So which of my three jobs do you want to hear about?

Not the sub-contract to deliver medical supplies, surely? I mean it’s nice to think I’m zipping about bringing folk stuff they actually need – plasma, insulin, dialysates – instead of another haul from the Home Shopping Network that they wouldn’t be seen dead in now they’ve sobered up. But it’s just night-driving. There are no stories.

So maybe I should tell you about my early-morning run? I’m a student transport assistant for Round’n’Round, getting a little busload of very special kids to school safe and happy. There’s Janelle in her glittery wheelchair, with her seizure-alert chihuahua. And then there’s Olivia, who doesn’t see. “Tell me! Tell me!” she squawks – like she’s a little bird and that’s her song – whenever the rest of them talk about what’s outside the window. Jack isn’t verbal and I’m embarrassed to say I used to speak to him as if he was a baby. Until one day I was handing him over to his classroom carer, once we’d got his chair off the lift, and she started talking about Ru Paul’s Drag Race from the night before. He’s a huge fan, apparently. So now I talk to him as if he’s a normal little boy of eleven who loves reality TV. I think he’s forgiven me. Simon and Damon can speak but they don’t. And they need to wear headphones because Janelle and Olivia do their poor wee heads in.

Ken, the driver, does my head in. He makes me meet him at a greasy spoon every morning instead of at HQ and – trust me on this one, okay? – fried egg and sausage sandwiches washed down with gut-rot coffee do not turn a person into the ideal companion for trips on a very small bus. Ach, he’s got a good heart though.

At least in my third job I’m the driver and there are no egg sandwiches allowed. My God, can you imagine! My plucky little band of chemo warriors aboard the Cancer Express are touch-and-go at the best of times. I drive very gently and if they’re all doing okay I take them down to the front for an ice-cream before I drop them back home. Siobhan, Suzanne, Mrs Cooke, Bobby the bum pincher, Bobby’s friend Art, and poor Lawrence who’s forty years younger than the rest of them and nearly as mortified at having to hang out with such a bunch of old saddos as is he about the rest of it.

I thought they’d be too consumed with their health to pay much attention to me, but that shows what I know. Mrs Cooke was a teacher, antennae honed by decades of kids trying it on. And Art was an insurance investigator so he’s got a BS detector he could rent out to the FBI. Plus Bobby was in the police. A plod, not CID, but you wouldn’t know it.

They’re onto me. The whole lot of them. Even Lawrence took his earbuds out when I started blustering and they saw through it. So it looks like my quiet days of driving around in a branded polo-shirt and a Hi-Viz are drawing to a close. I’ve enjoyed it – the peace and quiet, the chance to help people, the routine of getting up in the morning sure that I’ll survive till the end of the day. Oh well. I’ve only got myself to blame. So. Rip off the Band-Aid and let’s go.

A Gingerbread House
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Release: August 2021
Purchase Link

An invitation you can’t refuse. You should . . .

When shy, lonely Ivy meets a woman who claims to be her long-lost sister, she knows it’s too good to be true. She decides to trust Kate anyway. She wants a family. She wants someone to love.

She’s making a mistake.

Ivy enters Kate’s fairytale cottage, deep in the heart of Scotland . . . and she doesn’t come out.

She’s the first to go missing.

She won’t be the last.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Tash’s journey is just beginning . . .

Multi-award-winning master of suspense Catriona McPherson is back with an ominous, twisty psychological thriller set in contemporary Scotland that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

About the author
National-bestselling and multi-award-winning author, Catriona McPherson, was born in Scotland and lived there until immigrating in 2010. She writes historical detective stories set in the old country in the 1930s, featuring gently-born lady sleuth Dandy Gilver. After eight years in the new country, she kicked off the comic Last Ditch Motel series, which takes a wry but affectionate look at California life. She also writes a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers. A Gingerbread House is the latest of these. Kirkus said, “a disturbing tale of madness and fortitude that grabs the attention from page 1”.

Catriona is a member of MWA, CWA, Society of Authors, and a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime. 

All comments are welcomed.