Rich Odell
Stories
2
Chapters
24
Words
48.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
4 h, 2 m
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Joyce had been sitting opposite Mabel Shirley for nearly fifteen minutes and was still no closer to deciding what to make of her. The formidable Lady Hazelgrove Raymond had described had so far insisted she take another sandwich, complained about Wilkins calling her "Her Ladyship", and apologised for the state of her boots. Yet Joyce had not forgotten the first words she had spoken. Welcome home. Nor, Joyce suspected, had Mabel. The older woman appeared perfectly content to leave the matter…
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25.9 K • Ongoing
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True to his word, Raymond knocked on the door at precisely 11:45. Joyce was ready, now in a new uniform bearing the badges of the Admiralty Constabulary. It fitted perfectly, better than her old one, as though it had been made with her in mind. She chose not to question how. For now, she would take things as they came. As she opened the door, Raymond smiled. "That’s more like it. Very smart." Joyce dipped into a playful curtsy, lifting the edges of her skirt like a courtier. "Sir, you will…
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25.9 K • Ongoing
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Joyce had been in her new post for three weeks, and already it felt older than the building itself. The first had been chaos, chasing files across London as divisions closed and merged under the new order. The second had been consolidation, stacking lives into steel cabinets beneath humming lights. By the third, she began to wonder whether she had stepped forward into promotion or sideways into exile. Her team, five fresh constables from Hendon, were eager and painfully green. She spent more time…
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25.9 K • Ongoing
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Vane let the silence settle after his last sentence. He did not blink. He did not fidget. He simply watched her over the rim of his teacup. “You won’t reach the village gates,” he said quietly, “unless you are under our protection.” Joyce did not look away. “I’ve managed thirty years without it.” “Thirty years of pickpockets and public order. This is not that.” He reached into the leather case at his side and withdrew a slim buff folder. It was unmarked. “There is a…
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25.9 K • Ongoing
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Joyce watched as Vane's car turned the corner and began its journey back to London. She stood motionless, not from fear, but from the simple effort of processing what she had just been through. It took more than a few moments to comprehend. Her life had changed irrevocably, as though the past fifty-three years of her existence had been preparation for this one moment in time. There was no fear or trepidation, only an odd sense of belonging. That concerned her most. Why should such a feeling arise…
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25.9 K • Ongoing
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Arabella Quince had long been committed to the asylum. Her darkness was more than her remaining family could bear. As a child, nothing in her early years betrayed it. She laughed, played, clutched her dolls like any other little girl. But beneath the surface something worked steadily, eroding every kindness it touched. Pets were found harmed, playmates attacked, toys smashed in sudden rages. Servants bore scratches and bites. Then, at the age of ten, she set the house ablaze. Her parents died in the…-
5.6 K • Ongoing
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True love carves its own winding path—be it through the fire of passion or the shelter of protection. In both, the heart offers freely, without promise or expectation. It was a new day, though little felt renewed. Mabel woke depleted—emotionally threadbare. The shop would need opening, and she’d need to wash and dress. She also had to spend the day with Sam. How the hell was she going to cope? The clock read a quarter past five. No deliveries due today—just enough time for a soak before…
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17.1 K • Ongoing
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Every day, she made the pilgrimage—three miles from the grocer’s shop to the coastline, where the path climbed to the highest point of the cliff. The place the locals called Blackmere Point. They say no birds fly over Blackmere Point. That the sea below swallows sound. And that if you stand too close to the edge, you’ll hear your name whispered on the wind—not by the living, but by those who leapt before you. The villagers call it cursed. But the old women who keep to the woods call it something…-
17.1 K • Ongoing
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She knew he would do it. She knew how he operated. He had always been there, more constant than the community around her. He should have returned next week from the visit to her mother. Her suspicions were confirmed that morning, the mewing sound of his arrival, the brush of his body against her legs as she filled the kettle at the sink. Malkin Gra - the ancient one, a Knight of Friþgeard, the king maker, known only to trusted friends as ‘Puss’. Mabel looked down at the grey cat by her feet.…-
17.1 K • Ongoing
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Easterwich sat a mile inland, the sea ever-present in its bones. Blackmere Point lay three miles east along the cliffs—a place most locals avoided, though no one ever said exactly why. The town had grown in recent years. More streets. More strangers. It hadn’t always been like that. There’d been a time—before the turn of the century, before the quiet exodus—when a certain kind of people lived here. People like Mabel. They were never called by name. Not publicly. But the old families knew.…
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17.1 K • Ongoing
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