Sarah and Jack Bramer are a young couple who are desperate to have a child. Or at least Sarah is… After seven years of disappointment, their relationship has reached a crisis point. Sarah is a mixed race British woman. Jack is an American. Lately, his love for her has taken a sour turn. Sarah knows that this is her last chance to become pregnant. She wants to know, yet she doesn’t …. She runs away to her favourite place on the South Downs to come to terms with her rampant emotions. Jack, goes in search of her. He is distraught, manic, and increasingly desperate.
His name is Gabriel Keane, but they call him the ‘Keeper’. A man in his forties, he lives alone in a decommissioned lighthouse located at Beachy Head, East Sussex. He is a raggedy, handsome, and battered man.
The Keeper does not keep a light. He keeps sorrow, heartache, and a crippling sadness. He mourns for his love – Maria an artist, who went by the name of Rí (rhymes with free).
“It’s so hard to be here without her, but he can’t leave, because she is still here, at least in his head. His heart. Her things in the tower, the art she made.”
Before he came here, the Keeper was a war correspondent, then an investigative journalist. Now, he questions no one. All of the sad stories he keeps locked away in his mind. From long experience, he is a good listener.
When the grieving Keeper meets up with the emotional fragile Sarah, both lives will be forever changed.
The place. The striking white chalk cliffs of the South Downs. A place where people come to admire the beauty. A place where others come to end their lives. In fact, this area is the third most common suicide location in the world! So many people come to this area to commit suicide that there are regular patrols to try to locate and stop potential cliff jumpers.