Derek the hound had the scent. I followed him with a torch through the copse of trees behind the Leary household. Mr. Leary had vanished two days before. Mrs. Leary said her husband had run away with the car and the cash from the safe underneath the bed. We’d found the car the day before.…
I start to run. Grandma had mentioned the cornfield, it’s not like it used to be, and I could tell, it seemed thicker, denser. Untamed. Had she told us to be careful? If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s not to run in a corn field when the ears are showing. The stalks bend like elastic…
What’s better than a cat on a pub stool in moody black and white? Taken in a pub I’d walked past hundreds of times. Finally went in. There was a cat, and later someone started playing the piano. Sold cheap beer for somewhere so central.
Grandma is ill again. She dips in and out. Today she’s told me to take Ginny out of the house, because the air is stale, and the house smells like dust. I ask Ginny where she wants to go and she says, not far, because Grandma is ill, so we decide on the corn-field behind…
Tokida dashes out of the building and into the early dusk. He sits down on the cold steps, the wet steps, at the front of the mortuary. He doesn’t notice how cold or wet the step is. He has his phone out. He’s dialing her number. It rings. And rings. Beeping. Tokida can feel the…
Tokida walks in the direction he knows he has to go. His legs pull him one way and one way only. The pinnacle of the triangle, this is an equilateral, perfect and horrifying, and yet one side is slipping, sloping in the middle, where she used to hold up the middle. Like Atlas. Bearing the…
London skyline, pretend goats, smelly llamas, waiting to be stuffed, flares on. Rabbits, not fit for the wild, content munching hard frozen grass, mostly mud. So much white in so much mud. So much white in so much mud. Standing in the cold garden admiring Victorian foresight. A green space in…
She’s sitting there, eating tinned peaches. This is something we do every week. I drink tea, she has peaches, sat at a table in our favourite cafe. Today feels different. Next to the bowl is the book I gave to her last week. She hasn’t put it down. I’m in two minds. We don’t speak…
I Air pollution is high, turn engine off when stationary. Smoggy gray. A designated outstanding collection. Relics of a rich man. Glassy eyed foxes, stuck in time, a zoo of children and wandering couples. Don’t look at me, stop looking at me, look at this. The strained mother generates interest, forces…
Tokida knows that Lucy regrets ever sitting next to him, that he must sound mad. Deranged. All the numbers finally got to him. That’s what she must be thinking. Isn’t it odd, Mr. Tokida thinks, that we’re forever putting our own thoughts into other people’s heads? Mrs. Burrows. Stood at the door. Discussing paid leave.…
