FAULT LINES... ! new title !
... the kiss that changed everything
... the secret that tore them apart.
Fault Lines is not just a story about the 1984/85 miners' strike.
It's a story about what happens when love and loyalty collide on opposite sides of a war.
Betty kissed her boss just once. The next day, he was gone. Exposed as a spy.
Now she's alone among her own people – hunted by police, betrayed by those she trusted, and carrying a letter from the man who lied to her… but who she can't forget.
Set against the real-life Battle of Orgreave, this is a novel of conscience, courage, and the fault lines that run through us all.
🎭 "I never touched him again after that evening. That was when our whole life together began. And ended."
"What makes Fault Lines different is the writing. It’s literary but gripping – think Graham Swift meets The English Patient. The structure is clever: letters, confession, flashback, all building toward the real-life ‘Battle of Orgreave’.
... despite the historical setting, it speaks directly to today – to ideas of ‘us and them’, loyalty, and what we owe to people we love on the other side of a divide."
The Literary Monitor
Read excerpts below... order Paperback or Kindle from Amazon
From Chapter 1...
"If you'd shown me a film of it, candid camera-like, but before it happened, and told me – that was what I was going to do, I'd have said – no, that's just not me. I wouldn't do that. And then you'd have done the rolling eyes thing and made some clever remark.
"It happens millions of times, doesn't it? – office junior grabs a kiss from the boss after the department night out and everyone eyes them up and giggles. But hold your horses with all the usual clichés. Watch the clip again. You've missed something, because of course you can't see it – our two lives in that single kiss. I never touched him again after that evening. I'm not even certainthat I ever saw him again. When our lips separated and I took my arms from round his neck – it was a bit more of a kiss than you can see – those were the first and last moments of contact that we ever had, and that was when our whole life together began. And ended.
"I had an English teacher once who said that sometimes we can meet someone, and everything that's ever happened to them and everything that's ever happened to us, is there in that moment. And then there's a kind of amalgamation. And even if we never see them again, that all stays there somewhere inside us."
From Chapter 14...
The Inspector lay out on the sofa and she sat upright on the side away from the wall. He unbuckled his belt and waited. Propping herself on one arm across him, she started to unfasten his trousers.
Please, Peter, help. I don't know any of this.
The zip was awkward. She eased the boxers down. Just enough. Her right hand, inexpert, touching now, just holding, caressing.
Then lightning left – a vicious thrust. Grasped testicles, scrotum. Twist. Fingers clasping, wrist tensing, squeeze. Again.
"THIS is for Sandra." Tighter, digging nails. "THIS is for her children." He was screaming now. She clamped her right hand hard onto her left, crushing with all her might, yelling above the bar's clamour, "THIS is for ME."
He was gasping, groaning, eye sockets bulging, legs twitching. Still she gripped his shame...
now, Betts, run
... she released, grabbed the ice bucket, threw its contents in his face, made for the door. Turn right, down the passage, the fire exit. Let it open, please. Lunged at the door, then the cold air – and she ran. Harder than on the bus. Harder than she had ever known.