Inspired Worlds is an independent publisher currently specialising in distributing the literary works of the award-winning author Alan G. Brown across varied platforms.

 

Grave Digging

 

Genre: Thriller Pages: 104 Written: 2003 Suitable for teens upwards, and contains no strong language or explicit sex. In 1969, Helen Goodland ran for her life from London after discovering the man she loved was a murderer. She returns 20 years later, because of work and a divorce, to recall her old haunts and first love affair so she can write her biography. Her book might become he only record to question the disappearance of several young women. Helen quickly discovers that digging up old skeletons is dangerous when she bumps into Hal in the street. This time, she has nowhere to run. This is a tension-building story of undiminished first love. While warily renewing their old friendship, Helen recalls their first meeting and blossoming romance of 20 years earlier. As she remembers how those old suspicions grew, she now hears confirmation of her fears from the man she still loves. The final truth leaves her barely hours to ensure her future happiness.   Nothing looks familiar, I thought with a sinking heart as I peered through the taxi's window.    Only the early-autumn sunshine bore any resemblance to those faraway memories. Then I noticed the building. The chemist's shop seemed unchanged, as did the flat above. My stomach dropped and I suddenly questioned my motives for choosing to come here. Was I right to dig up the skeletons of my past? This was not simply a nostalgic visit to old haunts. I was going to spend the next year here. Here of all places. The same place I had left so hurriedly twenty-one years earlier in fear for my life.    The taxi driver dumped my bags onto the pavement and held out his hand. After paying him, I glanced around. I must have gasped aloud when I saw the boarding on the corner opposite because a man frowned at me as he passed.    They can't still be building that place, I thought.   As I had run for my life, I had past those poster-covered boards that hid the erection of shops and flats. Urban redevelopment, they had called it. Now, different posters covered new boards behind which they were busily demolishing that same development.    Perhaps little has changed after all.   Kindle Edition £0.99

New cover for Kindle Edition: Photograph and cover design by the author.   Original cover for printed versions: (This is simply a 'stock' Lulu cover).

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Author's Notes: As my years increase, I often think back to the magical years immediately after leaving school. Apart from the managers in my first job, most staff were school leavers or a year or two older. We lived far apart, catching trains to different parts of London, Chatham and as far as Gravesend. Some had moved to London to find jobs, and they shared a flat. The turnover in staff was fairly high, but time moved slower at that age. Yet the sudden disappearance of some girls was strange. Grave Digging is purely fiction, and the characters never existed. The crossroads at the bottom of Blackheath Hill no longer exists, and all the buildings disappeared long ago. Girls ran off with boyfriends, or quit their job at a moment's notice, and no questions were ever raised after the initial shock. Yet those times did start my mind thinking "what if". The plot appeared easily, and the characters are typical of the time. With that settled, only one question remained. The story left me no choice but to write as the heroine in the first person. Because she does not know everything, neither does the reader. We all learn together as we follow the clues and reminiscences. Although this shortens the story to a novella, because I could not include other views or action from another viewpoint (wanting to keep this as Helen's story), it does keep the pace going, building towards the page-turning climax.

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