The Runaways

Andrew Munroe gets declared bankrupt after his building business in Leeds West Yorkshire suddenly collapses. Andy is diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression. He abandons his wife and daughter hoping to kick-start his life finding work down in London. He feels that he has let his family down badly and assures himself that they would be far better off without him. After hitching a lift that takes him down to the South East Coast, Andy meets up with a kind and caring pair of star-struck elderly lovers, one of whom owns a boarding house in Basildon.

Two other main characters in the book enter the story intermittently. The first is a girl named Gita from Birmingham, who is running away from an arranged marriage. As her story unfolds she too will eventually end up living down on the South East Coast.

The other is Sam, a loveable rogue born and bred in the East End of London. After serving an eight-year prison sentence in one of Her Majesty’s Correctional Facilities for manslaughter, he too shuns his place of birth and makes his way towards the South East Coast.

All three will eventually meet up but not in the circumstances that you may expect or predict.

Patrick Gildea was born in Paisley, Scotland. He moved from Paisley to West Yorkshire in his late teens after meeting his wife to be on holiday in the Isle of Man. Now fifty years on, both are still joined at the hip. Pat is now retired and has relocated once again, this time to Southend-on-Sea; he has been a prolific reader since childhood. His style of fictional writing will have you in tucks of laughter one minute then have you reduced to tears the next.

Patrick’s academic qualifications came from the University of Life, having worked in the construction industry for over the past twenty years.

The latter part of his working life was spent as a senior officer working for local government. His life skills moved him away from a plumber’s blowlamp to producing various technical reports to senior council officials and local members of parliament.