Love Bites Synopsis
Love Bites is a series of short stories about relationships that bite. Relationships between men and women, friends, families and women and women. The protagonists are from different ages, and places, but they have one thing in common, love.
Relationships are complicated. Is there ever really such a thing as happy ever after? After all even in the happiest of relationships one person is usually left alone at the end, by death if not divorce. Each of the stories explore the complexity of the question, what is true love, and what happens when it ends. The stories vary from whimsical to dark with shades of light and humour.
In Grace, the first story, we meet the protagonist starting life over. The story is set in Spain in 1973, three years after Grace was on trial accused of murdering her husband. Grace had found out just what her ex-husband had been involved in after his death, and she has her own secret. Grace ponders what she learned about her past and how she will choose to move forward.
In All Change and Mind the Gap, Polly Brisbane a sixty year old single mother, who has been celibate for twenty years, survived breast cancer and the menopause, takes a lover. The sexual romp is not a success, as predicted by Speech Bubble, Polly’s nemesis, the voice of her long dead strict Presbyterian Grandmother. The story is contemporary set in 2018
In Fresh Compost, when Greta chooses Oscar, the shy professional architect has no idea how the trauma leaving Germany at the age of four has affected her. The story is set in Surrey and Lucerne, and begins in 1956.
In, A Moment in Time, the reader is invited into a relationship between Pam and Geoffrey. Pam is an older woman who takes a younger lover after they have both been widowed. This story is set between the Pennines and London in 2006.
The Herbalists, explores the love between two women, Maggie and Jo, a gift shop owner whose same sex relationship in a small village brings them under the evil eye of an evangelical priest. This story is set between 1957 and 1967 in a coastal village in Fife.
In Neighbours, a famous foodie, Mike and a wannabe Burlesque dancer, Anna, have a fling. The story is set in Bexhill and Catalonia in 2006.
In the final story, Sweet Dreams, we meet Harry who finds comfort in the garden Brenda created for them both. This story is set in the 2020 Covid pandemic.