Jane hopes that she doesn’t meet Richard Curtis anytime soon. If she did, she’d tell him exactly what she thinks of his movies. Especially if it were raining when they met. Because Jane notices when it rains in London. Jeez, does anyone not? Yes. Looking at you, Andie MacDowell! Jane doesn’t think that having Hugh Grant’s character, or any other man for…
“No luck, mate?” “Nah, they won’t let me in. Confiscated my membership card, then said I don’t belong. Gits.” “I tell you that Society place used to be alright, you know, but it’s gone downhill. It’s got so they’ll only let a certain sort in, yeah? I remember going there all the time when I was younger. ‘Course it’s changed…
I brought her back one last time. She liked the place, remembered it from her childhood, she said, or maybe when she was older, a teenager. I can’t remember. I glazed over every time she started to talk about the time before me. It can’t have been that interesting. She wasn’t. She weren’t much to look at neither. I can…
I heard women talking and tried to focus on what they were saying. “A most peculiar looking creature to be sure.” “Who is she, do you think?” “Foreign, of that there can be little doubt. It is not the fashion that a lady’s hair be cropped so close.” “And the clothes we found her in. Why! Little more than sacking.”…
I fill letters home with tales of a happier me: a young woman sitting in the shade on her balcony, trying to read a children’s book in Greek, and nodding “Kalimera” at the neighbour opposite, who is hanging out her washing and admiring our tomato plants. There’s no place for the flatmate tending to his marijuana plants strategically placed between…
When the first mist ribbon had snaked its way out of the forest and wrapped itself around their Saab on the road from Gothenburg, he understood how you could feel at home in a place for the first time in his life. Like being on one of those paths that only last for a limited time in fairy tales, before…
Efthalia noticed the changes on her walk to the market that day. The worst potholes in the road had been filled in with great clods of earth, grass, roots and all. She almost stumbled on its evenness. Cratered for as long as she could remember, she’d often found her way home through the ruts and swells of the road in…
“It’s over. I can’t see you anymore,” Lucy had said to him over the phone. “Not now it’s summer.” What does that have to do with anything?” he’d said to the dialling tone. He looked out of the window at the park opposite his flat and saw nothing but couples and families. He put his palm flat on the glass…
“Don’t I know you?” She’d heard him perfectly well but looked up and said, “I’m sorry?” He shifted in his seat. “I was just saying, I thought I knew you. You look familiar. I’m sure I’ve met you or seen you somewhere before…” She half-smiled, dipping her head down a fraction. “We have? You know, I can’t place you, sorry….
He dislikes lying to matron. She is, after all, a decent enough person. But if he told her the truth, she would never let him go. She would probably force him to join in more of the activities at the nursing home. He thinks activities a strange choice of word when the home only really has a dimly-lit television lounge,…