'SHORTS': 10-minute reads for coffee break or commute...Against All Odds
AGAINST ALL ODDS by Annie Holder
Neglected and heartbroken, Grace Radley flees London and the humiliation of her husband’s serial infidelity…but escaping her past proves far from easy.
On the windswept deck of the Orkney ferry, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with desperate Sonia Flett, who’s running home from the mess she’s made of her own London life.
Workaholic musician, Vidar Rasmussen, is also on his way from London to Orkney. Approaching fifty, increasingly dissatisfied with the enforced isolation of fame, Vidar is longing for companionship to lighten his lonely middle-age.
Captivated by the vivacious Grace, Vidar falls instantly and passionately in love. It seems nothing can upset the perfection of their union…except Sonia Flett. She’s Vidar’s former lover, she’s pregnant, and she won’t say who the father is.
When Grace’s abandoned husband arrives in Orkney to fetch her home, both Vidar and Grace are forced to confront their past mistakes, and justify the lies they’ve told.
Against all odds, can their love survive?
In this excerpt:
Vidar arrives on Orkney tired, depressed, and lonely. He’s collected from the airport by his friend, Stewart, the local GP, who reveals an unwelcome piece of village gossip. One of Vidar’s past conquests, a young girl called Sonia Flett, is pregnant, and close-mouthed about the father’s identity. Vidar’s reaction is ‘twitchy’ to say the least. Does he know something he’s not letting on? After all, why choose Orkney over LA when winter is fast-approaching?
On his doorstep, preparing to enter yet another cold and empty house, Vidar’s life is instead about to be changed forever by an unexpected guest.
(This snippet may contain swearing or sexual references which may not be suitable for younger readers.)
The handshake was as firm as ever, the smile as broad, but there was something behind the eyes…Stewart couldn’t place exactly what about his friend’s demeanour made him uneasy, but there was an unmistakeable difference in him.
“Thanks so much for getting me, buddy, it was a last-minute change of plan. Family ok?”
“They’re fine, fine…you all right?”
“What? Oh yeah…ok…” Vidar smiled, but it was a weak facsimile of his normal wide, beaming, twinkle-eyed grin which usually had the recipient of it helplessly gurning back like a baby in a bouncer within an instant of beholding it.
Vidar helped Stewart heft his two guitar cases and a suitcase into the boot of the doctor’s Audi.
“Nice car, man! When did you get this?”
“Couple of months ago. Wee fiftieth present to myself. Went to Inverness and spent the day in and out of every dealership doing eeny-meeny-miney-moe until I’d made my decision. Better than the other one ‘cos it’s a wee bit bigger.”
“Because, obviously, you need your car to be even bigger now your kids are away at College and you only have to take one little black bag and a teeny, tiny wife in and out of it,” Vidar teased, a little of the usual sparkle returning as he climbed inside and turned to wink at his friend.
Stewart raised one unimpressed eyebrow, adopting the tone and expression reserved for his student sons when they ridiculed him, retorting, “Having a dig? Make sure you don’t forget the room for two sets of golf clubs…and it’s mighty handy when collecting disorganised friends with ridiculously bulky luggage from the airport at short notice…”
“Touché,” Vidar chuckled, sighed, and ran a hand through greying hair.
Stewart didn’t ever like to pry. Vidar enjoyed Orkney precisely because it provided the antidote to the intrusive chaos of the rest of his existence; pursued by the press, followed by fans, his time and energy endlessly demanded in quantities far beyond the reserves required of any normal life. That Vidar had the stamina to maintain it was testament both to his dedication to career at the expense of all else, and the conditioning of over thirty years spent travelling the globe, living out of his suitcase. It must take a toll – you’d have to be superhuman not to feel the strain once in a while – and Stewart had witnessed Vidar’s exhaustion at first hand on more than one occasion, but his behaviour was different today from mere physical depletion. Stewart couldn’t put his finger on quite what it was about Vidar, but if he’d had to give a professional diagnosis, he would chalk it down to nothing less than hopelessness, as if Vidar was sitting beside him in his comfortable birthday purchase and questioning the continuing point of it all.
As they drove out of the airport on the Kirkwall road, Stewart probed, “Things not go well in London?”
Vidar turned to him, surprised, “Why do you ask that?”
“You seem a wee bit out-of-sorts…”
Vidar tried a smile, but couldn’t summon it, “It went fine in London. I just got sick of being trailed down the street by people with selfie-sticks. I don’t know; it just seems wherever you go now there’s a camera in your face. I’m sure ten years ago it wasn’t like that. People just want a piece of you whatever you’re doing. They don’t give a damn if you’re choosing groceries or buying socks. They think they have ownership of a part of you, that they know you! Oh, ignore me, I’m just being grouchy and ungrateful. I don’t mind people talking to me. I wouldn’t be anything without that…I just…”
Again, the careworn sigh, the frustrated scrape of the fingers through the front of his hair.
Concerned, Stewart tried a change of subject, “It’s been horrible here…so cold…and early snow.”
“When I was done in London, I was planning to go back to LA…better in December than here, huh?”
Stewart grunted agreement, and waved enthusiastically through the windscreen at a doctor colleague waiting to pull out of the hospital car park as the Q7 surged past.
“That was Bob Turner. Recognise him?”
“He did look familiar…”
“You’ve met him at our place. You spent all evening buttering up his wife. Why didn’t you go back to LA then?”
“You know, Stew, to be honest, I couldn’t handle being in that massive place all on my own. Up there in the hills with those high hedges, big gates…I felt as if I would just disappear.”
“Isn’t that the point of it?”
“Well…yes…except…”
“Come on, mate, what is eating you?”
“I own eight properties, Stewart. Eight. All around the world. Whichever one I go into, when everyone has left, it’s just me in a big, empty box surrounded by a lot of expensive stuff I didn’t even choose. Half the time it’s something the interior decorator put there a century ago and I’ve never had time to decide whether I like it or not so it all just sits there, and the housekeeper dusts it, and I walk past it. None of it means anything, not really. It’s not enough any more. The gloss has rubbed off. It’s just me, staring down the barrel of fifty years old in an empty house with nothing to show for it – “
“But platinum disks on every wall, awards coming out of your ears, and billions in the bank?”
“Now who’s having a dig?”
“Well, you’re hardly failing, mate.”
“No, agreed, I have been a lucky boy…but I’ve worked for it. I’ve given up everything for my career since I was a kid…”
“Ah, I think I’m starting to get it! You’re wondering what it would have been like if you’d done a bit less career and a bit more everything-you-gave-up, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps… You don’t go home to an empty house, do you? You go home to a smiling wife, healthy kids – “
“Now, this is Elaine we’re talking about. The smiles aren’t always guaranteed!”
Vidar grinned, “Scary Elaine…but she loves you, doesn’t she? She’s there for you, no matter what.”
“Surely you aren’t craving domesticity, with your opportunities to enjoy yourself? You’ve had more girlfriends than I’ve had hot dinners!”
“Yeah, and they’re with me because they think latching onto me for a week or two will help them launch their career as a model or a pop star or an actress, whatever they’ve decided to become that month. Get their picture taken with me at some première or other and they think it opens a door for them. There’s no feeling there, no regard, no care…”
“Still, can’t be bad, eh?”
Stewart was beginning to feel really worried. He’d never seen Vidar like this, not in the fifteen years he’d known him. Usually, he was an upbeat, glass-half-full character who grabbed the chances life offered with both hands, squeezing the possibility out of every situation with infectious optimism.
“I never thought so…and then I’d see the pictures and it would be as if I was taking my daughter out for the evening. I looked like an idiot, so I knocked it all on the head. It was the right thing for my dignity, but it just makes the houses even emptier, you know?”
“I don’t know what to say, mate.”
“I’m just sick of being on my own…sick of it. I want some company. I don’t mean being surrounded by the entourage of people who dress me and feed me and pounce to attention every time I open my mouth; I mean company. I mean Scary Elaine, who shouts at me if I don’t wipe my feet and goes nuts if I don’t use a coaster for my coffee cup on her nice table.”
Stewart smirked as Vidar, distracted by his own private frustrations, unguardedly described his friend’s fierce little Glaswegian wife in all her combative, house-proud glory.
“I mean somebody to talk to, to share opinions with, to discuss and debate and joke and laugh. Not someone who says ‘how high?’ when I say ‘jump’, but someone who says ‘you wanna jump, you get on with it your damn self’. Only now it’s impossible to have that because the persona, the ego, the fame,” Vidar spat out the word as if it tasted bitter, “precedes you into every room and clouds every judgement people make about you. There is no possibility of an incognito encounter with anyone because that’s how life is, how it’s been for so long I have no idea how to change it. I’m trapped in a situation of my own making.”
“So, you’ve come here to hide for a while and feel sorry for yourself.”
Vidar snorted, “Your bedside manner sucks, Doc, you know that?”
“I’m a GP, not a Psychiatrist.”
“You saying I’m nuts?”
“No more than you’ve been for the rest of the time I’ve known you.”
“I did think about going back to Denmark, to the lake house, but my whole family are right there on the doorstep. I know it sounds crazy, but the idea of that made me feel even lonelier…”
“Vid, you’re just tired. You work yourself into the ground and then wonder why you’re at a low ebb.
You should cut yourself a bit of slack now and again. You’re just at that time in your life when you start to feel a wee bit mortal, that’s all. Bit of grey in the hair, bit of grey in the beard. Maybe a bit of flab where it never used to be – although the amount you pound the gym in pursuit of eternal youth, I doubt you’ve noticed that yet. I felt like shite as soon as I got the wrong side of forty-five. I got through it though, with the help of my scary wife…and fifty wasn’t so bad once I decided I was going to treat myself to a big, shiny car when I got there. You should give yourself permission to enjoy the life you have…otherwise what are you endlessly working for, to be richer? It’s not my business, but I hardly think you need to be any richer…and what are you now – forty-seven; forty-eight?”
“Forty-seven.”
“How long are you going to keep pushing yourself like this with no let-up? Airport to performance to studio to interview to airport and on you go again and again. Are you still going to want to do that when you’re fifty-seven; sixty-seven?”
“I haven’t given it any thought…”
“Well, perhaps your down-time here should be given over to serious consideration of the latter half of your life. You have the luxury that you could never do a day’s work again and still not spend all the money you’ve made. I think your problem might be that you’re running out of reasons to get out of bed every day. The hole in your life isn’t professional, it’s emotional. Maybe you should be looking at a way to plug that, not pretending it doesn’t exist by working so hard you can’t remember your own name half the time…”
“You seem very concerned about it, Doc.”
“You’re my friend. You’ve been my friend for fifteen years. You’re the most unassuming superstar I’ve ever met.”
“Know a lot of them, do you?” Vidar prodded sarcastically.
“That’s my point! You say the ego precedes you into the room and spoils everything but it doesn’t…it doesn’t. No one would ever know who you are, what you’ve achieved, what you have. Who else would patiently teach my kids to play the guitar, or take them rock-pooling when they were little, or help round up the sheep when they get out, or give neighbours a lift into town if you’re going, or muck in and dig out the paths when it snows? I tell you something, none of the other rock stars I’m best mates with ever do any of that…”
Vidar smiled, “I like doing all of that. Makes me feel as if I fit in somewhere.”
“As your doctor, let me give you some medical advice, for your own wellbeing. You don’t need another hit album or an extra Grammy. What you need is a life…and you should be concentrating a bit of that legendary energy of yours on working out how you can get one.”
“Is that your prescription, Doc?”
“Yes, it is – to work on yourself, not on your brand.”
“Point taken. Thank you for your honesty.”
“What are friends for?”
“People mostly tell me what they think I want to hear…”
“That’s certainly not healthy, is it? Anyway, can you imagine that happening here?”
“Not for a moment. The very first time I put the trash out in my pyjamas, Mag Flett would appear telling me to have some self-respect.”
“Ah!” Stewart thumped his friend’s thigh, “This’ll interest you! Speaking of the Flett family, little Ginger’s back home.”
The sweep of those flame-red ringlets across his chest, the softness of her pale skin pressing against his naked body, vivid green eyes gazing deep into his…
“Little Sonia Flett…”
Stewart chuckled, taking his eyes off the road briefly to observe with amusement the change in his friend’s expression, “And you can wipe that look off your face. There’ll be no chance of her warming your lonely nights because she’s pregnant, by all accounts.”
Vidar lurched in his seat as if he’d just been stabbed with something sharp.
“How? I mean…I know how…but…little Sonia-I’m-going-places-and-leaving-you-suckers-for-dust-Flett? It seems unfathomable…so uncharacteristically short-sighted of her!”
“Life has a way of biting you on the arse sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“I guess…” Vidar seemed distracted, uncomfortable, as if the news was unwelcome.
“She hasn’t come to see me since she’s been back – too embarrassed, I daresay – but Elaine saw her mother in Dounby Co-op and the whole thing came out. As you can imagine, Margaret is scandalised. It seems wee Ginger’s foray into the world of motherhood was an unplanned excursion.”
“Poor little Son. Her family is out of the Ark. I don’t imagine they’re being too supportive of her…makes you wonder why she came back at all…”
“The impression Mag gave was that she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Lost her go-getting job.”
“Ouch… What did she say about the father?” There was more than a flicker of interest in the keen, grey eyes.
“Apparently, she’s keeping that particular card very close to her chest, so I’d suggest sniffing around there offering a butch shoulder to cry on will doubtless bring the mother out with suspicions aroused and shotgun cocked. Do your thinking with your big head, not your wee one, eh?”
“Relax. There’s nothing left between me and Sonia Flett. It was a bit of fun that ran its course. There’s no unfinished business there. I told you, I’m laying off the young girls. I’m gonna act my age from now on. I can’t deny I’d like to see her again, but only out of curiosity, not to cause her any more trouble than she’s already in.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
“It’s going to be tricky lying low next door.”
“Just don’t let Margaret catch you ‘consoling’ her eldest in the farmhouse kitchen, that’s all. Not if you want to make your own fiftieth birthday, anyway.”
“Is that Doctors’ orders too?”
“Yes, it bloody well is.”
Stewart squeezed the big car through the gate and up past the rear of the Flett family farm to the large timber lodge cut into the side of the hill overlooking the bay. The whiteness of the xenon headlights shone their bright beam in an arc around the circular driveway as Stewart turned the car.
“Want help unloading?”
“No, I’ll take it in. I’m used to lugging that stuff around.”
“Bit of washing to do?”
“Yeah, like, four months’ worth!”
Vidar swung his long legs out of the car. The cold of the evening swirled into the fuggy interior and Stewart shivered.
“Thank you for getting me, I really appreciate it. You and Elaine should come up to eat sometime soon.”
“Sounds good…and remember what I said; spend some time here working out what it is you actually want out of life – and stay away from Sonia Flett!”
Vidar stood to attention on the driveway, saluted and crossed himself for good measure, “I promise.”
“Boot’s open, smartarse.”
“Thanks again.”
“Any time.”
Vidar shut the passenger door, popped the boot and removed his bags, and waved as Stewart disappeared down the hill, leaving him alone on his drive in the chilly dark.
****
Vidar stood for quite a while on the flagstones, listening to the roar of Stewart’s big car as his friend enjoyed his own private race homeward along the empty lanes in his indulgent birthday present. Vidar smiled to himself. He was fond of Stewart and his family. The man had never been starstruck, and never treated him with anything other than the straightforward openness of one friend to another despite their very different life circumstances. Stewart held an influential position here as local GP, and his wife as a nurse. They self-evidently made more of a contribution to this close-knit rural community than Vidar ever could. That was why he enjoyed Orkney so much. It was satisfying to be anonymous, arousing barely a flicker of curiosity. Once his neighbours understood who he was and why he’d come, they delved no further. Hardly any tourists noticed his presence because no one would remotely expect him to be anywhere like this in a million years. He had to sign the odd autograph for a keen-eyed visitor, but found it was more of a novelty here than the nuisance he might be tempted to consider it in London, Copenhagen, or Los Angeles, perhaps because being in Birsay caused him to forget what the rest of the world thought he was – his ‘brand’, Stewart had called it – and enable the man trapped behind it to have some room to breathe.
Vidar held his key in one cold hand, zipped up his jacket against the gusting wind, and stood with his back to the front door, watching fast clouds scud across the bright, full moon.
His stomach growled. He should have trespassed further on Stewart’s endless kindness and got him to stop at a Kirkwall supermarket on the way. He hoped one of the people his brother let the house out to on his behalf had left a tin of something behind in the cupboard that would see him through until the shops opened tomorrow morning.
Whichever home he chose to frequent, all were equally devoid of welcome or the convivial comforts of company – no homecoming hug, no special celebratory meal, no interest in where he’d been, no one to put the pretensions into perspective. Nothing but him, his mountains of dirty laundry, the threatening winter, and the frighteningly fast passage of time. However wealthy and successful he was, when the front door closed behind him a moment from now, he would simply be a single, middle-aged man, sitting alone in a cold house eating something out of a tin – and he knew without a shadow of a doubt such an existence was no longer enough.
Shivering uncontrollably now, Vidar steeled himself against self-pity, unlocked the door and impatiently shouldered it open, staggering into the hallway with his burden of heavy luggage, dumping it unceremoniously in the middle of the floor and pushing the door shut behind him.
There was no post on the mat, which surprised him. Usually, if the house had no Lets and the cleaner hadn’t visited for a few days, there were at least a few letters for him to open. Puzzled, he slipped off his shoes and padded across the hall. After the chill outside, the house seemed quite warm and he shrugged off his coat, tossing it across the bags on the floor. He’d deal with all that tomorrow. Unpacking was a chore he couldn’t face in his current dissatisfied mood.
As he approached the connecting door, he noticed a faint light shining underneath it from the living area beyond. That explained the lack of post. The cleaner must have been here. She’d obviously left the light on by mistake, or Ragnar had told her his big brother was coming home and she’d kindly left a lamp on for him. It might explain the warmth too. Perhaps she’d decided to flick the thermostat up a notch to ensure he returned to a warm house? Maybe – his empty stomach growled again – she’d left him some food? He didn’t care what.
Hopeful, he pushed down the handle and opened the door, utterly unprepared for what he’d find.
****
In. Stomach swells, filling with the breath.
Out. Stomach contracts, actively pushing out the tension along with the air.
Grace, sitting in the lotus position on the rug next to the sofa, opened one eye as if that would improve her hearing. She could have sworn she’d just heard a car…
No, she must be mistaken.
She closed her eyes again, returning to her meditation. If at home, this would have been the time when Dominic barged in from work, banging around disturbing the tranquillity of her evening and demanding to be fed like a spoilt child when it was far too late and too bad for the digestion to eat. She had always passed through the pangs of hunger, never enjoying the elaborately-complicated meals she wasted her time preparing to impress him, as his disturbing presence made her so uncomfortable any lingering appetite instantly fled like a spider in a spotlight. Daily, she wondered why she bothered, as Dominic forked in the food with barely a pause to taste it and no comment on her efforts, but she’d established a benchmark of quality and could not dip below it without drawing attention to the fact she’d stopped trying. A Chicken Kiev simply would not do in place of Steak Diane. A rod for her own back, Sonia would call it.
Sonia.
Her friend.
What was more, the only proper friend she’d had in her forty-two years. Over these last few weeks, she’d come to realise previous encounters masquerading as friendship had never been anything of the sort, so tied up had they been with conditions of wealth, behaviour, and social status. Real friendship was accepting without judgement, supportive without indulgence, laughter without reserve, opinion without censure, and adventure without end. If Grace wanted an honest, straightforward exchange of views with someone who would consider her opinion without chiming in or shouting down, share without expecting a return, and buoy her up when her confidence wavered, she walked the half-mile down the lane to the Flett farmhouse and was welcomed into a haven of warm security, filled with laughter, banter, the smells of cooking and sooty chimneys, muddy shoes and damp dogs. Nothing was particularly clean, it certainly wasn’t fashionable, and footwear other than wellies was out of the question, but there was a comfort and conviviality unmatched in kind-hearted sincerity. It didn’t matter that the dresser was covered with a layer of dust and paperwork so thick Grace assumed it had been some years in the making. It really wasn’t important that she suspected the marks up the boot room wall came from something a cow had done. It didn’t seem significant now that she’d brought six different coats of varying styles with her and had only worn one – her thickest, warmest anorak – which now had quite a lot of mud and other unmentionables up the front of it from the paws of the exuberant farm dogs, and a significant quantity of sand in the pockets from her beachcombing finds now cluttering the windowsill in the guest bedroom she occupied at Somerled. She supposed she could have taken over the large Master Suite with its view down to the sea, but the family photographs and personal items occupying the shelves had made her feel she was intruding in private space. The guest room was clean, bright, and impersonal – more what she was used to in a room, given her whole London flat was a honed homage to minimalism. Her chosen bedroom had a large window which looked out over the circular flagstone driveway and across the Flett’s fields to the farmhouse and wetland wildlife reserve beyond. Grace loved that when the moon was out, it shone with stunning reflected symmetry in the waters of the reserve, and when she left the blinds open, she could see the farmhouse roof from her bed, which made her feel secure. The kitchen formed one corner of the large, square living space, with a dining table in front of it. A baby-grand piano occupied the lower-floor area in front of the window, facing onto a flagstone patio and the vast lawn that curved down the hillside. The entire rear of the house was glass, providing an uninterrupted rural panorama empty of everything but fluffy white blots of varying sizes. The ewes hunkered down within the waving tussocks of grass, trails of their wool caught on the barbed-wire fencing, blowing horizontally in the persistent wind like scudding clouds across a green sky. Rolling pasture eventually met shelving rocks and a beach of purest cream, with clear sea sweeping majestically across its expanse twice a day.
The bay was protected by a curve of rock extending out some hundred feet from the beach to create a tranquil, shallow lagoon at low tide, the stillness of which was only disturbed by the gusting wind rippling its surface, or the stately passage of a pair of swans who had claimed the stretch of silent water as their own.
A large double-sided fireplace divided living space from office and gym, with a sunken central seating area dominated by an enormous u-shaped sofa curving around a huge coffee table, and a flat-screen television above the fire. The whole house felt roomy without being ostentatiously large. It was subtly well-designed, functional, and comfortable. As Grace relaxed into this new space, she started to leave things lying around, something she would never have done at home – a book on the end of the sofa, two or three mugs on coffee table, worktop, draining board. She knew she was going to tidy them up eventually, but there was no pressure or hurry to do so. Instead of pathologically putting everything away the moment she no longer required it, in case Dom came home with a business associate in tow whom he was trying to impress, she left the bread out on the board, her slippers halfway across the room, and her handbag over the back of a dining chair. Her one concession to tidiness was to stand her undeniably filthy wellingtons on some newspaper to prevent their vileness spoiling the hall floor.
She thought herself very lucky to have discovered this gem at such short notice. The added coincidence of such closeness to Sonia convinced Grace she had been supposed to see that magazine, intended to come here, meant to find exactly this house and encounter the very person to bring her to it. Why else had all this happened so quickly, and so easily?
Thus, Grace’s first few weeks passed in a blur of surprisingly happy self-discovery. She relished the previously unknown freedom of making all her own decisions and either enjoying their fruits or dealing with their consequences. Instead of pandering to her husband’s whims, the pattern of her day was now dictated by her own desires. She ate when she wanted to, and the time when she would have previously been disturbed into nausea by Dominic’s demanding presence became her opportunity to relax, unwind, and practice her yoga. She still hadn’t attempted a piece of art, but was confident this would come, eventually, if it was supposed to. Grace felt strongly that this place had a plan for her, and she must follow the course it indicated.
Sliding onto all fours, Grace clasped her hands before her in a fist and pressed her forearms onto the ground. Lifting her bottom upward tipped her head to nestle into the thick pile of the shaggy rug before the fire. Clasped hands behind her skull supporting her head and holding it still, she gently eased to tiptoes. Grace walked her feet out wide to either side of her hips, took a deep inhale, tightened her stomach muscles, and gradually lifted her legs, first to the splits at hip level and then slowly and deliberately upward until her feet touched and she stood on her head on the rug, staring at her reflection in the window to maintain her form, concentration, and balance. Content she was in control, Grace allowed her eyes to close, and surrendered to the sensation of floating produced by the pose. The freer she became, the suppler her body felt. The more confidence she unearthed, the stronger her muscles seemed. Powerful, unbreakable, she stood straighter, walked taller. She was a butterfly emerging from long pupation, and discovering the potential of her newly-grown wings.
As she opened her eyes again to check the straightness of her legs in the huge lounge window, she saw a figure reflected in the glass, standing motionless by the hall door.
Something special is destined to happen between Vidar and Grace, two lonely people unsure of the direction of the latter half of their lives, finding unexpected solace and delight in one another…but a stormcloud looms. Both must face up to the presence of vulnerable young Sonia Flett and her impending single-motherhood.
‘Against All Odds’ is available to buy worldwide as paperback or eBook on Amazon.
www.annieholder.com/against-all-odds/
© Annie Holder 2018
Annie Holder has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Annie Holder in 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Place and public names are sometimes used for the purposes of fiction. Resemblance to any person, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.