Coldharbour I: A Prologue in a Café
Alive again with Power in her blood and a name sounding through her soul like that cathedral clock chiming out six in the distance: Elizabeth. – Laura Clarke Walker, Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death
Er, why isn’t this in the actual book?
Okay, so Coldharbour I is the only book I’ve written so far in the series that doesn’t have a prologue of sorts, mainly because it didn’t need it and also because all of the writing advice I came across was ‘don’t write a prologue, the agent’ll throw your manuscript out the window!’
So officially, there’s no prologue.
However…
I then connected with the fantastic thriller writer Sam Evans. When I discovered that she had an standalone prologue for her first book In The Woods Somewhere, I downloaded it, read it, and fell in love with it instantly. I was immediately frustrated that the rest of the book wasn’t out yet (she let me read it before the release date, so all’s well that ends well).
Anyway, I filed this excellent idea in the back of my mind and let it percolate. So here’s the official prologue to Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death, from an exclusive POV:
The elusive Elizabeth Black.
Looking for a Rhythm Like You
Elizabeth flipped the calendar over to “October 1999” and crossed off yet another interminable day.
The best part of a month, she’d been here.
Just a quick job, an easy job, some respite after …
Her side twinged, those bruises still fresh even after a month, because there were just some things Power couldn’t heal and the little of what she could remember of the monastery, the smoke and the screaming and that iron tang of so, so much blood …
At least it hadn’t been Eleanor.
Although Eleanor, she could handle.
Better the Devil you know and all that.
However, Elizabeth had to stop pushing her luck, she knew that.
And this was just a favour, a favour that had her scrubbing the café counter just a wee bit too hard, nails curled under her knuckles, thumb outside her fingers, because it wasn’t that boring, was it?
They were dredging cadavers out the sea every other week in all states of bloat, not to mention the missing.
That weren’t normal, not even for Coldharbour.
He’d said it were a wee bit abnormal here, but that?
And Elizabeth had seen some stuff, alright.
And she was seeing it now.
Well, she smelt it first: the petrichor under the sea salt and cleaning fluid.
Outside.
A woman, five foot two, dark curls tied up, no coat but a suitcase.
It was her.
Elizabeth dragged her wallet from her apron and pulled out the Polaroid he’d given her:
Me & Lex, 19th February 1990
That was Lex – Alexandra. Alexandra Catherine Wilde, he’d practically babbled at her in his frankly unnerving panic. Well, there she was, alive and well. That was all she had to do, after all. Just report that back.
That Alexandra Catherine Wilde was alive and well, except there was no coat and her jumper was slipping down the jut of a shoulder and what was she staring out at anyway?
The sea?
And her Power …
It was as weak as piss.
Nothing like—
“Right,” Joe said, slapping his knee as he eased himself up from his usual seat, “open tomorrow?”
“Aye, Joe,” Elizabeth murmured, sliding the tip jar away from him as usual.
“One day …”
“And I’m not needing to take your pension.”
“No offence, love,” Joe said, wrestling his flat cap on, “but I think you need all the help you can get.”
Elizabeth was about to make her usual protest about having savings when she clocked the paper he’d left on the table.
“Today’s?”
Keeping her eye on the girl still just standing there, staring out to sea, Elizabeth slid around the counter and took the paper from Joe with a nod and an attempt of a smile.
So Elizabeth stared at the girl, who was still staring out to sea. She supposed her stragglers didn’t need a top-up of their tea, not that she was inclined to offer any other service at the present moment.
A moment that was already unravelling, because Elizabeth had plans, she was going to sit in that wee piddly little theatre in Crossgate and see if they could even attempt to do Puccini justice and now she had a paper tucked under her arm, a paper reporting yet another bloated beach body which must’ve been that kid they’d found on the spit a few days ago, and now the girl –
The woman.
She would’ve been thirty, after all.
The woman was pulling at the suitcase like it was pulling back at her, like a pitbull on a weak chain, and she was –
She was coming right for the café.
Shit.
They hadn’t discussed making contact, only –
“Hello,” Elizabeth made herself say, the “h” catching in her throat. “Good afternoon.”
The woman—
Alexandra—
No.
Just Alex.
Alex’s hand clenched around the suitcase as her eyes darted around the café before they finally landed on Elizabeth with a dark nerviness that was nothing like him at all and nothing like the girl in the Polaroid either.
“Alright?” Alex whispered, as if uttering a single word would crack open the sky.
Oh.
Elizabeth was fucked.
Buy Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death (out now)
