Here's a taster, just the first chapter so you can see what you think. I hope you enjoy it!

                                                               1 Peter

        Underworld blared out on the high tech car stereo. Peter grinned from ear to ear as he put his new metallic-black Mercedes through its paces. I'd thought he was a bit of an old man for choosing the estate model, but he said he needed the space for all his climbing gear. Anyway, it certainly didn't perform like an old man's car! It was cruising down the Kent country lanes beautifully.
      "How's this for acceleration Emma?" he said as we reached a stretch of open road and he gently pressed the accelerator down. It didn't take much, this car had real power!
      "It's great Pete, but go steady! Don't break it on it's first day out!"
      "I won't break it - it's built for speed. I love it!"
The CD finished and Peter scrambled around for a new one.
      "Leave that, I'll do it. Just concentrate on driving." I said, looking for another thumping dance CD to put on.
      "It takes MP3 CDs too. I'll have to make some especially for driving. It'll be great for my long trips up north."
       Peter looked over and smiled at me. He was so pleased with his new toy. It had been worth every penny. We held each others' gaze for just a second and then looked back at the road. I don't know who saw it first. A huge truck was careering towards us on our side of the road. It was obviously overtaking the bus next to it but the driver seemed to have lost control. Time slowed down and as the truck came closer to us I stared in terror at the driver, who looked half asleep. Peter reacted fast.
      "Shit, man! Are you trying to kill us?" he shouted as he pulled off the road to avoid the truck.
I don't know what happened next, but I guess we were going too fast to navigate the drop off on our side of the road. The car began to roll over and over and I was completely disorientated. My seat belt clamped me into my seat as my head lolled around, hitting first the window & then the back of the seat over and over.
     "Holy Shit! Are you ok Peter?"
     I looked over to see him slumped forward in his seat, with blood all over his face and hair.
     "Shit! Peter! Pete! Fuck!"
     I struggled to undo my seat belt to feel for his pulse. I put my fingers onto his bloody neck but my own heart was pounding so hard that I couldn't tell if he had a pulse or not. Panic began to rise in me. I could feel a scream forcing it's way out of the back of my throat, my heart was pounding and my whole body was shaking. I could feel the adrenalin racing through my veins at 100 miles an hour!
     I sat bolt upright, my whole body shaking, a sick feeling in my stomach. I opened my eyes to find myself in a bed with white sheets. There was a mosquito net all around it, and through that I could see golden rays of sunlight. Birdsong filled my ears. I looked up and saw a roof made from woven palm leaves. It took me a few seconds to realise that I was in my own bed in Kenya. I'd had another damned nightmare! With my heart still pounding, waves of relief flooded over me. It wasn't true, Peter wasn't injured or dead. But then the familiar anxiety returned, I still didn't know what had happened to him. I was getting so distressed about Peter's disappearance that my brain was running overtime. Maybe the nightmare was a sign. A car accident seemed the most likely explanation. He had certainly been very pleased with his new car. Maybe he was sending me messages telepathically from his hospital bed in England, to let me know what had happened, why he had disappeared so suddenly without trace.
     As my heart gradually returned to a more normal pace I scrambled around for my phone. Maybe he'd sent a text or tried to call. No, nothing. I was at a loss. How could he have disappeared overnight?
     I lay there trying to focus on the tropical dawn chorus to calm myself down and banish all the horrific images of what could have happened to him. I was no bird expert but I could already recognise the songs of a few of them. There was the twittering chatter of what sounded like a million, bright yellow, weaver birds and I imagined a tree covered in the neatly made round nests that gave them their name. They would be hanging all over it like the baubles on a Christmas tree. Then there was the little ‘peep peep’ sound of the tiny sunbirds, who would be flitting from flower to flower, piercing the petals to suck out the nectar with their long, sharp beaks, glowing with iridescent blues and greens, like humming birds. Louder than these was the honking of the hornbills as they clattered their huge beaks against the wild fig tree outside. I thought they looked like giant magpies with crash helmets on; and last of all my favourite, the ‘who hee who’ duet of the common bulbuls. How did they manage to sing a duet so closely together? Apparently the ‘boy bird’ sang ‘who,who’ and the ‘girl bird’ chipped in with the ‘hee’ in the middle. ‘Now that’s teamwork’ I thought, ‘that’s a relationship that really works’. Despite all the bird-song I could still hear the far away crashing of the waves against the reef, the rhythmic, reassuring sound of the waves breaking a mile out to sea, and I thought of the incredible colours; aqua marine and turquoise turning to foaming white crests where the Indian Ocean met the silver sand. I gazed through the muslin of the mosquito net over my four-poster bed. It was barely 6 O’clock, yet the sun already shone brightly through the metal grilles that covered the window holes. The leaves of the palm trees glanced against the roof in the breeze and I could hear the sykes monkeys in the acacia tree over the car-port.
     Surely this was paradise, but the feeling of elation at waking up in such a beautiful, idyllic place had been replaced every day that week with the horrible feeling that Peter must be dead. There was no other possible explanation for why he had completely disappeared. I’d heard nothing from him since the Thursday night before when I’d sent a text saying that I was feeling terrible and could he send me some comfort. He’d sent a long text explaining that he was in a meeting as his boss would be away for 2 weeks from the following day. He said he’d snuck out to the loo to text me and he’d call as soon as he could. I’d felt comforted by the fact that he’d gone out of his way to reply, and that he would soon call.
     I hadn’t heard from him since.
     I’d wondered what could have happened for days. At first I’d thought that he must have been very busy, perhaps he was waiting for a good time to ring and talk properly. Hours had passed, then Thursday had turned to Friday. I had worried that he’d had had a crash, enjoying his new car too much and this idea had grown and grown as no other alternative seemed to explain the lack of contact.
     I tried to rationalise with myself. There must be a simple explanation. I’d decided to assume that he was busy and didn’t want a distraught woman on the phone. I knew he was going away for a few days. But I’d felt hurt.
     On Monday I’d sent him some text messages, just asking how his weekend had been, light hearted, friendly, thinking that maybe my ‘distress text ‘ had freaked him out. I’d heard nothing, no reply.
     By Tuesday I’d really begun to worry. What on earth could have happened? I decided to stop playing so cool and pretending things were OK, there was obviously a real problem here. Maybe he’d lost his phone, with my number in it, but surely he’d have sent an e-mail. I felt so impotent 4000 miles away and with no idea what had happened to him. I phoned him; it went on to answer phone. I phoned his office, answer phone. I waited till a time when he would normally be at home and phoned his house, no reply. I let the phone ring and ring and ring, hoping that his brother would answer between trips to visit Peter in hospital. All the time I prayed that Peter was still alive. It was nearly half term and I imagined that I would go back to England to visit him, maybe I’d just move back, if he needed me. I sent e-mails and left messages on all the answer phones explaining who I was and asking for someone to let me know what had happened. And today again there was no text message.
     But how could it ever come to this? How could you completely lose a boyfriend? Of course I’d lost plenty of things before, usually clothes or records, but I’d put that down to having too many sisters and a certain lack of organisational skills. I’d never heard of anyone else losing a whole boyfriend, without trace, but then this relationship was a little bit different wasn’t it. Most people shared mutual friends with their partners; the people who had introduced them, but Peter and I had had quite a different start from most people and I realised that having no mutual friends meant that I had no other way of contacting Peter or his family and finding out what had happened. I didn’t even know where he lived. Bromley, that was all I knew. He had disappeared and I didn’t know what to do.

e-mail me on lucymars@mac.com and let me know what you think!