The old car door closed with its usual bang and she looked along the road. Charlotte was surprised, briefly, by the sight of only two cars along the seafront. She got out the notebook, already bent at the edges and slightly damp from being in the door of the car. She hadn’t planned to use it yet,
Read MoreThe dream followed him out of bed, across the landing and into the bathroom. It waited patiently while he fumbled at the fly of his pyjama bottoms – lingering behind his reflection in the soap-spotted mirror; in the damp heat pooled in the small of his back; in the sleep-thickened ache held betwee
Read MoreMy father bought paperweights for her all the time. Every birthday, wedding anniversary and Christmas. When he died I continued to buy them for her. She became a collector. They sat in a teak display cabinet in the hallway, each one a strange planet in a human solar system revolving around her, its
Read MoreIn my perverse mind it’s summertime: that hot summer of 1976. Which it could not have been, since Lukey was born in January. Even so, I persist in seeing it this way. Seeing my mother, in bikini and tie-dyed sarong, drifting from shaded bedroom to sun-scorched balcony, a whiff of coconut suntan lo
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