I’m delighted to join the blogtour for Spellbound Books organised by Zoe for Sadie Ryan’s book Guilty which was published on 21st April 2021.
About the book:
Two Strangers.
A Chance Meeting?
One Moment that will change their lives forever.
Lindy once had the world at her feet. An adoring husband, two beautiful daughter’s and a successful career.
In a split second, a tragic accident causes Lindy’s world to come crashing down around her.
Mia, personal fitness trainer and glamorous wife of a local tv personality seems to have everything.
Slowly Lindy learns more about Mia’s ‘perfect’ life and becomes convinced that they are each other’s saviours.
As obsessions grow and the lines that shape reality become blurred, Lindy’s and Mia’s lives are now forever dangerously intertwined as personalities merge
Nobody with a conscience can survive, can they?
To entice you all, I have an exclusive extract for you below:
LINDY
My name is Linda Villas or Lindy; I like Lindy. Most of my friends, not that I have any left, call me Lindy. I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia. And I want to murder my husband.
Like all screwed up people, I’m probably one of the worst. I know it, I don’t need anyone to diagnose me, that’s already been done for the record. Like all unstable people I had my tipping point, which came a year ago, at least that’s what they told me at the hospital — or, at least, I hope it did, I don’t think I was unstable before. Who knows. We can all be unstable; it only takes something to tip the scales.
My noticeable southern accent, which the Brits love but in the states is regarded less of an attribute, I find, attracts unwanted attention. I’m sat in a pub right now nursing a glass of wine. It’s my second while I wait for Mia.
She’s late, which is unusual for her. Her timings are impeccable, unlike mine. We don’t live that far apart though she doesn’t know that. I used to live at the back of her before we had to sell our house.
Mia is always polite and kind although I doubt she remembers me from one encounter to the next. Surprising really, while I’m not beautiful like her, I thought I might have made an impression for being the opposite. I don’t think Mia thinks mean things about people. Something about her tells me she’s not cruel. Don’t ask me why I’m fixated on her, I just am. I find her fascinating and, well, I’ve got into a habit of watching her.
I’ve lived in the UK for thirty years. I married a Brit whom I met while vacationing over here and then moved here for love. That’s right, head over heels love. I was seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses, you know how it is when you fall in love you go a little gaga. Everything in my world was peachy at the time like the universe was trying to provide all my dreams. What could go wrong when everything was going right? Right?
I was so excited when I met my husband, like I’d found the golden chalice. That was me, Lindy Villas in love. Nobody had ever been in love like me, I thought. I wonder now if I had known that the man of my dreams was going to be the man of my nightmares how I would have reacted. My feelings were raw. I would have died for Frank. You see I’d met my other half. My soul mate. I suppose we all get swept up in love sometime or another. We were smug in our love. We’d idly watch couples arguing. Sitting with nothing to say to each other in restaurants, cafes or on park benches. Pitying the poor saps that never felt the power of love.
When that love crashes and burns boy is that a long way to fall. Falling isn’t the problem as much as landing. Hitting the deck. Smashing into concrete headfirst because that’s what it feels like when your life loses trajectory. When the unexpected bump in the road is a ruddy great big cavernous hole you fall into.
My kids are all grown up, twenty-five and twenty. I had my babies when I was very young. It was all I could think of when I found out I was pregnant. The joy, the love, the unbelievable idea a life was growing inside me overwhelmed me. Each stage of their development was total fulfilment for me. I never wanted them to grow up. I know some people want them to grow up. To become self-sufficient. Not me, I loved their dependency on me. I adored that, to them, I was their whole universe like they were to me. They’re still my whole life. I love being a mum. Bringing up my kids was the happiest time of my life. That bond a mom has is indestructible and tangible too like an invisible umbilical cord that never leaves you. Reaches across the oceans of time and space pulling you back time and again.
