No.1 best seller from the UK official charts. A controversial and shocking anti-romance, only previously released as a hardback.
Excerpt:
Each day when eight-year-old Jack arrived home from school he would squat in the window ledge of the modern semi-detached’s lounge to be as far away as possible from the foot of the stairs and the ghost that haunted his imagination from somewhere above.
He would squint at any remaining sunlight, desperate to see his Mother returning from work as she strode expectantly up the road, anxious to receive a hug from her handsome little boy.
He was too young to be ‘a latch key’ kid living near Bewdley in Worcestershire but because of his youthful innocence he noticed things in his loneliness that adults would miss, but accepted his thoughts were never to be shared.
Sometimes, he would gather up all of his courage and quickly stamp up those seven stairs, counting upwards from zero until he leapt onto the top landing where he yelled in a panic stricken and tearful voice.
“Go away! Leave me alone whoever you are; you have no right to be in my Mummy’s house!”
Was it a fantasy created by the fear of an imaginative little boy or was it the dawning of his awareness that he had a psychic gift? The fear as he felt unloved and alone needing his Mother to praise him about the events of his day at school. The unknown gift pushed to one side like the child who needed the love.
But Nim was always there acting as his spirit guide; trying to protect him at that tender age and of course Nim never went away.
Then Nim would smile as he watched the mature child with the brown hair scramble back down the stairs, jumping the last few to resume his safe window perch and listen to his thumping heart.
Jack had been a sensitive and lonely child troubled by the spirit World and would experience those same feelings of insecurity when he became a man living in Catalonia and searching for his true path.
Only then would he understand the reality that knocked on his door just like his beloved Mother.
Inevitably, forty-one years later Jack George Edmunson was still watched by Nim as he pulled his silver Mercedes into the gravel drive of his home in Tettenhill.
It was a ‘Cheshire Brick’ cottage with a dark blue front door centralised between windows to create a smiling and symmetrical face that stared at the sun warming its south facing walls. Jack adored the mirrored smile when it regarded the summer across the most colourful cottage garden, complete with a living pond that was an inherent part of the beautiful spot.
But on a Friday evening in the winter, and after a gruelling weekly commute home, he was only watched by Nim who remained silent in Jack’s mind, repulsed by those original childhood defences.