Summer’s well and truly here, so kick back, relax, and immerse yourself in some fiction.
Join me for breakfast all next week, and read a thousand words a day from my short story, Your Affectionate Friend.
There was another letter waiting for him. The same plain, white envelope. The same neat, unremarkable hand. No return address. No overt warning of its hideous contents.
Mother had placed it on the table, neatly squared with his cutlery. Short of eating his breakfast off it, there was no way to avoid the ambush. She was watching him, waiting for him to pick it up, anticipating the delicious moment when he would colour, and tuck the letter away into his inside pocket. She was delighted. Delighted by the letter and what she thought it contained. She had no idea…”
It’s Dublin, 1907, and William’s day is not going to get any better.
Your Affectionate Friend is a standalone story taken from my work-in-progress, The Descent of Chloe Jackson. It’s a troubled moment in the life of William Wyman, one of Chloe’s great great grandparents, and I’m hoping it will make you smile and cry in equal measure.
Read the rest of this extract, and get the rest delivered to your inbox in daily instalments…
Or read it on my website every day starting on Sunday 17th July…
Paul C. Mercer 