Nell Grey

Solitary Pleasures Nell Grey

The year is nineteen-ninety-five and Mattie, an original eccentric who lives on a decrepit houseboat called The Ark, has been in the habit of disappearing since she was a little girl. She calls these episodes of time to herself her Solitary Pleasures. She is now knocking seventy and the family have gathered in the luxurious setting of her nephew's large mock-Tudor house to discuss what's to be done about her latest escapade - falling into the canal and driving home stark naked. Mattie refuses to be bullied into behaving, but a shocking yet hilarious incident at an Animal Rights protest leads to Mattie's arrest and results in her little dog Spike being wanted by the police. There's nothing for it but to disappear again. As Spike and Mattie retrace her footsteps of twenty years earlier along the South Downs Way, tantalizing her family with a paper-trail of Mattie's dotty poems, only one thing is certain, and that is that no one in the story will ever be quite the same again.