Chapter 4: Storyboard

Madeleine Roth, posting under the name of Fatima, was putting the last touches to her daily blog. Eastern Promise, the web site she ran with a number of her friends, took up most of her spare time. She and Krista Collins had founded the site almost three years earlier as way of publishing their fantasies of life in the east, veiled and enslaved as part of some potentate's harem.

Over the years they had created a series of stories. They, in turn, had attracted other, like-minded, authors and those that shared their interests posting on the site's message boards or contributing their own tales.

This weekend, though, she wouldn't have much time for posting. She, Krista and three of the others that had contributed to Eastern Promise had agreed to meet up for a couple of days in a cottage in the Norfolk. Well it wasn't the mysterious east, Madeleine thought but at least it was the east of England.

Madeleine wasn't sure whose idea it had been but now that the time had come she was looking forward to it. It was a cottage that Krysta had found out about. Set way out on the edge of a stretch of marshes along the North Norfolk coast, it would offer them all a chance to get away from work, share their thoughts and enthusiasms and maybe do some writing as well. The weather didn't look promising and Madeleine knew that Norfolk could be bleak but she didn't care. It was going to be fun.

The sound of a car's horn announced Krysta's arrival. She and Madeleine had known each other for years. They shared the fantasies that led them to set up Eastern Promise and they'd collaborated on the site's most successful tales.

Madeleine threw her bag into the back of the car and the two of them set off through the suburbs of North London. As they slowed for a set of traffic lights passing through Walthamstow it began to rain. Krysta peered out over the steering wheel. "Well, it's hardly Baghdad," Krysta said.

Madeleine smiled. "Well perhaps this is our magic carpet."

"A Volkswagen Magic Carpet!" Krysta laughed in turn.

"At least it would solve the energy crisis."

The suburbs gave way to the Essex countryside, Essex to Cambridgeshire and Cambridgeshire eventually to Norfolk.

They began the last stage of their drive, working their way slowly through the gloomy evening along narrow country lanes to their final destination. It was dark when they reached their destination and Krysta's Volkswagen pulled in through an open white gate that hung from a brick and flint pillar. She drove up a short length of gravel drive and swung around, passing beside a battered Land Rover and a small sailing dinghy on a launching trailer. As Krysta turned the car again, Madeleine could see enough of where they were headed in the car's headlights to exclaim, "That's not a cottage. It's a windmill!"

Krysta laughed. "Isn't it fantastic? I was sure you'd love it. It's not a mill though: it's a pump. The land is pretty close to sea level here, it's only the pumps that keep it from flooding. But come on inside. If we go up to the top the views are terrific."

Together they climbed the steps of the ladders that led up to the mill's cap. A wooden gallery circled the tower of the mill close to its top. They stepped out onto the gallery, just below the point where the heavy wooden beam carried the wind pump's sails, holding them suspended over the dark, wide spaces of the marsh lands that stretched away to the coast. They could see the moonlight reflected in the sea half a mile away but between them and it the marshes were pitch black. There wasn't another light to be seen that way apart from a faint green glow as a tiny boat puttered its way eastwards some way off-shore. In fact the only lights they could see were those of Stiffkey — "Stoo-key" Krysta had told Madeleine it was pronounced — a small village a couple of miles away.

The sails of the mill were still. They seemed regretful, Madeleine thought, saddened that they weren't slicing through the wind. The wind, however, seemed to be slicing through her coat with no difficulty whatsoever. "It's wonderful. But its cold," Madeleine said. "Let's go back in."

"Fair enough," said Krysta as she led the way inside. "But it is fantastic isn't it. Tell me you love it."

A few minutes later they were in the warm. Pump Cottage, a small brick and flint, tile roofed, building was tucked in beside the great brick tower of the pump. The living room was small but cosy. The kitchen led straight off it, built as an afterthought on the back of the building. Beside that another room served as a dining room.

"It's going to be a bit crowded, isn't it?" said Madeleine. "With five of us?"

"Well, there are three rooms upstairs so some of us are going to have to double up or we'll have to use downstairs for sleeping too."

"Or the pump tower."

"Now that wouldn't be my idea of a place to sleep. Too many bats. Not to mention the mice and the rats from the ditches."

"Brr," said Madeleine. "Not my idea, either, then. I guess we'll all manage in here."

"Well, we've got the place to ourselves tonight. I thought we could go shopping in Fakenham tomorrow morning and get some food. The others will be turning up in the afternoon.

'The others' were three of the other authors on the site. Madeleine and Krysta had met Angela Dark and Celia Best at an earlier event when they had all fetched up in London at the "Power of the Eastern Idea" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was the success of that meeting that had led Krysta to suggest this get together.

The last of the five was a relative newcomer to Eastern Promise, Penelope Trating had started sending her stories in about three months earlier. She had been welcomed enthusiastically by the site's readers. Her tales, written under the pen name of 'Yasmin', seemed to convey a deep feeling for the world they were all trying to evoke, although some felt that some of her subjects trod a little too near the site's boundaries in the areas of what was acceptable in sex and violence. She defended them saying that there was nothing in them that couldn't be seen portrayed on television a lot more graphically most nights. Most of the other readers felt obliged to agree, and besides they enjoyed them.

"Have you given any thought to what we're going to do?" said Madeleine. "I mean we're miles from anywhere and there's nothing outside except marshes."

"Exactly. It's peaceful and quiet. We'll all be able to write. I thought we'd have a sort of workshop session where we exchange ideas about some of the things we're working on. And if all else fails we'll have to work our way through the wine that's stacked up in a cupboard in the kitchen."

"What a disaster!" Madeleine laughed. "That seems like an ideal way to finish the evening now."

Krista grinned back. "Sounds good to me," she said and went in search of a bottle, two glasses and a corkscrew.

Krysta and Madeleine woke with well deserved headaches the following morning. The rain had cleared through leaving a bright, sunny morning that at least gave the girls an excuse for the dark glasses they put on to spare themselves the worst of the brightness.

In Fakenham they fortified themselves with coffee before venturing in to a supermarket. The shop was small by London standards but still seemed to have most of the things they needed to keep them fed over the weekend. They got back to the cottage half an hour before Angela and Celia turned up in Angela's Peugeot 206, the roof down so that they could enjoy the sunshine which, according to the weather forecast was the last that they would see that week-end.

Krysta and Madeleine spilled out of the cottage to greet them as the Peugeot pulled up. "It's fantastic," Celia called, pointing at the tower of the pump. "All it needs is an onion dome instead of the cap and we could pretend it's a minaret!"

"Not sure how the denizens of Norfolk would take to that," Krysta laughed. "They still think multi-culturalism means putting up with people from Lincolnshire."

The afternoon gave the four girls a chance to enjoy the sunshine with a walk along the raised path that ran beside the ditch leading down to the coast. At the end, the path ran between a few low dunes and down onto a deserted, sandy, windswept beach. They stood there for only a few minutes delighting in the emptiness of the place.