Deaf Wish - Cook Geoff

Pretend you’re deaf and seek to listen with your eyes

for the silent scream of vengeance your fractured heart denies

‘Believe me, there is nothing bold or courageous in making the decision to sacrifice everyone and everything you’ve worked for in exchange for a new life thousands of miles away with a woman you hardly know.

Don’t kid yourself. All it takes is a heady mix of bravado, false conviction, cowardice and a total lack of conscience.

I should know. I did it.

Sixteen years have passed and an opportunity comes out of the blue to make amends, to rekindle the bonds of family I once too easily discarded. Or so I hoped.

But I was naïve.

I thought words could heal. They can’t. All they achieve is to distort the pain of rejection that feeds the prospect of revenge. Nor could I foresee the treacherous path ahead as I stumble into the bitter secrets of all our pasts.

But I can now.

My hearing might be shot, my memory failed and I know I should have taken the advice and walked away. Somehow, I couldn’t. My grandson has given me a reason to exist and I needed to discover the truth. But some people have different ideas and will go to any lengths to make sure I do not.

My name? It’s Gilbert Hart, but call me Gil. Some people know me as Hartless.’

Deaf Wish is a dark, contemporary family drama set in Wales, Northern Portugal and Spain’s Costa de La Luz. Gil is a man seeking reconciliation with the wife and two sons he abandoned sixteen years earlier for a younger woman and a new life in Spain.

As he faces the prospect of a reunion with his bitter ex-wife at their younger son’s wedding little does he realise the need for revenge of those he cast aside and the lengths to which they are prepared to go to exact retribution.