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
‘Monty, climb down. This instant.’ The smooth blonde crown of his head visible through the dark spikes, Monty is halfway up the monkey puzzle tree that stands by the school pitch. From his look-out, he can see the mini red rugby shirts of his classmates, bulldozing about. ‘Sir, did you know that even a tap
3 cups of coffee. That’s maximum. 2 is preferable. And none after 4pm. 3 sets of press-ups (20 per set) 3 sets of sit-ups (25 per set) 3 sets of squats (15 per set) 3 times to go outside. That is also a maximum. Once to run and once to shops. If you feel a
When Josh knelt and presented the ring, the first question Hélène considered – other than the obvious – was, “am I going to have to kill his mother?” So far she’d mastered her rage. Three years of the relationship, two and a half trying to extricate him from the strange, devious little woman who bore
Some folk said Uriah Bleakness would do the devil proud, should the devil ever stoop so low. Bleakness—Lord Bleakness, he’d grown fond of calling himself—owned a gloomy curio shop at the junction of Pinchin Road and Back Church Lane in the bustling parish of Whitechapel. The merchandise he sold was of a most Unextraordinary Character,
