The Planted Series

This will be my new project running alongside the Danny Felix Adventures. Set in Northern Ireland in the 1980’s, these thrillers will draw heavily on my personal experiences of what life was like…

1.
February 1981

A kiss.

But not just any kiss. It was a kiss.

The kind that makes your throat click as you swallow involuntarily as the memory of it floats back into your mind hours, days, weeks later. And Conor knew this kiss would float in and out a lot.

He didn’t even care that it was raining.

As he stood there on the doorstep of the tiny, redbrick terraced house she shared with her mother and four siblings, ice cold drops were edging their way down under the collar of his fake leather bomber jacket, tracing a frigid, but not unenjoyable trail down his spine. Somehow it seemed to mingle appropriately with the goosebumps he could feel rippling along the back of his neck and down his arms.

She whispered into his ear; ‘You’ll catch your death out here in this.’

‘You know what they say about Belfast? If you can see Black Mountain it means it’s either stopped raining, it’s about to rain or it is raining.’

Her small chuckle sounded like music to him.

He took a deep breath, luxuriating in the sweet, shampoo-meets-cigarette-meets-perfume mix that was clinging to her hair. He couldn’t believe his luck, because this girl, this radiant, strong, fierce Irish girl had chosen to plant her lips on his. The kind of kiss that you only saw on the big screen down the New Vic picture house. A kiss that would live in his memory for years to come.

He shifted his feet to steady himself, ready to pull her tighter to him before enveloping her in a repeat of what they had already shared, but she slipped from his grasp, turned on her heel and opened the little, green front door.

‘Away on a that wi’ ye. My Ma will beat the face off you and then me if she sees we’re out here doing this.’ The expression on her face told Conor she wasn’t joking.

And she was gone. The door shut softly but decidedly in his face.

He took a moment. Disappointment merged with his elation, yearning tinged at the fringes of his nascent desire.

‘Fuck me. You’re some girl.’