As promised – the Prologue of  the GRADUATION PRESENT

For some reason I thought shooting a bullet through the rear window of a car would make a precise, little hole. Wrong. It shatters the glass. Avoid doing so in hurricane-force winds unless someone is trying to ram your cheaply built Renault off a cliff with his Mercedes.

Cliffs near Pointe du Hoc France on a stormy day.

One bullet was not enough. The Mercedes recoiled to strike again, its engine growling. Francoise was out cold. The first blow knocked her headfirst into the dashboard as she reached for the emergency brake, and now she was draped like a rag doll over the steering wheel. It wasn’t fair. She’d survived the war, soldiered through a passionless marriage, and then fallen in love with—of all the people in the world!—my Uncle Bob. I couldn’t let her die.

Small fishing village on the coast of Normandy

I peered over the seat and aimed the tiny pistol at the Mercedes’ headlights. Bang, bang, bang. I fired blindly until all the bullets were gone. The rain pelted the roof like machine-gun fire, the steep road now a river of slime washing towards us. If he rammed us again it would be the end.

And to think six months earlier I was at an anti-war rally, protesting all violence and chanting “Give Peace a Chance” with a couple of stupid daisies in my hair.

Dear Readers – I’m pleased to announce that my first novel FLIPKA made the Literary Fiction Recommended Reading list on Wattpad ( http://w.tt/1gYlfYY ) along with  Colm Herron’s book THE WAKE and Duke Miller’s LIVING AND DYING WITH DOGS.