Authors and their Books – Ashley Meggitt

Introduction

At the end of 2012 I applied for a place on an MA in Creative Writing and submitted, as part of the application process, what would prove to be the first chapter of my novel ‘The Dark Chorus’. After completing the MA in 2015, I finished writing the novel but set it aside while I started on a career change. However, serendipity worked its thing and the novel is now published. It’s as much a mystery to me as to anyone else as to why I wrote this particular story, but sometimes things just happen. Extract A bee bumbles against the glass of the window, its comically small wings buzz in annoyance – it wants out. I hum quietly to it to calm it down. I have always had an affinity with bees, in fact with all sorts of creatures, but bees in particular. It quietens and as I put my hand out it lands gently in my palm and turns its engine off. I take a moment to admire its beauty and then carefully place it by a broken windowpane. It senses freedom, fires up its engine again and launches itself into the fresh autumn morning.

I’m waiting, so I spend the rest of the day walking the buildings letting serendipity guide me, amusing myself by checking through the scattered remnants of the inmates’ belongings. I find a few photographs, some medical notes, and sad, unintelligible letters never sent; snippets of lives never knowingly lived. Dusk comes, and I sit and watch from the comfort of a peeling wooden bench. It washes over the late afternoon sky and with each moment the granularity of the darkness becomes finer until night finally falls. I listen to what I call the Dark Chorus; the chatter of the lost souls, those that have died here but, for whatever reason, cannot pass on. The chatter is not beautiful like the dawn chorus, it’s chaotic, jumbled, laced with anxiety and fear. It doesn’t frighten me. I’ve heard it from birth. It’s sad, and I wish I could help them. It’s time Almost every day for the past six months I have gone about the business of collecting these souls. I do this because I am looking for one in particular. I know she is here, but I cannot pick her out from amongst the cacophony of incessant monologues. So, I collect these immortal remains one at a time in order to lessen the noise, to hear more clearly.

I know my mother is dead because I felt her die. Her death pulled at my own soul, nearly tearing it from my body. Our connection stretched and pulled and threatened to slip from my grip. I held on with grim determination to save her from passing on, but in my ignorance, I condemned her to a half-life in the Dark Chorus. From that moment on guilt has clouded my every thought, so I decided to leave Shelly Fields and return to my birthplace, to put things right. Biography My name is Ashley Meggitt and I’ve lived in Fowlmere for just over 20 years with my wife Jane and, until they left home, my children Ben and Lucie. I left school early to join a psychedelic rock band when I realised that sex, drugs, and rock and roll was a thing. Subsequently I went back to education and became head of IT for a Cambridge University College. In recent years I’ve retrained in psychology and am now an associate lecturer in sports psychology at ARU, where I’m also studying for a PhD. I’m a triathlete when the mood takes me, a rock musician, and a would be photographer with the Melbourn photography club.

The Dark Chorus is available on Amazon as an ebook or a paperback. www.ashleymeggitt.com www.facebook.com/ashleymeggittbooks twitter.com/CallMeReg www.instagram.com/ashleymeggitt39/

Photograph Sam Buchanan

Are you or a friend an author with a published book? Tell the readers of Melbourn Magazine about how and why you came to write your book, provide an abridged extract, and some biographical details. Contact Melbourn Magazine for full details email: melbournmagazine@ gmail.com Telephone: 261144.