A CROSS-CULTURAL ROMANTIC COMEDY
He came to England to learn the language. He didn't expect to fall for someone engaged to somebody else – or to follow her halfway round the world to find out what happens next.
The Story
Tom Henning leaves Switzerland for a six-month English course in a small coastal town, expecting nothing more eventful than verb conjugations and bad weather.
Then he meets Kimiko – and discovers, a little too late, that she's already engaged.
What follows takes him from rainy England to her family's dinner table in the Japanese countryside, by way of one ill-advised flight, several culturally inappropriate handshakes, and a handkerchief he doesn't yet know the meaning of.
Wry, warm, and quietly observed, Love, Secrets, and a Plate of Sushi is a love story for anyone who has ever fallen for exactly the right person at the wrong moment.
excerpt from chapter one
‘Watch out!’ I yell to Dan over the roar of the engines. Our van performs a graceful pirouette on the snow-covered tarmac, directly towards the wheels of an approaching jumbo jet. Working at the airport was meant to be a thrill – though of a different kind.
Dan is my supervisor, determined to be everyone’s buddy rather than anyone’s boss.
He is also, reliably, a terrible driver.
I’ve learnt to anticipate the sudden braking and the way he takes corners with the confidence of a Formula One racer. I no longer clutch the seat.
‘I’ve got this under control. Trust me,’ he shouts back.
Brilliant.
The last time I trusted him, I carried a package through customs without declaring its contents.
‘Just documents,’ he said.
It turned out to contain prescription medication.
There was an investigation. I was eventually cleared, though the paperwork took three weeks, and the customs officer’s expression suggested he remained unconvinced. We narrowly avoided a hefty fine.
So my trust in Dan is somewhere below zero.
‘Dumb idea to take the van in these conditions,’ Marcus, my co-worker and self-declared resident genius, says.
Marcus is dating Dan’s sister. That may or may not explain how he landed the job. For a man who’s usually relaxed about work and always quick with a joke, he looks remarkably tense, gripping the dashboard with both hands.
‘Dan, stop the van!’ he shouts.
Zurich Airport prefers its planes right-side up – so, sensibly, they keep the runways clear of snow.
The moment our tyres hit bare tarmac, they grip, and we stop abruptly.
The jumbo jet does not.
About the Author
R. K. Arnold grew up twenty kilometres from Zurich, in a small village whose name he has long since given up asking foreigners to pronounce correctly. He has since spent time in England and Japan, two countries he understands a good deal better than they understand him. His first novel, the cross-cultural romantic comedy, Love, Secrets, and a Plate of Sushi, draws – loosely, he insists – on personal experience. He currently lives in Japan, where he is working on the sequel and still, by his own admission, struggling with the right angle of the bow.
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