Back of a mobile phone found in the gutter on Crossleigh Street. Mugging gone wrong? Half mile radius searched for any further items, handbag, purse, searched bushes in Crompton park, ...
"There’s just something so bad about It. We talk sometimes about the beauty of a theory, the elegance of an explanation. What we have under that tent in Tower Hamlets ...
She resented his apology for the display of power it was. The silence had been building for some miles, compressed by the confined space of the car, and it was ...
“Do you like to listen to music during sex?” The website is asking me. I tick ‘no’. I think, who is listening to music during sex? I feel sorry for ...
Katja’s room was right at the top of the house; in fact it was set into the roof. The ceiling in the small room was comfortably low and the single, ...
Sleep always takes Jack by surprise now that he’s turned fifty. His legs can’t find a comfortable spot, his mind won’t turn off, he doesn’t feel as tired as he ...
Ever the stickler, he was the sort of man who bristled at the misuse of the word dilemma. Insistent upon correct usage, he never tired of pointing out to his ...
It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and I stand just inside, breathing the stale, dusty air. When I can see, I take the ...
The first time Caitlin laid eyes on me, I was swallowing razor blades. She told me afterwards my performance had been so convincing, she’d taken out her mobile phone, pressed ...
I’m not a big flashlight person, and even less of a drinking by myself in the woods person — so I wasn’t exactly using the flashlight in the most effective ...
Ffion raises her head from the pavement, merely as a matter of experiment. The brain is a smart device, Ffion knows that, smart in that whether she lies with her ...
There is a wolf-face in the trees. I can see it when I look up and the branches tangle and sway together in the shape of narrowed eyes, bared teeth. ...
The herd wakes me, hungry again and baying for grass, green and juicy. They huddle round the basher, lowing and groaning. Their rolling backsides butt up against the bent branches. ...
Harare was always a plum to me, a gorgeous memory; blue-black, full and ripe, luxurious and sweet to the tongue. I recall a veranda fringed city, snug with waiters, sunk ...
I imagine her as a young girl, turning boys’ heads. Somehow she manages to forget I’m there, and imagine it’s someone different listening to her, her eyes are somewhere above ...
Menengai, Alex our guide tells us, means “the place where God is not”. It is a word from the Masai, the great African tribe that traverse the land with their ...
Late that night when the river outside was black like octopus ink and inside the only noise was the low buzz of the boiler, he heard a scratching sound and ...
She was with him every night as he drifted between sleep and delirium. He heard her coo softly, a cool hand on his forehead. Even when his cough settled deep ...
They went out mixed, but as the cons distributed into the yard they broke into their component parts. White boys congregated by the weight pile, blacks by the half-court basketball ...
Seabirds haunt an area where the contents of a bucket have been tossed. I see fish-heads. Entrails. Farther along, I almost step on a dead jellyfish. Its skin is transparent. ...