Launch Feature – Briony Collins

Please join me in congratulating Briony Collins on the launch of Ambergris (Barnard Publishing Ltd)

Blurb

In a fishing trip gone wrong, Henry finds himself on a beach in a storm. With no memory of how he got there, and no sign of anyone around, he must figure out how to get back to his family.

Madeline worries for her husband’s safety and for her granddaughter’s wellbeing as Lacey’s world crumbles around her.

Elen is a hardworking detective put on Henry’s case, and is determined to answer the question: what exactly happened on that fishing trip?

Almost crime, almost mystery, Ambergris is both unsettling and comfortable. Briony Collins writes simply and beautifully through events that destroy a family in front of your eyes.

Opening of Ambergris

Briony Collins

As hard as he tried, Henry Belvidere couldn’t recall where he was or how he got there. The first thing he remembered at the beach was looking for his oxygen tank. He couldn’t leave home without it, but it wasn’t here. The last thing he remembered before waking up was bringing Madeline coffee in bed. She smelled like the eucalyptus soap in the bathroom. Henry hoped he wasn’t dead.

He sat and scooped up a handful of sand, letting it run through his fingers. Some grains stuck under his nails, and he swore. He watched his hands stretch and barely recognised them. His fingertips were nicked with a hundred, tiny white scars from decades of splinters evidence of the forty-three years he’d spent working at Dixon’s Lumber before he retired. Down the side of his left thumb, between freckles and age spots, was a longer, redder scar. Henry stroked the lines on his palms with hardened fingers. It looked like his flesh was cracking, made up of different pieces instead of one unending wrap of skin.

It felt like only recently his hands belonged to a young boy. They weren’t soft and smooth like other children’s, but instead suffered just as many cuts and scrapes as when he took up lumbering. The scratches he got when he was young were different to these in one important detail: as a man, Henry handled the real world. As a boy, his sole line of work was in shaping the imaginary. With one touch a tree could be transformed into a mighty monster, whose almond shaped leaves became thousands of eyes that blinked in the wind. He ran from it to the garden wall, which was his medieval castle. Moss grew between the slabs and stained his palms green– the same colour as the blood of the monster Henry slew. At ten years old, he was Midas; every golden opportunity lay at his fingertips with all of the glory and none of the consequences.

Henry grabbed another handful of sand and let it flow out of his grasp again, aware that he didn’t have the same hold on the world as he did in childhood. In any other scenario, the beach might have been a magnificent place. The sea’s white horses galloped onto the shore that swooped up into the dunes behind him. The golden hills met an oasis of greenery where birds dipped into the thickets of trees. Clouds smoked in a sky that was the colour of Madeline’s eyes.

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