Can I Tempt You?

Here's a snippet of a bitter-sweet love story. It's the opening to Lost Love .

The workshop was not somewhere Sally O’Brien liked to go. She’d heard bad things about the place and worse things about Mr Halcyon, the man who owned it. But her dad needed her to run an errand there and she could never say no to her father.

Sally pushed open the wooden door with its creaking hinges, peeling pale blue paint and corroded lock. The smell of sump oil and something vaguely metallic but unrecognisable seeped into her nostrils. She hesitated. Peered into the darkness, bottomless after the bright sunshine outside. Dare she step inside?

‘Excuse me?’ she called out. ‘Is anyone there?’

A metallic sound of something being dropped rang out.

Heart racing, Sally stepped inside, and the shadows swallowed her as the door swung shut. All the half-told tales of people never seen again after a visit to the Halcyon workshop seemed scarily possible.

‘Hello?’ she called again.

The rolling sound of dolly wheels moving over concrete broke the silence, and then he appeared. A tall, lean silhouette moving easily towards her.

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