Sample

Chapter 1

\"Wake up Finchy!\"
Christopher Martin Finch lay flat out on his back in the front garden of his home, 43 Cromwell Road, Slough, Berkshire; staring straight toward the morning sky, trying to focus on a British Airways jumbo jet as it boomed its way out of Heathrow airport on its way to some far-flung exotic place.
He was clutching a small wooden sign embossed with the words 'Finches nest' to his chest.
\"Urghhh,\" he spluttered. Thinking Velcro gob as he disengaged his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
\"God at least you're alive!\"
Chris slowly opened his eyes further, adjusting them to the brightness of the new day. Standing over him was Vincent Swift, his friend and neighbour and in moments of matey kebab-munching drunkenness, best mate!
Swift and Finch 'Birds of a Feather' as they were known at school.
\"What do you mean? At least I am alive!\" Chris was beginning to feel the early-morning dew slowly seeping through his outer clothing, consisting of a sweatshirt some hawaiian shorts and very little else.
\"It's not every morning you find your best mate flat on his back in his front garden!\" Vinny was visibly confused. Looking straight into his friend's normally pale grey but today – Saturday April 13th 2003 – bloodshot semi-vacant eyes. With this last retort Chris realised his friend was genuinely concerned for him, he'd called him his best mate, when he wasn't drunk and hadn't sworn!
As he lay there the events of the previous night began to come into focus. But why was he lying on his back in his front garden? \"Urghhh.\"

Six weeks earlier Chris Finch was, he thought, a happily married man. At thirty-two years of age he had: two kids, Charlotte aged ten and George six; a house, his own small business, and a dog called 'Bisto' – named as a puppy by Chris's mother as the descriptive aftermath of the temporary failure of the mongrel's internal digestive system under the strain of three scavenged giant Toblerone bars including ancillary packaging! Oh, and a wife, Christine, whom he loved with all his heart and a little bit more. He had loads of good friends, a lovely family, and a healthy disposable income, life was good.
Chris was a mechanic – not just a mechanic but also an engineer. From a very early age – conception as his mother would have you believe – he loved machinery. At the age of fifteen he bought his first car with a fifty-quid loan from his dad. Chris couldn't remember what make of vehicle it was, as far as he was concerned it was the mechanics not the aesthetics that was the thing of beauty. Working every spare hour he had to create mechanical perfection. Chris remembered the size and sound of the engine, the bore, the brake horsepower, the transmission type, the smell of the oils he used, the exact torque required to tighten the spark plugs and the gap required for the points. But no! He couldn't even recall the colour of the car.
So from school, aged sixteen, this bright semi-academic lad took his love of mechanics out into the flesh-pits of Slough and Eric Brookers garage.
Brooky must have been in his late fifties and was a real grease monkey. At that time in the mid-eighties the government offered various incentives to small businesses to take on youngsters and allow them day-release at the local technical college, alongside a trade apprenticeship. Chris's dad knew Brooky who, in a moment of uncharacteristic charity following beers at Chris's dad's works social, took the young Chris on. He also knew that for the first year of Chris's employ a he could claim back a large percentage of Chris's salary from the government, and surely the kid wouldn't last a year! So fifteen pounds per week became twenty-five pounds on the official forms and Brooky was happy!
Brookers garage was, under the Trades Description Act just about a garage, nothing more than a glorified lock-up, two security doors in and a covered workshop with small office. A foul, ammonia-smelling, sinus-clearing WC, whose dripping echoed through the cobbled yard and would drive the most accomplished of Japanese water torturers mad, completed the facilities. Brooky's contribution to hygiene at the garage was not of the highest order.
Situated between the town centre of Slough and Langley the business was most definitely 'private'! Resprays, clocking, new chassis and engine numbers and dodgy MOTs! If you knew Brooky you could phone up in the morning with your vehicle details, he would ask you a series of questions about the car, including some mechanical ones like, \"it's a Cortina, nice drive?…Good,\" and you could pick up the certificate at lunchtime for the official fee, supplemented by Brooky's unofficial one! Chris, in the running for most naive boy of the year, kept his head down and learned not only about fraud and deception but cars and how they work. Chris had never been so happy, he was living at home had cash in his pocket, was doing what he loved and was also in love.
Christine Mann was Chris's childhood sweetheart, they met at primary school in 1978 where he would pull her hair and try to take a look up her skirt when she least expected it! They both transferred at the age of eleven – Chris first as he was a year older – to the local comprehensive school. When Christine followed, Chris became her minder and mentor, they became inseparable. Christine took a bit of convincing at first probably due to the primary school fascination with her blue knickers. Chris knew she was the one for him even though he had nothing at all to base this feeling on. This pretty blonde girl with a radiant smile, blue eyes and a tiny but shapely figure, was his soul mate. Although shy, she was a popular girl and Chris was always paranoid that some other bastard was going to muscle in on her and she would go off, but she never did.
Chris, with Brooky's salary, could now afford to take Christine out. Simple places like the pub with friends, the cinema and girly films that Chris didn't mind so much as long as there was a car chase at the end!
Christine left school at sixteen with eight grade 'B' and 'C' GCSEs then spent two years at the local technical college studying for her BTEC National Diploma in business studies, learning basics such as touch-typing and computing for small businesses and moving on to accounts procedures.
Hard work paid dividends when she was offered a position as a junior accounts clerk with the local authority's fleet management control department. Here she was involved in the day-to-day finances of fleet management. She felt she could have walked blindfolded to the local post office after the number of times in her first month of work she'd been sent to collect vehicle tax discs for the department.
The sound of wedding bells was imminent for the young couple, not that there are many bells at Slough registry office! But they were married and that's what they wanted, it was their destiny.
Whilst on the council waiting list for housing, they lived with Chris's mum and dad in their neat terraced villa not far from the town centre and a stone's throw from the chocolate factory where Sonny Finch, Chris's dad, worked as an engineer. Most engineers end their working day covered in oil, slurry, and swarfe, Sonny used to come home covered in chocolate. Depending on what production line he was on he would smell of either dark or milk! He would cycle home, chased by the neighbourhood dogs, weaving along throwing sample blocks to get them off the scent. Chris remembered he and his mother, Jane, waiting for the old man to park his bike and come through the kitchen. They would take theatrical deep breaths and call out firstly milk or plain. Then if he was on the selection section that week, would try to guess what centres the machine he had been servicing had been dispensing. A lot of the clues were about the man himself!
It wasn't long before the young couple were offered a house at 43, Cromwell Road on the airport side of Slough. A two-bedroomed red brick and tile end-of-terrace with a long narrow front garden, shared side and rear access, and back garden with a large shed. Chris carried Christine over the threshold and christened their new home 'Finches nest', and even made a sign that he hung proudly over the front door. A nest it proved to be as within the year their first child Charlotte was born, a carbon copy of her mother and a child who could scream for Britain!
This was a defining moment in Chris Finch's twenty-one years. He was a potential homeowner as the opportunity to buy 'Finches nest' was on offer from the council. He was also a husband and father and, although he didn't know it, was about to become a garage owner.

View Synopsis View Reviews View Information Purchase Options