The First Cut
A Novel of Suspense
Chapter OneMartha
Martha Browne arrived in Whitby one clear afternoon in
early September, convinced of her destiny.
All the way, she had gazed out of the bus window and
watched the landscape become more and more unreal. On
Fylingdales Moor, the sensors of the early-warning missile attack
system rested like giant golf balls balanced at the rims of
holes, and all around them the heather was in full bloom. It
wasn't purple, like the songs all said, but more delicate, maroon
laced with pink. When the moors gave way to rolling farmland,
like the frozen green waves of the sea it led to, she understood
what Dylan Thomas meant by "fire green as grass."
Sea and sky were a piercing blue, and the town nestled in
its bay, a pattern of red pantile roofs flanked on either side by
high cliffs. Everything was too vibrant and vivid to be real; the
scene resembled a landscape painting, as distorted in its way
as Van Gogh's wheat fields and starry nights.
The bus lumbered down toward the harbor and pulled up
in a small station off Victoria Square. Martha took another
quick glance at her map and guidebook as the driver backed
into the numbered bay. When t ... read full excerpt from The First Cut: A Novel of Suspense ebook
