For the next two weeks, we enjoyed the sunshine, the wine, the women and … more wine. Oh, and more women.
I think you could say a good time was had by all.
On the day before we were due to leave, my five friends went off in search of gifts to take home.
They came from richer backgrounds than me. They liked me for what I was and I joined the gang, but I was still the poor relation. I couldn’t afford to buy gifts. So Claude and I went swimming.
After thirty minutes, I was pretty exhausted and came out of the sea to rest. Claude decided he could take more.
He must have got cramp at some point and it was purely by chance I noticed him going under. I thought he was mucking about at first but soon realised he was in real trouble. So I rushed in and helped him back to shore. He kept thanking me for saving him but all I did was what anyone would have done.
A local gendarme had seen what happened and an ambulance had been called for.
Thankfully, Claude made a full recovery and was out by the morning in time to see us leave.
As we were about to say Au revoir, Claude’s father beckoned me over.
“Thank you for saving my son. Nothing I own can offer enough thanks so I’m giving you this as the only way I know how.”
And with that, he handed me a wrapped package.
I thanked him for his generous gift and told him it was what anyone would have done.
Luckily I’d taken a large suitcase and the package just about fitted inside.
In the time, we had been there we soon realised he was a man of few words. And very weird.
Back in Blighty, things moved on. Over the years, all six of us gradually went our separate ways and we sadly lost touch. David Gilmour (he never liked being called Dave) went on to join a rock band and become rich and famous.
I achieved neither of those things but I was happy. In the early seventies, I found true happiness and moved to Trentbridge to be with the love of my life, June.
The painting given to me by Claude’s father was weird. Over the years, I realised what it was.
Then we were blessed with a daughter, Dawn. With my job we were comfortable. Neither June or I ever wanted to be wealthy. We were happy with life and getting by. But I told June if we ever needed money the painting would come in handy.
The last time I saw the painting it was still in the loft with the handwritten note Claude’s father Pablo had attached to the back.
I was always going to tell her the full story but somehow never quite got round to it.
The End
Book Three
Dead Lucky
Lee Wood
http://leewoodauthor.com
The Trentbridge Tales series
Book One: MR LUCKY
Book Two: LUCKY BREAK
Book Three: DEAD LUCKY
Book Four: THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS
Christmas Eve
The boot of the black 4x4 opened as Kevin O’Connor flicked the dashboard switch. His two sons Tyson and Lennox walked calmly from the house they had just robbed of the three stockings full of children’s toys and every Christmas present sitting under the tree. It was the fourth house they’d hit that night. The next day there would be a lot of kids too young to understand and left thinking they had been bad and Father Christmas was punishing them. The thought of all those disappointed children and their parents brought a smile to Kevin’s face, and he chuckled to himself, “Ho ho ho.”
Chapter One
MONKEY DUST
Michael Crompton hadn’t had a lot of good luck in his nineteen-year life. His father walked out on the family when Michael was four. His mother turned to drink and by the time he was eight, she couldn’t cope any longer and he was sent to a children’s home only to fall under the claws of the Reverend Father Jonathan Lowbridge who loved to play with little boys in ways that made their flesh crawl and gave them nightmares for years after. By the time Michael was sixteen, he was living in a squat and within three months was addicted to heroin.
Like a lot of drug addicts in Trentbridge, over the past few weeks Michael had moved from heroin to a new and much cheaper, but just as powerful, street drug called ‘monkey dust’. At £3 a hit, you don’t have to steal too much to pay for your habit.
Michael had his first experience of monkey dust just six days earlier.
Five minutes earlier, he had injected himself with a shot and it made him feel invincible. He knew he could do anything. He was Superman. And to prove his superhuman strength, he decided to step out from the pavement on Town Road into the path of the twenty-ton delivery truck that was speeding towards him and stop it with his bare hands.
The medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
The last three months, the police have been swamped with over 950 reported incidents involving monkey dust. They were receiving more than ten callouts a day.
Reports say the drug produces high body temperatures in users and makes some of them feel impervious to pain and for others it can induce severe paranoia, hallucinations, hypothermia and agitation.
One of the noticeable side effects is that the drug makes users’ sweat smell distinctively like prawns or vinegar.
The local newspaper ran an article after a woman out shopping on the high street had been approached by drug users and asked for money. The article quoted her as saying, ‘I was walking along with my four year old son and pushing my baby in her pram when I was approached by one of these
