Searching for Sandra by Jane Harvey Blog Tour!

 

Searching for Sandra (a novella)

Make yourself at home in Hummingbird House with this heartwarming new novella.In 1968, the summer of love seems long gone. Hummingbird House has a new batch of residents, and Betty is settled in a comfortable – though unexpected – form of domestic bliss. Life may not have worked out as planned, but she is determined to make the best of it.Yet as the months go on, she realises she still has much to learn. With one tenant missing and another threatening to sweep her off her feet, she begins to worry that her happy home could fall around her once more.***In 2022, Betty has established a comfortable routine. She weeds the front yard. Listens to the radio. Makes cake. At the age of 83, she knows what – and who – she likes, plus just how much she can manage before her arthritis begins to complain.She lives by simple rules gleaned from hard-learnt lessons:

• Keep an open mind and a well-stocked pantry

• Sometimes meddling is not such a bad thing

But when an old friend finally makes an overdue appearance, those guidelines start to take on a new meaning.Just how much should we do for absent friends? And when is it right to take a chance on love?Searching for Sandra follows the lives of the characters in books one and two of the Hummingbird House series – showing what happens next and the unexpected impact of friendships and neighbourly love.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Searching-Sandra-Novella-three-Hummingbird-ebook/dp/B0B5NJL4ZV/ 

https://www.amazon.com/Searching-Sandra-Novella-three-Hummingbird-ebook/dp/B0B5NJL4ZV/

Celticlady's Reviews

This is the opening of Chapter Nine, set in 1968. Betty is the landlady of Hummingbird House and is awakened by a noise. Arthur is the new tenant of the basement flat, and Robert was the previous occupant, along with his girlfriend, Sandra. Unusually for the time, they had lived as an unmarried couple before splitting and moving out. Sandra has now been missing for over two weeks.

At first, she thought it was a part of her dream. The banging. It popped into her sleep so that she found herself imagining she was hammering nails of a sudden. Then, as she stirred, she realised there were also voices. Men. One muffled, one angry.

It was Arthur, yelling at the foot of the stairs.

She jumped up, suddenly alert, and grabbed her gold, quilted robe from the back of her bedroom door. She made her way to the landing and flipped the light switch, peeping her head around the top of the stairs to see what the commotion was below, but she could see nothing bar the faint shadows of someone moving in the dark. She started to descend.

“One last chance!” Arthur yelled, staccato. “Stop now, or I shall call the Police.”

He squatted down at the front door, calling through the letterbox, brown and orange paisley print pyjamas open to the waist. Through the speckled, frosted glass, a dark figure loomed outside, periodically hammering on the door. Betty walked up to Arthur, expecting him to jump as she touched his shoulder, but instead, he reached his left arm up instantly, placing one warm hand over hers.

“We have nothing you want here. And now you’ve woken the whole household. There are women here, for heaven’s sake.”

“What’s… what on earth is happening?” she asked softly.

Fragments of a man’s face appeared on the other side of the letterbox, one after another—a jigsaw of a person. An ear, dark hair flopping down, then eyes, wild and frantic, and finally a stubble-edged mouth, wet, grotesque, trying to find its way inside the house.

“Betty? Betty! Let me in. Please!”

“Who is this fool?” Arthur asked, turning towards her. He remained kneeling on the floor, turning so that his face was in line with her belly. His top gaped open, his chest broader than she expected, with short blond hair forming a patch in a butterfly shape from nipple to nipple. She found herself taking a step back instinctively.

“I…”

“Betty. Tell him. It’s me! Rob.”

*

She filled the teapot when Arthur came into the kitchen, now buttoned up. The ease with which he wandered about her space unsettled her.

“Drugs?” he whispered. He stood just inches away.

“I assumed he was blotto.” She shrugged. Drugs hadn’t occurred to her.

“Drunk? I don’t know. His eyes are like saucers. I’m no expert, but….” He leant back against the counter. “Has he done this before? Does he… does he come around like this?”

She turned to face him. “Absolutely not.”

“Good, good.”

“I’m not in the habit of having squiffy gentleman callers in the small hours.”

“Oh, oh no. That’s not what I meant at all. I just…”

She stirred the tea in the pot.

“Would you get the milk, please? Cream jug.” Here he was in her kitchen again, though this time, she found herself strangely irritated, and she couldn’t quite determine why.

“Gladly.” He moved away. “I shall stay, of course. But would you prefer me to get decent?”

“Dressed? It seems to me that it would be pointless at this stage. Besides, it’s almost three am.”

He didn’t answer, reaching past her to pick up a tray. There was that scent again—his spicy cologne.

“I’ll do that.” She could hear the tightness in her voice. “You go and sit with Robert.”

Jane Harvey is a pen name. ‘Jane’ crafts fun fiction for the thinking woman, where she enjoys exploring unexpected friendships and writing happy endings. This is lucky, because in real life her (prize-winning) fiction is a little bleaker. She was born and raised on the beautiful island of Jersey, CI, and lives with two males and a dog.

Jane Harvey - Novelist | Facebook

Jane Harvey Novelist (@jane_harvey_novelist) • Instagram photos and videos

Twitter: @dreenac

https://www.tiktok.com/@dreenawriting/