Greysands , livre ebook
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English
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161
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Publié par
Date de parution
01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781839780103
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781839780103
Langue
English
Greysands
Mark Edmondson
Greysands
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2020
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN -978-1-839780-10-3
Copyright © Mark Edmondson, 2020
The moral right of Mark Edmondson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
Cover image created with designers own images and details from photos of sand dunes by herprettybravesoul.com and sky by Emma Francis both available on www.unsplash.com , and photo of amusement park by Christian Horz on www.istockphoto.com
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
For Maggi
‘This is the coastal town,that they forgot to close down.’
Morrissey
1
‘W ould you like to look around on your own, Mr Lloyd?’ the young lady asked.
Philip gazed through the large bay window. The view was amazing. He could see for miles over the ocean. The tide was high and making its way to the dry sand and scattered pebbles. To the right, if he leaned closer to the window, he could see the large grassy hill where the red-bricked lighthouse stood. The dark grey clouds held onto the rain for now, but it didn’t look as though it would be long before the heavens opened. The gloomy scene of a ghostly and dying seaside town was the perfect place for Philip Lloyd to be. He’d already made his decision.
Greysands was a small seaside town in Lancashire nestled between Blackpool and Lancaster. There was only one road in and one road out of the forgotten town that was littered with closed signs and boarded-up shop-fronts. Some businesses were still hanging on. The pub and the cafe were still open. The lights of the arcade at the edge of the promenade were still flashing. The chip shop was still trading and the grocery store was still open. But the novelty gift shops were all but gone. The miniature railway tracks were rusted and the ornamental fountains were green with algae.
The beautiful, natural scenery of the town wasn’t going to be enough to keep the businesses going. It was considered by many a good place to get some peace and quiet, or to walk the dog along the beach. But the single road that brought people here was eight miles from any other passing routes. The town wasn’t on the way anywhere, and it wasn’t going to compete with the bright lights of Blackpool or the sandy beaches of Lytham St Annes. The arcade lights were like dying embers compared to the illuminations further down the coastline. Although Philip Lloyd found this a little sad, he also found it fascinating. He wondered what characters lived in a small town like this, and what secrets they might be hiding. Who was still here and who had got away? He imagined Greysands was the kind of town where nobody wanted to live, as beautiful as it was. He thought that as soon as the kids were old enough, most of them probably took flight.
It was the perfect place to write his next novel. And he wasn’t going to get a more perfect house to rent than this one, especially one that was fully furnished. As he stared through the window, he knew this was the place for him. It was the perfect place to write, and it was the perfect place to escape the past. He knew the past always had a habit of catching up with you, and he knew there was still unfinished business back at home, but out here in this ghostly town, he thought he might just have a chance of breaking free and starting again. He wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted, but it certainly felt like the right thing to do; for now, at least.
‘Mr Lloyd.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Would you like to look around on your own?’
He brought his mind back to the job in hand. ‘No. I don’t need to look around. I’ll take it.’
The young lady looked surprised.
She had told him her name but he couldn’t remember it. She didn’t look old enough to work as an estate agent. He thought she was about twenty, she could’ve been older, but not by much.
‘Don’t you want to see the other rooms?’
The living room had a very old-fashioned feel to it. The carpet had a brown and gold pattern that looked as though it was laid four decades earlier. But there was a real log fire, with a wood pile stacked in the alcove, a comfortable looking sofa and a large desk in front of the bay window.
‘No. It’s perfect.’
‘Do you want to see the bedrooms at least?’
At first Philip’s overactive imagination thought she might be suggesting something, but when he turned to look at her, he saw an innocent expression of youth on her young smiling face. Her long dark hair gave her a Mediterranean look, but her accent was one hundred percent Lancashire. As he turned to judge her gaze, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that was hanging on the wall in the alcove next to the stone fireplace. When he saw his grey hair, pale complexion and tired eyes, he quickly realised that the young woman was being anything but suggestive.
His confidence in talking to the ladies had been met with some surprising results over the years; when he was a police officer, he’d been propositioned many times, and quite a few times after becoming a successful author, although he wasn’t as flattered by then as the women who showed an interest in him knew of his success. But now at fifty-five years old, he thought maybe he should stop thinking of himself as a ladies’ man, especially considering the situation he’d recently fallen into.
‘No. This is just right.’
‘Mr Lloyd, the views at the back aren’t quite in the same league as the views from this window.’
‘I’m sure they’re not. Nothing beats a sea view, even on a cold winter’s day like this.’
‘Mr Lloyd,’ she suddenly became more serious and her smile dispersed from her face. ‘Please come upstairs? You’ll see what I mean.’
They walked through the living room door and climbed the wooden stairs that creaked with every step. The hallway at the top of the stairs was dark and smelled of damp. This didn’t bother him too much because he wasn’t looking to buy the property, he was only looking to rent. Any building repairs wouldn’t be his problem, and he also guessed that the property might’ve been empty for some time.
Once upstairs, he followed the young woman to the end of the hall. She opened the door and they walked into a very dark and depressing room. There was a single bed, a wooden chair and a dark wooden wardrobe. The light-blue curtains were drawn, but the daylight came through them and dimly lit the room.
She stood in front of the curtains and turned back to face him. ‘This is the part you might not like.’
‘OK,’ he said. He knew he had an overactive imagination; he got paid a lot of money for it; but he had no clue what she was about to reveal to him.
She reached up and slid the curtains open. Suddenly, her reservations made sense to him. He stepped forward to look through the window. He saw a decent sized garden of about fifty feet in length. There was an overgrown grass lawn that was surrounded by a concrete fence, but that wasn’t what she was showing him. On the other side of the fence was probably to most people the most depressing scene anyone could imagine. But Philip felt a breathlessness at what he could see. Now he knew for sure that this was the house for him.
He looked down on an area the size of two football fields, surrounded by large iron fencing. It was an amusement park. He could tell it’d been closed for many years by the way all the grassed areas were overgrown and the rides and machinery were full of cancerous rust.
A large metal wheel that once spun swings around had years of rust building up on the framework and the swings lay dormant, hanging just above the forest of weeds. The merry-go-round was full of bird droppings and the painted flowers on the carts were all faded to a pale white. The rollercoaster track was rusted and overgrown with weeds and the entrance to the ride was a blue hut that was now partially covered with flaking paint. The pond in the middle was home to a family of large plastic swan-shaped pedalos that were dirty with algae. One of them floated on its side, partially under the surface of the water. And the Waltzer was barely visible under the bushes and weeds that had consumed most of the park.
Philip could see why she wanted him to see the full picture. She didn’t know that to Philip, this would be the best thing about the house. The old and dingy house that his wife Lesley certainly wouldn’t have agreed to even stay in for a week’s holiday, let alone a year, was perfect for him, even though he was aware that most people would consider it to be an eyesore. He was now starting to realise why the estate agent sent her.
‘What’s your name again?’ he asked.
‘Jenny,’ she said.
‘And how old are you?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘How many people work in your office?’
‘Eight of us,’ she said, looking confused at his line of questioning.
‘And this is a question that I’ve managed to avoid asking for the full twenty-five years of my career, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask it now.’
‘OK,’ she said, still looking perplexed.
‘Do you know who I am?’
She smiled a little. ‘No.’
‘But the people above you told you that I was a big deal, didn’t they?’
She nodded in a coy way, looking down at the ground as she did.
‘You were told to show me around and be as nice as you can to me and thankfully, you were told to make me aware of everything, but to keep smiling that beautiful smile of yours.’
She blushed a little, but nodded again.
He smiled at her. ‘I’m sure this house has been viewed by many people who loved the front but hated the back.’
‘It has.’
‘Well you can ring your office and tell them you’ve clinc
