Allie Cresswell

Allie Cresswell has been writing stories since she could hold a pencil and by the time she was in Miss Singleton's junior 2 class at Pownall Green Junior School she was writing copiously and sometimes almost legibly. For her eighth birthday she asked for a stack of writing paper and her parents happily obliged, it being more easily obtained and wrapped than a pony.

A BA in English and Drama at Birmingham University was followed by an MA in English at Queen Mary College but marriage and motherhood put Allie's writing career on hold for some years until 1992 when she began work on Game Show. The novel was written in snatched half hours here and there mainly for her own pleasure and interest. In the meantime she worked as a production manager for an educational publishing company, an educational resources copywriter, a bookkeeper for a small printing firm, and was the landlady of a country pub in Yorkshire, a small guest house in Cheshire and, until recently, the proprietor of a group of small holiday cottages in Cumbria.

Allie has two grown up children, Tom and Abby, and now lives in rural Staffordshire. Game Show is Allie's debut novel and she is currently working on her second.

Anxious, dumped, redundant, Barry needs to turn his life around; Helen wants the money to fund medical aid for Bosnia. Kate wants to exchange her perfectly coifed and manicured world for wild anarchy and abandonment, Celia – well, Celia has long preferred the romance she finds in her daydreams to the demands of her dull husband and family... They all hope to find what they're looking for in the anonymous safety of Game Show.

Gustav, meanwhile, crouches in the basement of his home, waiting. Hope rests in his father, who has gone to fight the enemy, and mother who went to forage for food but hasn't come home for three days. So Gustav waits, with his grandmother and his sister. The soldiers are not far away...

'Ladies and Gentlemen, we welcome you to the show where you come as a stranger and meet yourself...'

Excerpt from Game Show

'Bombs! They're dropping bombs!' screamed Jacob, grabbing Adele and pulling her to the ground, throwing his body over hers. Gustav remained standing at the window, watching the flow of missiles from the helicopters, the back of his hand shielding his eyes from the fierce brightness, his hair, long, uncut, streaming back from his face. Transfixed, he witnessed the fall of bombs, hundreds of them, dark spectres against the darker buildings, waiting for the impact, for the blinding light, for the ear-splitting explosion, and then he didn't know what. Pain, perhaps, or oblivion.

There was nothing. Just the heavy thud of parcels and boxes on the snow-packed streets of the suburb, and the calming of the maelstrom, and the subsiding of the noise, and the receding of the lights as the helicopters wheeled away across the skies and into the distance.

Amid the silence, the people emerged. Shadows of women, children, old people; scrambling over the rubble and into the street. Cautiously at first and then with more convidence, and finally lunging for aid parcels, aggressively fighting off their neighbours, snatching greedily. Gustav was amongst them, going for the parcels that had split open, loading his pockets with packets of dried milk powder, biscuits, matches, chocolate, tins of meat. Adele was there too, arguing with an old woman over a packet of flour. Even Gandma was out, dragging a box across the snow towards their house, until two boys pushed her aside, making her fall, and ran off with the box carried between them. Gustav recognised one of them as Jacob.

***

Arriving at the bicycle, which was still there, Barry put down the bags and, oblvious to the busy traffic on the pavement around him, commenced his weekly ritual of stowing away his shopping, telling himself all the while that his anxiety had been ridiculous. The bike had a nylon pannier, which fitted over the rear parcel rack. It had three compartments: two roomy ones which hung on either side of the wheel and a smaller one which rested on the rack itself. From one of the roomy pockets, Barry extracted a number of additional carrier bags and, item-by-item, he removed his shopping from the new bags and wrapped it in the old ones. This practice was the result of bitter past experience. On one occasion a bottle of Dettol had cracked and tainted all the rest of the shopping, on another Barry had been caught in a downpour on the way home and had discovered in his saddle bag a sodden mess of mushy cardboard. So, individually wrapped, items were stowed away, at first in the bicylce bag and then in his rucksack. Cornflakes (supermarket's own brand), toothpase, toilet-cleaner, sausages and a jar of pickled gherkins went in one side. Cucumber, dried milk powder, bottle of ketchup, pizza went in the other. Two microwave dinners, a box of matchees and a vacuum-packed wedge of Leicestershire cheese went in the small compartment. Barry tested the weight of the two side pockets: one was rather heavier than the other. He removed the tomato ketchup and replaced it with a packet of biscuits. That was better. Then into the main compartment of the rucksack went a loaf, the ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes, a bag of flour, a tin of luncheon meat, some apples and a can of shaving foam. The side pockets took two one pint cartons of milk, a family-sized bar of milk chocolate and a bottle of shampoo. Both bags were now full but there were still a few things left to pack. A little wearily, he broke the cellophane o fhte cereal Variety Pack and began putting individual boxes of cereal into his coat pockets which, fortunately, were numerous. A kiwi fruit went into each trouser pocket and he squaxhed the twin-pack of toilet rolls between the handlebars and the brake cables. A areview of the remainder revealed a circle of six cream cheese triangles, two chocolate mousses and a red pepper. With little enthusiasm, Barry embarked on what would have to be his evening meal.

***

The studio floor was occupied by an enormous, shallow, saucer-shaped platform about twelve yards in diameter. Within it, towards the back, in the semi-gloom, a bulky mass, draped in what appeared to be a thick-pelt of some indeterminate prairie animal lay on its side with its back towards the audience. Its size, its shape, its attitude and texture suggested powerfully that it was a arecently slain beast, killed by the tribe, which, now, in the seating area, whooped and hollered in the triumph of their vicarious kill. The camera zoomed closer. The animal's flanks quivered, or appeared to do so, and a steam of vapour followed by a gush of red, slithering, moist-seeming entrails issued from the opening out of view. The lurid effluent continued to pour forth from the animal, running into the bowl of the platform; blood, it seemed, carrying in its stream organs of different sizes, blubbery and gelatinous, intestines, slithering like snakes, meat in roughly hewn chunks, offal, gathering into a slick pool in the centre. The contestants took in the scene; one young girl screamed and was lead away before she became hysterical. Some looked horrified, others determined; not one looked in any way detached or doubtful. Then the game commenced with the long note of a prairie cry.