Flashlight by Susan Choi: a stellar auhor with a significant and influential voice

The last that ten-year-old Louise remembers of her father, is walking with him on a Japanese beach, looking at the stars. Perhaps they were swept out to sea by a huge wave––she can't recall––but she is found half-drowned, while there is no sign of Serk. He is declared dead and his wife and child go back to the US.

Louisa and her mother were born in America, while Serk emigrated from Japan as a bright young man, and worked in academia in Michigan, until taking a university secondment to Japan with his family. There, the two adults in Louisa's life become mysterious. Serk often takes his daughter with him to visit 'a friend'...an oriental woman who lives near the coast. Anne, her mother, loathes Japan and sleeps most of the day, hardly ever leaving the apartment, and by the time they take a break on the coast, she cannot walk at all. 

Catherine Taylor, reviewing Flashlight in the Financial Times, describes the book as… a rich generational saga that teems with intelligence, curiosity and, in terms of reading, sheer pleasure. Flashlight is told over four generations and sweeps the world; America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and most importantly North Korea. It moves from after the second world war to the twenty-first century, taking you along on an emotional flight that left me crying out at the end of the book, but also, there is a learning journey. Before the end of chapter one, I'd pulled out my atlas, and my historical atlas, to look at Japan and the Korean peninsular, and checked the history of North Korea online. Thus armed, it all began to make a deeply disturbing, utterly gripping sense, an important story, related with courage and stupendous language control, where flashlights are solid, important objects and a metaphor for lighting up a dark corner of recent history.

Courtesy of Wikipedia 
Choi at the 2019 Texas Book Festival

Beejay Silcox, in the Guardian, says: Choi is one of contemporary literature’s great demolition artists, and her emotional foundations hold. She can build as well as she detonates.  You may feel like that, if you take up this challenge: demolished…detonated. Susan Chio recently talked about the books she loves in The Guardian: I read Bleak House for the first time during the pandemic – it was one of the great reading experiences of my life. I'd already understood this, because the book reads as a deeply Dickensian investigation into the lives of people thrown into turmoil. She also cites Woolf and James as influences, something that emerges in her beautifully constructed, elongated paragraphs. 

Steadily, as Louisa grows from child to teen to middle aged adult, Choi reveals the mysteries she has set up, and as she does this we learn a little-known but shocking aspect of Japanese-Korean history. This might have been clumsily done in another writer’s hands, but Choi already ‘has us’––we are deeply invested in the story of Serk’s malfunctioning family, and however inscrutable he seemed in the early chapters, it is truly shocking to discover just what is happening to him in the later ones. 

One of the labels I use, to help my blog readers navigate my posts, is ‘Stellar Authors’. So this writer joins other ‘Stellar Authors’ such as Henry James, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Salmon Rushdie and Herman Melville. She deserves her place; as Beejay Silcox reminds us…Flashlight is all kinds of big: capacious of intent and scope and language and swagger. 

That perfectly sums up what you will find yourself diving into if you swim through the waves and into the deep of this book.

Books to Read While it Snows

 

If novels set at holiday destinations are the best books to read beside a pool, then surely books describing terrible winters are ideal snowy weather companions...so long as you are sitting snug beside a roaring fire, wrapped in fleeces with a hot chocolate drink on the coffee table.

This is how Robert Macfarlane opens his book, The Old Ways...

Two days short of the winter solstice, the turn of the year's tide. All that cold day, the city and the countryside around felt halted, paused. Five degrees below freezing and the earth battened down. Clouds held snow that would not fall. Out in the suburbs the schools were closed, people homebound, the pavememts rinky and the roads black-iced. The sun ran a shallow arc across the sky. Then just before the dusk the snow came––dropping straight for five hours and settling at a stead inch an hour…At around eight o'clock the snow ceased. An hour later I went for a walk with a flask of whisky to keep me warm…

The Old Ways follows the ancient tracks that crisscross Britain, but maybe it's no coincidence that Macfarlane opens his wanderings in snow. It reminded me of how I love a snowy walk, and will get out as soon as the blizzard stops, bundled into scarf, gloves, hat and extra socks. Four years ago I wrote on this blog;

I whistled my dog into the field beside my garden. It is clothed in snow, and the glow from the moon coated the snowy field in an eerie yellow light. This is our morning ritual, to get out and walk around the 10 acre field together before even a cup of tea. As I crunched through the snow, a thought occurred to me. What's the connection between you, me and everyone else on the planet today?

And now, deep snow is back in West Wales, a place used to drifts, white-outs and gritting lorries, and I'm still walking around the fields and lanes with my dog. The red kites are wheeling in sky, riding the air currents as if for the sheer fun of it, and the sun is golden over the valley.  I can feel my cheeks redden as I walk, and I can't help remembering three novels that made me feel as frosty as I do now. 

 

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, and I couldn't help drawing closer to the fire as I read the descriptions of the terrible winter of '62/'63. In a small West Country village, two young couples get to know each over the Christmas period. Rita and Bill have taken on a dairy farm and are trying to make a go of it. Eric the GP, and Irene, his pregnant wife don't think they have much in common but when Irene discovers Rita is also having a baby, they become friends.  Eric has a dark secret, and Rita has a past she'd like to keep secret. At a Boxing Day party, everyone becomes far too drunk, while outside the blizzard begins to rage.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is set in 1920's Alaskan homestead. Jack and Mabel are childless, and drifting apart, under the weight of farmwork and loneliness. Following the pattern of a fairystory,  the couple build a

child out of snow, which strangely melts overnght. They glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees, Faina. She hunts with a red fox at her side, surviving alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Jack and Mabel come to love her as their own daughter. But what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

Angela Carter also has a story called The Snow Child, the shortest tale in The Bloody Chamber. A Count sees snow on the ground while out for a ride with his wife, and wishes for a child ‘as white as snow', leading to an extremely bloody outcome. 

I first read Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow by Peter Høeg in 1992.  A neighbour's neglected six-year-old boy dies in a tragic accident, and a peculiar intuition tells Miss Smilla it was murder. This was such an unusual, unpredictable and beautifully written crime fiction, set in the snowy winters of  Copenhagen, that I've never forgotten it.

Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, has a warm theme of loss and the healing power of love, which will get you toasting your tootsies.

But if you want some that will really give you the chills, don't forget The Shining by Steven King. A classic snowy horror.

 

Stories About Artists; Amazing Novels about Artists and Paintings: Steel, Chevalier, Smith and Hustvedt

What is it about visual artists that attracts those word artists...writers, I mean...to use them so often in their novels?

Stories about artists, both real and fully imagined, abound. 

We've all heard of Girl with the Pearl Earring, which features a real oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, but Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn is also a great read; about an imagined 15thC artist, Nicolas des Innocents, who created the illustration for a richly embroidered wall tapestry, based on a real tapestry, rediscovered by French historian and archeaologist Merimee, in 1841, in Boussac castle in central France.

Then there's The Goldfinch, which, when I read the book, I imagined Donna Tartt had invented this rather wonderful little oil painting for her scintilating 2014 Pulitzer Prize novel, but is in fact a painting by Reneissance artist Carole Fabritius, which   I talk about here 

I've love all of Ali Smith's novels, but How to Be Both is perhaps as challenging read as you're likely to find. Smith plays with conventional fictional form, letting the reader in on  the poignancy of the story before the characters even start to realise. Smith examines a little of the life of  the 15th-century Italian painter Francesco del Cossa. Meanwhile, George is a teenager who has lost their mother, and tries to bring her back to life by recalling how they saw this  artist's  work.   Smith seems to investigate the symbolism of frescos: many layers, simultaneously.

curtesy of The Women's Prize

Most recently, Lucy Steed has just won the Waterstones Debut Prize for her first novel. She writes about one Edouard Tartuffe, “the Master of Light” an artist who lived in the early 20th Century,  a bit of a hermit and not a very nice man, really. He loves to paint rotting food, which gives his young housekeeper, Ettie, a bit of a headache. In 1920, Joseph Adelaide, an aspiring journalist, arrives at the remote farmhouse in the Provençal village of Saint-Auguste. He takes
comfort in art after being branded by the horror of the first world war, and wants to write an article about the famed oil painter.  Slowly, the young Englishman falls for Ettie, and tries to persuade her to escape her overbearing uncle.

If you're wondering why you haven't heard of Tartuffe, it's because Steed has created him, but he could be real, a cross between many artists of this incedury time. But her depictions of his art feel sensual and authentic and I could almost smell the paint...and the rotting peaches. 

Finally, a book I read some time ago, but have never forgotten. I must read more by this American author; Siri Hustvedt, Her 2003 novel, What I Loved sparkles with intelligence. It begins in the New York art world in the 70s, with art historian Leo Hertzberg and his friend, artist Bill Wechsler, whose artwork Leo has discovered in a SoHo gallery. Hustvedt is strong on the psychological effects of love, grief and hysteria, and her narrative voice pulls you into, and through, the story.

So now I'm looking for more exciting depictions of art and artists through a novelist's eye, although, I don't think, for now, I'm going to find more emotional maturity, than Steed, more passion than Hustvedt, more tense drama than Chevalier, or more brilliant plotting than Tartt.

HOW TO WIN THE BOOKER: EVERETT AND WOOD.

Although the  Booker shortlist is revered, and always anticipated, it has, in the past, been sometimes a bit of a let-down, often featuring books that are filled with 21st century angst, that are just too long or obscure or unnecessarily dense. Quite often they offer nothing but a bleakness that surely we can do without. This year, though, I've loved them all and can't wait to tell you what each book is about.  So far, in three posts, I've looked at the winner, which has  greener-than-green credentials...Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the deepest and most poetic, Held by Anne Michaels, and the raunchiest, The Safekeep byYael Van Der Wouden. In this post I'm going to look at two more before I finally turn my attention to the only 'quite long' novel on the list. 

James, by the long-acclaimed American author Percival Everett, who is back on the Booker shortlist after being there two years ago with The Trees, has written what I think is the funniest and most powerful novel on this list. 

Stone Yard Devotional, by Australian writer Charlotte Wood, is also a book that made me smile. Maybe Wood didn't want her book to be thought of as  'comic' but  it features, quite heavily, an infestation of mice in an isolated community of nuns, which decidedly raises more than one chuckle.

Percival Everett

Before I began James, I did wonder if the world needed yet another retelling of Huckleberry Finn. But James is a hilariously dark, beautifully compassionate yet deeply corrective, perfect for the 21st Century reader. The titular James, as he'd rather be called, is nothing like the 'Yessum' Jim of the original. In fact, he, and his fellow Mississipi slaves only use such language when the white masters are around. In their heads, in the narrative of this book, and when they talk together, their English is perfectly received. This device allows Everett to present James as  a fully-rounded character, enabling his voice to be heard properly  and giving him the agency to direct his own life, even under threat of the whip.

 

Here's James teaching his children how to speak to slave owners. 

    "Let's try some situational translations. You're walking down the street and you see Mrs Holiday's kitchen is on fire. She's standing in her yard, her back to the house, unaware. How do you tell her?"   

     "Fire, Fire," January said.

    "Direct. And that's almost correct," I say.

    "The youngest of them, lean and tall five-year-old Rachel, said, "Lawdy, missum. Looky dere."

    "Perfect," I said. "Why is that correct?"

    Lizzie raised her hand, "Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble." 

The reviewer Anna Bonet also loved this book; “Powerful” is an overused adjective when it comes to describing books, but it feels right here. In fact, James is more than that. At times, it is brutal to read – necessarily so, given that slavery is one of its primary subject matters – but it also manages to be light and funny and completely gripping. I could barely put it down.

When he realises he is going to be sold away from his beloved wife and children, he runs, falling in with Huck in much the same way as in the original Mark Twain, but in this story, he's the one who cares for the lad, leads their escape and engineers the happy ending. 

Charlotte Wood

Stone Yard Devotional has an unnamed narrator, who constantly surprises us. At the start of the novel she has abandoned her job and husband and, although not religious, decides to spend a short time in a rural Australian nunnery. The convent's routine of bells and service turns out to be just what she needs and she stays; a decision she never fully explains. As she moves through each day as a secular member of a convent, she reveals that she has uncomfortable memories of a girl in her class at school. This woman is now a famous nun, and is about to visit, bringing with her a corps the nuns wish to bury in their grounds. 

The story quickly becomes surreal, almost oppressive, as we watch, fascinated, a dance of manners between  the narrator, the charismatic Helen and the society of nuns. it takes a long time to get permission to give the corps a Christian burial, but meanwhile we witness the infestations of millions of mice being unceremoniously dumped into a deep hole in the ground. 

Orlando Bird, in the Telegraph, says this of the book;  Our narrator’s world is one of “dormant” truths waiting to be “released into the open at last”. Yet Stone Yard Devotional is all the more accomplished for resisting neat conclusions – “I don’t know why” is a familiar refrain – and recognising that even the examined life sits only “on the edge of comprehension”. Wood may not be the first artist to embrace uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, but at its best her novel does it beautifully.

It's a good read, but of the two, I will never forget James' journey up and down the Mississippi. 

How to Win the Booker Prize: ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

photograph: epa

Orbital unfolds over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Samantha Harvey allows us to marvel at Earth’s splendour through the thoughts, memories and work of the people on board. She allows them to pose the question: What is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

Orbital is Samantha Harvey’s fifth novel. On the 12th of November 2014, she stood amongst applause to receive the Booker trophy. Her acceptance speech began with a joke; ‘I was told we weren’t allowed to swear in our speech, so there goes mine’. She dedicated her prize to everybody who ‘speaks for and not against the Earth…and the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the people who speak for and call for peace.

If you would like your novel to win the Booker, you could start by picking apart what makes a winner. Why did the judges almost unanimously decide on Orbital?

Firstly, it's original. it is the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space. It has a natty little chart that describes the voyage of the SSI over one Earth day at the front of the book. It has chapters that align with the rising of the sun every 90 minutes. 

But there are some specifics that are probably key components each time. The judges recognised this book's beauty and ambition, saying: 'It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share'.  They were 'determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share'. 

Surprisingly, it is very short. This is a novella. It is so much shorter than some winners, that you could fit four Orbitals into some of them.  The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton won in 2013, at 832 pages, compared to the 239 pages of Orbital. But judge Kit  De Waal said that Orbital is 'the right length of book for what it’s trying to achieve'.

I loved this book. Its descriptions of the Earth from the ISS are stunning, lyrical and memorable, and yet sparse; we can never quite get enough of them, which is the best way to write descriptions, after all. There are only six characters, plus the people they carry in their heads. We don't get to know them very well, but rather as they all get to know each other, in that intimate, yes sporadic way we get to know our work colleagues for instance, sometimes sharing something truly important about their lives and lots of minor, day-to-day things, while probably not knowing much, say, about their family or the layout of their homes. But what we do see is what they also witness; the marvellous beauty of the Earth as they witness a sunrise every 90 minutes and follow the progression and devastation of a super tornado of life-threatening proportions as it assaults and wrecks south-east Asia. They are passing on the information, but feel powerless to help.

The odd 'other' perspective is also allowed in, so that we can travel back to the 'Big Bang' or meet the laboratory mice who are learning to fly. And then there is  Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, which is with the crew as a postcard. They talk deeply about the unique illusion of reality created in this painting. “Welcome,” Shaun’s wife has written on the postcard, “to the labyrinth of mirrors that is human life.”

Having finished the book and laid it down with a satisfied sigh, I turned to the reviewers to see what they had thought. Most had read this book before it had been shortlisted, and most, like me, found it such an absorbing, educative read. 

Anne Bonner, in INEWS says...With the modern world being as it is, it is not a surprise that a story set in space is a strong Booker contender.  At times it feels a bit like you’re reading an essay meditating on human existence as opposed to a novel. You also have the sense of observing these characters as though they’re floating in a snow globe: as beautiful as it is, something is stopping you from connecting with them.

The Economist did find flaws, and I can to a degree sympathise with the line they took: A slim, slightly worthy novel in which everything and nothing happens Yes, it is a tiny bit worthy, and nothing does much happen in it. So one thing you might try,  if you follow Harvey's model of winning the Booker, is create an epic poem in prose form.  

But who knows? With another night's sleep, the judges might have made a different decision. There are always 6 shortlisted novels for the Booker Prize, and I will review each of the 2024 books in turn and continue to think about...HOW TO WIND THE BOOKER PRIZE. 

You can read more about Las Mininas here.

An Interview with Author Ali Bacon

I met Ali Bacon when she joined Bristol Women's Writers and began her her first contemporary novel, A Kettle of Fish, set in Scotland. She followed this with In the Blink of an Eye which reimagines the life of an early Edinburgh photographer and was listed in the ASLS best Scottish books of 2018. Her writing is still strongly influenced by her Scottish roots and Linen Press has just shaped up The Absent Heart. I interviewed her about her continued success and her ability to keep writing over many years.

What is your forthcoming novel about?
The Absent Heart is about Robert Louis Stevenson’s relationship with his muse Frances Sitwell. 

Could you outline the story for us, without giving anything away? 

Frances Sitwell is relying on faithful but diffident Sidney Colvin to help her escape an abusive marriage when she meets the young Robert Louis Stevenson. Colvin becomes his mentor while she allows Louis to pour out his heart to her in letters. When Stevenson dies and those letters come to light, she is accused by Colvin of having been his friend’s mistress as well as his muse. As her ill-fated attempts at discretion come back to haunt her, she risks losing her reputation, her forthcoming marriage and her long-standing friendship with Stevenson’s wife.

That sounds absorbing and compelling! 

Yes, the book unpicks a complex Victorian love triangle while exploring themes of love, desire, romance and bromance. 

This is your second novel with Linen Press and both have included historic detail. What drives you to write novels about real people who had some fame in their time?

First of all, I had no real intention to write historical fiction which I thought would be way too hard (research research!) but while writing my very first (contemporary) novel A Kettle of Fish, I stumbled across the story of early photographers Hill and Adamson. I found their story, especially that of David Octavius Hill, utterly compelling and wanted to bring it to a wider audience. I even considered non-fiction, but as a novelist at heart, a novel is what I had to write. In the end, In the Blink of an Eye was a big challenge but also highly satisfying, so I thought I should have another go!

What made you choose your current heroine?

Our family always had a sentimental attachment to Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my ancestors knew him) and when I heard a radio drama in which he played a part, I considered him as a subject, but of course there is very little about him that hasn’t been explored, and I preferred to write what is in effect an ‘untold story’ about one of those thousands of women whom history has neglected up to now. Frances (Fanny) Sitwell appears in every R.L.S. biography but is mostly dismissed as a brief episode in his early life. In fact, they remained in touch, and in my eyes their early encounter reverberated throughout their lives and their other relationships. As the victim of an abusive marriage, Frances Sitwell is also a fascinating subject in terms of how she negotiated the difficulties and restrictions imposed by Victorian society. 

How have your Scottish roots influenced your writing?

Although I look back on my childhood with great happiness, when I first started writing (in the early 2000s) I didn’t see this as a particular source of inspiration.  It was only after a holiday to my home county of Fife that I realised my deep attachment to the places I frequented as a child and decided I should celebrate them in A Kettle of Fish. It was a happy coincidence that the characters in In the Blink of an Eye also had strong connections to Fife, albeit in a different age. It was a delight to revisit (mentally and physically!) my home town of Dunfermline and also St Andrews, where I spent four wonderful years. I think my instinct was also to convey not just the places but the voices I recalled from my youth. The Absent Heart, apart from the character of RLS himself, is actually my least Scottish novel so far!  However, it probably helped that I have a personal connection (through my sister) to the location in Suffolk where R.L.S. and Fanny Sitwell first met.

Frances Sitwell

What’s your favourite part of the writing process?

If I’m honest, apart from brief periods of the first draft when I feel I am in the zone, I really enjoy editing – taking those rough sentences and smoothing them out, removing the cliches or sloppy bits of writing ( we all do it!) and cutting out needless verbiage.  I firmly believe that however good the story, this process makes a massive difference to the end product. The reader won’t be consciously aware, but getting small things right is what makes reading a pleasure.  

Least favourite?
I do struggle with getting the plot in shape – or structural editing as it’s usually known. As a ‘pantser’  I write without a lot of detailed planning, so I always have to rewrite and restructure. You could call it reverse engineering! I don’t mind the rewriting, just the anguished moments in which I have to work out what the final shape is going to be. 

Tell us more about Linen Press, and when is publication day? 

Linen Press is a small indie publisher for quality fiction ‘by women, for women’. Since the demise of Virago I believe they are the only exclusively female publisher. I met director Lynn Michel some years ago and was absolutely delighted when she accepted In the Blink of an Eye especially as Avril Joy, one of my favourite writers, (check her out!)  is on their list. It was a single book deal so her accepting The Absent Heart was not a foregone conclusion. In fact Lynn did ask for some tweaks and changes of emphasis with which I was happy to comply as I trust her publisher’s instinct. Now we are down to our favourite task of close editing in which small changes are suggested and discussed. See above! We’re working towards publication in the early spring and I’m already exploring people, places and events who might help promote it. 

You've won short story prizes in the past, are you working on these now?

I have a historical short story in the forthcoming Linen Press anthology Skeins.

Anything longer in the pipeline?

I have an idea for a novel set in the 1970s, but so far it’s just an idea!

How can people keep in touch with you? 

I’m on Facebook, Twitter (@AliBacon) and Instagram (@alibwriter) but for sneak previews of the book and bonus material, readers can sign up to my Absent Heart newsletter which will run up to publication day and beyond. There’s a link on my website https://alibacon.com or use this one http://eepurl.com/iTCrNc

Don’t forget Ali’s other books are also available.

In the Blink of an Eye (ebook or paperback) from Linen Press Books. https://www.linen-press.com/shop/in-the-blink-of-an-eye/

or Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blink-Eye-Ali-Bacon/dp/0993599729

A Kettle of Fish, (Kindle or paperback) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kettle-Fish-Ali-Bacon/dp/1781768625/.(Both are also available from WOB)

Read about Ali here; https://www.linen-press.com/authors/ali-bacon/

Thank you so much Ali Bacon and huge good luck with your new book!

Read the first Chapter of the latest Shaman Mystery here!

The 4th Shaman Mystery by Nina Milton

THROUGH THE FLOODGATE 

Chapter One

Boiling Blood in his Brain

John Spicer was already waiting, when Larry drove down into Harper’s Coombe.

It was like a lover’s tryst – a lung-drying desire.

Larry pulled the old pickup to a halt behind John’s Audi and jumped out the cab. The ground was so soft he felt his wellingtons sink by inches.  Across the coombe there were patches of shining water, the start of little lakes.

Bloody rain. It was never-ending. Even down here in the coombe, the wind behind it was throwing water into his face.

He pulled the fur of his trapper hat down around his ears and went to the back of the pickup. Water pooled on the tarp, trickling down to the metal base as he shifted it, wetting the random items he carried. His fingers were slippy as he spun the combination lock. It was an old-fashioned document case, but it did the job. Empty, of course, because the previous money he’d carried home was now in a Second World War tin box, which had belonged to his father’s father and had previously held old documents and his sister’s first baby shoes. 

Soon, he would buy a soft leather case with a laptop inside, slender as a slate tile.

He left the briefcase ready and waiting to be filled, and splashed over the wet grass towards the Audi, obscenely large, less than a year old and glowing gold-brown with its metallic finish.

He’d told people he’d been getting migraines since the disaster, but it wasn’t actual pain. It felt more like boiling blood. Eighteen months of acid thoughts rolling in his brain, steam pushing at the lid.

At first, he had blamed God for his ruin. Then, with the promise of compensation, he had blamed the government. But one afternoon, standing in his own yard, a chance remark lit the gas beneath his stew pan of resentment, and the truth rose in the steam.

John Spicer was to blame.

Spicer had taken
everything away from Larry, taken more than his livelihood, taken the man he was. He could afford to pay for his mistake and Larry saw it as his duty to suck at the man until he was hollow inside.

The window of the Audi rolled down, but Spicer didn’t look at him. 'This is the last time I come here. You’re getting no more, Larry.' 

Spicer’s voice had a softness about it, as if he’d just eaten ice cream. Through that gentleness came the final trace of Somerset accent that going to posh schools couldn’t get rid of. Listening to John’s soft voice made his own speech sound unnaturally rough, hoarse, and littered with swear words, like his tongue was a lash.

'If you think this is the last time, you’re a stupider fuckhead than I thought you were.' 

'I only came here to say it to your face.'

Yet he was not saying it to his face; he was still staring though the windscreen as if there was a football match being played on the far side of the coombe, rather than the damp drip of willows, green with moss and pale with age, stubby things that rose almost vertically out of the steep sides.

From the start of this, Spicer had rarely done him the courtesy of glancing his way, and it made his brain boil harder, the knowledge that he couldn’t stand the sight of Larry.

It had been late July, the first time they’d met in Harpers Coombe. Midday, the sun warm on the balding crown of his head. The dell had been full of colour – meadowsweet and marsh marigolds and huge clumps of loosestrife, as if someone had thrown a quilt, ready for a picnic. He’d asked for a grand. He hadn’t expected Spicer to agree, but as the pack emerged from the half-open window, a flexible wodge wrapped in plastic, still warm from Spicer’s touch, he’d realised he should have asked for more.

Once the money was in Larry’s hand, the Audi shot forward by a couple of feet then reversed skilfully around the Land Rover pickup, whining as it sped up the track.

He’d had a flash of panic, ripping open the plastic there in Harper’s Coombe. Bank notes spilt into the briefcase, crisp from a bank clerk’s count. For the first time since the flood, his head felt cool, rested…atoned. He had scared John Spicer, a man not easily frightened.

In August, he’d put a zero on the end –  ten grand, you fucker, or I go to the police. 

It was chilly and damp when they met in September, with sedge growing at the soggy edges of the coombe. 

By October it felt like he was amassing a small fortune. 

End of November, John had not turned up.

He’d gone to his house, under cover of darkness. The windows glowed against the storm outside. The Christmas decorations were already up. They were playing music and their voices rose, fell, cheerful and relaxed. He heard John chuckle and Alison was chattering to her granddaughter in that baby voice people did.

He’d turned his collar up against the storm and slunk away.

He’d taken too long to think what to do, finally scribbling something down, sealing the envelope and stuffing it into the postbox at the end of the Spicer’s half-mile driveway.

The run-up to Christmas was in full swing when the brief reply, unsigned, had fallen through his letterbox. Capital letters exploded across the page;

WE SHOULD TALK.

TOMORROW.

Well, yeah, John. We should. You’re a month behind. That’s what we should talk about.

Rain dripped into his collar from the back of the trapper hat and he sensed that his right sock was getting damp; there was a small hole at the heel of his boot that only let in water when he was actually standing in it. He shifted, trying to find a dryer spot and saw how the Audi’s wheels were sinking into the boggy turf. John would probably be bleating for a tow, when they left.

'I’ve had enough,' Spicer was saying. 'It’s taken me this long to realise that I should never have started it.'

'You’d like to forget what you did,' Larry hollered back. 'Sabotage! You put people in clear danger!'

'I never meant to! But blackmail? That’s what you are doing, Larry Waish, damn you!'

He’d never heard the man let out an oath. 'Okay. You’ve had your little rant. Now it’s time to pay. You missed last month. I need the money. It’s fucking Christmas.'

John shifted in the seat, until, finally they were staring at each other. 'It’s over, mate. No more money. I’m going straight to Bridgwater to make a police statement. Tell them what I did; tell them what you are doing.'

The look on the man’s face. Pity. Larry stepped away from what was in those eyes, forgetting the boggy ground, and suddenly, his butt was in the mud.

John did not laugh. As if Larry Waish, and his pathetic life – never married, living with his weirdo sister, scraping a living from a barn full of poultry – was not a matter for mirth or taunts, but for compassion. The knowing chaffed the bottom of his stomach. All this time, John Spicer had felt sorry for him.

He sucked his boots free of the marshy ground and scraped himself up. He was mired. Shat upon. 'Fuckhead,' he hissed. 'Fuckhead, fuckhead.'

Spicer looked away, like he hadn’t seen the fool he’d become, and dropped the stick into drive. The fat, black tyres flew round with a high whining sound, splattering further mud over Larry’s jeans. The engine screamed. His foot must have been on the floor. He punched at the wheel and the horn burped out.

‘All right,' said Larry. His heart was pounding, he could hear the rhythm of it in his voice. 'All right. Make this the last time. Give me your payment and we’ll call it  a day.'

Perhaps John Spicer’s lips twitched, in and out of a smile. 'You’re too late. Because, Larry, blackmail is the bigger crime.'

'I call it fair payment. I lost two-thirds of my living.'

'You got compensation. I heard in the village.' Spicer tried to reverse, taking it steady, but the wheels dug deeper into the furrow he’d already made. The engine hollered for mercy. He stuck his head out of the window. 'Could you pull back up the lane?' As if they’d only stopped here to exchange pleasantries. 'Give me a bit of room, please?'

'You’ll need a tow,' Larry grunted. 'You’re in too deep.'

He mashed his way to the pickup, his jeans stuck to his backside. Somewhere in the back was a bit of good rope they could use to get the Audi out of its predicament. He shifted the briefcase to one side. It was still wide open, like a dog waiting for a treat.

The bastard owes. 

A double payment.

Fucking feels sorry. 

For me.

Fuckhead.

He’s in too deep.

Bloody fluid fizzed inside his brain until it felt like it was oozing out of his eye sockets. He wiped them and looked at his hands. Nothing but mud and rain and hot, invisible tears.

Blackmail is the bigger crime.

The back of the pickup was littered with his stuff. Bits from the farm, bits for the car, a spare sack of layer’s pellets. He spotted the fat coil of blue rope towards the bottom and reached down for it. His hand knocked against his shotgun. 

How did this happen? How did that sod turn his one bit of luck around like this?

He picked up his gun so he could pull the rope out. His shotgun. It felt good in his hand, like a friendship.

  As he walked along the side of the Audi, he drew his right hand behind him, the shotgun nestling against his back. The rope dangled from his left arm, almost tripping him.

'Look, Larry…I’m sorry, mate,' said John.

And he really was; sorry he couldn’t pay him any more money, as if the Waishes were a charity case.

Had he only agreed to pay him because he was a fucking charity case?

'You will be sorry.' 

He dropped the rope in the mud and poked the barrel of the shotgun through the window. It crashed against John’s teeth. The man veered away as best he could within the confines of the seat belt he’d never undone, his hands clutching at the barrel, struggling with the gun. The fucker had not been expecting this.

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t control his head anymore.

He fired. His eyes slapped shut with the recoil. When he cracked them open, he couldn’t make out where John’s face had gone. 

For a few further seconds, everything was motionless. 'Mate?' 

He went to wipe away the blood. His hand touched bone, and the slippery stickiness of innards. Like the entrails of a drawn chicken. He tried to help John up. The body moved. There was no sound as it gained momentum, just a single soft, squelch as Spicer collapsed towards the steering wheel.

He couldn’t take it in. He had no idea his shotgun could do this damage. It could kill a fox, from across a field, but he’d never used it on anything close up before.

He couldn’t recall what had gone through his mind before he pulled the trigger, or even if he had pulled it. All he remembered was the look of pity in John’s eyes, the mud on his jeans. The stew boiling bloody in his head. The friendly gun in his hands.

And then, a soul-saving moment of clarity as he realised no one knew they were here. No one knew they had ever met here.

He walked back to the car and threw in the tow rope. He pulled on a pair of chainsaw gloves and polished his gun with an old rag, burnishing it as if for a game show.

It was quiet in the glade. Even the crows had been scared away. Was Spicer dead? 

He had left Spicer’s brain splattered over the Audi. Of course the man was dead.

He stood in front of the car for a long time, thinking about positions. How a man might kill himself with a shotgun in a car. He rested the stock of the gun on the open window, so the trigger was just inside. Yes, that seemed to work. He let go of it and it fell into the driver’s well, where blood was pooling.

It wasn’t Spicer’s gun, but luckily, it wasn’t his, either. He’d picked it up somewhere, probably in some pub for a good price.

Sinking into the wet ground was the discharged cartridge. He nudged it towards the car with his foot. 

As he did so, the clarity left. As if the last of his luck had turned and walked away.

He was on his knees before he knew he’d fallen. A thin trail of bile ran from his mouth into the grass and was dissipated by the rain. He’d only had whisky for breakfast. His eyes stung. He ran his fingers over them and this time, yes, blood came away, smearing the bright colours of the chainsaw gloves. 

But it wasn’t his blood.

It was John Spicer’s.

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