I am sharing the first few pages of the novel published by Hornbill Publishing……

Chapter One – The Gift

Bill and Rachel Brown huddled together in the Cambodian jungle wondering just how they found themselves in such a perilous predicament.

They were exhausted and terrified in equal measure, having already faced unfathomable torment and having been witness to horrors beyond their imagination.

All this down to Bill contracting an innocuous seeming travel bug a few days before, leading to an astonishing chain of events that now threatened not only the lives of the pair, but absolutely everything that they held dear.

The devoted couple had been married for twenty-five years, having met at university in Durham in the mid ’80s.

Upon finishing their studies they had really bonded during a gap year trip they took together travelling and working in South East Asia and Australia.

Despite vowing to return, life had gotten in the way in the intervening years. That was until the moment Bill decided they should relive the Asian experience.

On a blustery English winter’s morning three months before the unforeseen ordeal, Bill had surprised his beloved with a pre-Silver Wedding anniversary trip.

First stop Cambodia, followed by a brief visit to Bangkok and Laos, plus unbeknown to Rachel, Vietnam.

The Cambodia that Bill booked for big trip number two was vastly different than it had been during the previous time they had ventured to the region.

In 1989 there had been far fewer tourists, and actually far fewer people in general.

The murderous regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was still frighteningly fresh in the scarred memories of the locals in those late eighties.

During the communist regime’s heinous three-year reign of terror in the mid to late seventies, an estimated three million Cambodians lost their lives to disease, famine and cold-blooded murder.

The five million or so that survived were mainly peasants and labourers, as Pol Pot, or Brother Number One as he was self-titled, had wiped out all ‘intelligent’ people, who were seen as potential threats to his supremacy.

A macabre ‘brain-drain’ that had removed the nation’s intelligentsia entirely, plus their whole gene pool.

The chaos that ensued post the horror had also provided an opportunity for unscrupulous people looking to take advantage of the turmoil by siphoning aid and establishing illegal businesses.

They preyed on the victims who may have recovered physically, but who would carry permanent demons and a long-held craving for mind altering drugs to ease their anguish. 

The type of unscrupulous people that have their own code, their own interpretation of right and wrong. The type of people not to be crossed under any circumstances.

It took a fair few years after the regime fall for people to want to go to the country for a touristic visit, even allowing for the stunning sights that lay within.

The whole of Indochina had been out of bounds for most of the seventies and eighties.

Apart from the Khmer Rouge atrocities, there was also the futile, gruesome Vietnam War that preceded the Cambodian massacres and had spilled out into neighbouring countries and had only ended in 1975.

All this turmoil had left behind ravaged lands strewn with landmines and reprisals.

The middle-class Browns had married in 1990, Bill proposing whilst the young lovers star gazed on Kuta Beach, Bali’s revered sunset hotspot.

Rachel had not needed asking twice. She had longed to hear the words pretty much ever since the pair had shared their first solo date as twenty-year olds.

A curry and a few beers had become the traditional anniversary meal ever since, in honour of day number one in their official relationship in a Durham curry house.

This had been their first ever meal without their hockey, rugby or housemates, and had led to their first passionate embrace and inevitable consummation of their relationship, a coming together that had been brewing for some six months.

Bill was a stickler for detail, and Rachel had half-guessed that something was afoot on that starry night on Indonesia’s most iconic island when he had suggested a Balinese curry before a stroll onto the golden sands.

Bali Hai had been a more than capable substitute for Cobra in the beer stakes and the spicy chicken meal evoked memories of that eventful night in North East England.

Love was very definitely in the air, with Bill uncharacteristically hardly touching his food. He had other matters on his mind.

Feeling light-headed following the meal, they kicked off their shoes and ran to the seashore to dip their toes in the surprisingly cold Indian Ocean.

As the crescent moon shone brightly and the ink-black sky was filled with silver stars, Bill dropped down onto one knee in the frothing shallow surf and held forth a ring of pearlescent seashells.

Words were not necessary, Rachel bursting into tears immediately and excitedly blubbing, “Yes, Yes, Yes!!”

“You don’t know the question yet,” Bill joked.

“So, will you become Mrs Brown?”

“Of course I will, oh Bill, I am so, so happy!”

They embraced tightly with Bill lifting his new fiancée triumphantly into the air before they kissed passionately.

The lovers eventually drifted into sleep on a bed of soft sand under a ceiling of stars, awaking a few hours later as the sun lifted night into day.

The footwear they had carefreely tossed aside had been lost to the ocean, but that did not matter a jot.

They were deeply in love and happier than they had ever felt was possible, the sand between their toes just adding to their intoxicating giddiness, the excitement of the countless possibilities that lay ahead swimming in their minds.

Drip By Drip

The book is available in both paperback and ebook versions from Amazon. If you do happen to read it, I would be so grateful if you could leave an online review.