Front Page Fridays Week-60
Front Page Fridays Week-60
Welcome to Front Page Fridays Week-60. On Fridays I showcase the first page of a new book.
My Front Page Fridays Week-60 guest is Charlotte Leonard with her brand-new and thought-provoking novel, One Little Lie.
Here’s the opening:
PROLOGUE
The house was hollow. Empty. Still. Devoid of all the people that I loved. I sat there in the gloom, the hall steeped in my memories. If I closed my eyes, I could see Ryan as a toddler in his favourite shorts, struggling to tie his shoelaces, and Olly banished to the naughty step, singing loudly with his head tipped back, his heels banging on the wooden floor, totally unfazed by it all. And James arriving home with flowers on Mother’s Day, his arms filled with a bouquet of pink hyacinths, the blooms a mass of coloured stars.
Outside the sun was dying. A single piece of Sellotape came suddenly unstuck, pulling at a small patch of beige paintwork as it detached from the hallway wall. The ‘Congratulations’ banner collapsed until it was hanging by the final ‘s’, the remainder of the letters twisting as they fell, and trailing down towards the wooden floor. It sounded like a moth hitting a lightbulb. The softest clunk. A sickening thud of singeing wings.
Inside the empty kitchen, a large bouquet of roses wrapped in tissue and clear cellophane was propped inside a water jug, and left out on the clean table. Below the blooms of crimson petals was a spread of cards in brightly coloured envelopes, all with ‘Mum’ or ‘Sarah’ written on the front, in handwriting that I recognised. I edged a nail into a gap and forced the gummed paper apart to rip open the card from James. ‘You’ve always been a star to me and both our boys,’ James had written in his familiar scrawl.
The words felt like a stomach punch. I pulled one hand towards my heart, pressed the other hand firmly on top, as if trying to staunch a fatal bleed. An injury no one could see. My heart pounded at frantic speed, as I ripped open the remaining cards.
‘I love you, Mum.’
‘We all love you.’
I sank into a chair and placed my head flat on the table, felt the sparkling clean and bleached surface press up against my pounding skull. I closed my eyes.
‘I love you too,’ I said out loud to all of them. But there was no one there to hear me.
About One Little Lie
It was the small things that weighed Sarah down. The dirty dishes abandoned in the sink. The empty bottle of milk put back inside the fridge. The clothes left crumpled on the floor. A life of never-ending mental load and constant demands. Somewhere along the way, Sarah had become a caretaker for everyone around her, both at home and at work.
Then came the lie. One harmless white lie, she thought. Just a little shift in the narrative.
And for a while everything became better. But one lie wasn’t enough. It was soon followed by another. And another. Until the truth became something unrecognizable, a distant memory swallowed by fiction.
She never intended for it to spiral this way. It was just one little white lie. But the truth would inevitably threaten everything she held dear…
Purchase Links
https://www.waterstones.com/book/one-little-lie/charlotte-leonard/9781398509566
https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Little-Lie-Charlotte-Leonard/dp/1398509566
https://www.tealeavesandreads.co.uk/product/one-little-lie-by-charlotte-leonard/
About the Author
Charlotte Leonard completed a law degree at Warwick before running away from Law School to travel the world. She returned to the UK and embarked on a career in advertising as a planner, where she fell in love with both writing and her husband. Her first novel ‘Afterwards’ was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award as an unpublished manuscript and was published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. 'One Little Lie' is Charlotte's second novel. Charlotte lives in London with her husband and sons. When she isn’t writing, Charlotte is happiest swimming in wild and cold water.
Social Media Links
https://www.instagram.com/charlotteleonard/
https://substack.com/@charlotteleonard
Links to Charlotte’s First Novel
https://www.waterstones.com/book/afterwards/charlotte-leonard/9781398509153
I hope you enjoyed reading Front Page Fridays Week-60. Please come back next time when I’ll be featuring a different author and the first page of their book.
And please take a look at books already featured on Front Page Fridays:
1. Blood Ribbons by Lin Le Versha
2. Fatal Blow by Brian Price
3. Can I Trust You? by Rob Gittins
4. The Last Bird of Paradise by AJ Aberford
5. Never Forgive You by Hilly Barmby
6. The Mists of Pencarrack Moor by Terri Nixon
7. The Thief of Joy by Stacey Murray
8. Edge of the Land by Malcolm Hollingdrake
9. The Mind of a Murderer by Michael Wood
10. The Midnight Man by Julie Anderson
11. Dark Road Home by Sheila Bugler
12. Her Charming Man by Rachel Sargeant
13. Wedding Bells at the Lakeside Hotel by Linda Huber
14. Dark Island by Daniel Aubrey
15. The Shame by Maureen Myant
16. Dead Mile by Jo Furniss
17. The Violin and Candlestick by David Jarvis
18. New Memories by S.E. Shepherd
19. Young Blood by Victoria Gemmell
20. Private Investigations by Rob Gittins
21. The Car Horn revolution by A.J. Aberford
22. What Lies Beneath by Maureen Myant
23. A Safe Place by Stephanie Carty
24. Fatal Image by Brian Price
25. Run For Your Lies by A.A. Abbott
26. A Walk in the Park by Natalie Kleinman
27. A Storm in a Teacup by Rachael Gray
28. The Midnight Bookshop by Amanda James
29. A Death in the Afternoon by Julie Anderson
30. Justice by Madalyn Morgan
31. Let Me Out by Amanda Brittany
32. A Pocketful of Poisons by Brian Price
33. Tribute by Madalyn Morgan
34. Mistress of the Manor by Cara Clayton
35. Waves of Change in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Chistensen
36. A French Inheritance by Jennifer Bohnet
37. Beneath the Same Moon by AS Andrejevic
38. The Fallen by Maureen Myant
39. The Bad Women by Jennie Ensor
40. Lies Between Friends by AA Abbott
41. Fatal Shot by Brian Brice
42. The Alibi by Katharine Johnson
43. The Croatian Island Library by Eva Glyn
44. If I Were You by Helen Matthews
45. (Not Quite) Done With Dating by Bella Osborne
46. Poison at the Wild Haggis Bookshop by Jackie Baldwin
47. Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway by Mary-Jane Riley
48. Missing… Rose Malone by Linda Huber
49. Fiasco by Nicola Kelsall
50. 27 Church Street by A.J. Hobart
51. The Girls of Maple Close by Amanda Brittany
52. Growing Old Disgracefully by Karen King
53. Meet Me At Apple Blossom Lane by Anita Faulkner
54. Festival Days by Julie Anderson
55. The Conservatory by Anthony Aberford
56. Her Rising Star by Rachel Sargeant
57. Wonderful by Louise Beech
58. Safe Space by Beck Lewis