The Blue Book

Fear death by water. D. The discovery of a cryptic note hidden inside a second-hand book sends thirty-something Hugh Mullion on an obsessive search for its previous owner. Hugh uncovers secrets that have lain hidden for sixty years and turn upside down his views of personal identity and the certainty of the past. Along the way, Hugh learns more about himself and what he really wants from his relationship with his partner, Kate - and about the puzzling disappearances of Anthony Buffo, in whose shop Hugh found the book that changed everything. Hugh Mullion walked back home from the station that evening for the last time. He and his partner, Kate Roberts, were moving from this part of South London in the morning. As he made his way down the parade flanked by Bin Ends and the betting shop Hugh paused to look in the window of Peter’s Antiques. A copper warming pan on the wall gleamed quietly in the light of a small table lamp. The dappled rocking horse in the corner appeared to rock gently back and forth, as if pushed by an invisible hand. The horse’s eyes betrayed a hint of sadness. Hugh sighed and thought of the hours he had spent there and at Toad Books next door. The bookshop was in darkness now, the boxes in which he used to rummage put away for another day. You never knew what you were going to find. Perhaps if he had known what he would find under the polythene, and where it would lead, that wet autumn Saturday of the previous year, he would have been more circumspect. But there was no putting the clock back. Hugh thought yet again of those events as he carried on down the parade and turned the corner into Dogberry Road.