The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

by Matt Cain

Genres: General Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Albert Entwistle was a postman. It was one of the few things everyone knew about him. And it was one of the few things he was comfortable with people knowing. Sixty-four-year-old Albert Entwistle has been a postie in a quiet town in Northern England for all his life, living alone since the death of his mam eighteen years ago. He keeps himself to himself. He always has. But he's just learned he'll be forced to retire at his next birthday. With no friends and nothing to look forward to, the lonely future he faces terrifies him. He realises it's finally time to be honest about who he is. He must learn to ask for what he wants. And he must find the courage to look for the man that, many years ago, he lost - but has never forgotten . . .

Release date: January 6, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 34

Sample

Albert Entwistle was a postman. It was one of the few things everyone knew about him. And it was one of the few things he was comfortable with people knowing.

One dark and frosty December morning he arrived at work, safe in the knowledge that the day ahead would be the same as any other – and exactly the same as it had been for years and years.

It was a few minutes before six o’clock when he cycled into the yard at the back of the Royal Mail delivery office on the industrial estate at the edge of Toddington town centre. A cold, hard light leaked out of the windows of the one-storey, grey-brick, corrugated-iron-roofed building, a building cheered only slightly by the woodwork and doors, painted the distinctive red of the company’s branding. Albert let out a yawn as he dismounted and chained up his bike. He checked his watch. The minute hand was approaching the hour. By the time he walked through the door it would be 6 a.m. Exactly as it should be.

He unfastened his duffel coat and tugged his ID card out from around his neck, leaning forward to touch it to the magnetic sensor. The familiar buzz told him the lock had been released. He walked inside.

“Alright, Albert?” said the security guard, barely looking up. Ste Stockton was a handsome man in his twenties with muscles that looked like body armor. He was so obsessed withsharing images of his physique online that he rarely took any interest in whoever entered the building – a quality Albert acknowledged wasn’t ideal in a security guard but, all the same, he appreciated in Ste.

“How do,” Albert said with a nod. It was his standard greeting and delivered in a way that made it clear no response was necessary or desired. Over the years he’d become adept at deflecting opportunities to interact and, as he’d entered his sixties, noticed that people paid him less and less attention anyway. This suited Albert perfectly; if he had his way he’d be invisible.

As he fringed a line of trolleys and headed down the corridor to the main sorting office, he braced himself for the hardest part of his day. Albert always tried to dodge hisway through the waves of chatter that peaked and crashed between his colleagues, particularly on Monday mornings; so many of them wanted to exchange summaries of what they’d done over the weekend. These days, most people left him alone, though some of his newer colleagues made the mistake of assuming that, because they had a life away from work, he must do too. When they realized he didn’t, they’d feel sorry for him.

“Have you ever thought about taking up a hobby?” they’d ask.

“What about bowls?”

“My Auntie Mabel used to love doing jigsaws.”

Hoping he wouldn’t be subjected to any such attention today, he buzzed open the door and stepped into the hall. . .