It is only two weeks to go to Publication Day on 18 March.
Am I ready?
Hopefully!
It is hard to believe that the book I have been writing and editing for so many years is finally about to be published. Friends have already been asking for signed copies: I guess I have two weeks to practice writing my name! (It is Catharine – with an A…) I can’t wait.
This week I’m going to share some excerpts from the book. I should start at the beginning…
Passport Pandemonium
It was as the Heathrow Express was dipping underground, leaving London and all that I knew behind, that calamity struck.
“Stephen, where are the passports?”
He stood up to check. They weren’t in his coat pocket. They weren’t in his rucksack. They weren’t even in the basket under the pram where we put everything else.
They were nowhere to be found.
We were still searching when the train pulled into the airport. I knew with a cold certainty that they were lost.
It wasn’t as if I had even wanted to emigrate. It had been a year since Stephen received the funding to do his medical research: anything to do with childhood malnutrition, dendritic cells or the immune system and he was in his element. We had both known the project meant living abroad for a couple of years, but I’d secretly hoped that something might stop this happening. What did Zambia hold for me? What if the children caught malaria? How would we cope far from family and friends?
Still, I didn’t plan for us to lose our passports an hour before departure.
(c) Catharine Withenay 2013
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