‘Come on, be serious! You can’t like everyone; no one does. It’s unnatural.’ Trish argued as she closed the fridge door, arms filled with carrots, beef, flour. She grabbed an onion and some garlic and started peeling. ‘There is good in everyone. You just have to look for it.’ Christian insisted. ‘I don’t buy it. People are mean out there; half of them are psychos. … Continue reading Fruit Tarts and Muffins

Lilacs. It was lilacs. A whole half-day had gone by until I knew. Half a day while my subconscious had worked, opening memory boxes, figuring out what had been so evocative. That morning I’d passed a woman in the icy-cold train station. Both of us fast walking in opposite directions: to different platforms, different destinations. A tall curvy blonde in turquoise swing coat and tan … Continue reading For Proust it was Tea-Soaked Madeleines

With nine months to go, we curl up together in the sleeping bag with dead grass and beetles. I suggest the M word. All my friends are starting to push babies out and go to baby massage and pregnancy yoga. We go crummy camping holidays in the rain in the Lake District. Joe blows beery breaths in my face, he mutters, “yeah, babe, whatever.” He … Continue reading Powdered scrambled egg and Prosecco

For weeks the sun, like a huge white marble, hung in the sky; any clouds were as fleeting and fluffy as marshmallows. It was a summer as wild and carefree as white bedsheets flapping in the cooling breeze. I was ten and Brian was six when, without warning or explanation, our parents uprooted us from our noisy, dusty, traffic-clogged south London suburb and moved to … Continue reading The Phone Box at the End of the World

I don’t mean that he’s inside it. He is not like Oscar the Grouch. He is an actual man in jeans and a Ben Sherman jacket that is zipped up to the neck and he is sitting in a bin, long thin denim legs lolling out in front of him. He leans back against the garden wall that divides the house from the street and … Continue reading On my way to work one cold clear autumn morning, I see a man sitting in a bin