Description

By Helen Poskitt

ISBN: 978-1-84991-804-6
Published: 2012
Pages: 298
Key Themes: obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), fiction, recovery, romance

Description

Bubbles (aka Undine) is the heroine of this initially gritty, London-based romance. It is also the story of her recent realisation of the fact that she has a condition called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and charts her infatuated relationship with an unscrupulous therapist, Alexander.

Soon the story lightens, along with her personal circumstances, as she meets Gabriel and begins to have happier and healthier relationships with those around her.

About the Author

Helen Poskitt is a graduate in Women’s Studies & English Literature and an ex-freelance Journalist with a portfolio of published magazine articles and poems. This is her first novel – although a TV sitcom and a film script, both co-written with Patrick Whittaker, attracted favourable attention from such as Hat Trick Productions and the BBC a few years ago.

Helen is currently writing a Play, a Comedy entitled ‘Check!’, connected with her novel, Rising to the Surface.
The Play is due to be staged at a London Fringe venue in 2008.
She is also writing a Thriller, based in Cannes, France.

In the past, Helen has travelled extensively, usually on foot with a backpack, and undertaken a variety of jobs. She now lives alternately in London (on a boat) and France (in a bleak apartment) – often with her husband Jonathan Bingham and three rescued cats.

Book Extract

You know, Bubbles is behaving oddly, upstairs.’ Matilda said quietly to Chloris as she entered the kitchen. Chloris was making bread, white fingers pulling and kneading the pale elastic bread dough. She pushed the door closed with her foot and turned wide blue eyes on Matilda, ‘Why, what’s she doing?’
‘She keeps opening her bedroom door, she’s on the landing, peering round it, then pulling it to, not closing it, then doing it all over again.’
‘Do you think we should talk to her?’
‘I don’t know. She looked at me as I passed but she was very pale and strange. She was muttering something too.’
‘You know that awful conversation last week, when she kept asking if we thought if she was a coward?’
‘Yes, why did she keep asking the same questions, was she not listening or something? It felt as though if I gave the ‘wrong’ answer she might crack up.’
‘I know. I almost said, what answer do you want me to give? It reminded me of being at work.’
‘It’s like living with a stranger. I used to think when I first moved in she hadn’t got a care in the world.’
‘There’s something wrong there. She’s manic, look at the amount of housework Bubbles does. She was washing the wainscoting in the hall early yesterday morning, really scrubbing at it, talking to herself, and I have to go out now when she starts labouring away with that ancient hoover.’

‘It’s a bit difficult to do that at seven in the morning. I’m glad I’m at the top of the house, Dion and I can’t really hear it up there. Perhaps she’s taking too much speed?‘
‘I’d feel bad if I asked her to leave when she’s having a difficult time. I just wish she would pay some rent. Vivienne was really fed-up with her, and Finn, at the last meeting.’
‘I know. She owes me too.’
‘Oh well,’ Chloris added briskly to Matilda’s surprise, dropping the dough into a baking tin: ‘I like Undine, odd-bod that she is.’
‘So do I, you can’t help it somehow.’

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