Since You've Been Gone

Since You've Been Gone

By Lisa Dyer

About the Book

Together Forever...

until the day Abigail dumped Hal, after he left for university, back in 1983. Hal was so devastated that he went home less and less until, in the end, he didn't go home at all. And he never got over her, even after he married the wealthy Julienne. Their marriage was doomed from the start; it was just a case of who caved in first.

Abigail had a secret; one she had kept from Hal, and it had defined her life for fifteen years. She was glad he never came back to learn it. That was all about to change.

Hal was on his way home. Nothing would ever be the same again...

Excerpt

​In the beginning...

…there was Hal and Abigail and they should have lived happily ever after… everything in their story shouted that to the world. Hal’s mother knew it. Their friends had no doubt about it. Hal and Abigail were the perfect pair. Having grown up together from infancy, there were no secrets, no hidden agendas; just love. All that was missing were the church bells and the first flat with the second-hand furniture and the gas fire that didn’t work, and even that would be okay because they’d cuddle up in bed to keep warm until summer.

Then Hal blew it all wide open by getting a conditional offer to study at Cambridge – in the Department of Veterinarian Medicine. To be honest, it was a total shock to everyone, but most of all to Abigail. She had supported his idea to apply, but had secretly thought that he would be out of his depth and have second thoughts. He didn’t. It was all he thought about and planned for. He locked himself away in his bedroom to study, and suddenly two people, who had been inseparable from the first moment they had met, were wrenched apart. Hal’s mother, Diana clucked about nothing else; anybody would think he was marrying into royalty. Anyone foolish enough to ask, ‘How’s the family, Di?’ soon found themselves wishing they’d kept their mouths shut.

Hal and Abigail limped through the spring, and dragged themselves into the summer. His hard work paid off and he attained the required grades then received positive confirmation that, come the autumn, he would be going up to Cambridge. There was one last night, camped down at the Bay, Hal on his guitar and the old crowd avoiding talking about what was happening, as if by doing so it may go away. And that was it. The beginning of the end of Hal Bartlett and Abigail Markham. Except, for Abigail it was the start of something new, something so big, so life changing – and its outcome would resonate down the years…

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Meet Michael Bayliss

What should we know about him? Michael Bayliss, vet, Yorkshire man, legend. On the surface, he seems a pretty uncomplicated person. He gets on with life, living in a flat above the practice and doesn't really have a long-term plan. This easy-going nature can put him at odds with people because they think he's easy to read, likes a bit of banter and therefore unable to be hurt but he is a vulnerable as the rest of us. Michael is the product of a broken home, his mum having run off with the local bingo caller. It has given him a wary perspective on relationships but that doesn't stop him having them or having opinions on Hal's. It's the commitment he has the problem with. What is the main conflict? For Michael it is keeping Hal grounded in reality. He knows that his friend has an emotional block but all the while it is kept on a low level, he's not bothered what it is. When Hal's life is thrown into confusion, Michael must be the anchor but also, he must have one eye on what the impact of going home might have on his life and the practice his shares with Hal. What is the personal goal of the character? For Michael it is getting through life as peacefully as possible. He's a grafter but with a slacker mentality. Not for him the mortgage and the kids. He doesn't want convention and, although he is wary of relationships because they seem to go to fast for him, he is really looking for someone just like him; someone a little unconventional. Since You've Been Gone was published by Crooked Cat Publishing in December 2013 and is available exclusively through Amazon across all markets and Kindle Unlimited.

Meet Abigail Markham

What should we know about her?

Abigail Markham is a Dover girl through and through. Born and raised in the Tower Hamlets, she still lives in a tiny terraced house within a stone’s throw of her childhood home. Abigail is a fighter. She is also complex. She didn’t have the best start to her life and her prospects were patchy to say the least but she has a good heart and is a strong woman. She married young and bore her first child in her late teens. The marriage produced one more child before it fell apart. She works in the local hairdressers and life is tough but she has her friends and her sister and they keep her going even though money is short.

What is the main conflict?

The main conflict for Abigail is reconciling herself with her past decisions. She has a secret and she has had to live with the consequences of the path she chose. Some would say she did it for the best of reasons and others might think that maybe she was crying out for attention but, the deed was done and she got on with it. There is a part of her that is angry, even though the decision was hers and hers alone, she feels let down. Only Abigail can reconcile herself to her decision and, although she doesn’t tacitly blame Hal, she feels anger towards him. Once she looks at herself and her own part in how her life turned out, she will be much more at peace.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Finding peace with her past. She is happy that Hal never came home because she doesn’t have to expose herself to having to tell the truth but she also suffers from an acute, unspoken sense of abandonment by him. It’s kind of given her a bit of a martyr complex – ‘look at me, look what I did without your help’. Once it all comes out, then she can move forward but she has to be prepared for it all to come out.

Since You've Been Gone was published by Crooked Cat Publishing in December 2013 and is available exclusively through Amazon across all markets and Kindle Unlimited.

MY WRITING PROCESS

Here is my version of The Writing Process

What am I currently working on?

Actually...I've kind of got three things on the go. I know, spreading myself a little thin. One is a Young Adult novel provisionally called What Are Ghosts Afraid Of? This one is quite a bit of the way through but I've reached a halt and am still working out my demons on that one. Secondly, an untitled chick-lit piece that started off with great panache and good intentions but then stalled. Not because I don't know where it's going but because my third project took over. The Winter Rose is proving to be a genre mash up - a romance/historical/supernatural murder-mystery (I'm not even sure you can have that much of a genre mash up to be honest). We shall see.

What makes my writing distinctive?

I don't know...I use third person omniscient although I do generally have a distinctive protagonist. I guess it's up to the reader to decide if I have a distinctive writing voice.

Why do I write what I write?

I like ideas that amuse and intrigue me. I also enjoy looking at the weirdness of relationships. I don't really want to write straight chick-lit with the boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back dynamic. Relationships are messy and they suck sometimes. They're also amazing and make you feel alive so I want to go down that route rather than the soppy will they/won't they road. With Since You've Been Gone I had the need to express something about how I felt going back home to Dover (also the home town of my protag Hal Bartlett) but also I was quite determined to subvert expectation. I think, in the most part, I succeeded with that.

How does the writing process work?

I'm a pantser - I write by the seat of my pants. I can't plan for toffee. I get an idea, a starting point. I get the measure of my characters and I get an ending. I just then work to join up that initial opening 'scene' with the final closing one. I started off writing scripts and putting them into contests. I think I probably write my novels in the same way. I 'see' a scene and I write that 'scene' (maybe that will translate to one side of an A4 piece of paper - I do it all long hand and type it up later). Then I will use that to progress to the next 'scene' and so on. So, when other writers/authors talk about word counts they like to achieve every day - 1,000/2,000/3,000 words, I talk about maybe 800 words. I do short, sharp blocks of writing.

Since You've Been Gone was relatively easy to write because it started out as a 90 page script that had been through tough feedback from a professional script reader. It had also been in competition - Prequel to Cannes (2nd place) and was only one of 25 scripts picked annually in the BAFTA/Rocliffe New Writers Forum Prize. It had its structure in place. So, writing from scratch is taking me some time.

What next?

I'll keep going. At them moment I've resumed work on the untitled chick-lit and managed to work out some of the bugs.

Meet my main character - Hal Bartlett

What is the name of your character?

Meet Hal Bartlett, sometime resident of Dover, Kent, now living in rural Oxfordshire with a veterinarian practice, a very opinionated business partner and a lot of marital problems.

When and where is the story set?

Hal Bartlett is the main character in Since You've Been Gone which is set fifteen years in the past. The story begins in Oxfordshire as Hal wrestles with the increasing deterioration in his relationship with his wife, Julienne. It's the eve of Julienne's spoilt younger sister's high-end wedding and Hal knows he's out of his depth. After a bitter row, Hal takes the only option open to him...he returns to the home town and friends he abandoned years before and begins his journey to revisit his past and lay some old demons to rest.

What should we know about him?

Hal is a good man, a bit of a wimp but essentially a good bloke. His life is a bit messy, no neat edges. He left his home town of Dover in the September of 1983 without ever realising how life expanding university would be. Slowly, so slowly even he didn’t notice it happening, Hal shed his old life, old friends who never left the town into which they were born and, sadly, he shed his parents. He didn't do any of this because he was denying his past...he did it because Hal is a man on the run, from his emotional past and in particular one person, Abigail Markham. She was 'the one'. The one that he loved first and last. The one that broke his heart. The one that cut him loose. His withdrawal from his old life and absorption into his new allowed him distance and an excuse never to go back and find out exactly what happened between them.

What is the main conflict?

Hal married out of his league and he knew it. His wife’s family have money, have never been on the type of rough council estate Hal grew up on let alone been in a council house and they glossed over Hal’s working class roots and remade him in their image and Hal, for a quiet life, goes along with it. He’s an adaptor but never comfortable in his new role and always guilty of what he’s done to his parents in order to keep the charmed life he now has. Hal needs to man up and get out but he’s loyal and steady and really he’s looking for an excuse. Hal is also wrestling with his past and is too scared to confront it, to move on and wipe his emotional slate clean. Forces outside of his control, however, end up making the choice for him and he goes back...back to the home town he left as a teenager and back to the family and friends he's distanced himself from in order to heal his own heart. He's about to get a big wake up call and his life will never be the same again.

What is the personal goal of the character? In the beginning Hal is drifting. He knows in his heart of heart he's in the wrong place and with the wrong person but he's also trying to be a 'good bloke'Like most people, circumstances drive him not the other way around and so he finds himself constantly fighting the tide to get upstream. What he really needs is a good old dose of 'closure'. To lay his past to rest so that he can move on with a new heart. He sort of understands this but is at a loss on how to act upon it without causing the hurt he some much desires to avoid. Hal wants to be at peace with himself.

Since You've Been Gone is available exclusively on Amazon across all markets to download onto your Kindle or Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £2.99.Paperback is available through Amazon for £6.99