Central Reservation ebook | Will Le Fleming | 9780956937018

This is how Holly had woken up every day since the crash. First she would become aware of a weight pressing against her chest; then she’d open her eyes, stiff and unmoving in a breathless clutch of wrinkled sheets, her hands by her sides, as if in a vice, staring into the face of her dead sister from inches away. She hadn’t screamed, not even the first time.

It’s 2001 and Holly believes her life will never change. She and her twin sister Yvonne, growing up on their mother’s isolated farm, will be stuck with each other forever, no matter how desperately Holly longs for freedom. Until, one February morning, Yvonne dies.

For a few brief hours Holly is alone at last. Then her sister’s silent ghost appears, and haunts Holly with ruthless determination. Her cousins arrive, full of promises and secrets. The foot-and-mouth epidemic erupts, and gangs of slaughtermen begin to maraud the countryside. As the pyres blaze, Holly has to find out how far she’s prepared to go for a life that is truly her own.

A gripping and darkly comic tale of loss, haunting and the search for identity in a world on fire.

Will le Fleming was born in 1976, and raised in a dilapidated West Country farm house with a moat and no heating.

He has written stories all his life, and worked in several countries around the world. Over the last few years he’s been a stringer in South America, a croupier in New Zealand, and a sword-fighter at the Tower of London.

He presently teaches English literature and lives in London with his wife and young daughter.