Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for Perfect Silence by Helen Fields where I have an extract from her latest novel. I was thrilled to be asked by Sabah Khan from Avon Books to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else is taking part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this extract so without further ado, here it is:
What a waste of a life it had been, she thought. And the
horrible truth right now was that if she could have even a tiny
percentage of those bruise-filled, hate-inducing days back, she
would take them with a grateful heart.
By seventeen she had been living with a college friend until
the girl’s mother had lost her job and couldn’t feed or house
Zoey any more. She had tried and failed to study and pass exams,
but the constant moving between sofas was too exhausting. In
the end she had given her mother one last try. Promises had
been made. They were just as swiftly broken. Fists had fl own
once more.
At eighteen, Zoey had been wise enough to know when to
cut her losses. She had walked out into the street to shout her
opinion of her stepfather to the world, publicly enough that
he wouldn’t dare retaliate. Then she had taken herself and her
plastic bag of clothes to a shelter she’d heard about. Sporting
the bruises that were her passport inside the safe haven, she had
settled down while she waited in the endless queue for social
housing. Scars were examined. An offer to prosecute was made.
Still Zoey couldn’t be so cruel to her mother that she could
put the man who kept a roof over her head in prison. Even if
he deserved it a thousand times over.
The sky came closer as she stared at the moon. A gust of
wind danced through the branches of the trees above her,
scattering a sheet of golden leaves over her body. A manylegged
creature skittered over her neck, but Zoey didn’t mind.
No point fl inching now. In a while, all she would be was bug
food. The road was long and straight, unadorned by regulatory
white lines. She was in the countryside, then. The next car
might not pass until morning. It would be an awful discovery
for the poor driver, Zoey thought. Imagine starting Monday
morning with such a monstrosity. That was if the car didn’t
run over her.
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