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Tags: Hope

Her head spins, her feet ache, and the ‘Idle’ icon counts the seconds since her last call, while the on-screen graphic transitions from green to amber, about to turn red. With a sigh, she rolls her neck and stares at the blue icon that says 'Free'. In her last review, concerns were raised abo

My biggest secret is that you licked off my right nipple. Shame in the shape of absence. Making love with men was a dream for months. I thought to myself – you will understand the pain of a cold bed, once you’re grown. But what do you know about it now, now that you are? Then, you were a glob

Stanley Richard Klonczynski had worked at the dream shop for fifty-four years, seven months and thirteen days, or 19,946 days if you didn’t count the days he took off, which were not very many and really only brought the total down another hundred days, give or take. The 19,946 days – give or ta

In rain, sunshine, mist and high winds we tottered through the fields as fast as Elspeth’s little legs and my dodgy knees allowed. Both of us breathless, we rushed up the hill – more of a hillock really – that Elspeth had named The Big Mountain. The vista from the top encompassed the sweep of

Six minutes and thirty-three seconds. That was the amount of time it took a spark to wind its way down and around the forty-inch fuses attached to the nine cherry-red two-stick dynamite charges that Frank Rasmussen was carrying in his dusty leather satchel. Frank had been excavating mines long enoug

'Hey! You’re not even waving!’ Annie’s voice had an air of authority, but with a wry undertone. She was wearing the biggest smile and waving frantically as we walked past the window of 1 Croft Road. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I was suddenly ripped from my mini mind-drift and gave a clumsy left-handed

Before my husband’s night shift, I put a three-bean chilli on the table and kiss him on the head. He is holding his phone in his hand and scrolling through his December rota. The night of the 24th is marked as LN − long night. As is the following night. I had only just put the beans to soak when

There was giraffe snot on my hand and I must have been smiling because Mum was smiling back at me with my shaped grin. Not hers. Two years before that, I handed Mum a picture of a reindeer that I'd drawn and stood back to await approval. She said it was an excellent giraffe. I pretended that it w