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Short Stories

‘When yer momma broke in, she didn’t realise there was a dog. It was dark out, wintertime. ’Bout three years back now. I was upstairs sleepin’, Ralph on the floor. She prob’ly thought the place was abandoned. We’re out in the butt crack a’ nowhere, wouldn’t be too strange.’ Elli

Helen was standing by the milk with a list in one hand and a phone in the other. Julia had found the Almond Thins she came in for and was looking at yogurts – her daughter didn’t like peach or cherry, so she’d been scanning the multipacks for offending flavours. When she saw Helen, she quickly

They were sitting at Harold’s kitchen table under a harsh light. Outside, the London of September 1965 weighed grim and heavy, and rain pelted against the sitting room window. Phillip took a long drink of his scotch. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it would be easy enough to find another one.’ ‘

Herbert Wubbins wasn’t the first actor to make his fortune with his face. He wouldn’t be the last. He was just one of the luckiest, and, obviously, one of the unluckiest. It was all down to practice. Muscle control. Hours of staring into a mirror and willing himself to look like that, or this

Before the drink got him – and shook him, and shook him – there was nobody west of the Mississippi that played the mouth harp like Billy Cooper. Friday nights at JJ’s Bar & Grill you couldn’t shift him from his stool, even if you’d wanted to. When Billy settled in his spot just to the

It didn’t start on social media. No, he couldn’t even blame the bubbly icons of validation on the phone, because it didn’t start there at all. It didn’t start at the pub or at work, and not even at the gym. It didn’t start at any one moment that Ryan could have put his finger on, were he i

The waiter brings their order after ten minutes and Anna immediately begins picking the ham off the ham and lettuce sandwich. Meat finally moved to the side of the plate, she takes a nibble. ‘At least the dressing’s low-fat. I can’t even swallow full-fat,’ she says. ‘It’s so cloying.’

Recently I asked my father when he stopped believing in God. This is what he told me: I was at university by then, and the familiar faces of our household had grown crooked and grey. Sometimes I was away for prolonged periods, in summer camps perfecting my long jump or doing social work under the