Radio Wales DJ Jack Valentine finds a lost trainer on a station platform. With echoes of Cinderella, he appeals on his show for its owner, Hope Shepherd, to come forward. Hope handles publicity for a Cardiff based charity, Heartbeat. Encouraged by colleagues to secure Jack Valentine to raise the profile of an upcoming fun run, she reluctantly heads for the studios. The attraction between Hope and Jack is immediate but, bruised and battered by their recent divorces, they are reluctant to risk romance again. Barefoot In The Dark is a bitter-sweet novel about taking the first steps towards trusting again. But when love at first sight is the last thing you’re after, is a fairytale ending an impossible dream?

People will tell you that there is no essential difference between Monday and any other day of the week. The sun rises and sets just as it does on, say, Thursday. The meteorological patterns that govern the weather do not lay on any special horrors at Monday’s behest. It is not possessed by a malevolent alien life-force, nor is it occupied by evil spirits or gremlins. For Hope Shepherd, however, this was plainly so much tosh. When you were newly divorced, and all-at-odds with the world, Monday was a day like any other only in the same way that a rottweiler was like a poodle, or a self-assessment tax return was like a hair-appointment card. Thus, as she jogged the last fifty yards to Cefn Melin Station with a box-file under her arm and a thumping headache, she knew there was only one sure route to defeating the beast that was Monday and that was, simply, by getting better organised to deal with it: in particular, by remembering all those things that should never be done on a Monday. Like taking Friday’s lunchboxes out of school bags. Like being forced to acknowledge that you cannot put a tin of beans in a sandwich. Like taking the school uniform you have remembered to wash on Sunday evening out of the washing machine. Like noticing that you do not have twenty pence for your son’s bus fare. Like remembering you have failed to set the alarm again. Of course, you could just cancel Monday altogether. Or designate it a non-contact day, like teachers have from time to time. A day in which hopelessly disorganised people could pause, take stock and, well… get organised. Except Hope knew that if you did that, Tuesday would simply become The New Monday, which was why one of her New Year’s resolutions this year was to stop trying to re-schedule the Gregorian calendar and to simply lick herself into shape. It would be a challenge, however, because getting organised was not something that came easily to her. Getting organised was something her ex-husband used to do. And still did, no doubt. And would do in perpetuity. Hope didn’t do organised. Organised was boring. She used to do spontaneity and optimism, didn’t she? Yes. So much better. And optimism did work, in a roundabout way. Why fuss, for example, with the bother of remembering an umbrella if you knew perfectly well it wasn’t going to rain? Except now it was. Which struck Hope as unfair, and a metaphor for the state of her life generally. She shunted her bag higher on her shoulder and broke into a run. Missing the train was an absolute no-no, because the next wasn’t due for twenty minutes. She’d no business aiding and abetting a day that was already intent on frustrating her. This, she thought, as she scuttled down the ridiculously long flight of steps – the station was in a cutting – was what making all those New Year’s resolutions was really all about. Greeting every new day with a smile. Yeah, right. She bared her teeth, her breath whistling as it tried to keep up with her, and jumped the last two steps before sprinting towards the platform. Hope didn’t get the train often – she generally drove to work – but today she was off to the printers in town and had to bite the fetid bullet that was rush-hour commuting. She ran faster. The train, she saw, was already at the station. She braced her shoulders, quarterback style, in preparation for pressing her way into the fuggy interior. Even from outside, her nose prickled under the assault of anti-perspirant and perfume, of jackets smoked overnight in essence of chip fat, of cloying post-weekend early morning breath.

 

 

Barefoot in the Dark by Lynne Barrett-Lee
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