Nearly Home

W. Martins

scroll

Delivered

the message that gave the book its name

Memoir

A Brazilian in an English town keeps meeting people in cars, airports and borrowed rooms.

Someone who stayed four hours past the time he said he would leave. Seven years in Belo Horizonte with a man he promised never to leave. A tenant who became a boyfriend, and a cancelled flight that pointed towards London. The stranger who waited four hours at Heathrow and asked him to turn ten days into six months. A guitarist on the Scottish coast, met by accident when two conversations got confused. The woman a friend introduced with a photograph, who years later drove him part of the way to Scotland. The one who asked to be called Anonymous. The Polish airport supervisor he took to a club night with one rule, no clothes. And a law student who said he loved him, then added the two words that would govern the next six years: as a friend. And the sister whose visit made Britain something he could share rather than the place to which he had disappeared.

This is an account of what can be built inside a borrowed room. A parked car. A hotel that has had plenty of time to become one. A single bed in a service room in a flat that belonged to somebody’s mother. It is about being seen, which is not the same as being kept, and about a man who asks everyone else for the truth while adjusting his own age by six years.

Everything in it happened.

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Also available as an ebook everywhere else.

The front cover of Nearly Home: a road running to a vanishing point under a pale moon, a very small car waiting at the horizon.

Chapters

  1. A tall street lamp on an empty stretch of road, its light pooling on the ground below.
    Chapter One

    Yesterday

    Four hours in a parked car, and a message to a father.

  2. A bunch of flowers, stems gathered and tied.
    Chapter Two

    Gabriel

    Seven years, one promise, and flowers on the back seat.

  3. A panelled door, closed, with a round handle.
    Chapter Three

    Otávio

    A tenant, a butcher’s that never opened on time, and a panic button.

  4. An open passport with a boarding pass tucked into the crease.
    Chapter Four

    James

    Four hours at Heathrow, and ten days that became six months.

  5. A standing stone ringed by a faint halo, alone on open ground.
    Chapter Five

    Balintore

    A standing stone, a hire car, and a plectrum left on the floor.

  6. A wood-burning stove alight, with logs stacked beside it.
    Chapter Six

    Alice

    A photograph, a log cabin in Fife, and a drone that was not allowed to fly.

  7. A round looking-glass propped up on two legs, facing outward, empty.
    Chapter Seven

    Anonymous

    A hotel with a golf course, and a name he chose himself.

  8. A boarding staircase raised to an aircraft’s open door.
    Chapter Eight

    Florian

    A club night with one rule, and a friend who said so kindly.

  9. A spray of orchids standing in a vase.
    Chapter Nine

    Bernardo

    Two words, as a friend, and six years of them.

  10. Two small figures on a wide street, walking towards a castle on the rock above the city.
    Chapter Ten

    Wendy

    A sister, a caricature in Edinburgh, and a train ticket kept behind it.

W. Martins was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1992, and has lived in England since 2022. He works in insurance in Surrey, which is less interesting than it sounds, and writes about the people he has met, which is more interesting than they expected. Nearly Home is his first book.

Cover and illustrations by the author.

Written mostly in parked cars.