Silver Chains

By Jay Mountney

A middle-aged country lawyer seeks a partner via online chatrooms. He finds the man of his dreams but the course of romance is not smooth because of family problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Mountney
• Release date: Feb 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463896686

Jay Mountney

Jay is a writer who enjoys exploring themes including m/m romance, culture clash and coming of age, often through fantasy. She reads voraciously and her website/blog contains regular reviews. She lives in the north west of England in a seventeenth century cottage with erratic access to phone signals and internet.

Book preview

Silver Chains

by

Jay Mountney

Text and cover art copyright by Jay Mountney 2019

Smashwords Edition

I would like to thank Anel Viz and M.A.Naess for their beta and editing work. This story is dedicated to them in appreciation of their skills and kindness.

Chapter 1.

Angus read the page slowly and carefully. This one looked good.

Lonesome of Leamington Spa. Young-at-heart man in mid-fifties, medium build, GSOH, likes walking, music and theatre visits. Wants to meet similar for fun, friendship and maybe more. Replies with recent photo to PO Box 1928.

He cut it out and stuck it into an exercise book he’d turned into an album. He wouldn’t reply, of course. He never did. For a few weeks he would pretend, imagine the man who had placed the advert, and keep him as a kind of imaginary friend, like those he’d dreamed up in childhood. Then, when he was fairly sure that Lonesome had by now been joined in Leamington by a similar keen walker, with tickets to Stratford booked and paid for, he’d buy the paper again and find someone else to dream about.

He replaced the exercise book in a side pocket of his brief case where no-one would ever look. Of course, he thought fleetingly, it might be found when he died, but by then it wouldn’t matter. Meanwhile he had a position in the local community to live up to and plenty to do. Lonesome would keep him company while he did all his normal, everyday tasks.

And for a while, it worked. Lonesome was followed by Yearning of Yeovil, Ready from Reading and Despairing in Derby.

Then the ads seemed to dry up, become less tantalising. There were fewer possible imaginary friends available. There were also, he noted, fewer wedding announcements, wardrobes for sale, and odd-job-men (no task too small). He felt somehow bereft but also determined.

The exercise book was, he decided, an outdated way of keeping information. Printed newspapers were rapidly becoming obsolete in the twenty-first century. Loneliness, however, was less subject to technological progress, and besides, his innate caution never lessened. He buried the book in a drawer at home, and sought information at work, without risking interrogation.

For weeks Angus watched his secretary, asked carefully guarded questions, pondered. How hard could it be? Then a leaflet dropped through his door:

LearnDirect. Government Sponsored. As Near Free As Makes No Difference. Local. At Your Own Pace. Individual Learning.

Not that the cost mattered, but he liked the idea of ‘his own pace’ and the privacy, even anonymity.

Once when he was coming out of the centre, he met a younger colleague from his office. They smiled and tried to sidestep, but ended up shuffling in a mock dance. It