I'm so excited that Summer in Tintagel will be out in a few short weeks! The 14th of July is publication day and the Kindle version is available for pre-order now. You can't see inside yet, so I thought I'd give you a sneaky peek at the opening lines. Hope you like them!
Chapter
One
Rosa
kneels on the lawn. It is summer, but the grass is damp under her bare legs and
she wishes that she had taken the picnic rug that Mummy had tried to give her
just now. Mummy said that she was wilful and she’d have to learn by her own
mistakes. Rosa wonders what wilful means as she pours water from the plastic
teapot into a tiny cup and places it in front of Barney, her oldest teddy bear.
Wilful is perhaps the same as stubborn. Daddy often says she is stubborn.
‘Would you like tea too, Miss Jemima
Puddle-duck?’
A
stuffed green and brown duck looks at her from its one glassy eye, but says
nothing. Rosa nods. ‘Yes, of course you would. You can have a biscuit too.’
Rosa puts cups in front of all her
toys and looks back across the long expanse of grass towards her house. The sun
hides itself behind a cloud, but that isn’t the reason she has goosebumps
forming along her arms. She feels her heartbeat quicken and she tightens her
grip on a biscuit. It crumbles and leaves as sticky smear of chocolate on her
fingers. Rosa licks the chocolate, but her stomach rolls and she tries to blot
out a voice in her head. Daddy will be angry, very angry.
A scream pierces the silent
afternoon. It comes from the house and it sounds like her mother. Rosa leans
her back against a tree and draws her knees up under her chin. She looks at a
grass stain on her white sock and her whole body begins to shake. A siren wails
up the valley and she knows that something bad has happened. Very bad.
She has been under the tree what
feels like a long time, but then she sees Daddy burst from the house as if he
has been fired like a bullet from a gun. His hair is messy and he runs his
hands through it with wild jerky movements. Daddy’s tie is pulled to the side
and he doesn’t look at all neat. Being neat is something he is very proud of. Rosa
tries to make herself small, but he has seen her and runs towards her ... fast.
Daddy kneels beside her and puts his
big hands on her shoulders. He shakes her roughly. ‘This is all you fault!
Dabbling in evil always ends in disaster, do you hear me?’
‘I ... I ... haven’t done anything
...’
‘Don’t lie! All this mumbo jumbo
about ghostly old ladies appearing in my house and warning you to ...’ Daddy’s
face looks like a Halloween mask and his mouth twists down at the corners. ‘Never mind. You are going to your room and
staying there for the rest of the day!’
Rosa’s arm hurts where Daddy is
squeezing it as he drags her back to the house. Her eyes fill, but she won’t
let him see. She is glad she is going to her room, because she doesn’t want to
know exactly what has happened; the bad thing that has made Daddy so angry.
Rosa has a good idea already and this makes her so sad that she can hardly
breathe...
