Sneak preview of new novella

Working title: Through Open Doors

Hello everyone and Happy New Year. I wish you all the very best for the 12 months ahead.

I wanted to give you a little sneak preview of my new novella in this post.

It’s about an old widower who lives in an unnamed town in England. He has a terraced house and seems to be incapable of closing both his front and back doors. He’s young at heart really though.

He spends most of his time reminiscing, denying the fact that he has the onset of dementia and — most importantly to the story — having paranoid thoughts. I won’t give too much more away.

Here’s the first two chapters (in their raw, as yet unadulterated form):

Through Open Doors

1.

My front door is open.

I walk through it. The air is fresh. Young. It is early in the morning. Have I had my breakfast?

I turn right and walk around the corner and back up on myself, taking another right, down the alley to my back gate.

It is open. I go through it. My back door is open. Inside, my toast is burning under the grill. I scrape some of the black bits off. I butter the toast and sit down to eat it. Waste not, want not.

Upstairs, as I brush my teeth, I wonder if the door was open all night.

2.

Where are my slippers? I look for them everywhere. I cannot find them. I make a cup of tea. It tastes funny. Maybe the milk has gone off. I cannot tell. For some reason I have scribbled over the best before date on the plastic bottle with a thick pen. All I can see is black ink. Why did I do that?

I look through the front window for a few minutes. I spot my slippers. What are they doing out there?

I go outside and retrieve them. Someone starts speaking to me. A young lady. Slightly plump, but attractive. She is wearing lots of make-up. Her nails are long and painted.

'Everything OK Mr. Deardsley?'

'Everything is fine dear.'

My wife never wore too much makeup. She would wear some on Sundays and for special occasions, but that was about it. And it would always be subtle, never over-the-top.

She never had long nails. She said if she had long nails, they would never have been able to do the washing, or to knead bread.

We lived together in this house for almost 60 years. We were very happy together. We were blessed with four daughters.

Before Edith became ill and after we retired, we used to have a cup of tea and some cake at 3:00 p.m. every day. Unless we were not home, of course. We would usually have a Victoria sponge. We usually managed to make one medium-sized cake last a whole week. I try to keep the habit up, but I sometimes lose track of time. Take yesterday, for example. I went to put the kettle on and it was already 7 in the evening. And I didn't have any cake left, so I had a chocolate-covered biscuit. It was very dry. And the tea tasted funny. Maybe I need to buy some new teabags.

Edith and I would talk about our days. I would talk about the allotment and what I had taken care of, who I had spoken to. Edith would talk about the goings-on on the street and about the neighbours. Sometimes we would talk about our remaining three daughters and the grandchildren.

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And that’s that. For now. Hopefully I’ll have this out before too long.

Take it easy. And thanks for reading.