Here's a taster of Lighthouse Love... published 22nd August 2013. You can get your copy at all good online eBook retailers, including Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, Nook, Kobo and Sony.
Chapter One
Lucy Dinsdale has only vague memories of the day she left Wellington, New Zealand. She was six years old and her father gave her a packet of wine gums, which her mother promptly confiscated. He'd patted her head, perhaps in the same way a dog-shy individual might do when told, “Come and pat Rover, he wouldn't hurt a fly.”
Twenty-three years later, Lucy is back in the place of her birth. She joins the line to use her new passport for the first time, its black cover so different from the British red she holds in dual citizenship. She traces the engraved letters on its cover. Aotearoa, the Maori word for New Zealand. A memory of kindergarten plays on her jet-lagged mind as she shuffles forward in the queue. Balls swinging on strings, what were they called? She remembers the soft give of the balls, the crackle of plastic when she squeezed them in her hands.
“Poi, they're called poi!” Lucy says. A young woman looks up from her phone and smiles briefly before returning to her screen. I have roots here, Lucy thinks, maybe this is where I belong?
Though there is very little Lennon Taylor has managed to do for his daughter Lucy in the twenty-nine years of her life, he has made her adventure down under possible. She is very grateful for the bonus bonds he has bought in her name, every month since she was born. Her mother's unwillingness to take a cent of Lucy's father's money has left her with a hefty nest egg, plentiful enough to see Lucy through a few months of travelling, and, if she is careful, as her mother has insisted she be, a deposit on a house.
“Have fun, Lucy, but be sensible,” her mother advised. “Save some pennies for when you're ready to settle down.”
Settling down has proved elusive for Lucy. Her feet are in constant movement, and not only from her classical ballet training. While her daily dance classes have kept her active and agile, her metaphorical feet mirror those in her ballet slippers, pointing and sliding, twisting and turning, itching for the next movement. Lucy has always been a professional dancer. There has always been another show, another venue, another performance to prepare for. Ballet seasons and tours have given Lucy a structure of movement her whole life.
But last year, at twenty-nine years of age, Lucy stumbled on her life's path. She crashed and burned, and though the stage lights still burnt brightly, Lucy did not. She passed off her retirement from professional ballet on the back of recurring tendonitis which, though incredibly painful, was not really the reason she gave up on her old life.
I'm not going there, Lucy decides, shuffling forward again. She is desperate for distance from all that has gone before. She wants to wake up without a schedule full of rehearsals and performances. I want to choose my own direction. To be someone new, someone different.
The queue moves forward once again. I'm on the other side of the world, Lucy thinks, and then quickly pushes the thought away in case she is tempted to turn tail and buy a one-way ticket back to Britain. Lucy Dinsdale may appear brave, but she is still a tad apprehensive about where her new life might lie.
“You're young,” her mother had said as Lucy lay on her couch, a hand draped dramatically over her eyes, her pale pink pyjamas in desperate need of a spin through the washing machine. “The world is your oyster! Get out there and enjoy it!” But facing such extraordinary freedom, Lucy had felt less pearl, and rather more pathetic. Apathetic. She felt too tired to trek, too old to Contiki.
“Don't be daft!” her mother had huffed, watching closely to make sure Lucy did not get chocolate on her cream cushions again. “You need to do something Lucy,” her mother pushed.
“But I don't know what I want to do,” Lucy had whined.
“Well you're not going to find out sitting in the snow in Kelso feeling sorry for yourself,” Lucy's mother had replied.
Daphne Dinsdale was ever so slightly despairing of her only child, and a little anxious at the mess that grew daily in her semi-detached, modern home on the Scottish Borders. Her spacious clean lines and sea-green chaise longue had disappeared under a pile of magazines and biscuit packets. So mother had given daughter a wee prod and a little push, and in the hump between Christmas and New Year, Lucy felt compelled to form some kind of New Year's resolution.
“Why don't you have a holiday?” her mother had suggested over tea and toasted sandwiches at the Hazel Lodge Tearooms. “Why not go back to Ibiza? That James Blunt you like so much, he lives there. He's got a night club at the end of his garden.”
“I know, Mum, I was the one who told you that,” Lucy had replied.
“I thought I read it in Hello,” her mother mused. “Anyway, what kind of man needs a night club in his garden? What's wrong with a few lemon trees and a nice pergola?”
“Let me get this right,” Lucy had laughed. “You'd like me to go to Ibiza, find James Blunt, and suggest he swaps his pop star ways for growing lemons?”
“A few weeks of sunshine would do you good. You've been through a lot and you're still looking a bit pasty. A bit of vitamin D might perk you up.”
“I think he lives in Switzerland now.”
“I think you're missing the point,” Daphne Dinsdale had sighed.
“I feel like I'd be running away,” Lucy whispered back.
“Think of it more as changing tack,” her mother suggested, “moving in a new direction. Storm's over now, Lucy, time to set sail again.”
Lucy is shunted forward in the queue once again, her passport clutched to her chest, as if in prayer.
It's just that James Blunt is on his world tour, so there was only a slim chance he'd see me in a crowded place and would think I was so beautiful that he would dump his supermodel girlfriends and start writing songs for me instead. But New Zealand, well, New Zealand is my place of birth, so even though it is on the other side of the world, it feels a little less like running away, and little more like a journey home. Like that programme on the telly. What's it called?
Who do you think you are? Lucy?
“Hi-ya,” the Customs man smiles at her. He checks her arrival card, “No food, plant or animal products?” Lucy shakes her head. “Welcome home,” he says, and for the first time in twenty-five years, Lucy is a New Zealander.
“Nu Za-lun-da,” she tries out her Kiwi accent as she waits for her bag to creak its way around the baggage belt.
Lucy finds the big orange airport flyer bus without a problem. She is to get off at the railway station, turn right and walk up Bunny Street, then left up Lambton Quay. Up, up and away, Lucy hums the tune. Her father will meet her at Astoria Café, beside Midland Park. He's found a window in his schedule, time to grab a quick bite.
“Hello sunshine!” she says as the bus pulls out into the traffic. Her eyes blink to adjust to the brightness. “Sunglasses!”
Lucy fishes in her bag for her phone, and opens up her notepad application. She starts a new list:
SPF30!
Bathers!
Sunglasses!
Head over to www.wellychelle.co.nz and find out more about Lighthouse Love!
