When there is no choice, all you have left to do is walk. Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Urban Fiction With smart, gothicky touches and a large and generous challenge to our assumptions of what and who constitutes a modern family, it explores both the limits we’ll go to for our children and the sunken taboos of grief – of how erotics can still exist, and can even be life giving, after suffering loss. But as Black Mamba’s coils tighten around the girls, Alfie and Julia must contend with their own unspoken sense of loss, their unacknowledged attraction to one another, and the true character of the presence poisoning the twins’ minds…Ī darkling tale of tragedy, hauntings and sexual desire, Black Mamba is a novel of a father’s love for his struggling daughters, and a widower’s growing love for a woman after his wife’s death.

Alfie finds himself struggling to cope, and so he turns to Julia – Pippa’s twin and a psychotherapist – for help. What seemingly begins as an imaginary friend quickly develops into something darker, more obsessive, potentially violent. As expected he finds no man, but in the following days the girls begin to refer to someone called Black Mamba. Still, he goes to check to reassure the girls. It’s been nine months since Pippa – their mother – suddenly died and they’ve been unsettled ever since, so Alfie assumes they’ve probably had a nightmare. This is the chilling announcement Alfie hears one night, when he wakes in his quiet, suburban house to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed.

Knee-Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds