sounds like a character from a Fruit Shoot advert. The bus out of the village ran once an hour so I made my getaway on foot and holed up among some trees by the banks of the River Tweed. Then, having been living in the wild for a good thirty minutes, I got peckish and lit a fire (I blame a kids' TV show called Captain Caveman for the knowledge of how to do this, or possibly Why Don't You?), opened up my tin of soup and started to heat it. So far, so good - I was like Robinson Crusoe, at one with nature and convinced I could live on my own indefinitely. Then it all went a bit wrong; I heard someone coming and, in a panic, tried to douse the flames with some sand. Only in the rush, I doused the soup as well. Then I peered out to see who had come to hunt me down. It was a sheep.




I stuck it out for another twenty minutes before hunger (and a complete disillusionment with the nomadic lifestyle) drove me home with my tail between my legs. And the worst of it was, no one had even noticed I'd gone. They noticed the missing tin opener all right, though; I'd buried all the evidence in my hiding place before I slunk home. It's probably still there, actually...




You can but Holly's latest book here....







Cupidity




What if Cupid fell out of love with love?

 

Cupid is exhausted. Modern day matchmaking is tough – people are busy, their hearts are harder to hit and he’s had enough of wall-to-wall romance. And St Valentine has noticed…

 

Annelise is a Lost Cause. She runs a dating agency but her heart is colder than a penguin’s feet. She thinks love is about compatibility and has no time for passion.

 

Can Cupid prove to St Valentine that he hasn’t lost his touch by melting Annelise’s heart? Or is it curtains for Cupid?




You and find out more about Holly here.

When Emma Lee-Potter Ran Away

Here's Emma's story....






My
daughter was a year old when I became obsessed with the idea of running away to
the country.




We
were living in south London at the time and although I loved our house, with
its pocket-handkerchief garden and scruffy Georgian façade, I loathed the
traffic and the noise and the scary crime levels. In the space of a few weeks a
friend was mugged in the alleyway a few doors down and another had her bag
snatched while her two young children looked on. One night I glanced out of the
back window to see flames soaring 20 feet into the night sky. Joyriders had
stolen a car and set it on fire behind our garden fence.




This
definitely wasn’t the life I’d dreamed of for my daughter. But how could we
possibly escape? As a writer I could work anywhere but my husband couldn’t
uproot at the drop of a hat. Then out of the blue he was asked to take over a
company 250 miles from London. So that was it. We threw caution to the wind,
let our house and ran away to the country.




We
rented an old stone farmhouse just outside the idyllic village of Downham, in
the wilds of rural Lancashire. The next house was half a mile away, we had no
heating and getting to the nearest road involved driving through two fields of
sheep, opening and closing three gates along the way.




Our
friends thought we’d gone bonkers but it was one of the happiest times of my
life. Downham looks like something out of a picture book – complete with a pub,
church, village shop, stream with ducks and even a nursery school – and the
whole village welcomed us with open arms. Every evening I gazed across the
fields to majestic Pendle Hill soaring high above, and thanked my lucky stars
that we ran away.




PS.
A few years later the experience inspired my novel, Taking Sides. It’s the story of a mother who uproots her family to a cottage in the country
only to find that her DJ husband has landed a new radio job and refuses to come
with her.




Here's Emma's Novel Taking Sides and you can get it here.






Juliette Ward is tired of trying to be superwoman. Her job's driving her crazy, her house has been burgled three times and she's scared to let her six-year-old son out to play. But just as she persuades her family to move to the country, her DJ husband Jon promptly lands the breakfast show on a new London radio station. 

Juliette knows he'd be mad to turn down his big break. But she hates the thought of swapping her stable marriage for a long-distance relationship. Big city versus country idyll? If only things were that simple...




























And the novella Lessons in Love is here. To find out more about Emma visit here.

When Nicola Doherty ran away....

Here's Nicola's story...






When I was twenty – a very immature twenty – I went to Paris
for a year to work as a jeune fille au
pair. After meeting a few different families, it seemed I could pick and
choose: shallowly, I chose, not necessarily the nicest family but the one with
the glitziest apartment and nicest accommodation for me.  They lived on the third floor of a hotel particulière
on the Rue de Sèvres in the heart of Paris’s 7th arrondissement.
The furniture was Louis Quinze; Yves Saint Laurent apparently lived in the
building. Madame was a former model whose social life now seemed a full-time
activity, and les petits were a boy
of seven and a girl of nine.




The kids were sweet, but overscheduled. The working day
started at 7 am with breakfast, searches for hairbrushes and stickers and a
hair-raising walk to school during which the little boy gave me frequent heart
attacks by running off around corners, hiding behind cars or leaping into the
road. Then I had the day free until 3pm, when it was time to pick the kids up
from school and ferry them to their next activity. Judo, swimming, ballet,
football, art: there was at least one extracurricular event every evening, plus
making dinner and supervising an hour’s homework each when we got home. The
little girl was sometimes so exhausted I had to help her with her homework
while she lay in bed.  Weekends were
family time, during which I hovered on the sidelines, listening to praise of
the previous au pair, who was apparently much more organised than me – ‘impeccable’
in fact, was the word used.  Though I did
get the inkling that turnover was high. ‘Ici, les jeune filles au pair, ça défile,’
I overheard my employer say with pride to a friend. Luckily my French was good
enough to know she meant they had a ‘parade’ of au pair girls, in other words
that they came and went, not that we defiled the place, though to be honest
both seemed possible.




A holiday in their chateau was looming; I couldn't face it.
I made up some feeble excuse and left in the dawn light, shutting the massive
door behind me with a feeling of euphoria. I hopped on a train to Strasbourg,
to stay with some friends who were doing an Erasmus year abroad. The free
evenings and weekends were a revelation: I decided that from now on I would
only work during daytime hours. I went back to Paris and got a job with an art
museum, which paid me enough to rent my very own little fire-trap on the sixth
floor in the 6th arrondissement (sans
ascenseur).




Looking back, I still feel guilty for running away. The
family was perfectly nice, they paid rather generously (by au pair standards) and
the duties really weren’t that onerous. I just wasn’t cut out to be an au pair
girl. It’s a weird position: living with a family, yet not a part of it, and
looking after children when you’re barely more than a child yourself. I hope
the next girl who paraded through their door was a little more impeccable than
me.




Here's Nicola's latest book... and you can get it here.



From London to Italy with love...

Alice Roberts is having a rubbish summer.

She's terrified of her boss, her career is stalling, and she's just been dumped - by text message. But things are about to change... 

When her boss Olivia is taken ill, Alice is sent on the work trip of a lifetime: to a villa in Sicily, to edit the autobiography of Hollywood bad boy Luther Carson. But it's not all yachts, nightclubs and Camparis. Luther's arrogant agent Sam wants him to ditch the book. Luther himself is gorgeous, charming and impossible to read. There only seems to be one way to get his attention, and it definitely involves mixing business with pleasure. Alice is out of the office, and into deep trouble...




Nicola grew up in Dublin and now lives in London with her husband. Her first book The Out of Office Girl was shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Awards in the Romantic Comedy category. Her second book, If I Could Turn Back Time, is due out this autumn. You find out more about Nicola here or on Twitter @nicoladoherty_

When Bernardine Kennedy aka Marie Maxwell ran away...

Here's Bernardine's story...














Ah, that old favourite, RUNNING AWAY.








How many times have I fantasised about running away over the
years?  Quite often during certain times
in my life.

I’d raid my ‘running away fund’ (not that I had one), I’d
fly to New York with a backpack of essentials then criss-cross America on a
Greyhound bus. I’d go to Los Angeles and Hollywood, to Las Vegas, to Chicago,
in fact to all the names I’d heard of in films and books. I’d stay in romantic
motels, eat in desert burger joints and drink root beer with cowboys. Oh yes,
I’d done my research!

My other fantasy was pure Mills and Boon, it was fabulous. Because
I didn’t have a ‘running away fund’ I’d get a job as nanny to a rock-star in
Hollywood and live the life in Bel-Air with beach parties in Santa Monica and
holidays in Hawaii.  

It was a nice thought in the middle of the night but of
course I never did it. The fantasy was always great but I wasn’t a runner.

Except for once.

I was brought up in Singapore and went to school at the
convent there. (the convent that is now CHIJMES for anyone who knows
Singapore). It was a multi-nationality school, I was the only European girl in
my class, and a very competitive environment, very ‘Tiger-Mother’.  Slowly but surely my mother had become equally
Tiger competitive, but I hadn’t. Not at all. I was a dreamer and not in the
least academically motivated. I wanted to read Enid Blyton and daydream about
adventures, I wanted to swim and dance and collect stray kittens; I didn’t want
to study.

It was when I was about ten that I got a really rubbish
school report. I wasn’t meant to open it but I did and when I saw that I was
fourth from bottom of the class, with a selection of E marks, I just knew I was
going to be in Really Big Trouble.  So I
changed the E- marks to B+ marks and gave it to my mother to sign for me to
take back the next day. Sadly the apprentice Tiger Mother decided that B grades
weren’t good enough, only A’s would suffice and she was going to see Mother
Superior about it the Very Next Day. How dare they?

I was awake all night envisioning the moment when my mother
berated Mother Superior for only awarding me B grades and the nun then produced
the Real Grades and they both realised I had cheated quite spectacularly.

I was scared witless and the only way out I could see was to
Run Away.

We lived in an area of houses with large gardens which were surrounded
by long grass (Lalang) and trees and I had this idea in my head that if I could
find somewhere to lay low for a few days it would all blow over and I’d be okay
to go back. Just a few days.



The house Bernardine was living in at the time




To say I wasn’t streetwise was an understatement, I had never
been anywhere or done anything on my own, I hadn’t even been on public
transport, but it didn’t stop me; I was so scared about the outcome of the
meeting.  The shame of it.

So I took my nightie, (first clue to daftness), a book on
ballet, a sandwich and a glass bottle of water that was in the fridge, put them
in my schoolbag and ran for it first thing the next morning. Off I went across
the lawn and out through the lalang to a hidden copse-like area. I ate the
sandwich, drank the water and tried to read the book. (I can picture the cover
but can’t remember the name)  

I lasted until the afternoon ignoring the calling until I
heard my father’s voice….. ‘Bernardine, I know you’re out there. If you don’t
come back we’ll have to call the police.. You’re not in any trouble and there
are snakes……’

 Ah! I hadn’t thought
of snakes, suddenly I could feel them everywhere so I jumped up and ran
straight back. The bit about the snakes may have been true but the ‘not in
trouble’ bit wasn’t, not when my mother got me and dragged me off to school. She
went crackers and Mother Superior was ‘disappointed’; I was given two weeks
after-school detentions to pick up my grades and banned from the Swimming Club and
dancing school indefinitely. But even that didn’t seem as bad as the thought of
snakes creeping up on me in the lalang.

Why had I not even thought of that before I took off? Why
didn’t I think of it when I was racing through the lalang? J An
innocent in the long grass!

Luckily my father, as always, fought my corner and
eventually everything went back to normal although I don’t think my mother ever
really got over it. She lived to the age of 95 still mentioning my ‘cheating’ and
the ‘shame’ every so often!

Safe to say I never actually ran away again and nowadays I
don’t even want to, however I do still take a book everywhere!   




Here's Bernardine/Marie's latest book Gracie and you can get it here.










'She made the ultimate sacrifice... but can she now move on with her life?

Can she ever escape her past?


Gracie McCabe is building a new life for herself in the Essex seaside town of Southend working alongside best friend Ruby; she’s put her past to rest and is planning her future.

All that is missing is a family of her own, Gracie desperately wants a baby so when boyfriend Sean proposes she accepts without hesitation.

But a chance meeting before the wedding gives her doubts and when old secrets come back to haunt her, it seems that Sean is not the rock of strength she expected him to be.

Will Gracie find her happy ever after or will she be betrayed and abandoned once again?