Greetings all! Just so you know, I will be posting Blackwood only up until about the halfway mark. The reason is because I have a publisher for the novel, and although I can give you mates a preview, obviously I can't post the whole thing. I hope that you'll enjoy the novel and when the time comes that it's published (and I'll let everyone know when that is, promise) you'll buy it. This will be my first solo novel I've had published so I'm rather nervous, therefore any and all suggestions/ideas/etc are much welcomed! Please don't hesitate to let me know if something isn't working so I can fix the problems. Much appreciated, and enjoy the novel!

Prologue

2040

‘Oi, boy—I’ll take a copy of the Post.’

‘Yes sir, that’ll be £2.50.’

Paying the boy, I take the paper from him, tuck it under my arm and quickly walk away from the hubbub of the street to a vacant bench in a nearby park. Placing my walking stick at the edge of the bench, I settle in to read the article that has made the front-page of nearly every newspaper in the United Kingdom, perhaps even the world. I shiver as long forgotten voices from my past spring up around me in an attempt to distract me from reading, but I pay no heed to their hateful cries. I have waited too long for this day to arrive, and nothing is going to mar the occasion.

It isn't long before I finish reading the article, and with a small sigh of happiness, I fold the paper onto my lap and look out across a park that I have not been in for years now. It is then that a fragrance catches my senses, a familiar scent of vanilla and lilies. Without looking, I know who has joined me on the bench.

‘I thought I was seeing things when I saw you buying the paper,’ a voice says. ‘I hoped you would come for the ceremony, but I wasn’t really sure you would.’

‘And miss such an important occasion as this, ma chère?’ I ask. ‘You think so little of me?’

‘I never thought little of you, Silvius,’ the woman says in mild rebuke. ‘So much has changed since you left England. It’s a new era for all of us.’

‘An era we don’t belong in, Kayleigh. We had our time to enjoy life, now it is their turn,’ I say, turning to look at the woman. Even though she is also old now, in my eyes she is still the young woman I once had the privilege to share my life with. ‘You are as beautiful as ever, ma chère.’

She smiles. ‘And you are still the world’s biggest flirt.’

‘My dear woman, I have been called many things in my time, but only you would dare call me a flirt.’ I laugh and pull her into my arms, kissing her gently on the lips. ‘I have missed you.’

‘England misses you … so do I,’ she says softly.

‘England misses my notoriety, not my physical presence,’ I say with a hint of resentment.

‘You know that isn’t true. It is you they miss, not your escapades, although you have given people plenty to talk about over the years.’

‘I recall we both had our share of the gossipmongers, didn’t we. That was then, though, this is now. France is my home now; they are kind enough to accept this old man’s eccentricities.’

‘You shall never be old, Silvius, you are the eternal child,’ Kayleigh says with a twinkle in her warm blue eyes.

‘Au contraire, I am old, there is no getting round that fact. My seventieth birthday is in a few days, unless you have already forgotten such a thing,’ I say.

‘Of course I haven’t. I’m not the one who used to forget things,’ she says in mild rebuke.

I chuckle; she had always been the one to remember the important things, whilst I had always been the one to forget even my own birthday at times. ‘I barely remember the days when a birthday or anniversary was all I had to remember. Now it seems all I want to do is forget.’

‘You may want to, but the rest of us do not. If it were not for your visions things would be much harder for us.’ She taps the newspaper. ‘He would not have continued your work if he didn't believe in your dreams.’

I sigh. ‘That makes one of us then, because I am not so sure I believe in what I fought for back then.’

‘You are being rather maudlin,’ she says.

‘It is easy to be that way when getting out of bed is enough of a chore, let alone having to think about what is to come next.’

‘You are not well?’ she asks, concerned.

‘I’m getting old; there is no cure for that. My body is slow, my hands shake, and my mind wanders when I least expect it. Lately I see the past more than the present; the ghosts of what were still tease and torment me,’ I say heavily.

‘Only because you let them torment you. You have been alone too long; it’s doing you no good,’ she says angrily.

‘I am not alone. Jaysen takes care of me well enough.’

‘Don’t pull that on me, my dear; we both know Jaysen never fully recovered from what happened to him back then. Be realistic, he’s still just as much an invalid as—’

‘That is enough,’ I cut in. ‘I left England for good reasons, reasons I’m not going to discuss again.’

‘For God’s sake, you were forgiven years ago for what happened. What more do I have to do to convince you of that? Now, I will ask you—in fact, I am telling you—to come home.’

‘Kayleigh, don’t— ’

‘No! Enough is enough; we don’t want you dying on foreign soil. If you won’t come home for me, then at least come home for him,’ she says, looking down at the paper.

I shake my head and sigh. ‘He doesn’t remember me anymore, ma chère, it is better that way.’

‘You’re wrong, he does remember, and he misses you terribly.’

‘I am not the man he knew; I shan’t ever be that man again. And truth be told, looking back on the past as much as I have as of late, I see how terrible a person I was.’

‘No, Silvius, you were never a terrible person; you made a few mistakes, we all did, but only you choose not to forgive and forget. Frankly, if you ask me the person you were back then was far better than the shell of the man that is before me now. The man before me now is bitter, resentful, lost, and alone, when he does not have to be.’ Kayleigh puts her hand on my arm. ‘You have suffered enough, your debts are paid, darling. Let the past go, it's time to come home to us … to Blackwood … it’s where you belong.’

As her words sink in, suddenly, I am no longer sitting in the small park in London; instead, I am standing outside a grey one-story brick building that is barely visible through the haze of a pre-dawn mist. A movement catches my eye, and turning to see what it is I have to choke back a gasp of surprise. I see a boy just fifteen years of age standing off to the side of the building, his thinly clad body shivering as the sun rises over the horizon. The morning light casts its crimson glow across the boy's pale face; a face that haunts me even in my waking moments. It is the face of an innocent boy that has no idea of the things about to befall him. A boy who doesn’t know he is about to embark upon a journey that will be unlike anything he could have ever imagined.

Harrowfield Boys Home is the place, and the forlorn boy beckoning me back into the past is me.