Secret Exchanges

An artist is invited by his girlfriend to visit her parents in the provinces and, failing to get on with her father, duly finds himself being inveigled into inviting her mother to his London studio where, to his shame, he allows himself to be seduced by her whilst apparently teaching her to meditate. Thereafter things go from bad to worse for Matthew Pearce, not to mention his girlfriend's mother, whose tetchy and ailing husband has discovered what he believes to be concrete evidence of her infidelity. Yet Deirdre Evans is determined to capitalize on Matthew's previous hospitality, just as the latter is having serious doubts not only about her but, thanks in part to their affair, about his relationship with her daughter, Gwendolyn, as well! Then, one evening, a female acquaintance of Gwen's turns up at his place and, before long, she precipitates him into a new and more passionate affair - in fact, the kind of affair he had been hoping for all along! So now it seems he can dispense with both Gwen and her mother and take up with Linda instead - provided, however, that she can secure a divorce from her husband on grounds of incompatibility. For Linda Daniels is also a married woman, and, like Mrs Evans, the man to whom she is married proves himself to be no friend of Matthew Pearce! Could that be the main motive for Pearce's willingness, bordering on recklessness, to enter into affairs with both women? The reader is left to decide this and so much else for himself in what is, by any accounts, an ironic commentary on human relationships and their social and ideological interactions! - A Centretruths editorial.
About the Author: John O'Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to social incompatibilities, he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot and, following the death and repatriation of his grandmother, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE's (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE's (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, including ill-health, and dedicated himself to writing, which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and early '90s, he has continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and Deceptive Motives (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin dedicated himself exclusively to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical order, including Devil and God - The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), and Philosophical Truth (1991-2).