The dog was dead. It just didn’t know it yet. Pete ‘The Meat’ Truelove knew it. The vet knew it. When the results of the blood test had appeared on her monitor screen, she’d softly chewed her bottom lip. She would say something soon. He could sense the hard word coming. Crouched on the floor
All this time trying to convince himself he had to squash his pride like a piece of bubble wrap and ask her. “Do you want to move in with me?” After four years together, it’s just natural procedure. He could have slipped it into a conversation, mentioned it as a joke, or, better, pointed out
The house was a piece of shit, but it was the best I could afford. I remembered hearing something about “curb appeal” on the Home and Garden Channel. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew this wreck didn’t have it. I knew it was going to be an insurmountable amount of work
We don’t talk—I mean, sit down and have a conversation—during the day. There isn’t time. We have three kids under the age of five, we both work, and spare time revolves around booster chairs, baby food, and car seats. There’s always something else, something more immediate, tugging at our attention. Our communication as a couple,
The steam from the two mugs of coffee adds to the condensation on the already misty window. I wipe my coat sleeve across the pane, exposing a small portal to the outside world. The rain sounds like tiny footsteps against the glass, the intensity ebbing a little as the wind drops. Two women trudge along
The building was scheduled for demolition. A former apartment block on the outskirts of Bristol, it was built in the sixties in two hinge-like columns joined at the corner. Below lay a large unused courtyard, empty save for dead leaves, a heap of white refuse sacks and a few shattered wooden pallet boards. Graffiti covered
Ramon bites his lip as he agonises over a perfunctory hand job. We’re sitting in a swan boat chained to the pier in The Cabecera Park. You’d think he was trying to hand start a motorboat the way he’s going at it. I’ve whispered instructions into his ear. I’ve closed my eyes and thought of
“From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home. Because the critical thing we must do is stop the disease spreading between households.” Marcy had one eye on Boris Johnson and one eye on the Instagram stories of a guy she’d met on Tinder and
Mike Hanneman followed his father down a corridor in St. Joseph’s Hospital. Leading them was a prim, middle-aged man in a white jacket, who moved briskly and said little. The overhead lights reflected off the well-polished floor and the silver plates of the numbers of the doors on either side. More doctors in white coats
Dr Beamish, Since yours is the name on the paperwork I was given I am assuming that it is to you that I should address this document. Not with any great enthusiasm, I must confess, but Dr Hansted insisted that a commitment to keeping a journal was an essential prerequisite for acceptance onto this trial.
