Moira Forsyth - Waiting for Lindsay

In October 2013 the book club read David's Sisters by Moira Forsyth and in August 2017 a group from the Society attended the launch of another of her novels A Message From The Other Side.

Moira has kindly sent us an extract from her recently republished first novel Waiting For Lindsay, both as text and video of her reading it.

As we would have been at the Boswell Book Festival this weekend, hearing many writers talking about their work, this seems an appropriate time to share it.

   

EXTRACT FROM WAITING FOR LINDSAY

Annie was on her way to her mother’s house. She went there most Saturday mornings; they had coffee, and discussed unimportant things. She stopped at the newsagent on the corner to buy the gardening magazine she got for Christine every month. It had a free packet of plant food, attached to the front cover with sticky tape. The glossy paper of the cover was slightly torn, where the packet had started to pull at it. Annie stood at the counter waiting to be served, holding the magazine carefully so that the paper didn’t tear any further. On the wide counter, all of the day’s newspapers were spread out. The headings on most of them said Police search for missing eight-year-old.

She and Graham had gone out the previous night, and she’d been up working in the garden from early morning. She had not seen or heard the news. So it stung her, this headline. She’d come face to face with it many times, but it never ceased to sting. Sometimes it was a girl who was lost, sometimes a boy, and the age varied. Sometimes the child was found alive, and sometimes not. Occasionally, the child was not found at all, but the headline slipped from the front page to an inside one, and eventually vanished altogether.

‘Is it just the magazine?’ the newsagent said, so she came to herself again, and handed over the coins. She did not buy a newspaper, and though there was one at home, folded and unread, she wouldn’t look at it. She knew better.

In her mother’s garden the roses were blooming, and in the sitting-room window, facing the street, she could see a bowl of red ones, fully open, so that a few crimson petals had fallen onto the polished surface of the table. She rang the doorbell and walked in. Everything in this dim hall with its long mirror, red and brown patterned carpet and oak hallstand, was utterly familiar. On the hallstand hung her mother’s navy coat, her father’s check cap and waterproof jacket. On top of the drawer was the last of the Indian Tree cereal bowls, full of oddments: spare buttons, keys, some loose change. Annie had grown up in this house, and it had not changed since she and Alistair had left home, Alistair to go to university, she to be married. Usually, this sameness was a comfort. Annie liked tradition, old and shabby things, a safe world. Today it seemed claustrophobic. She was full of words she could not utter.