ShortBookandScribes #BlogTour #Extract from A Random Act of Kindness by Sophie Jenkins @sophiejenkinsuk @AvonBooksUK
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for A Random Act of Kindness by Sophie Jenkins. I have a fab extract to share with you today. My thanks to Sabah Khan for the place on the tour.
It only takes a moment, to change a life for ever…
Fern is too busy making sure other people feel good about themselves to give much thought to her own happiness. But somehow, without her noticing, life has run away from her.
Suddenly, Fern realises her vintage clothes business is struggling, and the casual relationship she’d always thought she was happy in doesn’t look so appealing.
But sometimes, karma really does come through. And when Fern goes out of her way to help 85-year-old Dinah, little does she realise their new friendship will change her life.
Dinah may have troubles in her past, but she’s lived and loved to the full. Can Dinah show Fern that even the smallest acts of kindness can make the world a better place?
If you liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine or How to Be Happy, you’ll love A Random Act of Kindness.
‘Rubbish, lad! I’ve taken wardrobes and beds up and down these stairs without taking the door off. You telling me you can’t get my wife down here? There’s nothing of her.’
He looks at me with sudden concentration as if he’s translating my words from a foreign language.
‘Yeah. Okay. We’ll have another go.’
I follow him into the dining room, where the door to the stairs is open and the edge of a trolley is wedged in the doorframe.
I stand on the bottom step next to the lad and take a quick look. Enid’s strapped tightly to the trolley, underneath a red blanket, as if she’s not dead but just chilly and likely to spring off it at any minute, protesting at the damage to the paintwork. I shake my head – if she were alive now, there’d be ructions.
‘You want to back up a bit, you won’t get it through at that angle,’ I tell the lad.
He gets hold of the trolley. ‘Back up a bit,’ he tells his dad.
They back up and disappear from view.
A muffled voice asks impatiently, ‘Now what?’
I’ve never had a high opinion of myself. Didn’t make it to grammar school – it was the technical college for me. But the older I get, the more faith I have in myself because people don’t know how to think for themselves anymore. That’s what’s wrong – they don’t have to figure things out – they get a google to do their thinking for them. I haven’t got a google. I do things the old way. ‘Hold her vertically,’ I say.
‘Okay, Kim. Gotcha. You go back in the sitting room, leave it to us. We’ll call you when we’re done.’
I smooth my hand down the waxed woodgrain of the door. Take the door off? How did they think that would help? The door opens outwards. They’d have to take the doorframe off.
Standing in the dining room, I can hear grunts and curses up the stairs; they’re more like builders than undertakers. To them, it’s just a job.
‘You’re having the funeral in the crem,’ the lad says when he reappears in the doorway and sees I’m still there.
Sophie Jenkins’s debut novel The Forgotten Guide to Happiness is published by Avon. After studying creative writing at City University, Sophie took an MA in Prose Fiction at Middlesex University and finds that the creative stimulation of belonging to writing groups wonderfully balances the solitude of writing. She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Romantic Novelists’ Association and lives in lively north London. In The Forgotten Guide to Happiness, Sophie explores the enduring happiness of love that persists even when memories are fading, and its life-changing effect on those who witness it.Author photo and bio taken from Amazon
