Spies, Lies & Consequences

In the 1960s the UK Pharmacy chain - Boots the Chemist - as it was then known - operated a subscription lending library. A light romance book - titled The Sandy Shore - has many borrowers, some interesting, some dull. The book tells his own story and gives you snapshots of their lives as he sees them as borrowers. One borrower (Anne) buys it when the library closes in 1966. The character in the romance (Sandra) seeks new horizons in her fictional life and this resonates with Anne and she decides to do likewise in her real life. She awaits what chance serves up, like flotsam and jetsam on the shore where she lives in Pembrokeshire. She talks to Sandra as an intimate diary and to the book itself which, in her mind, becomes a personality (Book). An affair with an old boyfriend (Nelson) from Royal Navy days when she was a WRNS in a local naval station (Kete) has dramatic consequences.

The affair ends with an almighty bust-up when she realises he is as rotten as her navy friend naughty Christina always said he was. There is then a long period of normality and she continues as a normal happily married woman. However, the past has a habit of catching up with you and does so half a lifetime later with dramatic consequences for Anne and for Book. He ends up in the mansion library of the Bletchley Park museum, where Anne’s mother had worked during WW2 when it was an ultra-top secret code-breaking operation. From his library shelf, Book ponders on the shattering events he has witnessed and wonders how it will end. After all - who knows what tomorrow may bring?