Remembrance

by Wayne Smallman

After many years, two former school friends meet by chance. Or do they? Deborah — a high-flying corporate lawyer, now living in New York — remembers a sequence of events one way, while Ben — a travel writer and campaigning journalist — remembers them another. But why?Unable to shake loose the feeling that something's wrong, Deborah and Ben return to the rural idyll of their home village in England, to make sense of what really happened during that apparently lost week in their young lives.What they uncover is more disturbing than anything they could have ever imagined, striking at the very heart of their adolescence, affecting not just their own lives, but the lives, the careers and the reputations of people past and an event so unbelievable, only the unimaginable could bring it to an end.

110 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 7, 2013

About the author

When you're young, you think you know everything and life is indistinguishable from a game. It's only when you get older — when you begin to doubt the authenticity of the event and question the rules — that experience begins to count for something. And to quote the inimitable Forbes Bingley, a recurring character of several novels: "Life makes you stronger, at a price."

In a sense, life has been preparation — practice, perhaps — for this wild stab at being an author. After all, how hard can it be, putting one word after another? Of course, like anything else in life, you only get out what you put in. At times, writing is both cathartic and semi autobiographical, where I catch myself looking backwards whimsically, lustily, with regret, a wry smile, a despondent glower or growing doubt.

But writing is also a journey, one with no intentional destination, just waypoints I may navigate towards from time to time, at leisure. Though I must admit, it's a journey I would prefer not to make alone.