This tale has its roots in an chance encounter.

We were on holiday in New Zealand. We stood high above Hastings, at a Viewpoint. A very elderly, dapper gentleman joined us.

As we chatted he revealed that he was originally from England, that he had emigrated to NZ as a £10 Pom in the 1950’s, travelling by boat. He found a girl, made a happy life, although there had been no children.

Two years earlier, after a long illness, his wife had died.

He had been lonely, cast adrift, and haunted by the thought of an old flame, a girl he had once loved but lost to another man, someone he knew well, a rival.

The idea that this lady might still be alive, and perhaps open to an approach, nagged and nagged. Eventually he had hopped on a plane and returned to Blighty, to search for her.

This lady, now a widow of many years, was living alone, her children scattered around the globe.

“Did you hit it off, after all those years?” my lips blurted, as they do.

“Oh Yes. And she decided to come back with me, for a holiday.”

“Did she like it?”

“Oh yes, I think so, she’s still here, that’s nine months now. She’s sitting in the car, just over there, having a snooze.”

The genesis of this little tale was a ‘five minute challenge’ to warm us up, at a Creative Writing Class.

Initially it was only about the bad tempered surgeon abusing his ‘minions’.

But, when I revisited it much later, the Muse provided this other tale, about two nice people ‘finding each other’.

Get out your box of tissues!

My friend Sheila is keen on ‘Women’s Rights for Lady Golfers’. And so am I!

Her daughter-in-law Lindsey, now a full-time Mum, was until recently a Theatre Nurse.

This tale is for them.

And for my friend Brian of the Morning Papers, and for Richard my brother, both of whom have had recent triple by-pass operations, both ‘doing well’.

We were on holiday, in Rosemarkie, with our caravan.

Whizzing along in our car one day, I saw a sign advertising a “Car Share Club”.

I started to write this piece, with no idea what would come from the Muse.

This is a piece which has drawn criticism.

It contains dark material.

I defend myself by pointing readers to the nightly news.

In my mind, however, this story is a ‘true romance’, albeit involving strange bedfellows.

I spotted some anomalies and revised it in February 2016.

This novella is rooted in the experience of someone who lives nearby.

It is a tale of an ‘ordinary’ woman who inherits great wealth under tragic circumstances, which did happen. (Is there such a thing as an ‘ordinary’ person?)

What I have written is an invention, a fictionalised version of events as they might have unfolded.

Once started, this story took hold of me for a few months.

Margaret got fed up with reading and re-reading it and it and eventually refused to continue.

Fortunately my friend Kareth from the Writers’ Circus, who is a brilliant published Editor, came to my rescue.

Kareth wanted me to ‘neutralise’ the story by removing the names of local businesses, but me, being the usual stubborn me, refused so to do.

Give it a couple of pages, it might grow on you.

This story arose from a challenge at the Writers’ Circus - we should choose a Proverb, and write a story about it.

The next weekend we went off to Edinburgh to stay with our friends Alan and Jean, in their brand new town house in Morningside. Part of the same impressive development, was a new block of luxury flats, the locus in my mind for this story.

I dug out a Bible that had belonged to my mother-in-law, Georgie. From it fell a greetings card sent to her from one of her Women’s Guild friends. The image on the front of the card was of a Sweet Sultan.

The story wrote itself.

You may note the input form the ubiquitous Maisie Kaywood, she of “Hook, Line and Sinker”.

(Please, do not use Sweet Sultans to make an infusion, unless you know that it is safe so to do! This is fiction, folks!)