Chapter 1

Chapter 1

.FOREWORD

The trouble with being invited to write the foreword to an anthology is that it can turn into a very expensive business. Of course, there will be writers with whose backlist one is familiar, who offer no new plums to be plucked from the pudding. But there will also be fresh meat for the hungry reader; writers earlier in their career than the old favourites, writers whose short fiction promises delights, writers who draw us to the booksellers so we can feed our habit with our credit cards.

And so it was for me with Afraid of the Christmas Lights. The TBR pile has grown higher as a result… And I can safely promise that you’ll have the same response. There are stories here to suit everyone, from the darkest of noir to the lightest of festive touches. And the joy of Christmas is that you can share the delight by giving it as a gift to all the
readers in your life – even the casual ones, because who doesn’t love a short story every now and then?

There’s an added bonus with this particular anthology. It comes with the added glow of virtue because the profits will be donated to ESDAS (www.esdas.org.uk) and
Rights of Women (www.rightsofwomen.org.uk), charities that provide support for victims of domestic abuse. It’s particularly relevant in these difficult days; lockdown in its various forms means that many victims have no hiding place from their abusers. There is already compelling evidence that levels of domestic abuse have risen significantly since COVID-19 restrictions were first imposed.

As the recent advertising campaign has it, ‘Domestic abusers always work from home.’ Charities like ESDAS are struggling to keep up with the calls on their services. Whatever support we can provide is vital.

This Christmas will be dramatically different for most of us from our Christmases past. But the comfort of reading is a constant. It’s a salve for isolation and a haven when we need to escape into someone else’s imagination. I hope you enjoy these Christmas bonbons as much as I have.

Take care and stay safe over the festive period.

Val McDermid

Christmas 2020

Chapter 1

Foreword by Alex North- author of THE WHISPER MAN

I’m writing the foreword to this book at an extraordinary time and in an extraordinary place.

The time is Saturday the 4th of April, 2020, at which point my country is in the grip of coronavirus. That means we’re effectively in lockdown, and I’m confined to my house, so the place I’m writing this from is my living room. Now – don’t get me wrong here – I like my living room. But it was not designed to handle this lack of traffic, and over the past
few weeks it has grown over-familiar to me, increasingly off-kilter and strange.

A bit like life itself, I guess.

I find it odd to think that a century from now the children of our children will be studying this period of time in their history lessons. They may well focus on numbers and statistics, but the most obvious change for me is the loss of contact. Human beings are social animals, after all, and right now we’re all adjusting to a new world of talking to each other
over the phone or in a video call, of smiling and nodding to a stranger across the street, of shouting conversations across a fence from a safe distance, or
down the queue outside a supermarket. Because the thing is, we’re human, and that’s what we do. We are – all of us – full of life, and of stories that
demand to be shared.

Not all stories are real, of course, and it seems to me that fiction is particularly well-suited to these days of social distancing. Somebody far smarter than I am described fiction as an act of telepathy: a writer, with an image in their head, describes it in words; and then a reader, interpreting those words, receives that image in their own head
– as if by magic. Crime fiction, to me, feels especially geared towards making sense of the world around us. In this volume, you will find stories by fourteen brilliant writers. The stories are wildly entertaining in their own right, of course, but they also address the concerns and fears we all feel: isolation and loneliness; guilt and grief; justice and punishment. And perhaps most importantly of all: redemption and hope.

Which brings me to the Samaritans. The flipside of having stories to tell is that you need someone there to listen to them. Well, that is what volunteers for the Samaritans do. Every minute of every day, every day of every year, people volunteer to answer calls from people, all of whom have stories to tell, many of them very sad stories indeed.
And whatever story you have to tell, the Samaritans do something extraordinary. They will not judge you; they will not offer advice or tell you what to do; they will simply listen to you. And no matter what you’re going through, over the course of that phone call, you will know that you are not alone.

That’s the least we all need.

I hope you enjoy the stories to follow. I started by saying we were in an exceptional place, but I think the fundamentals remain the same: we have stories to tell, and we need people to listen. By purchasing this collection, you have helped. Keep reading, I reckon. Keep hearing, absolutely.

And most importantly of all, keep listening.

Stay well and stay safe,

Alex North, April 2020