much needed injection of cash after an old insurance policy came into fruition. Up to that point she was over £5,000 in the red, a debt we were liable for. I’m not entirely sure of all the exact details, but I can find them out, soon enough, if you want).
I have no idea what the money is for. I presume that it is to cover legal fees and other debts incurring to us as a result of this impossible situation (Rhona had sworn that ‘nothing on God’s good earth’ would impel her to touch a penny of the money. I can only guess that something important has changed her mind).
I am unhappy about the withdrawal, and I felt that it was only right to let you know about it. Can I assure you, though (for my own part, at least), that my determination not to access Glenys’s account remains as strong now as it ever was.
So there you have it. I’m not sure there’s anything left to add. If you still are resolved to pursue the case against us, thenall I can do is wish you well. I think it only fair to tell you, though, that both our lawyer, and Mr Baquir, seem to think your hopes of achieving anything by this course are not good.
Please see sense, Donovan! Don’t let foolish pride get in the way of a happy outcome. Stop this mess while it can still be stopped. We are your dear friends. We love you deeply. You are always in our thoughts and in our prayers,
Tilly
PS On a slightly lighter note: someone bought us a duck! He’s a Muscovy and very fine! Rhona sank a bath for him in the back garden, but he still persists in following me up on to the moor for a swim in the ghyll each morning. He had befriended a lone swan up there who unfortunately died after swallowing a load of fishing twine. By rights we should clip his wings (we’ve had complaints about him – he’s quite a beast!) but we’ve yet to catch the little devil!
Do take care.
XX
[letter 4]
1, The Old Cavalry Yard
The High Street
Burley Cross
Wharfedale
WD3 4NW
20/12/2006
Dear Mr Vesper Scott-Jones,
I am writing to you, care of your publishers, because I have contacted you via your website www.sky-turns-black.com on three separate occasions and have received no direct answer to my enquiries. Instead my questions (and my email) have ended up – in bastardized form – on a ‘fans’ forum’ to be chewed over and debated by other ‘fans’, which isn’t at all what I’d had in mind (and, to put it bluntly, their various contributions have, by and large, been nothing short of asinine).
If I had wanted to know what Joe Bloggs thought on a variety of issues relating to your ‘oeuvre’ I suppose I could always have strolled out on to the High Street, right here in Burley Cross (West Yorkshire), and conducted a small random poll myself (I don’t doubt that it would have taken me considerably less time and been infinitely more illuminating!).
It might interest you to know – by the by – that you have an Australian fan who haunts your site called AUSSIEHARDASS (I’m guessing he’s an Australian – of course this can’t be definitively proven) whose provocative views and coarse language I find especially difficult to stomach, as do many other contributors (I believe he answers to the general description of what they like to call ‘a troll’ in the lingo). I would suggest that his presence on the site is counter-productive and that all traces of him should be expunged from it as a matter of some urgency.
Perhaps this letter may serve to draw your attention to some of the other problems with the website: it’s slow to download, the graphics seem a little amateurish – far too much lime green for ‘average tastes’ – and there’s an irritating, somewhat gratuitous home-page which you need to double-click – several times, in my case – to gain proper access to the contents (I am presuming that you have some flunkey from your publishers running the show, or – worse still – that you are actually paying some wet-behind-the-ears graduate a
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