Goodreads Book Giveaway! A Signed Copy of Alone!

Would you like to win a signed copy of Alone, Book One in the Serenity Series? Well, head on over to Goodreads and enter my giveaway! And while you're there, feel free to send me a friend request or add any of my books to your 'to-read' or 'read' lists! Good luck!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Alone

by Marissa Farrar

Giveaway ends April 19, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Read an eBook Week! Get Your Free Copy of 'Alone'!

I'm going to keep this one brief as I'm both swamped and exhausted after my weekend away at a writer's conference (not a good combination!).

This week is 'read an ebook week' over at Smashwords. If you head on over to the site, you'll find a  whole heap of ebooks either with discount codes or that are being offered for free!

My own novel, Alone, is currently FREE so click on the link here and grab it while you can. This offer will only continue for another week!

Day Five of Creepfest! I'm giving away 100 copies of Alone!

Yes, you did read right! I'm giving away 100 copies of Alone over on my facebook page!

Here are the rules:

‎>>100 eBook Christmas Giveaway<<

To receive a FREE ecopy of my debut novel, ALONE, all you need to do is:

1) “Like” the Marissa Farrar Author's FB page
2) Enter your email addy *and* type of ereader in a comment on this status update
3) Click the “Share” option on this update and post it on your profile or FB business page ("share" is located next to the "like" and "comment" links under every FB update)
4) If you are worried about spam, please enter your address like this: marissafarrar at hotmail dot com.

To read a product description of the novel, please go to Amazon and search for the title, Alone by Marissa Farrar. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Giving Something Back: Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month in the States.

Domestic abuse can happen to anyone; whether the abuse is physical violence, controlling behavouir, or threats. In the UK, two women a week are killed by abusive partners and in the US, three women a day are killed by their spouse.

Even celebrities can be affected by domestic violence. In 2009, the world was shocked when pictures of the young pop-star, Rihanna, were leaked to the public. She’d been beaten up by boyfriend, Chris Brown after a Pre-Grammy party. Her injuries were bad enough to make her cancel her own performance at the event.

Rihanna’s experience got the world talking, but the truth is that thousands of women live with domestic violence every day, and for the most part the public turn their heads. One in four women in the States report being involved in some kind of abusive relationship at some point in their lives, and those are just the women who will talk about it! Many women refuse to admit or speak about what they are experiencing at home.

When I was younger, I was in a controlling relationship. The guy in question cheated on me and I found out. After I forgave him, (more fool me) he completely changed, turning the tables on me. All of a sudden, I was the one who he was suspicious of. He berated me with constant accusations and threats. I ended up never wearing make-up and always wearing baggy clothes to avoid the endless questioning about who I was dressing up for. I stopped going out or seeing my friends.

I’m not a weak person by any means. I’m outgoing and confident, yet this person managed to get around all my defences and I didn’t even realize what was happening. It wasn’t until he threatened, ‘If I ever see you with someone else, I’ll kill him and then I’ll come after you’ that something clicked. It was like someone took blinkers off my eyes and I remember thinking, ‘hang on, this isn’t normal. This isn’t right!’

I was lucky. We weren’t living together and I had a great support network around me so it was easy for me to give him the boot. But I can totally understand how another woman who might be married to this type of person, who has children and their lives tied to them, would struggle to make the break.

A while ago, I ran into my ex standing in front of a local supermarket. My reaction... I hid. I ducked down behind the nearest car and then crawled between the vehicles to get into my car and drove away. Even after several years, the person created an instant reaction in me. I’m normally someone who doesn’t take any shit, but from this man, I fled.

The main character in my novel, Alone, is a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. She was a challenge to write because most female characters in urban fantasy novels are strong, snarky, kick-ass heroines. My character, Serenity, was none of those things. She’s tortured, both physically and mentally, by her abusive husband, Jackson and can’t see an escape.

Serenity was difficult to write because I wanted the reader to be on her side without thinking she was a weak person. Her inability to leave comes from years of abuse and it’s all she’s ever known. She doesn’t know how to exist in a life without a controlling man. I wanted to make the reader understand how it feels to be in her shoes and empathise with her as opposed to dislike her for not having the strength to tell her ass-hole husband where to go.

I’ve had some complaints from readers about the violence in the book and how it made them ‘uncomfortable’. Good. Domestic abuse should make people feel uncomfortable. For me, these comments simply mean I did my job right and portrayed domestic violence as it should be – cruel, unnecessary and horrific.

The character in my novel does change and she also finds someone who will help her (in this case, a vampire!) but many women remain trapped in these relationships.

To give a little back, for the month of October I’ve decided to donate 25% of all revenue earned from the sales of Alone to the charity, ‘Refuge’. It might not add up to much, but at least it’s something and I hope everyone else out there will take this month to think about all the women (and some men) trapped in violent and abusive relationships and maybe even give a little something to help.

'Alone' is available to buy from Amazon and Barnes & Noble for $0.99.

Something for the Weekend - Win a copy of my vampire novel, 'Alone'!

After a long week, I'm feeling thankful that the weekend is here so I have decided to celebrate by giving away three e-copies of my novel, 'Alone'. Yep, that's right, THREE!

So, how do you win? Just leave me a comment below telling me who your favourite vamp is (from the movies or books) and I'll randomly choose three winners!

I'm looking forward to reading your comments and maybe even discovering a couple of vamps I haven't heard of! Remember to leave me your blog link or email address so I can contact you to let you know if you won and how to collect your prize!

Good luck everyone!

Have you read 'Alone'? I need your help!!!

As I'm sure you're all aware by now, I've re-released my vampire novel Alone. While I'm thrilled with the book's facelift, unfortunately one of the things that happened during the change over is that I lost all my reviews and ratings :-(

So, I'm in need of your help. If you were one of the wonderful people who originally wrote me a review for Alone, I'd be forever in your debt if you rewrote the review either on Amazon or on Barnes & Noble (or both would be even better!).

I did go to the trouble of copying and pasting all of my reviews, so if you can't remember what you wrote, just email me at marissafarrar@hotmail.co.uk and I'll be happy to sort through the reviews and email your one for you to copy and paste.

I really hope some of you will get in touch. It was a huge disappointment to lose all of my wonderful reviews but it felt like a price worth paying. Reviews are so important to both readers and authors!

Thanks everyone!

I'm Back!

After a lovely week with my parents in Spain, I've returned home feeling both relaxed and eager to get on with my work.

I've had the final edits back for Alone now and they're pretty much done! Whoo-hoo! All that's left is some final proofing and formatting, and then I hope to have the book back up for sale this weekend (double Whoo-hoo!).

 While I was away, I wrote a number of short stories (all longhand, despite taking my computer, I never actually turned it on!). One is for the 'Demonic Dolls' anthology which I blogged about earlier this month, another is the free short for Alone, 'The Vengeful Vampire', and the third short story is one called 'Thumbing it', about a female hitch-hiker, which I wrote just for the fun of it!

So I now have page after page of almost illegible notes to write up. On top of that, I also have the new deadline for the sequel to Alone, which is entitled, Buried. As soon as Alone is up, I'll be turning my editing eye to Buried and hope to have the book up for sale by the end of October.

Progress Report...

I'm now well over halfway through the edits for Alone and my editor is way faster than I am, so she is patiently waiting for me to get some more chapters to her. It feels great to finally be on, not quite the home straight, but certainly close to it.

For the most part, I've enjoyed this re-edit. Because this book has already been out there and has received some fantastic reviews, I'm not filled with all the usual paranoia that accompany a new release (will people like it, will people buy it?!!!). Okay, maybe the 'will people buy it' part still applies but I think I'm learning more and more about what parts of promotion work and which don't. I plan to release Alone at the $0.99 price mark for at least two weeks (possibly a month) to try to get it up the sales charts. Alongside that, I'm working on a short story which will be about Sebastian (the main vamp in Alone) being turned by his maker, Madeline (the vamp-bitch in the novel). The short story is set during and just after the Spanish American war, two hundred years ago. I've never written anything historic and I have to be honest, I'm a little nervous about how I'll do. I have a couple of friends who have written historic pieces so I intend to let them have a good critique before I release it to the public. However critical other writers are, having critical readers is definitely worse! Anyway, the short story will be  freebie, along with a nice chunk of Alone to get people interested.

Another thing that is coming together is the cover. I can't wait to show it off! The designer Rebecca Treadway, has so far done a fantastic job to putting together exactly what I had in my head. I'll be previewing it here very soon!

As always, I'm also looking forward to what I'm going to do next. I've got The Dark Road to re-edit and re-release, but depending on how well Alone does, I'm also tempted to get the sequel, Buried Alone finished. The book is basically done, minus the last chapter so all I need to do is give it the usual ten edits (and write the final chapter of course).

As my husband always says when I complain about being busy...there's always another book, Marissa. I guess he's right. As long as I stay as motivated and determined as I am, I'm always going to be busy!

An Epiphany!

I logged onto Goodreads today to discover someone had left Alone a two star rating. Now this is the first two star and so far lowest rating Alone has received and my initial reaction was to get annoyed. But then I realised that you can't please everyone.

Books, like anything else in life, are all down to personal taste. Maybe this person loves soppy romances, in which case there is no way Alone was ever going to be for her. Just the same as if someone doesn't like spicy food, I'm sure the chef in a curry house wouldn't take it personally.

When your work is out there, and people are reading it, reviews are just part of the course. There is no way I can control what people are saying about my book, but at least people are reading it! So far the reviews for Alone have been great. It's got a steady 4 stars out of 36 reviews on Barnes and Noble, with some of the review headings being 'Wonderful Book' and 'Great Read', with people saying they couldn't put it down and can't wait for the sequel.

I know I can't please everyone, but as long as I am pleasing the majority, and above all, that people are actually taking the time to read my books, then I am happy. And look out for the paperback guys! The proof as been ordered, so it won't be long now!

In the words of Stephen King…

To write is human, to edit is divine.

Since making the decision to put some of my work out alone, I’ve discovered something about myself. As much as I can spot problems in other people’s work, I am hopeless at doing the same thing for my own writing. It’s as if I’m just too close to the piece and I’m only seeing what I think should be there, instead of what it actually says.

Because of this I’ve decided to hire an editor to do my final edits for me. I was lucky enough to meet Janelle, from Dawson Editing Services, through a mutual friend. She kindly offered to edit some of my work and I was amazed at what she found. Honestly, I thought I’d edited the arse out of these pieces, and I’d even had other writers go over them, but Janelle still found so much that needed changing.

She described herself to me as a punctuation and grammar freak, and that is exactly what I needed. While my writing might be strong, I’ll agonise for hours over where to put a comma!

Anyway, Janelle is fantastic and I can’t wait to see her transform my stories into tight, professional novels. The editing process is so important, and I know readers will come back for more if the books are professionally edited. Besides, any time I’m not editing can be spent doing what I’m supposed to be doing—actually writing. As I’m working on a ‘flood the market to the point where people HAVE to start noticing me’ promotion plan, the more writing I can get done and actually get out to the readers, the better.

If you would like to contact Janelle to find out how good she is for yourself, you can email her at jdawsonedit@gmail.com. She is currently offering the first 500 words of your m/s for FREE, and the rest of her prices are extremely affordable.

The reviews for my novels have been coming in thick and fast, and have been fantastic. You can check out the reviews for Alone over at Barnes & Noble, and at Smashwords. Also, Alone is still free to download!

I honestly think reading great reviews by is one of the best things about being a writer (next to seeing actual sales of course!). While I love my friends and family giving me positive feedback about my work, I am always a little sceptical. I mean, they’re hardly going to tell me it sucks (actually, scratch that. My mother would—and has—told me when something blew). But there is still nothing better than discovering, through the wonder that is Google-alerts, someone is raving about your book.

For years I wondered if I was like one of those poor saps on X-Factor (UK equivalent of American Idol) where they are totally convinced they have talent, but actually they can’t hold a tune to save their lives. I’m slowing starting to believe this isn’t the case, and I have really high hopes for this year.

Alone is now free—for three months only—and a new ebook!

After much market research, my publisher and I have decided to offer my vampire novel, Alone, as a free download over at Smashwords. The idea is to expose as a many people as possible to my work, and hopefully (she says, *fingers crossed*) gear people up for the sequel, Buried Alone, which will be released early 2011.

 

So, if you would like your free copy, just follow the links on the left to Smashwords, select which format you would like to read it in (I always find using the Kindle for PC app is the best) and get reading!

 

And, if anyone has already read, or plans to read Alone, please remember that reviews are always appreciated!

 

On other news, I have released a small (three) collection of short stories over on Amazon and Smashwords. They are three very different stories ranging from horror to fantasy, so I hope you will give them a look. The book is entitled, Where the Dead Live, and it’s available from Amazon by clicking here! It only costs a matter of pence, so why not give it a go!

We've Joined the iPhone Revolution!

First off, if you've not already done so, please check out Marissa's posting on a 'real life' werewolf -- the utterly heinous Peter Stubbe. A true, real-life monser -- ugh!

For the big news, Marissa and my novels are now available on iPhone! Yay! Just go to iTunes, then hit the Apps tab and do a search for our names, or you can use the Apps button located right on your iPhone to hunt us and our books down.

Look, I'm an old dog. I still use hairspray every day even though it went out in 1995, and I couldn't name one song off the Twilight soundtrack even if I were faced with a firing squad (I just haven't gotten around to listening to it -- can't put away my Lost Boys soundtrack ;-)

I was of the Old Guard that had to feel the paper in my hands and know that I could flip back and forth between the pages (in case I missed something earlier). It was with great trepidation that I purchased a novel for my iPhone -- White Wolf of Avalon by Eva Gordon -- and now I LOVE reading books on my iPhone! I don't have to worry about buying more bookshelves, killing trees, or lugging a book with me when I go to appointments, etc. -- I just take my phone and off I go! I'm currently finishing White Wolf, as I got sidetracked by Dance On Fire by James Garcia Jr. and then Vampire's Seduction by Raven Hart. I read Seduction entirely on the iPhone and thought the experience was great.

If you're worried about reading on a small screen, you can ajdust the size of the font and the colors to suit your eyes and tastes. Also, Kindle has an app just for iPhone, as well as Kobo (which features Vamplit titles).

Did I mention that e-books are fairly inexpensive, too? Less than $10 for most titles. Kobo features Eclipse for $4.99.

So, if you've got an iPhone and are looking do do more things with it ;-) -- then head to Apps and start downloading Release and Alone!

Post Chrimbo..

Well it's all over and we had a lovely, if quiet, time. The best present we had was opening our little envelope on Christmas morning, the one that held the sex of our unborn child, and found out that we are having another girl! I can't believe I am going to have two daughters! For some reason I had convinced myself that it was going to be a boy, but then I did exactly the same with my first and was obviously wrong, so it shows what I know! So much for a mothers intuition...

Present-wise my darling hubby bought me 'Eclipse'. Now I haven't read 'New Moon' and I am wondering if I should try to read that first? Would it ruin it for me to read them out of order? As soon as I have read it I will be sure to let everyone know what I think!

I have managed to get a few thousand words for 'Alone's' sequel, 'Buried', done over the holidays as well, which I am really pleased with. It has been strange writing a sequel as I have never done it before and it has taken me a while to figure out where I am going to come back into my characters lives again. I have done a lot of cutting and pasting, but I think I am now into the swing of it!

First Chapter of Alone

Chapter One

The day Serenity Hathaway would come to view as the lowest point in her life would also turn out to be the day that everything changed.
She had just been fired.
In many ways it shouldn’t have come as a shock; she had been hanging onto the job by her fingernails for quite some time. It wasn’t her fault that she was fired, not that that made her any less terrified of going home to face her husband, Jackson, who was ultimately the cause of her getting the sack.
She had been given her marching orders at two o’clock that afternoon, after she had passed out in the women’s bathroom and had been too ashamed to admit it. She thought by now she was able to control the pain. She tried to think of it as a different sense, like sound or colour, but today her meditation hadn’t worked. When she had gone for a bathroom break and tried to pee, the pain in her kidneys had overwhelmed her and she had passed out in the bathroom stall.
When her boss had demanded to know where she had been for the past two hours, she had been too embarrassed – too humiliated – to tell him the truth and instead she told him she had had a late night the night before and had fallen asleep in there. He had given her a look that was somewhere between disbelief, frustration and anger. She knew he didn’t believe her, but the number of times she had gone AWOL on the job had gone beyond a joke and he told her to clear her desk.
That had been early afternoon and she had been walking the streets of downtown Los Angeles, too scared to go home, ever since then.
It was late November and the last of the light was slowly bleeding out of the LA skyline. Her ribs were throbbing and the pain in her lower back made her walk with a hunch and press her palm into the small of her back, so that she walked like an old woman instead of the twenty-eight year old she actually was.
The job Serenity had just been fired from was their only income. She was the one supporting Jackson while he worked on the novel she had never seen. If it wasn’t for Jackson’s refusal to work, she was sure he wouldn’t even allow her to have a job. After all, he didn’t allow her to do anything else. She had no family left except for the step-father who had passed her on to Jackson to continue the good work he had started, and any school friends she had managed to have at the time had long given up trying to keep up any contact with her. She hadn’t had a night out since she was a teenager.
Her current afternoon, wandering the streets, was the closest thing to freedom she had experienced in a long time.
A hard ball constricted her throat, making it hard for her to swallow, and the back of her eyes burned like fire, but she was all out of tears. Long ago she had learnt that they didn’t get you anywhere.
She stopped on the corner of East and 3rd Street and rummaged around in her bag. She pulled out a bottle of water, a packet of aspirin, and a packet of paracetamol. She pushed out two of each tablet through the foil backing, the small white discs dropping into her palm. This was another thing she had learnt over the years; that it was okay to take the two medications together and that they worked even better that way.
Except they hadn’t worked for her that afternoon.
She had gone to the bathroom to pee, but her kidneys were in such bad shape the pain had been excruciating. Combined with the lack of sleep she had had over the past few nights, it had all just been too much for her body and she had passed out.
Why hadn’t someone noticed her slumped in the locked stall? Why hadn’t someone come and checked on her when they saw she had been missing for hours? She knew the answer; because they wanted her out. Who wanted a work colleague who was moody and silent, who never attended any of the social functions and was always off sick? Serenity couldn’t blame them for finally losing their patience with her.
The streets were starting to fill up with people. The tourist crowd had already headed back to their hotels after another day sightseeing and now the residents of LA were leaving their workplaces and heading off home. Serenity glanced at her watch. It was nearly six and Jackson would expect her home in the next half an hour. Her stomach twisted into a knot of anxiety. Could she get away with not telling him? Could she pretend to leave for work as normal the next day? She only toyed with the idea for a moment. Jackson called her at work several times a day and would quickly find out what had happened, and even if he didn’t he would see through her in a moment. He had known her the whole of her adult life and would quickly see that something was wrong. If she lied to him, it would only make matters worse.
Serenity felt a slow coil of anger stir inside her – anger at her boss for putting her in this position, anger at Jackson for controlling her life, but mainly anger at herself for allowing him to do so.
She wasn’t a stupid woman, she knew what Jackson did to her was wrong. Yet somehow she always managed to make excuses for him, tell herself that she had wound him up, or that he hadn’t realised what he was doing, and that old favourite – that he would change. It was pitiful really.
The truth was that she was scared.
She had married Jackson at the age of eighteen. He had been the son of a man her stepfather had been friendly with and her stepfather had been happy to palm her off. Of course alarm bells should have rung immediately – her stepfather was more than happy to use his fists with her and any pairing he made would have been soured from the start – but Jackson had seemed to nice at first and she had been happy to escape from under her stepfather’s roof.
The result was that Serenity had no idea what life would be like on her own and no idea that a life existed where you weren’t constantly looking out for where the next fist was coming from. She didn’t know how to live by herself. If she left Jackson, she had no idea what would happen to their home, to the bills, to all their things. That wasn’t the only thing she was scared of – she was terrified of how Jackson would react. He had no qualms about giving her a swift elbow in the kidney if she had burnt dinner, so she didn’t even want to imagine how he would react if she told him she was leaving him.
Serenity stopped at the side of the street and waited for the lights to change. People gathered either side of her, closing in, and she suddenly felt faint. Despite the cool evening, her palms began to sweat and her cheeks flushed. She stared in panic at the people either side of her, professional people in their suits who had their lives sorted. Her eyes were wide, and her heart thumped painfully in her chest. She just wanted to get away. She couldn’t stand it, all these people pressing in either side of her, talking loudly on mobile phones she could not see. Some part of her half-believed that they were talking about her, laughing about her to the faceless people on the other end of the line. She could feel their eyes upon her, how they judged her, how they wondered how such a pathetic creature could even be out here on her own, and she realised she wasn’t going to wait for the lights to change. She stepped out into the road, jolting her painful ribs so they made her gasp for breath.
Someone blasted their horn at her, but she barely even noticed. She half-stumbled, half- ran across the road. People looked at her with curiosity and concern in their eyes, one woman even put out her hand as Serenity passed her and asked if she was okay, but Serenity shrugged the kindly woman off and ran.
Blindly she pushed past people, knocking shoulders and elbows as she went. She could hear shouts of protest, but they were muffled by the blood that was rushing through her ears.
“Hey, crazy lady!” one man shouted at her as she stamped on his foot in her effort to get past. The panic that had exploded inside of her just made her want to get out of there, no matter what. Her heart was pounding and there was a pressure inside her head, a horrible pressure that made her think something terrible was going to happen unless she got away.
She rounded the corner. The side street was empty and was only lit by the dim lights from the restaurants that backed onto it. Large commercial bins were pushed up against the walls and Serenity collapsed between two of them, seeking shelter between their tall plastic sides. She bent over, ignoring the pain in her ribs, resting her hands on her thighs, her head hung down, gasping for breath. Her lower back screamed out in agony – Jackson always knew where to hit her to make it hurt the worst and always in places that no one saw – in her kidneys, the ribs just under her breasts, the bottom of her spine.
Just a panic attack, she told herself, as the feeling that she was going to die faded away with the adrenaline. Nothing to worry about, just a panic attack, you’ve had them before.
Slowly her breathing returned to normal and her heart lost its trippy beat. She was about to straighten up when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She shrieked out loud and leapt away, jarring her poor ribs once again.
“I’m sorry,” a man’s voice said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“By scaring me half to death!” Quickly the fear had been replaced by anger and she looked up, her eyes blazing.
In front of her was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He was easily six foot tall with dark wavy hair that he wore a few inches too long so that it curled around his broad throat and fell across his forehead. He had the square jaw of a catalogue model and a wide, generous mouth, but it was his eyes that really blew her away. She had to do a double take, and she felt something deep inside her heart (or was it her brain) do a little jolt, like a flick back in time. Despite the darkness she could see they were the brightest green she had ever seen.
Green? Not yellow? Hadn’t they really been yellow?
She pushed the strange thought away.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and his voice was like chocolate melting down her throat. She thought she could hear an accent, something European. “You seemed to be in distress. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help.”
“No. I’m fine, please. Just leave me alone.”
The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and he stepped forward and held out his hand.
He fixed her with those amazing eyes. “At least let me help you to your feet.”
She looked at his hand in mistrust, but couldn’t help glancing at the rest of him. He was well-dressed in a smart woollen overcoat and his shoes looked expensive. He gave the impression of someone who was important, of someone who knew his place in the world.
He was everything Serenity wanted to be.
She glanced again. His hand was large, and strong and inviting, and he certainly didn’t look like a lunatic.
Could this man do much worse than what she had waiting for her at home?
The anger in her melted and she found herself incapable of resisting. Instead she wanted to take his hand, wanted to touch that skin that looked so soft and strangely pale, and she reached out and slipped her small palm into his.
She gave a small gasp and would have pulled away if it wasn’t for the strength of his hand closing around her own.
Cold. He was so cold.
It wasn’t just the cold that made her gasp. His touch seemed to fire every synapse in her body and she felt her skin prickle with goose flesh, her heart hitch in her chest. Again there was that strange jolt in her brain, like static discharge realigning her nerve cells. It felt as though someone had reached in and moved something around, like something had happened that someone wanted her to forget. Black blobs suddenly clouded her vision and she felt her legs fold beneath her and the world swim away.
His arms were beneath her before she could fall, his easy strength holding her, and she felt herself come back to the surface.
“Sorry,” she managed, embarrassed. “I don’t know...”
She tailed off, not sure what she was going to say.
“What were you running from?” he asked her, gently.
She looked up at him. His eyes were full of gentle understanding; he was the first person in a long time who had shown her any kind of compassion.
“Myself,” she whispered. “I was running from myself.”
He smiled that half-smile again. “You didn’t get very far.”
“No. I never do.”
She suddenly realised she was still in his arms, that her breasts were pressed up against his broad chest, that his face was only inches from her own. He seemed aware of their close proximity at exactly the same moment and he let go and stepped away, both of them flustered.
She stared down at the floor, too embarrassed to meet his eyes. What had she felt go through her? It was like a charge, an electrical charge, or like he had somehow reached inside her and touched the essence of who she was. That was crazy; she must be losing the plot. The stress was all getting too much for her.
“I...I have to go,” she managed, pushing past him, not trusting herself to look at him again. For a moment she could almost sense him about to reach out to her again, but he did not and she kept walking. It was only when she reached the main street with its lights and bustle of people that she dared to look back.
He was gone.
A strange ache of both disappointment and relief filled her heart and she chewed at her lower lip, worrying a piece of dried skin. She found herself trying to commit his face to memory, to bury deep inside of her how she felt when he had taken her hand. As stupid as it seemed, it felt like her moment, something that she had experienced just for herself, and she would bury it deep inside of her and dig it out like an old forgotten favourite teddy or blanket when things got really bad.
The thought made her want to cry, but she pressed her lips together and fought the tears. She wouldn’t let herself cry. Not anymore. She wouldn’t let herself cry.
It was getting late and she knew that Jackson would already be wondering where she was. Hoping to do damage control, she fished around in her handbag and found her cell phone. She only had three numbers programmed in; Home, work, and Jackson’s cell phone. She hit home and put the phone to her ear.
It only rang twice before her husband picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, honey,” she said, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking too much. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be a bit late home. The traffic is terrible and I wasn’t able to get on the last bus, it was full of Japanese tourists.”
He was silent on the other end as he weighed up what she had said. She held her breath in anticipation.
“How long are you going to be?”
She could hear the measure in his voice, as though every ten minutes she was late was going to buy her another punch.
“Half an hour,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light. “Quick as I can.”
Air whistled down the phone and she knew he was huffing air out through his nose. He always did it when he was pissed, like a bull shown a red rag.
“Fine, but hurry up. I’m getting hungry,” and he hung up.
Serenity hurried down the road towards her bus stop, praying it wouldn’t take long to arrive. To her relief she saw the big blue bus trundling down the road towards her and she broke into a gentle trot, ignoring her protesting ribs, not wanting to risk missing this one. She made it in plenty of time and joined the queue of people getting on. There was no hint of the panic attack she had suffered earlier at this same close proximity of a crowd. Strangely she felt stronger within herself, as if the nugget (of hope?) she had stored within herself was feeding her.
She flashed her travel card at the driver who barely bothered to look. All the seats were taken so she grabbed hold of one of the standing poles.
With her free hand she fingered the thin silver necklace that lay around her throat, the letter ‘S’ hanging from the chain. It had been one of the only presents she could remember her mother ever giving her and she rubbed at it like a good luck charm whenever she was nervous, which was often.
Just as the bus pulled away she caught something out of the corner of her eye and she swung her head round and peered through the bus window. It was as though her eyes sought him out through the crowds, like some part of her deep down knew exactly where to look, exactly where to find him. For there, on the other side of the street and standing in the crevasse of a doorway, was the man who had tried to help her.
He was watching her.