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    In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn
    In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn
    In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn
    Ebook111 pages2 hours

    In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn

    By Debbie McGowan

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    About this ebook

    Death in a prison cell, a birthday celebration gone awry, dead mice, dawning realisations and a chance encounter on a train...As the light dawns on a grim, dark January, it soon becomes clear; this could be The Circle’s annus horribilis.

    * * * * *

    ‘Capricorn’ is the first episode of In The Stars. For those readers unfamiliar with the Hiding Behind The Couch series, it re-introduces the main characters, so you could pick it up from here and perhaps catch up with the previous books later.

    In The Stars explores the day-to-day lives of The Circle—nine friends from high school, now it their late thirties—following them through celebration, loss, illness and life-changing decisions.

    Each episode covers the period of time indicated by the zodiac sign from which it takes its title.

    The full novels of In The Stars Part I: Capricorn–Gemini and In The Stars Part II: Cancer–Sagittarius are also available for purchase (paperback/ebook).

    In The Stars Part I is season four in the Hiding Behind The Couch Series.

    The story follows chronologically from The Harder They Fall (Season Three), Crying in the Rain (Novel) and First Christmas (Novella). It continues in Breaking Waves (Novella) and In The Stars Part II (Season Five).

    * * * * *

    What readers say about the Hiding Behind The Couch Series:

    “The remarkable characterisation in these novels is what makes them for me.”

    “This story reminds me of my favorite movies about friendship and relationships.”

    “Few authors have explored the depths of longtime friends within a group, or ‘circle’ the way Debbie McGowan has!”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBeaten Track Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781909192614
    In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn
    Author

    Debbie McGowan

    Debbie McGowan is an award-winning author of contemporary fiction that celebrates life, love and relationships in all their diversity. Since the publication in 2004 of her debut novel, Champagne—based on a stage show co-written and co-produced with her husband—she has published many further works—novels, short stories and novellas—including two ongoing series: Hiding Behind The Couch (a literary ‘soap opera’ centring on the lives of nine long-term friends) and Checking Him Out (LGBTQ romance). Debbie has been a finalist in both the Rainbow Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2016, she won the Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) for her novel, When Skies Have Fallen: a British historical romance spanning twenty-three years, from the end of WWII to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Through her independent publishing company, Debbie gives voices to other authors whose work would be deemed unprofitable by mainstream publishing houses.

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      Book preview

      In The Stars Part I, Episode 1 - Debbie McGowan

      In The Stars Part I, Episode 1: Capricorn

      Hiding Behind The Couch

      Season Four

      by

      Debbie McGowan

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      * * * * *

      Copyright 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 Debbie McGowan at Smashwords.

      https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/debbiemcgowan

      This book is available in print at most online retailers.

      Cover Design by Debbie McGowan

      Licensed stock images: usage is not indicative

      of the models’ identity, activities or preferences.

      Zodiac Illustrations by Emma Pickering

      http://www.beatentrackpublishing.com

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      * * * * *

      This novel is a work of fiction and the characters and events in it exist only in its pages and in the author’s imagination.

      * * * * *

      Death in a prison cell, a birthday celebration gone awry, dead mice, dawning realisations and a chance encounter on a train…As the light dawns on a grim, dark January, it soon becomes clear; this could be The Circle’s annus horribilis.

      * * * * *

      ‘Capricorn’ is the first episode of In The Stars. For those readers unfamiliar with the Hiding Behind The Couch series, it re-introduces the main characters, so you could pick it up from here and perhaps catch up with the previous books later.

      In The Stars Part I is Season Four in the Hiding Behind The Couch Series. This book is also available as six separate episodes.

      The story follows chronologically from The Harder They Fall (Season Three), Crying in the Rain (Novel) and First Christmas (Novella). It continues in Breaking Waves (Novella) and In The Stars Part II (Season Five).

      For those readers unfamiliar with the series, In The Stars re-introduces the main characters, so you could pick it up from here and perhaps catch up with the previous books later.

      * * * * *

      Acknowledgements

      Thank you to my wonderful proofreaders, Tracy and Andrea, for your persistence in / insistence on finding and then laughing at my dreadful mistakes, not to mention your extraordinary expertise in all matters, but in particular, those of bingo and health care! The Circle thank you, too!

      ***

      ‘Love Hearts’ used with kind permission:

      Swizzels Matlow Ltd.

      www.lovehearts.com

      Excerpts from:

      ‘The Signs’, by Henry Van Dyke

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems of Henry Van Dyke.

      Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.

      Reproduced under the terms of the

      Project Gutenberg Licence.

      www.gutenberg.org

      ‘Footprints In Your Heart’, by Eleanor Roosevelt;

      also attributed as

      ‘Today is a Gift’, by Laszlo Kotro-Kosztandi.

      Further bibliographic information unavailable.

      * * * * *

      Dedication

      For my friends on the flat roof:

      we steered a wayward ship,

      lost and found God, glimpsed Satan,

      didn’t learn a lot of Latin.

      And for Powelly, rider on the storm.

      Elf people, though, dude. Seriously?

      * * * * *

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Dedication

      Marigold: Friday 6th January

      Hair: Friday 13th January

      Extermination: Saturday 14th January

      Sweet Little Lies: Monday 16th January

      U-Turn: Thursday 19th January

      Hankering: Thursday 19th January

      Roberta: Thursday 19th–Friday 20th January

      Kid Gloves: Friday 20th January

      The Story Continues

      About the Author

      By the Author

      Beaten Track Publishing

      * * * * *

      In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.

      William S. Burroughs

      * * * * *

      Capricorn

      The goat looks solemn, yet he likes to run,

      And leap the rocks, and gambol in the sun:

      The truly wise enjoy a little fun.

      Marigold

      Friday 6th January

      Rank mops and disinfectant. The stench clung to every grubby cubic inch of air. Metal clanged loudly against metal; the jangle of keys echoed around the corridors and up through the levels, ricocheting along landings and up into the void above. It was a grey, grey world. The steel doors were painted industrial grey. The bars were Hammerite grey. The walls were a featureless corpse-skin expanse, terminating at distant skylights showing nothing but grey sky. Even the uniforms and overalls—everything. Grey.

      Well, almost everything.

      Eh, it’s our turn, a voice shouted from across the void. This is fucked up.

      Yeah, another voice agreed from behind. Oy! Marigold! Get a new fuckin’ mop, you cunt. It stinks to shit.

      ‘Marigold’ continued along the corridor, trying to ignore the multiple complaints as he passed each cell. They had every right. No supplies, and the mops hadn’t been changed in all the time he’d been in there, which was five months, two weeks, four days and three hours. Seventeen days to go. Then he’d be out. He glanced up and spotted Darren coming his way.

      Alright? Marigold said. Hardly anyone there called him by his real name, not even his fellow wing cleaners.

      Yeah. Noisy today.

      Third’s not been cleaned this week. That’s why.

      So why’re we doing Second?

      Don’t ask me. Anyway, sooner we get on, the sooner we’ll be done.

      Marigold wheeled his stinking grey mop bucket along the filthy concrete third floor of C-wing. Darren followed with the cleaning trolley, past the rest of the cells and onwards to the lift, where they waited whilst the screw unlocked the gate. Marigold let Darren enter first and followed reluctantly, turning to watch as the gate was locked again. The lift started to descend.

      Not long now, huh? Darren said, gnawing at the grotty stubs of his fingernails.

      Nope. Two weeks, three days.

      Darren changed hands. Wish it was me.

      Yeah, Marigold replied absently. The lift came to a stop, and the gate procedure was repeated, in reverse, to the accompanying third-landing prisoners’ shouts tumbling from above. The second landing was empty, with everyone out for exercise, not that it would have mattered, as they only cleaned the corridors. Darren stopped the trolley and pulled the wide broom free, flipping it up the right way and letting it flop to the floor.

      Gonna start at the other end, he said and dawdled away, the broom shushing along the floor behind him.

      Right, Marigold acknowledged belatedly. I’ll just get this shit off the wall first.

      The second landing was where they put the weirdos, not the pervs—they were on the fourth floor—the ones that were a bit loopy but not loopy enough to be in K-block. It was closer to the screws’ station, in case anything kicked off, which it didn’t very often. In fact, most of the time there was just this line of shit along the wall, from the showers to C221. And they wondered why he’d asked for rubber gloves? Doctor Sheridan got him permission eventually, but he had to hand them in at the end of every day. Sometimes he wondered why he wasn’t in K-block himself. Maybe he wasn’t the right kind of loony. He was never the right kind of anything.

      He squirted dilute disinfectant over the trail of faeces, breathing through his nose, which would’ve seemed counter-intuitive to the uninitiated, but for as much as it stank worse when it was wet, he’d once been hit in the face by spray-back and swallowed it; he wasn’t making that mistake again. Back to the start of the line, he retraced with a rancid, damp cloth, pushing the brown smudge around until it

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