Here’s the Prologue from ‘The Silver Locket’…

The silver locket hides beneath the loose floorboard in a small attic room.  Sunlight streams through the window pointing towards the tarnished trinket which waits patiently for its secrets to be unlocked.

The locket has a history.  It has a past forged in passion and suffering; bought in the hope of love and put away in despair.  A gardener’s boy, aspiring to the love of his master’s young daughter Cathy, bought it from a traveller at a local market.  The traveller had assured him of the mystical powers of the locket which he said had been wrought in a far off land, where dreams come true.

The boy had spent a whole week’s wages on the locket; taken it home and polished it lovingly.  He’d removed the faded photograph it contained and replaced it with a drawing of a little rabbit, ears pricked and nose raised as if sniffing a scent on the breeze.  Cathy had been so delighted when he’d brought her the baby rabbit he’d found in the orchard that bright May morning.  Together they’d taken it to the far side of the meadow and watch it scamper away, safe from the murderous eye of Mr. Stebbins, the head gardener.

A few weeks later, he gathered his courage and presented her with the locket.  The traveller’s magic worked.  She smiled up at him and kissed him quickly on the cheek.  He took her lightly in his arms, the calloused skin of his hands stroking the soft fabric of her gown.  He had captured her heart, just as he’d captured the little rabbit.

But as the sun rose high in the sky that summer, the locket, once so proudly displayed, disappeared from view.  For a while longer it was still tenderly worn, pinned to the young girl’s under-bodice, close to her heart.  But a year after its giving, the locket found itself gently put away, hidden in the under-floorboard darkness, waiting to be found.

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