B.A. Spicer's Blog, page 6

Goodreads Giveaway! And it's 99p/99c as an ebook until 11th November!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway My Grandfather's Eyes by B.A. Spicer Giveaway ends November 29, 2017.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway

Free short story!

I have two offers running at the moment!  Can I tempt you to something new to read?

'Strings', a vintage sci fi short story, is free until 15th November:

View on Amazon
'My Grandfather's Eyes', mystery/psychological thriller, is just 99p/99c until 12th November:

View on Amazon
And while you're here...
My brand new paperback is now published!  'A Good Day for Jumping' has been described as intelligent, surprising and evocative.  Set in Greece, it follows the misadventures of Stephen Firth, a man of considerable wealth, who jilts his bride and runs to Crete, where he was brought up as a child.  The people he meets become more than just playthings and he begins to see that there is more to life than money and power.  'A Good Day for Jumping' is available as an ebook and in paperback.  
View book and reviews on Amazon

Goodreads Giveaway!

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Giveaway ends November 29, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

99p/99c Ends 13th October!Funny, colourful and full of jo...

99p/99c Ends 13th October!

Funny, colourful and full of joie de vivre!

Amazon UK: Stranded in the SeychellesAmazon US: Stranded in the Seychelles

Also available in paperback: Stranded in the Seychelles

99p/99c for a limited time!Funny, colourful and full of j...

99p/99c for a limited time!

Funny, colourful and full of joie de vivre!
Amazon UK: Stranded in the SeychellesAmazon US: Stranded in the Seychelles

Excerpt from Bunny on a Bike - for fans of the 80s

View on Amazon

1981


I wanted to be a bunny as soon as I saw the advertisement.  Why wouldn’t I? There was no question that it was the most interesting job prospect I’d seen so far. I thought: casinos, glamour, fast cars and millionaires.  But most of all I thought it would be better than working for a living.  So I told Carol and she said we would go to London together.  Easy.  After all, we didn’t have anything else planned for the rest of our lives.  We had both put in just enough effort to get our degrees and, having got this far, didn’t have a clue what to do with them.  Some of our friends were going to be doctors, solicitors or even teachers.  They knew what they wanted.  I hated them all.  We met up at King’s Cross, eventually.  Carol had managed to get herself almost arrested for slipping past the toilet attendant but, in a stroke of genius, had invented a relative who worked as a toilet attendant in Exeter station and who had been given an award for the cleanest toilets in the South West of England.  Mary, the London loo keeper, thought that she had heard of auntie Georgina and asked Carol to make sure to pass on her regards, before pressing a free token into her hand and wiping a metaphorical tear from her eye, saying that it had been a great pleasure to make her acquaintance and that, when you got up in the morning, you never knew what was going to happen.     ‘Why do you do it?’  I yawned.     ‘What?’  Carol replied, as though I may have inadvertently changed the subject.     ‘Make things so bloody complicated.’  I saw from her expression that she thought I was a dullard.     ‘What would you have done then?’ she turned on me.     ‘Paid the woman!  I mean how much can it cost to have a pee?’     ‘Ten pence.’     ‘Really?’  It seemed implausible.  ‘Whatever happened to the spending a penny idea?’     Carol gave me one of her blank stares before suddenly noticing the effort I had made with my appearance. ‘What the hell have you got on?’  She looked me up and down in what can only be described as a less than complimentary manner.     I was wearing figure-hugging jeans and a tight tee shirt with ‘Why Don’t You Ask Me?  I Might Say Yes!’ written across the front.  I could understand her taking exception to the incorrect use of capital letters, but I knew that maths graduates were more or less unaware of punctuation.  My carefully selected attire kind of set the mood, I thought, the mood being, as far as I was concerned, one of extreme levity and foolish indulgence.  To add to the effect, I had on a pair of disarmingly conservative calf-length beige zip-up boots, cunningly worn over my jeans, as was the fashion for young women of a certain type, that type being acutely bimboesque.  I thought I looked brilliant.Carol, in my opinion, hadn’t got a leg to stand on as far as dress code was concerned.  She was wearing a tatty kaftan coat and gypsy earrings in an effort, apparently, to be as inappropriately dressed as possible and thus give an uncomfortable edge to the proceedings: she didn’t agree with the concept of an interview.  There were a lot of things that Carol didn’t agree with so, to save time, I said that I thought she looked brilliant too.       In short, we were confident, provocative and loud, we were backward birdbrains about to learn the hard way that there was ‘no such thing as a free lunch’.  We had no notion of what it was like to have a job, apart from serving curry in the Students’ Union bar to salivating youths hoping for a post biryani snog and a grope; we were young, hopeful and out to impress with our individual ideas of what was inspiring in a world brimful of desperately dull people leading desperately dull lives. How could we be wrong?  How could the people at Playboy not love us?     ‘Shall we get on with it?’ said Carol, looking at the over-sized watch on her wrist.     ‘Whose is that?’     ‘Dave’s.  I haven’t got one.  Didn’t want to be late.’     ‘Is that a cow on the face?’    ‘Yeah.’  She held it up for me to see. ‘He likes cows.’London was a huge and shapeless odorous maze and we cursed, laughed and stumbled our way towards Edgware Road via the ubiquitous London underground, which seemed like something out of a Victorian history book. Or do I mean a book on Victorian history?  Anyway, I discovered, interestingly, that I was in fact claustrophobic and taunted myself with the thought of being trapped in the dark, shiny tunnels, never being able to get up to the surface again.  My reflection looked so serious in the dark, glossy windows of the carriage while I entertained these thoughts that Carol found it necessary to practise her favourite grimaces until, catching my eye, we both started laughing.  The other passengers were not amused, as it turned out, although this only served to bring out more of our loutish behaviour.  We finally left them in peace as we burst out of the sliding doors and exploded up the stone steps on to the street, quite exhausted and gasping for air, believing ourselves to be hilarious.        The tube station was not far from the casino and when it came into sight I thought it looked more like an enormous, ungainly office block.  It was on pillars, but not the classical kind, and it looked so, so wrong.  The windows were high up and masked by long curtains which, presumably, hid the bright, luxurious interior.  I suppose I thought the building would be grander, more ornate, dripping with wealth and sophistication.      ‘What a dump!’ said Carol.     She wasn’t wrong.       Then, we saw all the people.  There were hundreds of them.  Girls and some boys too, just standing there, in the longest queue I had ever seen.  It went along the side of the building, round the corner and on for at least a hundred yards. On closer inspection I noticed how the young trendies were dressed. Never had I seen so many fashion mistakes in one place.  I pushed back my dyed blonde hair and eased up my skin-tight jeans.     ‘Do you think they’re all here for the croupier jobs?’  I wondered aloud.     ‘Of course they are, you silly cow.  Let’s get in the bloody queue, shall we?’     Carol shoved me, and we walked along the pavement, checking out the competition.  ‘They look younger than us.  And prettier,’ Carol whispered.     ‘Speak for yourself!’  I said.     The advert had specified bright, good-looking people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three.  I was twenty-four, Carol was all right, she was twenty-three. I was almost young enough and we were certainly both attractive, in a brash kind of way.  Looking back, I blame Debbie Harry for my lack of refinement.Carol was right, there were some very pretty girls.  But we had a university education, which I doubted most of the others had.  After all, it was not a job for dimwits.  You had to do maths, work out bets.  I looked at the prettiest girls and decided they must be incredibly stupid.  They had spent a lot more time and care on their makeup than on their education, obviously.  I wiped away a smudge of mascara from Carol’s cheek and ended up poking her in the eye.‘Ouch!  What was that for?’ It was no use explaining.  She had been moody all day because Dave had asked her to marry him.‘Come on.  This’ll do.’  We joined the end of the line just as two rather dumpy girls arrived wearing identical bright yellow button-through dresses and very long chain belts.‘No chance!’  I mouthed.  Carol curled her top lip and, licking her finger, started working on a white stain on her coat. The girls in front of us looked about fifteen years old.  They were all chewing gum and wearing platform boots.  They had big hair and bigger fluffy jackets.  They had what my dad would say was ‘swank’, which was a word I could never take seriously. He would also have privately (and totally unreasonably) thought them cheap and promiscuous.  I experimented with covering up the words on the front of my tee shirt, although ‘Don’t You Ask Me?  I Might…’ didn’t seem like much of an improvement.‘What time did it say in the ad?’  I asked Carol, remembering her fabulous timepiece and shivering in my flimsy jacket at the thought of having to stand around indefinitely.‘Two o’clock.’  ‘What time is it now?’‘Two-thirty.’A blond boy, with blond eyelashes and a flawless, grey complexion turned round, then.  I was disappointed that I didn’t find him attractive.  I always made up my mind instantly about boys.  I was generally only wrong when I was drunk. Unfortunately, I had met my current boyfriend after a night of cider drinking and he had given me a piggyback to my Hall of Residence.  When he had phoned the next morning, I had fallen in love with his voice, not remembering what he looked like.  It was sheer luck that he resembled Sting rather than Timmy Mallet.The boy with the blond eyelashes was speaking over my musings. ‘A bloke just checked the queue, asking for proof of age.  Sent a load of kids home.  Said they were opening the doors any time now.  My name’s Keith.’He stuck out his hand confidently and I noticed his nails had been bitten down so much that there were very sore looking bits on his fingers.  This put me off even more.  I liked wholesome, not scabby.   ‘I’m Bev and this is Carol.’We shook hands.  We were well brought up, after all.‘You live in the city?’  he enquired.‘No.   You?’  ‘Yeah.  Training to be a chef.  Thought I’d give this a go.’  He took out a cigarette and offered the packet.   Neither of us smoked.The people in front of us lurched forward and there was a babble of excited conversation.‘Here we go,’ said Keith, grinning.  The queue was moving fast, which caused a lot of buffeting and more than a couple of turned ankles.  We surged, then flowed, then stopped as the building swallowed up the first hundred or so hopefuls.‘Rate your chances?’  asked Keith, taking a colossal drag on his cigarette.Carol pulled a face and shrugged. As for me, it never crossed my mind that we would not be offered a job, so I said, ‘No problem!’They both stared at me for a while and then my face started to hurt from smiling too much, so I tried to whistle.Keith kept us amused.  He had a pack of cards and could do tricks with coins and cigarettes.  He was working in one of the larger hotels, I forget which one, and it turned out that you had to start at the bottom and work your way up.  He was at the bottom, it seemed, doing the washing up.  I wondered whether he wore Marigolds and a pinny.‘You going to the Mecca interviews, too?’  Keith knew much more about what was going on than we did.  He couldn’t keep still, either.  I could see that his hyperactive enthusiasm was getting on Carol’s nerves.‘What are they, for God’s sake?’  Carol was trying to do up the flies of her jeans.  They wouldn’t close properly and she swore she would never again set foot in Miss Selfish Pig.‘Mecca Casinos. They’re recruiting. Monday.  Much bigger than Playboy.  Got the address if you want it.’‘Yeah, sure.  Is the money better?’  Good point Carol!‘Dunno.  Probably. Got to be better than hotel work, anyway.’  We nodded, taking his word for it. It struck me that I hadn’t read anything about the salary in the Playboy advert.  It must pay well, though - we would practically be celebrities.  Our pictures would appear in glossy magazines on the arms of superstars and sex symbols.  We would be sponsored by Chanel, Clinique, Yves Saint Laurent… And, looking lovely, we would be catapulted into a world of champagne and caviar, silk undies and tiaras, unlimited Poptarts and Ambrosia Creamed Rice.   It took around two hours to get into the building and up the stairs to the first floor, where we waited our turn to run the gauntlet of the ‘Yes’/‘No’ corridor.  It was a strange experience to walk into a room where a bored, well-dressed person sat behind a desk, whose job it was to hand over a yellow card so that you could go on to the next stage of the interview. It made light of our endeavour, but we were not yet important enough to object, so we took it in our stride and didn’t complain. Of course by the time we got there, all kinds of rumours had filtered down from the ones who hadn’t made it. You shouldn’t smile.  You shouldn’t speak.  You should stick your tits out.  You should smoulder.I slinked into room 117 and a woman with a moustache and body odour, said, ‘Good afternoon.  Down the corridor, second on the right.’  I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and, for some reason, walked backwards out of the room, trying not to catch her eye in case she changed her mind.Outside, Carol was waving her card at me and crossing her legs, laughing. It was one of those silent laughs that makes it difficult to speak properly.‘Where’s the bloody loo?  I’m going to wet myself!  Bloke was flat out on the desk, wobble-snoring.  Just helped myself.’So much for the first phase of the interview.  The next would not be so easy.

Excerpt from Bunny on a Bike - 99p until 4th September

View on Amazon

1981


I wanted to be a bunny as soon as I saw the advertisement.  Why wouldn’t I? There was no question that it was the most interesting job prospect I’d seen so far. I thought: casinos, glamour, fast cars and millionaires.  But most of all I thought it would be better than working for a living.  So I told Carol and she said we would go to London together.  Easy.  After all, we didn’t have anything else planned for the rest of our lives.  We had both put in just enough effort to get our degrees and, having got this far, didn’t have a clue what to do with them.  Some of our friends were going to be doctors, solicitors or even teachers.  They knew what they wanted.  I hated them all.  We met up at King’s Cross, eventually.  Carol had managed to get herself almost arrested for slipping past the toilet attendant but, in a stroke of genius, had invented a relative who worked as a toilet attendant in Exeter station and who had been given an award for the cleanest toilets in the South West of England.  Mary, the London loo keeper, thought that she had heard of auntie Georgina and asked Carol to make sure to pass on her regards, before pressing a free token into her hand and wiping a metaphorical tear from her eye, saying that it had been a great pleasure to make her acquaintance and that, when you got up in the morning, you never knew what was going to happen.     ‘Why do you do it?’  I yawned.     ‘What?’  Carol replied, as though I may have inadvertently changed the subject.     ‘Make things so bloody complicated.’  I saw from her expression that she thought I was a dullard.     ‘What would you have done then?’ she turned on me.     ‘Paid the woman!  I mean how much can it cost to have a pee?’     ‘Ten pence.’     ‘Really?’  It seemed implausible.  ‘Whatever happened to the spending a penny idea?’     Carol gave me one of her blank stares before suddenly noticing the effort I had made with my appearance. ‘What the hell have you got on?’  She looked me up and down in what can only be described as a less than complimentary manner.     I was wearing figure-hugging jeans and a tight tee shirt with ‘Why Don’t You Ask Me?  I Might Say Yes!’ written across the front.  I could understand her taking exception to the incorrect use of capital letters, but I knew that maths graduates were more or less unaware of punctuation.  My carefully selected attire kind of set the mood, I thought, the mood being, as far as I was concerned, one of extreme levity and foolish indulgence.  To add to the effect, I had on a pair of disarmingly conservative calf-length beige zip-up boots, cunningly worn over my jeans, as was the fashion for young women of a certain type, that type being acutely bimboesque.  I thought I looked brilliant.Carol, in my opinion, hadn’t got a leg to stand on as far as dress code was concerned.  She was wearing a tatty kaftan coat and gypsy earrings in an effort, apparently, to be as inappropriately dressed as possible and thus give an uncomfortable edge to the proceedings: she didn’t agree with the concept of an interview.  There were a lot of things that Carol didn’t agree with so, to save time, I said that I thought she looked brilliant too.       In short, we were confident, provocative and loud, we were backward birdbrains about to learn the hard way that there was ‘no such thing as a free lunch’.  We had no notion of what it was like to have a job, apart from serving curry in the Students’ Union bar to salivating youths hoping for a post biryani snog and a grope; we were young, hopeful and out to impress with our individual ideas of what was inspiring in a world brimful of desperately dull people leading desperately dull lives. How could we be wrong?  How could the people at Playboy not love us?     ‘Shall we get on with it?’ said Carol, looking at the over-sized watch on her wrist.     ‘Whose is that?’     ‘Dave’s.  I haven’t got one.  Didn’t want to be late.’     ‘Is that a cow on the face?’    ‘Yeah.’  She held it up for me to see. ‘He likes cows.’London was a huge and shapeless odorous maze and we cursed, laughed and stumbled our way towards Edgware Road via the ubiquitous London underground, which seemed like something out of a Victorian history book. Or do I mean a book on Victorian history?  Anyway, I discovered, interestingly, that I was in fact claustrophobic and taunted myself with the thought of being trapped in the dark, shiny tunnels, never being able to get up to the surface again.  My reflection looked so serious in the dark, glossy windows of the carriage while I entertained these thoughts that Carol found it necessary to practise her favourite grimaces until, catching my eye, we both started laughing.  The other passengers were not amused, as it turned out, although this only served to bring out more of our loutish behaviour.  We finally left them in peace as we burst out of the sliding doors and exploded up the stone steps on to the street, quite exhausted and gasping for air, believing ourselves to be hilarious.        The tube station was not far from the casino and when it came into sight I thought it looked more like an enormous, ungainly office block.  It was on pillars, but not the classical kind, and it looked so, so wrong.  The windows were high up and masked by long curtains which, presumably, hid the bright, luxurious interior.  I suppose I thought the building would be grander, more ornate, dripping with wealth and sophistication.      ‘What a dump!’ said Carol.     She wasn’t wrong.       Then, we saw all the people.  There were hundreds of them.  Girls and some boys too, just standing there, in the longest queue I had ever seen.  It went along the side of the building, round the corner and on for at least a hundred yards. On closer inspection I noticed how the young trendies were dressed. Never had I seen so many fashion mistakes in one place.  I pushed back my dyed blonde hair and eased up my skin-tight jeans.     ‘Do you think they’re all here for the croupier jobs?’  I wondered aloud.     ‘Of course they are, you silly cow.  Let’s get in the bloody queue, shall we?’     Carol shoved me, and we walked along the pavement, checking out the competition.  ‘They look younger than us.  And prettier,’ Carol whispered.     ‘Speak for yourself!’  I said.     The advert had specified bright, good-looking people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three.  I was twenty-four, Carol was all right, she was twenty-three. I was almost young enough and we were certainly both attractive, in a brash kind of way.  Looking back, I blame Debbie Harry for my lack of refinement.Carol was right, there were some very pretty girls.  But we had a university education, which I doubted most of the others had.  After all, it was not a job for dimwits.  You had to do maths, work out bets.  I looked at the prettiest girls and decided they must be incredibly stupid.  They had spent a lot more time and care on their makeup than on their education, obviously.  I wiped away a smudge of mascara from Carol’s cheek and ended up poking her in the eye.‘Ouch!  What was that for?’ It was no use explaining.  She had been moody all day because Dave had asked her to marry him.‘Come on.  This’ll do.’  We joined the end of the line just as two rather dumpy girls arrived wearing identical bright yellow button-through dresses and very long chain belts.‘No chance!’  I mouthed.  Carol curled her top lip and, licking her finger, started working on a white stain on her coat. The girls in front of us looked about fifteen years old.  They were all chewing gum and wearing platform boots.  They had big hair and bigger fluffy jackets.  They had what my dad would say was ‘swank’, which was a word I could never take seriously. He would also have privately (and totally unreasonably) thought them cheap and promiscuous.  I experimented with covering up the words on the front of my tee shirt, although ‘Don’t You Ask Me?  I Might…’ didn’t seem like much of an improvement.‘What time did it say in the ad?’  I asked Carol, remembering her fabulous timepiece and shivering in my flimsy jacket at the thought of having to stand around indefinitely.‘Two o’clock.’  ‘What time is it now?’‘Two-thirty.’A blond boy, with blond eyelashes and a flawless, grey complexion turned round, then.  I was disappointed that I didn’t find him attractive.  I always made up my mind instantly about boys.  I was generally only wrong when I was drunk. Unfortunately, I had met my current boyfriend after a night of cider drinking and he had given me a piggyback to my Hall of Residence.  When he had phoned the next morning, I had fallen in love with his voice, not remembering what he looked like.  It was sheer luck that he resembled Sting rather than Timmy Mallet.The boy with the blond eyelashes was speaking over my musings. ‘A bloke just checked the queue, asking for proof of age.  Sent a load of kids home.  Said they were opening the doors any time now.  My name’s Keith.’He stuck out his hand confidently and I noticed his nails had been bitten down so much that there were very sore looking bits on his fingers.  This put me off even more.  I liked wholesome, not scabby.   ‘I’m Bev and this is Carol.’We shook hands.  We were well brought up, after all.‘You live in the city?’  he enquired.‘No.   You?’  ‘Yeah.  Training to be a chef.  Thought I’d give this a go.’  He took out a cigarette and offered the packet.   Neither of us smoked.The people in front of us lurched forward and there was a babble of excited conversation.‘Here we go,’ said Keith, grinning.  The queue was moving fast, which caused a lot of buffeting and more than a couple of turned ankles.  We surged, then flowed, then stopped as the building swallowed up the first hundred or so hopefuls.‘Rate your chances?’  asked Keith, taking a colossal drag on his cigarette.Carol pulled a face and shrugged. As for me, it never crossed my mind that we would not be offered a job, so I said, ‘No problem!’They both stared at me for a while and then my face started to hurt from smiling too much, so I tried to whistle.Keith kept us amused.  He had a pack of cards and could do tricks with coins and cigarettes.  He was working in one of the larger hotels, I forget which one, and it turned out that you had to start at the bottom and work your way up.  He was at the bottom, it seemed, doing the washing up.  I wondered whether he wore Marigolds and a pinny.‘You going to the Mecca interviews, too?’  Keith knew much more about what was going on than we did.  He couldn’t keep still, either.  I could see that his hyperactive enthusiasm was getting on Carol’s nerves.‘What are they, for God’s sake?’  Carol was trying to do up the flies of her jeans.  They wouldn’t close properly and she swore she would never again set foot in Miss Selfish Pig.‘Mecca Casinos. They’re recruiting. Monday.  Much bigger than Playboy.  Got the address if you want it.’‘Yeah, sure.  Is the money better?’  Good point Carol!‘Dunno.  Probably. Got to be better than hotel work, anyway.’  We nodded, taking his word for it. It struck me that I hadn’t read anything about the salary in the Playboy advert.  It must pay well, though - we would practically be celebrities.  Our pictures would appear in glossy magazines on the arms of superstars and sex symbols.  We would be sponsored by Chanel, Clinique, Yves Saint Laurent… And, looking lovely, we would be catapulted into a world of champagne and caviar, silk undies and tiaras, unlimited Poptarts and Ambrosia Creamed Rice.   It took around two hours to get into the building and up the stairs to the first floor, where we waited our turn to run the gauntlet of the ‘Yes’/‘No’ corridor.  It was a strange experience to walk into a room where a bored, well-dressed person sat behind a desk, whose job it was to hand over a yellow card so that you could go on to the next stage of the interview. It made light of our endeavour, but we were not yet important enough to object, so we took it in our stride and didn’t complain. Of course by the time we got there, all kinds of rumours had filtered down from the ones who hadn’t made it. You shouldn’t smile.  You shouldn’t speak.  You should stick your tits out.  You should smoulder.I slinked into room 117 and a woman with a moustache and body odour, said, ‘Good afternoon.  Down the corridor, second on the right.’  I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and, for some reason, walked backwards out of the room, trying not to catch her eye in case she changed her mind.Outside, Carol was waving her card at me and crossing her legs, laughing. It was one of those silent laughs that makes it difficult to speak properly.‘Where’s the bloody loo?  I’m going to wet myself!  Bloke was flat out on the desk, wobble-snoring.  Just helped myself.’So much for the first phase of the interview.  The next would not be so easy.

Why not try your luck? Click on 'giveaway details' for this book.

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; background: white; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink { display: inline-block; color: #181818; background-color: #F6F6EE; border: 1px solid #9D8A78; border-radius: 3px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-size: 13px; padding: 8px 12px; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover { color: #181818; background-color: #F7F2ED; border: 1px solid #AFAFAF; text-decoration: none; } Goodreads Book Giveaway Bunny on a Bike by Bev Spicer

Giveaway ends September 22, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Why not try your luck?

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; background: white; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink { display: inline-block; color: #181818; background-color: #F6F6EE; border: 1px solid #9D8A78; border-radius: 3px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-size: 13px; padding: 8px 12px; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover { color: #181818; background-color: #F7F2ED; border: 1px solid #AFAFAF; text-decoration: none; } Goodreads Book Giveaway Bunny on a Bike by Bev Spicer

Giveaway ends September 22, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Excerpt from my latest mystery-thriller, 'What I Did Not Say'.

99p until 25th August
view book on AmazonTerry
The atmosphere in the courtroom crept into my bones.  Here I stood, accused of murdering Jack Banford.  The past weeks I’d spent in police custody, appalling as they had been, were as nothing to the chill animosity that now flowed towards me from all directions.  I took a deep breath and looked up.  I would face what was to come.  I would not crouch and hide.Melissa took the stand first.  Expert witness.  She would presumably be followed by the pathologist, although I was not privy to the order of witnesses, of course. These were just simple thoughts that ran through my mind. So much clutter, trying to organise itself.    When Melissa looked at me, I met her gaze. Despite my resolve, I felt my knees weaken.  She was here in her professional capacity, the look said.  She was not here as my ally.
“Good morning, my name is Jonathan Bewley, counsel for the prosecution.  Will you state your full name, please?”I listened, wondering what Melissa would say, remembering the evening she had come to visit.“Miss Shinkley.  How long had you known Jack Banford?"“Almost two years.”“And, in what capacity?”“I was assigned to his case by social services.”“Could you tell the court why this was?”“Yes.  His mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and every effort was made to keep Jack at home for as long as possible.  With appropriate support, he managed admirably.” Heads nodded and a gentle wave of what could only be sympathy flowed invisibly around the room.  Melissa was a good person.  She had Jack’s best interests at heart.  It was odd to be excluded from the goodwill she was generating.“Thank you.  Thank you, Miss Shinkley.”The prosecutor smiled.  Melissa smiled back.“Now.  I understand you met the accused on one occasion at his home.  Could you explain how this came about?”Melissa spoke as though I were not in the room.“It was after I had been informed that Jack was spending time at Mr. Pickup’s house.  We, I mean, social services are obliged to follow up reports if a child is deemed to be putting himself potentially at risk.”“At risk?”“Yes.  We have to know where a minor is spending his time outside the family home.” “Please go on.”“I thought it best to meet Mr. Pickup in person and so I suggested going along with Jack one evening.  He went there to observe the stars.  It was an interest of his.  I spoke to his mother, Vera Banford, and established that she and Mr. Pickup were old friends.”“And what was your impression of Mr. Pickup when you met him?”“I thought him eccentric.  He seemed to have Jack’s best interests at heart, though.”There was a tone to her voice that contradicted her faith in my intentions.“Do you feel guilty, Miss Shinkley?”This was a strange question.  Melissa was visibly taken aback by it.  “Yes.  I feel guilty.”It was clear to see that the jury members had drawn their own conclusions.  Several of them looked my way.  Counsel for the prosecution had succeeded in turning Melissa’s admission of guilt into an assertion that there was something in me to inspire fear.  That I was someone who might harm Jack. The guard on my left shifted his position.The prosecutor referred to a file before continuing.  He was changing tack. “Would you tell the court how you came to know Jessica Morley?”“I met her on the day I first went to visit Jack.  She was his constant companion.”“In your professional opinion, was the friendship between Jack and Jessica a beneficial one?”“Undoubtedly.  Jess is a strong young woman who had a stabilising influence on Jack.  The time they spent together gave Jack a degree of normality to his life and provided him with a loyal friend to confide in.”“Miss Shinkley, did either Jack, Jessica or Vera Banford ever give you cause to doubt the safety of Jack’s spending time in the company of Terry Pickup?”“Not directly, no.”“Please explain.”“Vera, Mrs. Banford, had nothing but admiration for the man, so much so that it was hard to believe he could be so perfect.  She was fiercely defensive of his good name.  It made me suspect that there was another side to Terry Pickup she wanted to conceal.  And on the evening I accompanied Jack to Mr. Pickup’s house, I put his awkward behaviour down to eccentricity, ignoring the gut feeling I had that he was not all he seemed.  As far as I know, Jess never met Terry.”“Vera Banford wanted to protect Terry Pickup?  Can you be more specific?”“The last time I saw Vera, she gave me a photograph album which had been compiled by Terry.  It contained pictures of the places she had visited as a young girl.  Terry drove one of her father’s coaches and was charged with Vera’s personal care.”“I see.  Could you describe these pictures?  Item five, My Lord.”The jury began an examination of the album.“They were mostly of Vera, but included some taken of other children, usually boys.  Many of them in shorts or swimwear.  There were quite a few shots of one boy in particular.   I think that Mrs. Banford believed them to be artistic.  I would say that they were mildly pornographic.”This caused a stir in the courtroom.I remembered the album.  That anyone could say my pictures were pornographic made me shudder.“In what way?”“I remember thinking that they were intimate.  Too intimate.”“Did you tell Vera Banford your opinions?”“No.  She died before I could speak to her again.”“Did Jack see the photographs?”“I don’t know.”“Would it have been possible for him to see them?”“I should say it would have been easy for him to find them if he’d wanted to. They were kept on a shelf in her room. His mother slept a good deal.”“If he had seen them, in your expert opinion, what effect would they have had on him?”“I should say he would have been shocked.  Jack never spoke of Terry Pickup as more than an old friend of his mother’s.  The photographs were intimate, as I said.”“They were intended to be for Vera Banford’s eyes only?”“That’s what she told me.”“Why did she want you to see them, Miss Shinkley?”“She said they would help me understand Terry better.  I think she considered the photographs beautiful.  Works of art.”“And were they beautiful?”“In a way.  As I said, she considered them artistic, whereas I found them to be mildly erotic.”“Erotic?”“Yes.”Was no one going to explain the vast difference between erotic and pornographic photography?  The pictures were all about focus and tone.  They captured movement and intention.  They…“Did Vera Banford ever suggest to you that her relationship with Terry Pickup had been anything more than platonic, Miss Shinkley?”I froze, bracing myself for what awful travesty might come next.  My head was pounding and I had begun to feel dizzy.  The guard to my left put a hand under my elbow.“She once said that Terry had bewitched her.  I don’t know exactly what she meant by it.  She never mentioned a physical relationship.”“Bewitched.  Hmm.”I wanted to silence this man.  His deliberate distortion of the truth was astonishing.  My knees gave way and I suddenly sat down heavily on the bench.  The next few minutes were taken up with providing me with a glass of water and a towel.  When I was able to stand once more the trial continued as though nothing had interrupted it.  “Were you aware that Jack and Jessica were to meet Mr. Pickup on the afternoon of 28th November on the banks of the River Severn?”“No.”“In whose care was Jack Banford at the time?”“His father’s.”“Was Mr. Banford aware of the meeting?”“I don’t know.”“Thank you, Miss Shinkley.  No further questions.”

The questioning had been subtly manipulated.  Jonathan Bewley was a clever man. When Mr. Dunster stood up, I wondered what he could do to mitigate the damage his colleague had done.  At the same time, I knew that the world was a dangerous place and that I was at its sharp edge.  In some way, I suspected that I’d been waiting for this trial all my life.    
“Good morning, Miss Shinkley.  Counsel for the defence, Daniel Dunster.”Melissa looked the picture of calm.  I remembered how she had laughed with delight at the sight of Saturn and its moons.“I’d like to begin by asking whether it is fair to say that your knowledge of the defendant is based on a single visit to his home shortly before Jack’s accident?”I took in the word ‘accident’.“Yes.  Apart from in regular conversations with Jack.”  “And did these conversations reveal anything about Mr. Pickup that could be substantiated, Miss Shinkley?”“That depends what you mean by substantiated.  Jack–”“–I mean, substantiated as fact, Miss Shinkley.”“I... I don’t think how you feel about a person can be substantiated.”The lawyer paused.  I knew where he was heading. “You were not only Jack’s social worker but also his friend, would that be fair to say, Miss Shinkley?”“I became close to Jack and his mother, yes.”“And your opinions, your feelings, about Mr. Pickup.  Are these based on your professional assessment, or your feelings of empathy for a dying woman and her young son?”Melissa stood taller. “I formed an objective impression of Terry Pickup.  It is part of my job to assess people.”“Of course it is.  Of course it is, Miss Shinkley.  What I am trying to establish is whether your opinions, your feelings your perceptions are purely a product of your objective observations of my client...perhaps we should move on.”Dunster turned his attention to his notes.  “Let’s see, now.  Could you explain to the court how exactly you knew what Jack felt?  I mean, did he specifically tell you he was worried or anxious about going to see Mr. Pickup?  Did he communicate specific concerns?”Melissa was having trouble.  The questions were slippery. But I was interested in the answer.  It was important for me to know how Jack had felt.  When Melissa spoke, I was overcome by a sense of vindication.“Well, no.  Not in so many words.  But I sensed that something was not quite right.  I have a lot of experience in such matters.  I decided that it would be best to meet Mr. Pickup, which is why I accompanied Jack to one of his astronomy evenings.” “Ah, I see, you ‘sensed’ that something was not quite right.  A hunch, perhaps?”“No.  Professional training.”“Of course. This visit had nothing to do with...intuition?”“No!”  “I think you stated earlier: ‘We have to know where a child is spending his time outside the family home.’  Was this not, in your capacity of Jack’s social worker, simply a case of professional duty?  You were required to make a report.  Not to go on a witch hunt, Miss Shinkley.”I couldn’t quite believe what the lawyer had said.There was an uncomfortable stirring coming from the public gallery.“Objection!  The reference to such medieval notions is inappropriate and highly derogatory.”The judge spoke in a level tone. “Sustained.  Kindly keep to the facts, Mr. Dunster, and abstain from colourful language.  Rephrase the question.”“Yes, My Lord”“Were you required to write a report on Mr. Pickup, Miss Shinkley?”“Yes, but–”“Your comments in this report would be strictly objective?”“Of course...”“Would you explain what you meant when you described the defendant as ‘eccentric’, please?”“Well, I thought him unusual.  His manner was a little shifty.  He was awkward, in my professional opinion.”“I see.  Miss Shinkley, may I ask you to put yourself in the defendant’s position for a moment?  Let’s imagine you are to receive a visit from a member of the social services because you have offered to instruct the son of a close friend in a subject you have a particular talent for.   A boy who is considered by the authorities to be vulnerable.  How would you feel under these circumstances?”He was cornering Melissa and there was nothing she could do about it. It was difficult not to be pleased.   “I would think it perfectly reasonable.”“As a professional, yes.  But, put yourself in Mr. Pickup’s position.  An ordinary member of the public.  How would you feel then?”“Objection!  I fail to see why Miss Shinkley’s feelings about a hypothetical situation should be relevant, My Lord.”  Bewley stood with a hand on his hip doing a good job of looking outraged.“Mr. Dunster is trying to establish whether the defendant had a good reason to act in a ‘shifty’ manner, I presume.” “Exactly so, My Lord.” “Then kindly continue.  Objection denied.  The witness will answer the question.”Melissa spoke up bravely. “I imagine I would feel nervous.”“Nervous enough to seem shifty?”“That’s not the same thing.”“Awkward, then?”“Yes, I suppose so.”I was comforted by the fact that the eyes of the jury were fixed on Melissa. And I had a new confidence in Daniel Dunster. “After this visit did you file a report, Miss Shinkley?”“Yes.”“I refer you to item two, members of the jury.  On the first page, last paragraph.  ‘In my opinion, Terry Pickup poses no identifiable threat to Jack Banford’s safety.’  Was this your considered conclusion, Miss Shinkley?”“At the time.  Yes.”“At the time.  Hmm.  And, at the time, or since would you say that there was any single piece of evidence to show that my client intended to harm Jack Banford, the son of his dearest friend?”“It was a brief meeting.  I did suggest a second visit.”“Yes.  You did.  Page two, third paragraph.  ‘I suggest that, should Jack express concerns of any kind, a second and more thorough appraisal should be made of Mr. Pickup.’  Is that what you wrote, Miss Shinkley?”“Yes.”“It sounds to me as though you had no urgent concerns about my client.  Would I be right in thinking this?”“At the time, yes.”“You had no reason to suspect my client of any wrong doing?”“Not at the time!”“A simple yes or no, Miss Shinkley.”“No.”“And on no occasion, either at the time or since, did Jack Banford approach you with concerns about my client?”  The insistent repetition of his argument gripped me.  Melissa’s frustration was clear.“Well, no.  But–”“Thank you, Miss Shinkley.  I have no further questions.”As I watched Melissa leave the stand I willed her to look at me.  Instead, she glanced up at the public gallery and mouthed the word ‘sorry’.I was exhausted.  Partly from the ill will that Melissa bore me and partly because my liberty hung in the balance.  I was in turn optimistic and terrified.  My head ached.  I dreaded seeing Jess testify against me, but not as much as I dreaded seeing Julian.  That would be difficult to endure.
In the meantime, the pathologist, a slight man with a sallow complexion and eyes that bulged, took the stand and was sworn in.  He delivered his professional assessment in a voice that hovered between apology and boredom, which added to the horror and made me shudder.Jack had drowned.  He had bruises to his left shoulder and upper arm, which were shown to be inconclusive, in spite of brave attempts made by the prosecutor to prove that they were inflicted during a desperate struggle with me, the accused.  The pathologist would not be drawn.  He was immune to conjecture.  Cold water had entered the boy’s lungs and passed into the body’s lymph channels via the ruptured alveolar walls and pulmonary veins, thence to the heart, brain and liver.  Jack would have passed out within four minutes of submersion, at which point he would have either asphyxiated or experienced organ failure. When he had given his testimony, the pathologist stepped down and I listened to his sharp, neat footfalls, thinking only of Jack.
I ate little lunch.  Inside my cell, I was tortured by what had happened that morning and also by what was to come.  There would be no real surprises.  I knew the charges against me.  I understood the testimony that would be presented.  But in the courtroom it was not only what people said that counted.  Melissa had performed badly.  Badly enough to silently apologise to Jack’s grandmother as she left. 
When a guard came to take me up, neither of us spoke.  I walked the passageway behind him and climbed the narrow stairs, taking my place like a lamb to the slaughter.