Paula Hillman, author

Looking back at my fourth novel, Chapel Field, made me realise how much I love the fictional Diamond family. I keep coming back to them in my writing and musings. The themes are so compelling: small town dysfunctional families, small town secrets; generational trauma. Chapel Field is my favourite novel in the mystery series I created, and I particularly enjoyed the way Lenny Diamond’s mistakes in 1945 drove the rest of the story. Here’s a peek at the prologue introducing Lenny…

Walney Island, 1945

Lenny Diamond

An evening in late summer, long shadows, crowds of midges. Lenny Diamond pulled his truck onto a patch of shingle at the edge of the wood. No one was about, not even the last stragglers from shipyard kick-out time; he was alone. He rested his forehead on the rim of the steering wheel and tried to contain the joy threatening to punch its way out of his belly like a wild thing. He’d become a father. A father. Twenty-four hours of pacing corridors in the maternity home, smoking one roll-up after another, hoping he didn’t smell of oil and rust, then she’d done it, his Maisie-Anne: she’d given him a son.

A pail full of barley stout bottles rattled in the footwell. He grabbed one then climbed out of the truck, dropping heavily onto the shingle. From this part of the beach, it was possible to look across the water to the mainland, to a jumble of brick chimneys and the back-end of the shipyard sheds. The new housing estate, too: a place his wife coveted as much as he loathed.

The tide was halfway in, a wide band of glittery blue cutting into the drab of the mudflats. He knocked the cap of his bottle against a rock and gulped down a first sweet mouthful of the stout. A breath of sea-wind touched his face, and he inhaled deeply. Having a child was the best of things to happen. And the worst. One way or another he would have to get May and the baby a proper home. Living in the caravan didn’t bother him; he was a traveller. But she needed more.

The wood caught his eye whenever he drove through this village: Chapel Field, full of old cottages and barns, huddled together at an angle to the sea, as though they were fighting the island weather. Those places would not suit him, even if he did have money. Privacy was what he wanted, and where better than a sea-wood.

His boy had no name yet, but he was thinking something like Richard. Richard Leonard Diamond. Perhaps Ritchie for short, Rick for his friends and Rikki for his lovers. Another wash of emotion followed his next glug of beer, and Lenny had to sit for a moment and settle his giddiness. His son might have sons: being a granddad in the future was something he hadn’t thought about; a new line of Diamonds, children with his height and May’s way of smiling.

There had been the opportunity to hold his baby, given grudgingly by a pair of hefty women wearing dark uniforms, eyes like the slits in a post-box. But it had been enough. He’d not felt a rush quite like it, not even when he’d first set eyes on May. With utter certainty, he knew he would kill for this tiny boy, with his head of dark thick hair and angry frown. And he wouldn’t let him spend his life dealing scrap metal. An actor, perhaps, or an artist, that would be exactly right for little Richard Diamond.

Further along the shingle, where the borders of beach and wood blurred, were two gigantic boulders, looming upwards, peaks hidden by a mass of tangled branches. Lenny had the urge to climb, to get to the top of the world and shout his victory at the sky. Until this moment, his life had been full of small wins: a good price for copper piping, a winter passed and not gone to his chest. Today felt like he could hold his head up proudly and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other men.

His boots had a hulking set of treads, and he was up the boulders in a few seconds and thinking he could jump from here and into the wood. He could do anything today, it was his; the universe had his back. With a swing of his arms, he flung himself forward onto a square of bramble and mud, and kept his momentum going until he’d entered the wood proper. What a place it was. The light of evening filtered through a canopy of green, becoming grainy and enveloping in the most comforting way. Lenny liked the feel of it. He knew what happened in wide-open spaces, knew the prying and judging that went on in plain sight.

The trees thinned out once he’d walked a few more paces, muddy paths trodden between them. Hardly being able to read, he had no way of naming anything but holly bushes and stringy nettles reaching for the light. That people used the wood was obvious, and he could smell smoke; woodsmoke.

He picked his way between silvery tree-trunks and shrubby overgrowth, enjoying the way early leaf fall felt like the best kind of carpet. If he could clear an area of thicket, he could build a house. Right here. May would love it. He would give her a garden and the boy could have a bedroom, and no one would stare and judge because there would be trees for protection.

‘What you doing here?’

Lenny gasped like he’d been punched. Lost in his little world of playing house, he hadn’t seen or heard the man now standing in front of him. He was dressed in the working uniform of a docker: greasy cap and jacket with a string belt, heavy boots. His face was soft and flabby, small features sunk deep. Another man appeared from behind him, the difference being his hard-edged expression.

‘Alright, fellas.’ Lenny scanned around the wood: there were only two of them. Easy. ‘Cooking up some supper, are you? Feel like some company?’ He pulled the half-drunk bottle of stout from his pocket. ‘I’ve got more of this back in my truck.’

‘I asked a question,’ the first man said, then hawked up something from the back of his throat and spat on the ground between them.

‘And he should answer, shouldn’t he, Butch.’ The second man shuffled forward, pulling a cigarette from between his lips and grinding it out under his heel.

Whatever pulse of pecking-order excitement Lenny had been feeling was quickly turning into something that burned. ‘And I don’t feel the need to answer, right now. I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s not your business. Unless you’re saying this wood is private property, and I don’t think it is.’

‘Listen to him.’ The second man stuck out his chin. ‘Not from round here, are you.’ He scanned Lenny’s overalls and donkey-jacket. ‘You’re one of them gyppos what’s living down the south end. I’ve seen you. Bloody offcomers.’

That word. Offcomer. His life was contained within the sound of it. A flash of hot anger made Lenny bite his teeth together, but he wasn’t stupid. Resolution was better with no blood spilt.

‘I bet there’s good lamping up here,’ he said, deliberately relaxing his posture. ‘Not that I’m looking for new places. As you say, I live on the south end of the island and the dunes are teeming.’

The men eyeballed each other. Lenny took another swig of beer. He braced himself. He knew how quickly things could turn nasty. And they did.

The first man took two steps towards him and grabbed the lapels of his jacket.

‘Teeming with vermin is exactly what them dunes are,’ he growled. Lenny was close enough to his face that he could see the dirt ingrained in a spread of enlarged pores, smell the meaty tang of his breath. ‘So you’d better get back there. Or better still, piss off out of town altogether.’

Lenny lost his wish for good sense. He swung his fist back then swiped it into the side of the man’s head. Boxing had never been his strong point. He liked a dirty fight; temples, not chins. The man released his grip and stumbled sideways. Lenny wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. He lunged for the other man, swung his boot to groin-level and connected, bracing himself for an assault launched from behind when the man recovered.

As soon as he felt the weight across his shoulders, he let his knees buckle. His assailant was propelled by personal momentum, then collapsed in a heap of coat and boots. Lenny added a few kicks for good measure. Both men were down now and trying to find their breath. This wasn’t how he wanted the atmosphere to be between him and other people. So many times he’d tried to make a good impression, tried to find common ground, but the endings always looked like this one: Lenny Diamond, a line in the sand and the rest of the world crouched on the other side and snarling.

‘This isn’t what I’d planned, fellas,’ he shrugged. ‘And wouldn’t it be awkward if I turned out to be the owner of this little patch.’ When one of the men seemed to be rousing, he added, ‘I’m not. But help me out by telling me who is, before I leave you in peace.’

One of the men hauled himself up and for a moment Lenny thought he wasn’t done. Then he held up his hands and spoke through gritted teeth.

‘I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but you can bugger off. The wood’s ours. Chapel Field folks, like, and we don’t want you and yours anywhere near.’ He turned to the other man, now also on his feet. ‘Two of us might not be able to give you trouble, but there’s plenty more who’ll join us next time, believe me.’

‘Oh, I do.’ Lenny finished the last dregs of his beer, draining the bottle slowly, keeping his eyes on the men. ‘Believe you, that is. But you’d be surprised what money can buy. And us gyppos have always got plenty.’ He threw the bottle, so it landed between them, then turned his back and stalked away, more determined than ever to own a portion of this wood.