Twice Goodbye

Leanne Kenyon is the love of Frankie McDowell's life, someone he feels destined to be with forever, a destiny affirmed in his mind by the birthdate they share: he senses that they are twinned in some way.

With little more than a week to go until his - and Leanne's - fortieth birthday, Frankie's need to be with Leanne is starting to consume him. However, there are two major obstacles to the fulfilment of his desire: firstly, he has been happily married to the steadfast and loyal Donna for fifteen years; and, secondly, he has no idea where Leanne might be, having lost contact with her in tragic circumstances twenty years before.

In the face of opposition from his brother, Irving, who urges him to leave Leanne in the past, "where she belongs", Frankie resolves to head north, a long way north, to Fleetpool, the rundown seaside town where he and Leanne had been together (often living rough, owing to Leanne's psychological problems) two decades before.

For Frankie, that period of his life, though fraught with the necessity to survive on the mean streets of Fleetpool, was the best of times, a personal golden age, and that sense of nostalgia is bound up with his love for Leanne, a love of which he was barely aware until it was taken from him.

In short, though he has prospered in life, he has been haunted by Leanne's memory for two decades.

In Fleetpool, then, on a wing and a prayer, trusting to luck, Frankie exploits the few contacts still available to him, and, via Hebden Bridge, Whitby, Scarborough, and back to Fleetpool, on their fortieth birthday, he finds Leanne, who now owns a caf?on an idyllic spot on the coast a few miles north of the noise and clamour of Fleetpool.

Frankie and Leanne, together again as both have long yearned to be, find themselves with a decision to make.

The story is populated with many colourful characters from Frankie's past and present, people he encounters as he endeavours to track down Leanne; indeed, the narrative is enriched by Frankie's ability to attract strangers, folk who confide in him, open up to him, and through him seek solutions to their problems. In this way the reader is made to appreciate Frankie's warmth of heart and generosity of spirit.

The story thus becomes driven as much by character as by plot.

The narrative is broadly linear but shot through with reminiscences which shine a light on the present and suggest the future. Moreover, each chapter has a theme (a person, or a place, or an idea or concept) which serves as a hook upon which to hang Frankie's first-person narration.

Frankie's character is a complex interplay of publican (he co-owns and runs a pub with his wife), artist, and academically trained philosopher, and these different facets of his makeup enable him both to conceive original thoughts and to express them in an intelligible and coherent fashion.

The great unknown of the story is what happens to Frankie and Leanne after their reunion. The title of the book offers more than a hint.