TERMS OF INNOCENCE
by
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"So, anyway, we’re peering through the bush spying on this couple lying on the grass and the man is now kissing the girl again and he’s kind of moving over her and pushing her down and as he does so Mick mutters, “Christ, look at him!” The girl lifts her head and looks in our direction as if she had heard, but she hadn’t because she laughs again looking up at the man shaking her head and I hear the word ‘No’ – distant like, floating across the field, though her voice is firm and definite. For a split second I think I know her but then I decide I don’t and then she’s pushing the man away and starting to sit up and for two heartbeats I see her bare breasts, voluptuous, white, brown nipples. I get this odd feeling, this peculiar pleasure, and a kind of fluttering excitement inside. It’s a sensation I’ve never experienced before and for a couple of moments everything seems to have stopped and kind of frozen up. Then she pulls her unbuttoned blouse together and it’s like slow motion; then Mick pulls my arm and everything starts up again at the right speed and we step back and he says, “Let’s move a bit further up and see if we can get a better view.”
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About the Book
It is the 1950s. A small seaside town in Suffolk, England. Chris, a young boy just entering manhood, together with his friend, witness a couple making love in a field. A girl is later reported missing and the police attend the boys’ school appealing for help. His friend persuades Chris they should not report what they had seen. The disappearance develops in to a murder investigation and to Chris’s distress the police arrest the wrong man. The impending break-up of his parents’ marriage and his mother’s mental breakdown, are the background to Chris’s awakening interest in the opposite sex. His increasing guilt over the failure to report what he knows to be vital evidence in the murder investigation finally brings about a violent dénouement.
About the Author
Gerald H Thornhill left school at the age of fifteen and worked in the wholesale cotton industry in Manchester. After two years in the R.A.F. serving in Cyprus during the EOKA campaign and the Suez Crisis, he returned to Manchester. In 1967 he joined the British Airports Authority and worked in the Operations Department at both Stansted and Gatwick airports. He left the BAA in 2001 to start a video business making training, instructional and promotional films for the aviation industry. After retirement he turned to writing – a lifetime’s ambition. He lives with Heather, his wife, in Sussex, England. “Terms Of Innocence” is his second novel.