MEETING COTY by Ruth Estevez
ISBN: 978-1-906154-03-5 £10.99 pp170
Kings Hart Books - available now
About the Author
Ruth Estevez was born in Yorkshire. She has worked for Opera North and theatre companies from Pitlochry to Wigan Pier, but ultimately she always returns to writing. Since the birth of her two daughters, she has, amongst other things, written for the animated children’s programme ‘Bob the Builder’ and is a visiting lecturer in Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University. In her free time, she dances with the percussion group, Juba do Leao who play Northeastern Brazilian rhythms. ‘Meeting Coty’ is her first novel.
Reviews and comments on Meeting Coty here
Meeting Coty
Her younger sister eloped from under the Mother Superior's nose.
Her elder sister believed herself to be the Madonna incarnate.
Her mother spent entire days lying in bed, as still as a corpse...
While her father hid in his study eating Liquorice Allsorts.
One brother had a passion for the newly invented biplanes,
The other four ran the family business, Sherry imported from Spain.
And Tessa? Tessa decapitated flowers and plunged their heads into aromatic waters, submerged herself in death, wounded herself with love and dreamed of meeting Coty...
“Suspended like a small glider on a windless day, Tessa floated through the silent dining room, across the hallway, into the sun-lit drawing room and back again. As her white clad form passed by, she snapped blooms from the vast displays. She did not hesitate as she dropped each perfume-laden flower into the cotton basin that she’d made by pinching up the hem of her nightgown with her eight-year-old fingertips. She gathered her harvest noiselessly, her undersized bare feet soundless on both carpet and wood. Her reflected figure glinted in the dark, polished surfaces and brass inlay handles of the sideboards.
She paused at the foot of the stairway’s wooden banister and glanced with dark, hopeful eyes at the imposing front door. It was too early for the rattle of the milk cart. Too early for the postman. Too early to be downstairs alone in the Garcia household. But not too early to garrotte heady blooms from Tessa’s mother’s carefully arranged Covent Garden flowers.”
© 2007 Ruth Estevez
