'Oldstone Gardens'

'Could I have done more for him? I tried to look out for him as much as I could. God knows, we're all looking out for him now.'

So begins another story from Tom Johnstone's collection Last Stop Wellsbourne. Again, we are with the council grass-cutting squad, and one of their number is missing. As usual, most of the team are dickheads and the narrator is the outsider.

There is a paranormal - or just plain weird - reason for the vanishing of another team member who was always a bit of a misfit and underwent psychiatric treatment. In this case the scene of the disappearance is the eponymous park, which proves surprisingly difficult to locate. The story of how the narrator and his colleague got there, and what they found, is intriguing.

Here again we find the mysterious woman who is perhaps a siren of sorts. There is the hint of pagan origins in the reference to an 'old stone' that used to stand in the gardens. Above all, though, Johnstone one more evokes the intense loneliness and despair of a thoughtful and sensitive character struggling with not only an intractable mystery, but the loneliness of existence. In the end, he suggests, it might be better to embrace a mystery that could bring oblivion than carry on living in Brexit Britain. I cannot disagree.


More from this impressive book very soon, I hope.