Paperback: 390 pages
Publisher: Wild Pressed Books Ltd; Second edition (13 Sept. 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0993374085
ISBN-13: 978-0993374081

Welcome to my turn to host the tour for Another Rebecca. My thanks to Rebecca for the extract and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the invitation.

There is a super giveaway for 2 paperback copies and 5 Kindle copies, details of how to enter are below but first take a look at the book.

| About the Book |

A gripping psychological family drama about Rebecca Grey, a sensitive girl who’s spent her childhood caring for her alcoholic mother, Bex. They lurch from one poverty-stricken situation to another until Rebecca is hospitalised with exhaustion. While there, she has an illness-triggered hallucination which entangles her deeper than ever into her mother’s psyche. As an art student, Rebecca can’t understand why she is repeatedly impelled to paint a white horse in a blue landscape. And then there is the boy with yellow hair who she glimpses from the corner of her eye.
Bex’s life was frozen by a shocking tragedy when she was nineteen. Her ‘great grief’ caused her to make a decision which nobody must ever find out about. Rebecca has been implicated in her mother’s lies since the moment of her birth, a fact that her father, Jack, has no inkling of.
As Rebecca gets to know her father’s new family, the gap between her and her mother widens. The mystery of Bex’s dark past comes into focus when an old woman she has never met contacts Rebecca, claiming to be her grandmother.
The thunder of hooves is getting closer for both Rebecca and Bex and the blond-haired boy is more and more often in Rebecca’s dreams. Can Bex continue to keep Rebecca in the dark about the circumstances of her birth, or will the final twist in her tail set Rebecca free to make a new life of her own?
Adapted from a short story written by the author when she was an art student, Another Rebecca was inspired by the painting There is no Night by Jack B. Yeats.

EXTRACT

The photograph on the next page is a close up of the happy couple. It looks to be taken in the same place as the previous picture; flower arrangements in huge bowls with ribbons tied around them pushed up against the walls in the background, fairy lights strung across the ceiling.

Out of focus partygoers look towards the camera behind the loving pair; dancers who have out-flung arms are stilled forever in the distant space of the dance floor.

My mother looks beautiful. Her face is so similar to the one I see when I look in the mirror, except there’s a poise about her I don’t feel I’ll ever have; a visible confidence of her rightful place in the world. She looks… the words that come to mind are ‘well fed’, but I don’t mean with food. She gives the impression of having had all her needs met. Like how my half-brothers came across to me when I first saw them. Completely loved and cared for, appropriately cultivated. It’s impossible to correlate this image of Mum with the one of her sleeping in the armchair, mouth open, sunken-cheeked, old before she ought to be.

But it’s not these notions, the way I feel when I look at my mother’s face a lifetime – my lifetime ago, making my head spin, chest tighten up, sweat prickle on my hot face.

It’s him. Sebastian. The boy from my dream, the one on the white horse.

I have pressed my head against the chest of my mother’s fiancé, I know I have, his chin dug into my shoulder, the sound of his heart against my ear. I remember how his hand cupped the back of my head, his fingers trailed my skin. In turn I positioned my fingertips on each knobble of his spine, divining his strength beneath the muscles and bone.

I could describe precisely the scent of his neck just below his ear, the exact shade of his hair when the light from a pale purple sky glimmered on it.

I can say what it felt like to stand under the hot breath of a horse, this boy’s arms around me, and have him speak to me as if he would never love anyone else as much as he loved me.

When I experienced all of those things, I felt the way I somehow know my mother felt at the moment that photograph was taken.

“Oh God…”

The sound of my voice dissipates into the dim quiet of my room. I pull my knees up to my chest under the quilt, flex and then curl up my fingers, open my palm again and stare at it as if it could help me understand what’s happening. There’s no logical explanation for the fact that I know him, that he’s mine.

Not my mother’s.

There’s something completely wrong about this, as if everything has happened backwards. It was me he kissed, me he said he loved; not her.
He can’t have been hers; it was me he offered to take to Oblivion.

But my heart sinks even as I’m forced to acknowledge that he changed his mind. He brought me back, told me I was the wrong one. The sensory memory of those unexplained moments is as strong now as when his arms were wrapped around me, the pungent scent of his horse wafting over us in that purple, mystical landscape.

I’ve never felt more miserable and alone in my life. Jane Grey was right; I made a mistake allowing my mum to persuade me to come and live here.

My relationship with Connor is over; Mum’s disappeared into her own past and I’m perched on the edge of a precipice.

I look at my hands and I’m scratching at my arms, red marks appearing on them. My skin feels prickly, heat rising from the inside.

I look at the picture again, ignoring my mother’s eyes adoring Sebastian.

Don’t look at her, look at me.

It’s a college day. I should have got out of bed at seven, taken Dusty for a walk, settled him in the stables and got my moped out of the garage for the five-mile ride into Leicester. But it’s already 8 o’clock and I can’t be bothered.

I look at my phone to check the time and see there’s a missed call from Connor. If only he’d answered his phone when I wanted to talk to him last night. He left a voicemail this morning at 6am.

“Hi Rebecca, sorry I missed your call darlin’. Would ya believe I had to drive me eejit brother to the emergency department to have his finger sewn back together? He went an’ sawed it practically in half the daft eejit. Mam and Dad’d had a drink so it was down to yours truly here to do the drivin’. Anyways, he’s fine now, our Riley. Give us a call back at lunchtime if you want? Love ya.”

I want to but I can’t, I wouldn’t know how to talk to him today, not after last night. I have feelings for my mother’s dead fiancé; how do I start to deal with that?

| Author Bio |

Tracey is the author of four novels, The Last Time We Saw Marion, (2014) Of His Bones (stand-alone sequel to The Last Time We Saw Marion, 2017) and The Eliza Doll (2016). Another Rebecca was originally published by Inspired Quill in 2015 but has been enhanced and has a beautiful new cover for its re-release in September 2018 by Wild Pressed Books. Tracey’s novels have been described as both poetic and painterly.

Tracey is also a poet and a visual artist. All her work is inspired by the emotions of her own experiences and perceptions. She has a Fine Art MA (University of Lincoln) and a BA Hons Visual Studies (Humberside Polytechnic). She has exhibited throughout the UK (as Tracey Scott). Most importantly, she is the mother of four grown-up children, who have astonished and inspired her.