This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
We're excited to be able to bring you the opening extract of Eighty Days White the fifth novel (published today) in Vina Jackson’s red-hot Eighty Days series. The previous four novels have all been Sunday Times top 10 bestsellers, selling over half a million copies in six months, and Orion have sent Novelicious an extract especially for our readers.
Opening Extract…
THE GIRL WITH THE TEARDROP TATTOO
Had I known about its meaning, I might not have gone ahead with the tattoo. But by the time I was made aware of its significance, it was too late and I'd already become known to friends and strangers as the girl with the teardrop tattoo.
*
I had dreamed of getting one for years. Somehow it was one of those things – like getting a job and maybe one day falling in love – that I felt would be an inevitable part of my future. It was simply a matter of waiting for time to pass until the preordained day arrived. I felt more certain about the tattoo than I did about finding a job when I finished university, or even falling in love.
So when Neil finally disappeared and Liana and I found ourselves alone outside the weathered door that nestled inconspicuously amongst a bevy of retail stores, vintage boutiques and cafes, it seemed obvious to me that the time had finally come. On the pavement outside the door stood a simple white sign, which read 'Tattoo Parlour' in large, black, italics.
I had lingered here before, had even worked up the courage to push the door open a few times, but I had never been inside. I had often dreamed of walking in, flicking through books of drawings, confidently selecting the one that would suit me best, lying back in the chair and having it done. But always I backed out at the last moment, believing that someone like me, the living, breathing picture of a good girl, would be laughed out of the shop by the pierced and tattooed cool kids that I imagined ran the place.
‘Come on then,’ Liana said, brushing past me and stepping inside. She had always been the wild one of the two of us, and did not seem to carry even a shadow of the self-doubt that possessed me like a disapproving second skin, no matter how hard I tried to shed it.
The door led to a flight of steep, rough, concrete steps, painted red, now chipped, with a metal handrail up the left-hand side that had the thick heaviness of something that might have been salvaged from a plumbing supplies warehouse. I took hold of the rail gingerly as though it was the lifeline that might carry me away from the person that I was and towards the person that I wanted to be and followed Liana up the stairs.
At the top was a studio, its walls painted a deep red and covered in photographs of tattooed limbs, sketches and posters of old heavy-metal and rock bands. I was heartened to see a battered print of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant with guitars in hand. Whoever had decorated the place had taste.
The tattooist ignored us entirely when we entered, until we had been standing in front of him at the front desk for a few minutes. Liana coughed and eventually he introduced himself. His name was Jonah, and he hailed from New Zealand, but had owned the studio in Brighton for fifteen years, or so he told Liana who was attempting to charm him with a stream of chatter.
Jonah was bald and dressed almost entirely in leather, besides a thick metal belt that jangled when he stood up. Both of his arms were covered in tattoos from his knuckles to his shoulders which bulged out from his vest.
‘You girls been drinking?’ he asked, peering at us with a suspicious eye.
‘Oh, God no,’ Liana replied. ‘Just a glass for courage. We’ve been planning this for years.’
‘You got ID?’ he continued.
I could hear the muffled sound of an old-fashioned kettle whistling through a door to the side. It swung open, and another man appeared. He was much younger, probably in his early twenties, and could have been Jonah’s son. They had the same mouth. Lips like Mick Jagger’s, so full that I couldn’t decide whether the feature was handsome or not. Either way, it gave them both the sort of sleazy look that Liana seemed to love and which made me nervous. He leaned against the doorframe and began to roll a smoke, staring at Liana as he ran his tongue along the cigarette paper.
‘Come on, Jo,’ he said. ‘These two look like sensible girls. Don’t be a mean bastard. If they’ve got the money, they get the tat.’
Liana cast him an appreciative smile.
Jonah snorted. ‘No ID, no ink. I don’t have time to deal with pissed-off parents.
‘You know what you want?’ he added, barely glancing at our student cards as we handed them over for inspection.
We were both over eighteen, been born only a month apart – her on the 21st May and me on the same day in June. A pair of Geminis, on the opposite ends of the cusp, a fact that Liana’s hippy-ish mother believed was the explanation for our friendship.
‘Yes. We’re both getting the same.’
Jonah raised his eyebrows as if to suggest that this fact was another obvious sign of our idiocy.
Liana immediately volunteered to go first, winking at me as she slipped behind the curtain that separated the inking equipment from the rest of the studio. Her long skirt swayed around her calves as she moved, flashing her slim ankles. She was so naturally thin that she was closer to bony, and she dressed in loose-fitting, bohemian style, wearing the sort of clothes that Neil said reminded him of his grandmother’s curtains, but she moved with the sort of swagger that made her attractive in a way that far outshone the sum of her parts.
Her form was clearly not lost on the cigarette-rolling man, who did not make the slightest effort to hide his appreciation of her backside as she sashayed across the room.
‘I’m Nick,’ he said, still staring at the space that Liana had just inhabited, as if I didn’t exist at all.
‘Lily,’ I replied, under my breath.
We will be reviewing this book soon.
Vina Jackson's Website