The writers lab anthology august 2015 skyros

!1

The Writers’ Lab Anthology of work produced during Leigh Russell’s Creative Writing Course on Skyros

August 2015 1st Edition April, T. A. Black Nikolas, John Greeves, Sophie Hale, Steve Healey, A. J. Ivory, Juliette Lee, Edward Longmire, Mary Maclean, Andrew Stevenson, Jann Talbot, Marina Viscardi

!2

Table of Contents April A Series of Given Moments ...............................................................7

T. A. Black Nikolas The Path ......................................................................................11 The Walk......................................................................................13 Ceceilia ........................................................................................15

John Greeves Anastasia Klimoski ........................................................................17 Eleonora Falcon ............................................................................ 22 My Greek Room ............................................................................ 23 Parallels in Writing and in Art ..........................................................24

Sophie Hale A Romantic Moment on a Cliff Top ...................................................27 The Notebook ...............................................................................29 The Box ....................................................................................... 31 Ninja Birthday Boy ........................................................................35

Steve Healey Adventure in Skyros ......................................................................37

A. J. Ivory John’s Silent Walk .........................................................................59 Keeping an Eye .............................................................................62 My Nan ........................................................................................65

!3

Juliette Lee Healing Pythagoras ........................................................................67

Edward Longmire Fur Coat Reunion ..........................................................................75 Suspicion .....................................................................................81 Psycho Psychiatrist .......................................................................82 Psycho Mackerel Killer....................................................................83 Underground Pace .........................................................................85 Relaxation ....................................................................................86 Sexy Selfie ...................................................................................88 Andy the Arsehole meets Hugo the Hippy .........................................89 Spoof of Other Class Members’ Writing .............................................90

Mary Maclean Beached....................................................................................... 91 Walking in Skyros..........................................................................92 Lost and Found .............................................................................93 Working Lunch ..............................................................................95

Andrew Stevenson A Good Old-Fashioned Copper .........................................................97 The Pigeon .................................................................................100 The Freshers’ Conference .............................................................101 Oedipus Bay ...............................................................................102

Jann Talbot High Heels on the Highway ...........................................................107 Location, Location! ......................................................................109

!4 Despair ......................................................................................111 An Ode to Autism ........................................................................112 Writer’s Block ............................................................................. 113 Character: ‘A Battler’ story 2 .........................................................114 Ceramic Secrets ..........................................................................115 Ode to An Ant ............................................................................. 117 A Parody of Writing Styles ............................................................119 Playing with Pace.........................................................................120 Tits Up in Atsitsa .........................................................................121 Playing with Dialogue ...................................................................123 The King and I ............................................................................125

Marina Viscardi Dog Days ...................................................................................127 Privy Beauty ...............................................................................128 The Book Spotter ........................................................................129

!5

FOREWARD THE ANTHOLOGY This anthology was written on the Greek island of Skyros during the two week period 9th - 22nd August 2015, on Leigh Russell's creative writing course at The Writers' Lab. THE WRITERS’ LAB Writing Holidays at The Writers’ Lab in Skyros island were described by The Guardian as "the No 1 of the World's Five Best Writing Holidays". In an idyllic environment, far away from the demands and routines dictated by a busy life, The Writers’ Lab in Skyros island, Greece, offers writers the opportunity to learn from distinguished authors. Former Writers’ Lab participants have gone on to publish books or to stage plays they started, developed or completed in Skyros. Courses are open to novices with a secret passion for writing as much as to writers who already have a book under their belt. http://skyros.com/writers_lab.htm LEIGH RUSSELL Leigh Russell writes the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson series. Her books have reached Number 1 on kindle and iTunes, and have appeared on bestseller lists for Amazon, Waterstones and W H Smith.

They have been well reviewed in many journals, such as Number 1 recommended crime novel in The Times. Leigh's popularity is spreading in translation, as well as hitting bestseller lists in the US and UK. Nominated for several major awards, Leigh's series are currently in development for television. Described in trade journal Book2Book as 'the next big name in crime fiction', Leigh is currently working on a new series featuring Lucy Hall, while continuing to write the Geraldine Steel series. http://leighrussell.co.uk Any writer interested in attending a future course on Skyros should contact office@skyros.com Any literary agent interested in contacting one of the contributors can do so on office@skyros.com

!6

Acknowledgements Front cover photograph: Magazia beach taken from the veranda of the Manos Faltaits Folk and Historical Museum on Skyros Island, Greece.

Taken by Jude Lemkin using her iPad.

Rear cover photographs: Top: Mosaic mural on the side wall of the Skyros Centre.

Bottom: View from the Skyros Centre looking towards Molos beach. The white building is the accommodation for the Skyros Centre delegates.

Both taken by Steve Healey

Publisher’s acknowledgments:

 

Leigh Russell and all of the authors helped bring this book to a wider audience by contributing towards the editing, media, layout, proofreading and publishing. A real team effort!

!7

April A Series of Given Moments

It was before I made my discovery that I met Carlo. At the time I had seen the majority of the Venetian masterpieces, spending days in the museums’ archives, in churches, and even more time visiting private collectors. Many had become friends.

I had set myself a secret goal: seeing all I could, in person. It was my job as an art historian, but there were other ways too. And I had nothing against being digital - I wish I was more apt at using all technologies, they attract me.

Still, I am happy to have been raised without the Internet. I look out, constantly, for the physical contact. The need to touch the paintings was so strong in my first years as a student that I sometimes wished they wouldn’t leave me alone with them in the room. I was waiting for everybody to leave, and hoping they would stay. Because as soon as nobody was around I felt the urge to put my fingers where the brush had been. If in front of me was a Madonna with Child the urge was even worse. I needed to touch their faces, give just a little caress. And if they were holding cheek to cheek, then I couldn’t leave without having touched the spot where their faces met – Madonna Glycophilousa – mother and child facing me, waiting for my tenderness, I believed.

It was a privilege I abused. I knew that if many more people did as I did, the painting would be ruined. But very few others could be in the position I was in, and I believed those who were did not have my same desire. In time I discovered that almost everyone in my field has their private obsession – some colleagues have shared them with me, but I have not. I have not told anyone. Maybe someone had seen me, and was keeping the secret too.

!8 I remember all the paintings I touched. The adrenaline has helped me fix those memories. It took some planning, minutes before seeing it, sometimes hours. When I knew we were going to be many on that specific day, my obsession grew. I could not leave without having touched it. More was at stake. I needed to distract more people. It had been easier the first times. I could go to the loo and come back when others had moved on to the next room. But what if the paintings were all in the same room? Then I needed to be alert, my senses activated, trying to catch that fraction of second where everyone was looking elsewhere.

After some years, I started feeling guilty about it. What had begun as a little game now scared me. I was losing concentration. It was mainly because of this uneasiness that I started seeing Carlo. He was a psychologist, 17 years older than me, and a very attractive man.

I had kept it protected inside me for months. At the beginning, it was because I myself couldn’t believe it; I couldn’t trust my intuition or bear the joy of what this might mean. But then, as time passed, I enjoyed what had become my secret – a better one – and while searching for proofs, I privately appreciated what I had discovered. An original Tintoretto. A painting that many knew existed – there was written evidence it had been commissioned – but everyone thought had been destroyed during one of the Venice floods.

Tintoretto worked for a living, as did many artists at his time, but he was also possessed by a haunting perfectionism. There were many letters from the Doge asking for this painting of a little girl walking up the steps of the Church: Maria being presented to the Temple. It was supposed to be the masterpiece shown for the opening of the new basilica in Dorsoduro, but it hadn’t arrived on time. The painting was paid for in advance, but was never received. Was it one of the many Tintoretto had left unfinished in his studio? Or was it perhaps completed by Marietta, his beloved daughter, an artist herself? I had possibly found it, working side by side with the restorers, scratching under the surface

!9 of unnamed paintings. I kept telling myself I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the art community.

But that summer, while looking out at the sea from my privileged spot on the rocks at Atsitsa Bay, I decided I had to announce my discovery. From the rocks there was a perfect view. I loved to go up there and look at the people below, trying to figure out who was together with whom, going as far as imagining whole stories that had led the women, men and children that were swimming or lying on the beach, to that specific site. Looking down at sunset, I saw a hat floating in the water. It was a wide white hat, with a white ribbon, being carried gently by the waves. I immediately turned my head to the beach, wondering who could have lost it, or was it a naughty little girl that had thrown it in the water while nobody was looking?

There was only one person there, his hands on his hips, looking out to the water. He was a handsome man, dressed in blue, standing up straight. I quickly looked back to the water, searching for the hat, but what I saw then was a woman’s head still half in the water wearing the hat. Slowly her body also emerged, revealing perfect round breasts, a thin waist and perfectly shaped hips. The man was now with a towel in his hands, waiting for his lady to join him, proud to see her walk out of the sea in all her beauty. I wanted to be proud too. I decided to let the world know about my Tintoretto.

!10

!11

T. A. Black Nikolas The Path

The path, fixed somewhere in the late eighties, early nineties, was of course based on the traditional path, but perhaps not a mule trail, not really, as it goes not go up to the castle, unless the upper part had been disused since the Middle Ages. There was concrete between the stone slabs, not the usual seventies Greek hash job. The path was steep and zig-zaggy rather than winding.

There was an abundance of plants; some yellow and deep pink night flowers waiting to open – just a little more time before these dainty flowers dance in the wind and naturally the bougainvillea with the last of the first blooms, the second coming will be at the end of August, then the jasmine with a faint perfume as it waits till evening to emit all of its rich, encompassing scent, light enough not to be cloying. A little further up stood an old house with no roof and only half of the central beam.

Someone has been doing work on it as the wall tops have fresh concrete on them, yet it still looks forlorn and uncared for.

As the heights of the path are reached a myriad of flowers is revealed, the reds, whites and pinks looking up towards the sun with a scent of sage, brought on the breeze to tease the nose. Then the little square is reached on which stands an old gnarled fig tree to offer respite from the heat of the day under its hands of leaves. The old road continues along the far side of this little square and is a more cobbled affair with the old traditional houses painted in white – almost clouds in the sky so high up.

Some need work, the concrete balconies are starting to crumble, more

!12 work, the continued fixing, repairing which buildings demand; their desire for love and attention.

Then comes the de rigueur church. Through the open door, the icons – the largest always being the Theotokos, the Virgin with child – can be seen as well as the sanctuary lamp, lit to show that the divine essence of God is present, and to the passer-by the sense of peace exudes.

Walking along a little farther past the white-washed walls with more bougainvillea spilling over offering contrasts of green and bright pink, the eyesore of cars and rubbish bins is reached, a reminder of reality to break the idyll.

Yet to offset that, turning to the right is a circular square with a bronze statue of an Adonis in the middle whose backdrop is the blue of the hazy sky, and the sea; the perfection of man. A spot to contemplate, to dream of something ever more about to be that is always just beyond the grasp.

From here, head to the right and almost hanging over the cliff is a café.

Here are wooden tables with Van Gogh chairs and red geraniums in their flower boxes looking out over the sea into infinity.

!13

The Walk

This path the same, yet not the same. Less rubbish. The dumpsite has been cleared, but some of the stench still lingers. The night flower bushes have pushed their way up through the soil. Life has returned.

The construction work has finished, you cannot really tell where they were building as no mess has been left and once again this building has life, someone to live and breathe in it. Its purpose reborn.

The non-existence of June is reflected in the plants, the blooms are smaller or never came, the beautiful fig tree that spreads above the path with its hand-like leaves is full of unripe fruit; another month of waiting is needed.

As he arrives at the top of the path into the sunlight of the little square, he knows that the hill climbing is over. The sigh that is not released is made up for by the breeze through the leaves. It caresses his cheek and he tries to find his inner balance.

The donkey path starts and he wonders where that little church is. It meant so much last time, it offered hope and now he can give thanks.

The two icons look more alive. The sanctuary candle burns brighter.

Continuing down the path, he notices the beautifully fresh white-washed walls and there, peeking out from under the bougainvillea, is the sign, Brook Road. Ah, so this is a road, is it? Opposite, the hibiscus flowers look jaded and faded and so much smaller. The night flowers have no blooms, but the hues of green are more evident. You just need to look.

It is all there. Just look.

!14 And at the end of this road, there is a sea of cars and happily no waste bins, no odour intensified by the heat of the day. As he lifts his eyes, he sees the calm turquoise water meet the blue of the heavens. He goes to the cafĂŠ on the cliff side. There he sits and gazes out into infinity, cooled at the East Wind by the breeze, alone.

!15

Ceceilia

“Good morning, John,” she said looking up smiling as soon as she heard the door open. This was her special moment when her heart skipped a beat. Ceceilia dressed smartly, but never overly so. She was in keeping with the office: chic with a hint of trendy. Her make-up was a level just below glamorous. As John strode through the reception area, she caught a waft of Obsession.

“Get me a cappuccino and arrange another meeting with the weaver.

Any messages?”

“Mr Jarvis called again, he really needs to have that meeting.”

“If it’s alone, then after 3 pm, if not, after 11 am tomorrow.” And with that he disappeared into his office.

Ceceilia got up and went to make John’s cappuccino. She felt she had come a long way, she, a small-town girl from Didcot. She loved working in London, it made her feel real, like she had arrived. What she wanted more than anything though was an acknowledgement from John, one look to show he reciprocated her innermost feelings. Just one look.

That evening when she arrived home, an icebox awaited her. She had forgotten to call the gasman to fix her boiler. The office had overtaken her; she had even had to work through her lunch break which was becoming more and more usual.

She took off her shoes, hung up her coat, put on a pair of sheepskin moccasins, almost ran into her bedroom, removed her dress and hung it up in her wardrobe immediately. Then she walked over to the chair and put on her sweatshirt and pants and two fleeces followed by a pair of thick woollen socks.

!16 Then, she padded into the kitchen and took out a tin of soup, poured it into a bowl and placed it in the microwave, put some bread into the toaster. As she was eating her tea at the kitchen table, Ceceilia noticed that when she breathed out, a cloud of white was emitted. “That cold,” she thought, “maybe, I need to put my coat on top of the duvet.”

When she had finished, she washed up the dishes, dried them and then put them away. These were the habits she had learnt growing up. It meant her tiny flat had order.

Since it was so cold, she decided to jump into bed and watch telly in the hope that some warmth would be offered. Despite the little heat given, her core was freezing and she wondered if this coldness would let her drift off to sleep. At least her nostrils were not starting to freeze over.

She remembered that type of cold from her childhood.

!17

John Greeves Anastasia Klimoski

Anastasia Klimoski has become an anomaly in our street. While many old Georgian houses have the trimmings of modern aspiration with twee furnishing and restoration, hers has remained the eyesore of the street. No one is certain about her past. News about her life comes mainly through Mrs Phillips, the cleaning lady, who is the daily herald of our street. ‘She's surrounded by cats, you wouldn't believe the mess, Social Services would have a field day, if they only knew,' Mrs Phillips says. 'Not that I like to gossip, but there's some...'

It's then when I stop her. 'Finished with your cup?' I ask, placing it in the sink.

'There's the upstairs landing and the bathroom still to do Mrs. Phillips when you're ready.'
 'Righty-oh Mrs Knight' she replies. Nothing happens. There's no reaction. I move out of hearing distance, hoping silence will spur her on.

You can always rely on Mrs Phillips for gossip. There's bound to be another instalment from this mouthpiece next week. It's easy to be drawn into this tittle-tattle. I listen intently, feigning detachment behind a frozen smile.

As for Anastasia Klimoski, my only view of her is when I take the dog for a walk past her house. I'm no builder, but her house has seen better days. The roof needs repair and all the sash cord windows are grey with neglect. Even the portico begs for prosperous times. It's here I catch a glimpse of a crouching figure at the doorstep, her back turned as she struggles to pick up the milk. She must be the only one who has milk delivered in the street.

She's usually in a silk dressing gown with all of its colour and vigour sucked out. If Mrs Phillips is correct, Anastasia Klimoski was once a great beauty and

!18 a Polish countess to boot. Mrs Phillips assures me she has seen the silver framed photographs on her grand piano.

When I first saw Mrs Klimoski on my walks I used to utter a brisk 'Good morning'. Her rouge cheeks would turn in my direction for a moment. No eye contact would ensue. Mutterings would follow. Not the most generous or savoury kind. Then the door would close. Good morning indeed, I'd think.

Being a good neighbour is so overrated and yet so underwhelming.

Anastasia does have one visitor. According to Mrs Phillips her niece comes to see her. 'For her money,' Mrs Phillips insists and why not I think.

'Her niece is only counting the days until she pops her clogs,' Mrs Phillips says.

‘What's that house worth today?' She looks dismayed. I've decided to serve Rich Tea biscuits on this occasion instead of Duchy biscuits. I don't reply.

'Anyway, her name is Maja,' Mrs. Phillips tells me. 'Another cup of coffee would be nice?' Now she's becoming presumptuous. I pour her half a cup of dregs.

I think I know the niece. I can picture her now. She has one of those Smart cars. Why is it that huge women always pick the smallest cars, it can't all be about parking? Perhaps it's a foetal thing like returning to the womb. I've seen her emerge from her car. Too many Polish dumplings or nalesniks by the look of things as she waddles down the street.

Anastasia and her niece are always rowing according to Mrs Phillips. In the winter it was always about having a weekly home delivery from Tesco.

Anastasia wasn't having any of that, not even if Maja did the ordering for her.

'She's tight, Mrs Knight, the sort who can peel an orange in their pocket,' Mrs Phillips says. 'Never a Christmas bonus like you, or a thank you by your leave.

Spends a fortune on her cats and gives money to beggars on the street or to trick or treaters. Would you believe it?'

'Oh really,' I say, wondering how a covert threat, benignly packaged, can open wallets and unlock purses.

!19 Mrs. Phillips eases herself onto a kitchen stool. I try to look menacingly at her (benignly of course) to get her working, but she continues.

'There was a barney about moving to a smaller flat – one of those with a warden on site. Anastasia was having none of that. I could list the arguments – the dangerous electrics, a big empty house, not coping. It doesn't take much before the fireworks,' she adds. She won't get the bedrooms done at this rate.

Autumn's a time of year I'm looking forward to with some quiet relaxation. A long weekend in Harrogate Spa should do it with some healthy shopping thrown in.

On return, I'm only greeted by Mrs Phillips on the Thursday with worldwide crisis talks looming. I'm calling it Black Thursday. Apparently things got very hot between Anastasia and her niece the other day. The smell was terrible according to Mrs Phillips. She calls it 'incontence' instead of incontinence. 'Well the smells – you wouldn't believe it Mrs. Knight. Then there's those cats doing their business all over the house. It's disgusting. Something had to be done. I phoned Maja's emergency number she'd left out on the mantelpiece. Told Maja I was quitting. Anyway she told me to hang on and she'd try to sort it out.

When Maja arrived and said the cats have to go Mrs Knight, all hell broke out.

You should have heard what she called Maja. Well you never, noble blood and all that, she'd make a sailor blush. She tells me I'm sacked. Tells Maja never to call again as long as she lives. Says she'll always provide for her cats long after she's dead and that she'll be changing her will soon so Maja won't see a penny of that now. I was glad to go.'

'Sorry to hear your news, Mrs Phillips' I say pushing her stool under the kitchen surfaces and closing the biscuit tin to her world.

Summer is draining and there's that sudden switch in the air. Fortunately the street has returned to its former normality. Mrs Phillips has found new employment at number 17, a nice old gentleman, who apparently pays a

!20 pound an hour more than I do. Mrs Phillips has told me she's weighing up her options, but she's not sure about things. A small increase of ÂŁ1.50 an hour on my part would I'm sure resolve her confusion.

Maja hasn't returned to the street. The organic man calls every Tuesday, the postman comes late afternoon, home delivery van arrives on a Thursday as a rule. First class mail arrives promptly late in the afternoon. Hawkers and traders remain discouraged as autumn hibernation sets in. Peace has returned, so I think.

As for Anastasia, it's the new post-woman who notices it first. It always takes a woman to notice these sort of things. 'Is Mrs Klimoski away on holiday?' she asks one day. 'The step is covered in milk bottles and I've tried knocking.'

'Not sure,' I say. I don't really want to get involved but this inconsideration has been sprung on me. I ask Mrs Phillips the same day if she still has Maja's number. Unfortunately it's still on the mantelpiece across the way, so I'll have to act. Social Services don't sound particularly helpful until I say that I will be contacting the police and of course my MP if nothing is done. It's their job after all.

Social Services do respond. Thank god for that. First a little grey man in a grey car arrives, in fact everything about him including his manner is grey.

More than forty shades of it. I don't like him ringing my door. I told them over the phone where she lives. Then an ambulance arrives, followed by the police, a small crowd and a press gaggle. I'm quite relieved when they all leave, all that unbearable noise bringing down the neighbourhood. I have time to read the evening paper at last. It comes as quite a shock. There's a smudge on the mirror, I must remind Mrs Phillips.

Anastasia did disappear for several weeks. She fell down the stairs, probably tripping over one of her cats. Quite dead. 'Martwy,' as they say in Polish. All

!21 her fifteen cats survived. They must have drunk from a dripping tap and of course Mrs Klimoski was true to her word and providing for each of them long after her death. How kind, none of them went hungry. The coroner is expected to record a verdict of accidental death and Maja her loving niece has already indicated the house will be sold to developers and she will be moving on to better things.

!22

Eleonora Falcon

Eleonora Falcon rises today through the radiance of sun Uplift of thermals Curvature of form Etched spirals Cursively performed Above rigidity of rock Stability of ground.

!23

My Greek Room

My Greek room has developed a personality of its own. I hear grumblings from the air conditioning, the steady drip of a tap.

Sometimes there's churning in the cistern – they all call out.

My room doesn't do bathrooms, it's an afterthought. Think cubicle or smaller broom cupboard; sink toilet and shower all squeezed into a square metre of tiles.

This demands a set sequence - teeth, ablutions, shower, unless you want a dripping toilet seat. The toilet disposable paper bin is unruly. On a bad day it refuses to lift. This is not a paper you want to have at hand.

It's only with rapid pumping of the feet that it lifts open-mouthed at last for grateful disposition.

Morning tranquillity is shattered every day at dawn. First the ring of the small bell, then the clamorous sound of the church bell joins in.

At first I thought it was an earthquake and rushed out (half a step) to the door. The room is small, bijou is an exaggeration. The exit sign above the door directed me. Two green men running, not walking in opposite direction with a green arrow pointing down. I rushed out of the room – on to my balcony (the top step) and was relieved to see neither volcano eruption or earthquake had taken place; although I'm sure the green arrow pinpointed the epicentre of this sudden activity.

The shower was an emotional wreck flooding its tears across the floor, which remained impassive below the stare of the Cyclops bulb.

Laying down at night, the bed creaks and groans as if it's having its left leg amputated, while the door at least says good night with a friendly click while I await the next instalment.

!24

Parallels in Writing and in Art

I am essentially a writer, but decided to spend a week of my holiday in Skyros painting watercolour for the first time. I was interested in the parallels that existed between the written word and painting.

What can be said about the process of writing can also apply equally to that of painting. Both the writer and artist seek an aspect of originality, one where ideas and images are expressed in a particular way. Each aspires to view the world in a unique way.

Through the media of paint or words we hope to surprise our audience, to evoke feelings and make a connection to our minds and the way in which we perceive the world around us. Style is important to both disciplines, but more important is finding that unique voice which incorporates and mirrors who we are through our work.

In both fields we stand exposed, measured by what we create and naked to the criticism of others. Yet if we are believers in either form, we strive to engage and express our being through our work with all its vulnerability.

Art and writing both work within a structure however loosely defined and expressed. Each is perceived and planned and consists of definite elements, carefully assembled so that the work lives through its vibrancy and colour, be it words or acrylics.

Again the same tensions exist for writers and artists; extreme concentration, uncertainty, even frustration as both attempt the ancient craft of alchemy of changing base materials to gold. The self-critic is always on our shoulder trying to undermine our self-belief.

There are rewards, however. Sometimes the work itself can surprise you on those rare days when the muse sits beside you and conjures something magical out of the ordinary or mundane.

It’s never easy, but failure holds the hand of success and every downturn has an upturn if we continue to persevere.

!25 Just as word play is important to the juxtaposition of words in a sentence, so the same is true of colour in composition. In both art and writing, parts need to be combined to recreate a whole in which a narrative or story can be told.

Neither discipline is a softer option, both require an enduring application and dedication where pushing boundaries beyond the scope of what we ever conceived possible is demanded. Neither is mastered overnight. In both creative forms, the writer or artist can adopt specific stylistic approaches. They can use figurative form through paint or words, which can be peppered with imagery, hyperbole and even paradox. As an artist of the canvass or the page we demand an active voice, one which can be heard through the intimacy of the first person or perceived through the collective view of others. We hope to avoid the ‘affected’ and ‘verbose’ and seek through either form to find something of ourselves, so that we are true always to the inclination of our hand.

Both are pathways full of tribulation and uncertainty, but for those who are prepared to endure there is always a final destination awaiting them.

!26

!27

Sophie Hale A Romantic Moment on a Cliff Top

Salty curls of hair wisped around Joanna’s face as she turned towards the sea breeze. She dug her deck shoes into the chalky earth and blinked away the thoughts that came to smart her eyes. Then she leaned back on her hands and watched the careless seagulls wheel above her. Taking a good long look at the horizon, in that moment she reached a decision.

She glanced at the headland, where the tiny, almost completely camouflaged figure of Martin was making its way along the coastal path.

From this far away he couldn’t be exactly identified, which was soothing.

She sighed and relaxed back her head onto a large smooth rock. Eyes closed now, she stopped thinking and just let herself be.

Martin’s closely cropped hair and neat outline could now be seen bobbing purposefully along behind the gorse. This was his moment, their special moment, and everything — even the weather — had fallen into place perfectly. The path ran steeply upwards now, and Martin imagined that this was the final assent of a long pilgrimage that he had begun five years ago. The icon he worshipped was amber-eyed with an exquisite constellation of freckles dancing at their perimeter, and was now going to be his. She was fierce and peculiar and also unexpectedly whimsical, which was when he loved her the most. Obsessive and demanding yes, but he was determined he would embrace it all.

He reached the top of the steep slope and saw that she was lying on the ground with her eyes closed. He considered this move in the game of chess that was their relationship, in which Joanna was always several moves ahead of him.

!28 ‘Joanna?’ He waited, feeling slightly clumsy and unbalanced in the position he had decided to adopt.

She opened one yellow eye, catlike in wariness. In an instant she was on her feet.

‘Martin. What are you doing?’

A rather stupid question considering he was down on one knee holding a small box in his left hand. He smiled a broad encouraging smile — so near but in actual fact so terribly far away. He managed to open the little box and hold it up towards her without wobbling.

‘Do you remember that little shop in Budapest? We said we couldn’t afford it, but I wanted you to have it anyway.’

Joanna looked at the exquisite antique gold and garnet ring that she had lusted after for the entire two weeks they had been in Hungary. She remembered the crushing disappointment she had felt when she had sneaked away one afternoon to buy it and it was gone.

‘It’s even prettier than I remembered,’ she said almost to herself.

‘Then put it on.’ Martin’s knees were beginning to ache. He shifted his position slightly, trying to maintain dignity. They both heard the ominous clunk before Martin’s body registered the pain searing around his right knee cap. Which was not in the right place anymore. He was even able to take in this fact before his head hit the ground.

Naturally time was moving very slowly now. Yes, Joanna had absorbed the fact that Martin was unconscious. Yet her main focus of attention was on the little box which was rolling towards a narrow gully to the left of Martin’s prone body. In one neat movement she jumped over him and made a grab for it as it was disappearing from sight behind a clump of heather.

!29

The Notebook

André considered the shiny spring onions on his chopping board. He could see Peter in his peripheral vision through a cloud of steam wafting upwards from a giant steel saucepan. He turned his back so as not to be distracted from his purpose. Which was what? He thought this before he could stop himself.

‘The spring onions? Do you have them?’

The sound of Peter’s voice brought him sharply back. Peter was looking over André’s shoulder, frowning.

‘What? Now?’ ‘Yes chef. Now.’ Peter went back to his section.

André thought he might just put the knife down and leave the kitchen.

Stride past the vats of bubbling meaty liquids, with stocky serious young men working their knives across endless boards of vegetable prep. Walk up the stairs to the back door to light and sunshine and freedom. Yet he must stay: an opportunity to steal Peter’s notebook would surely come soon. Owning that notebook would bring him far more freedom than walking out now ever could.

He began to chop, quickly and more quickly still. Shards of green flew off the counter-top landing on the floor.

‘Damn it,’ he muttered.

‘Chef?’

Peter was looking at him across the kitchen again.

André briskly filled the plastic container with the tiny green discs and went over and put the box next to Peter.

Peter nodded his head, took the box to the burners to add the contents to the high-sided frying pan that glistened with molten butter.

‘Do we have the Sauvignon for the sauce?’ Peter asked the room in general. Someone piped up, ‘No chef.’

!30 ‘OK. I get it.’ Peter bounded up the stairs to the restaurant, banging the door as he went. Leaving the floor, leaving his section, his knives and the notebook. The notebook. Tucked between the splattered tomes on the shelf above his section.

Now, André told himself. Now. But he couldn’t. It was too easy to slip the small volume into his apron pocket and then later into his rucksack.

Where was his ruthless courage? He hesitated as the din of saucepans banging on the burners, chefs whistling and the incessant babble of the radio dissipated his determination. He just couldn’t do it. Maybe it was a trap: Peter had never left the notebook behind before.

The kitchen porter brushed past him with a large box of salad and herb leaves. The soft exotic smell of the basil brought André back to what he was supposed to be doing.

Lemons he thought. Need to be prepped for tart au citron. He went to the walk-in fridge to fetch them. The coolness of the space rushed against his face as he opened the door. He started to look for the box of lemons. Someone had been in here rearranging the shelves. He stopped to think for a moment. The quiet of the tiny dimly lit space soothed his nerves. What was the hurry? Not just finding lemons, but in stealing Peter’s most precious possession. The key to André’s future as one of the world’s greatest chefs lay a couple of feet from where he was standing. He must take his time and the opportunity to take the little book would come up. He took a deep breath of the cold air and found the plastic drawer that contained the lemons. He took five and stepped back into the Bedlam of Eurotrash radio music, flaming gas burners and the chefs’ filthy banter. Peter was back. The notebook was open by his side as he gathered the ingredients for his famous seared scallops with prunes, black pepper and Sauvignon Blanc sauce. A recipe that André knew would be his one day.

!31

The Box

She flips off the jetty backwards, her body arching over the curve of the setting sun. Under the water she twists and turns to point downwards.

Her body ripples in strong fluid movements as the triangle of her finned feet creates a small wake. This quickly disappears from the people gathered on the boards above.

Silence. Twelve pairs of eyes are fixed on the spot in the water where the last bubbles of her existence disappeared. They hold their breath in communion with hers, as if by not breathing they could send her more oxygen.

Her world becomes quieter and darker as she journeys downwards. The environment now forces her inwards, to an internal stillness that will keep her safe. She shuts out the calculations that threaten to panic her – how deep; the water pressure; does she have enough strength for the much harder return journey? As she descends she stops needing to push herself, as her lungs have expelled all the air that kept her buoyant.

She welcomes this part of the journey. She is travelling back to the very beginnings of life on earth, the womb darkness of the deep sea that is the wellspring of all creatures. She is not fearful that the ocean will snatch her back for itself, for she is a visitor committed by rope to the air-filled world above. Never afraid of the dark as a child, unlike her brother, she is drawn into the mirrored inky stillness of both her external and internal world.

On the surface her brother is staring at the water, his hands in his pockets. Jonathan is racked with unreasonable guilt that his little sister has had to do this instead of him. He is angry with himself for catching pneumonia, angry that his fallibility has forced Gemma to take the risk that should have been his. His mother’s unbearably disappointed face accompanied by his father’s heavy anger flashes across the screen of his mind and he is desperate that they will never know what danger he has

!32 put Gemma in. He wants to go back to the moment when she offered to do the dive, wishes beyond wishing that had been strong enough to stop her volunteering. He looks out towards the orange-crested horizon and feels the weakness of a tear trickle down his cheek.

Gemma sees something white in her peripheral vision. She keeps looking ahead, but the white speck becomes bigger and coalesces into her grandmother’s tablecloth floating towards her with a candelabra suspended above it. She pushes away the urge to engage with it as she knows it is a hallucination. She must stay focused as every second she wastes brings her further away from her safe return to the surface. She closes her eyes to banish the phantom dinner, but is met by her mother’s chiding face mouthing silent reproaches at her. She opens her eyes again and focuses downwards.

Marietta is pacing the jetty, pacing and counting. Deeply regretting she had mooted the idea of free diving to attach a line to the box they had located by sonar on the sea bed. It is too far down: sixty metres is further than Gemma has dived before. Marietta knows as team leader she should have halted the project until they found a safer way of retrieving the chest. She considers now that it probably doesn’t contain anything of interest that can’t wait for a little longer to be examined.

She knows she was seduced by Gemma’s authoritative confidence. It was sheer perversity to ignore common sense and Jonathan’s objections. The end of her relationship with him was at the root of this foolish enterprise, and Gemma was paying for it by risking her life.

As Gemma’s body drops beyond the deepest place she has known she slowly reaches out her right hand which is holding the hook that will attach to the box. She is being squeezed by fear and doubt, her worst enemies. Looking around her into the blackness she sees Jonathan racked with tears coming towards her, his arms outstretched, beseeching. Moules, her little black spaniel, is at his feet scrabbling towards her too. Moules is bleeding from his ears and Gemma must tell

!33 Jonathan to staunch the flow. She wants to open her mouth to speak to him but something is stopping her. She is desperate to embrace her little dog and make him better. What has her brother done?

She is about to shout at Jonathan when she realises her hands have brushed against something hard certain and cold. Before she can slow down, she feels her head bump the chest. Sprung into the present moment she quickly feels along the container for the loop of iron to attach the hook to. Just when she is giving up she feels a reassuring curve and makes the connection.

Now begins the task of reclaiming her airborne existence. She propels her body fiercely into action, curving her torso and arms upwards. Her muscles are resisting, shouting for oxygen to do their work. She pushes away from their clamour, strength rising from the pit of her stomach.

She sets her mind’s eye to the cheery outline of Moules racing towards her down the driveway at home. Arm and leg muscles still fighting back she begins the mantra, ‘I will arrive’, and continues upwards.

Marietta looks at her watch. Three minutes fifty-five seconds. She sees Jonathan standing right at the edge of the jetty, as if he were about to jump in. The calamity of his fear can be felt from twenty feet away. She looks down at the other members of the team as they sit lined up with their feet dangling over the water. One of them is smoking a cigarette, flicking the ash into the wind. They do not speak, and their silent waiting is a reproach that grows with every second that passes.

Jonathan stares at the water in desperation. He reasons that if he were a stronger, better brother he could make Gemma appear by his willpower alone. The ruthless blue-grey calm of the water reflects back to him the blurred empty shape of his existence.

Jonathan first senses rather than actually sees a large fish flashing dark and grey moving upwards from several feet under the surface. Then he sees that its head is the wrong shape, too round and flat to be any fish he knows about. As he stares he sees a streak of straw-yellow floating

!34 alongside the shadow of the creature. This he does not understand at all, until he comprehends that it Gemma’s hair and body that are coming rushing back to reclaim their place amongst the living.

The crowd of onlookers turn as one as the noise of her arrival breaks the calm of the water’s surface. Marietta rushes to the edge of the jetty, crouches down and collects the line that Gemma is offering up to her.

Jonathan also leans over and grabs his sister’s arms and hauls her tiny taught frame out of the water. They stand and face each other, deaf to the whooping cheers of the others. Gemma looks into her brother’s eyes and sees the tears of her hallucination still wet on his cheeks and now something has changed between them. She turns and walks away.

!35

Ninja Birthday Boy

The dog shifted her weight inside the box. She folded her legs one way, then another. Then she looked through the plastic bars at the small lobby that she had been put in. Something smelt good and meaty, though it wasn’t possible to turn round completely to see exactly where it was coming from. She then felt an itch behind her ear, but was unable to get a sufficient angle with her leg to scratch it. Yet she liked being in the box. It felt safe and the towel that she was sitting on was soft and smelt of her owner’s kitchen – a familiar odour of dog food, dust and detergent. She sighed and put her head on her paws and began to doze off.

She wasn’t aware of how long she had been asleep, but sometime later when the room had begun to show evidence of a little more daylight, she heard a noise at the door. Immediately she was on high alert as the person on the other side was not anyone she knew. What’s more, it smelt like a younger person, a child perhaps. She sniffed, carefully taking in notes of jam, bacon and sour milk. Also snot: this young person was ill or upset she decided. This was further reason to be very cautious.

Alex almost fell into the room, even though he was desperately trying to be quiet. He had been given very strict instructions, under no circumstances whatsoever, to go into the laundry room. Or even go down the stairs into the basement. Naturally this prompted him to focus on getting there as soon as possible without being detected. Alex loved surprises, but being seven years, eleven months and thirty days, his overriding imperative was to know everything about the world immediately. He was also unable to think further than that he was now a detective, or even an assassin on a top secret mission. He had meant to wear his Ninja outfit, but the opportunity to get into the basement had presented itself before he had had time to change.

!36 The dog sat back on her haunches as far back into her cage as she could. Alex sat on the floor by the door looking at her. They assessed each other for a little while. Eventually Alex began to crawl slowly across the lobby floor towards the cage. At the same time, the dog came slowly to put her nose through the plastic bars at the front of her box. Finally he reached out a cautious hand towards her nose and she licked his finger in response. Alex smiled as the lick tickled his fingers. He very gently stoked her head through the bars. She leaned into his hand and he scratched her behind her ear.

‘Aaaaalex? Mummy wants you!’ The sing-song voice of his little sister Clara could now just be heard from the floor above. ‘She says if you don’t come noooow you can’t have any cake. So I’m going to eat it all, tra la la la la.’ Alex could tell that Clara was standing at the bottom of the stairs to the first floor shouting up towards his bedroom. It was only a matter of time before she noticed the door to the basement was open, and then he definitely wouldn’t be having any cake.

‘Bye-bye, little dog. It was really nice to meet you, but I have to go now,’ Alex whispered into the dog’s ear. He turned round and crawled back the way he had come, very carefully shutting the door as he went.

The dog could hear him move slowly up the stairs and walk onto the floor above her head. She could just make out the sounds of an angry conversation with the other young person that she could smell in the house. Then a door banged and then the noise stopped. She shifted around a little and went back to sleep.

!37

Steve Healey Adventure in Skyros Introduction: The following 3 chapters are based on 4 separate stories written as individual 10 minute exercises during the Skyros Writers Lab. They are presented here as a personal challenge to join them together as a complete, short story.

The Drop

It was 8:30am and Charlie, as she was affectionately known, was approaching her favourite cafe for breakfast. She knew she would always get good service and portions here. She had taken a shine to Giorgio, the waiter who always greeted her with a warm, welcoming smile.

“Kalimére! - Nice to see you again miss. Would you like your usual table?“

Charlie smiled at the flattery of being called miss. She was too old for that title. However, due to a healthy lifestyle and her dancing career, she was actually very fit and her complexion looked better than most women in their mid-twenties.

“Kalimére! Giorgio. Yes please.”

Giorgio pulled out the chair which gave her a commanding view across the square. She always sat on the outskirts of the cafe as her limp and walking stick made wriggling through the tables and chairs too difficult.

!38

“I won’t have my usual Giorgio. Just eggs and bacon with a fresh orange juice please - Thank-you."

“OK miss.”

As he went to remove the ‘reserved’ sign from the table, Charlie put her hand over his. “Can you leave the reserve sign on the table, Giorgio? I just need to pop to the Ladies and change.”

“OK. No problem.” Giorgio disappeared into the cafe to place her order with the kitchen.

It was a busy morning at the cafe. There were three members of staff swooping between the tables like ravenous seagulls. Giorgio served at least four or five customers before he noticed Charlie had returned, and he hadn’t laid her table yet.

Quick as a flash, he dived into the cafe and returned with bread, cutlery, serviettes and an assortment of condiments in a wicker basket.

He was so busy, he hadn't noticed that the woman at the table looked almost completely different to the Charlie he had greeted fifteen minutes before. Placing the basket on the table he was then distracted by a small group of customers who had just arrived, looking for a table.

At very busy times, all the waiters would look after each other’s tables to ensure the food was delivered piping hot. Fabio had no idea who Charlie was, so happily engaged in small talk as he served her breakfast.

!39 “Thank-you Fabio. Could you ask Giorgio for the bill please?”

“Yes madam. No problem.” Fabio headed off to find him, pirouetting through the tables like a whirlwind.

Charlie was now entertaining two guests at her table. They were not altogether unexpected, but were not welcome. She didn’t want to make a scene, and so engaged in polite conversation whilst she waited for the bill.

Her guests were eager to move on. She could see the black Audi car with heavily tinted windows waiting yards away, on the edge of the pedestrianised area.

“Time to go Charlie?” came the command in a firm tone. Her two guests stood up.

Giorgio approached with the bill and presented it to Charlie. He looked surprised to see how much she had changed. Gone was the long dress and six-inch red platform shoes. So too had the walking stick and the blonde hair.

“Miss, your bill.”

“Thank-you Giorgio. I have left money in the basket. Please keep the change.”

“Thank-you miss. I hope you have an enjoyable day.” He wandered over to the table and cleared everything for the next customer.

!40 As he walked back inside, he glanced over to the black Audi and noticed Charlie was being manhandled into the back seat. Another black car had arrived along with a motor bike. It looked like Charlie was in some kind of trouble, but he didn’t know what.

A woman came out of the cafe and walked towards the second black car.

She was carrying a pair of red platform shoes and a small black bag.

Draped between the handles of the bag was the same green coloured dress that Charlie had been wearing when she arrived at the cafe, along with the blond wig resting on top.

Isn’t that typical of a woman? What you see is never what you get, thought Giorgio.

Checking the basket for cash, he noticed a fifty Euro note was covering a small object that was wrapped in cling film.

“Wow! What a tip.” He said to his colleague. “The whole meal was only nine Euros.”

“You’re so lucky Giorgio. You always get the big tippers,” Fabio said dejectedly. He always seemed to get the tight tourists who rarely if ever gave any tips.

“I’m off at one Fabio. I’ll meet you at the Juicy Bar and I’ll buy you lunch.”

“You’re on. That’s a deal.”

Leaning against the railings next to where the black cars were parked was Giorgio’s motor bike. He had a trials bike as the cobbled streets,

!41 steep steps and rough terrain made it difficult on a normal scooter. He lived halfway up a hill on the far side of the village, well off the main road. It was just below the Skyros Centre.

From 1pm until about 6pm, small delivery vehicles were allowed through the pedestrianised area to make deliveries to the shops and houses.

Giorgio took advantage of this as a shortcut home.

As he was about to ride off, he noticed the two black cars racing up the road towards him. He turned into the precinct and rode slowly up the street with some shopping bags hanging from the handle bars. He had to go slowly and weave through the people and around the delivery vehicles.

The small road opposite the wine shop was blocked by a van. He waited for people to file past. A frustrated biker was trying to get between the van and the building but was blocked by a telegraph pole. The man on the bike had been with the people in the black cars earlier that morning.

Giorgio didn’t like the look of this. He tooted to the pedestrians and edged his way through the crowd. Hooting as he went, he made his way through the narrow street, past the chandlery shop on the left where the road narrowed before a sharp right-hand corner.

He felt a bump and the back wheel drifted out to the left as the bike crashed to the floor. The other biker had caught him up and tried to dislodge him, but ended up skidding into the wall of the handbag shop.

Giorgio looked back and realised he was being chased by the people who took Charlie away. He straightened up his bike and started to accelerate up the slope. This section had steps as it was very steep, which was

!42 easy for a Trials bike. He struggled with his shopping still on his handle bars though.

The other biker was gaining on him rapidly and would catch Giorgio at the top of the hill. He needed to do something to shake off his attacker.

He went to the right of street to give the other rider space to come along his left side. At the top of the hill, Giorgio swung left across the path of the other bike, forcing the rider to swerve into the seating area of the Calypso Bar, where Giorgio had entertained the Skyros Centre guests the night before.

The rider clattered through the tables and chairs and came off his bike completely. People poured out of the bars and shops in the area to see what was going on, as Giorgio accelerated towards the Orange Box boutique in a blind panic. Who were these people?

The cats which would normally be enjoying their twenty-four hour siesta were rudely awoken as Giorgio bounced down the steps of the narrow passage and skidded to avoid hitting the wall.

His heart was racing as he straightened his bike and headed towards the sign for Magazia Beach. The cobbled lanes were slippery and full of clutter which made Giorgio wobble uncontrollably. He was frightened of losing control on the corners and hitting a child or the old couple he greeted every morning on his way to work.

The pressure was on to evade capture. His adrenalin was pumping and his throat was dry as he finally reached his flat, where he could hide the bike.

!43 His pursuer skidded to a standstill on the track below his flat, and was scanning the open hills and fields beyond to the roads below, and then he spotted a motor bike was turning left, onto the road that leads to the airport and Atsitsa.

“I think he’s on the road to the airport. I’m in pursuit.” Giorgio heard his stalker say on the radio.

The assailant sped down the track and into the lane below. Turning right, he battled against the oncoming traffic through the narrow, winding road. Determined to catch up with what he thought was Giorgio’s bike, the agent pursued at full throttle along the main road toward the airport.

Giorgio, meanwhile, quickly dropped his shopping off at his apartment.

He grabbed his beach towel and walked calmly down the same track towards the beach. He was glad he had lost his menacing shadow and could now relax on the beach and catch up with Fabio for lunch.

!44

The Handover Giorgio weaved his way down the pot-holed road as it twisted between the white buildings. Overhanging flowers and trees were joined together by a multitude of colourful shrubs, vegetation and a lattice of woven woodwork.

He glanced over his shoulder and noticed the two people were still following him. He quickened his pace.

He took his rolled-up towel from under his arm and strode purposefully towards the Juicy Bar.

Turning right off the road into the car park, he hurried on towards the walkway that lead down to the bar. He noticed a body face down in the water.

Giorgio raced down the steps to the beach and onto the wooden boards which divided the beach chairs and umbrellas.

Without a thought for what he was wearing, he dropped his towel on the grey, damp sand at the water’s edge and ran straight in.

The body was floating about twenty metres from the shore and as Giorgio powered closer, the sunlight bounced off the gentle swell of the crystal clear water and winked at him.

Finally, he reached the body and turned it over, much to the surprise of the swimmer, who thought he was being attacked.

!45 A struggle broke out between the two of them, which aroused the curiosity of the crew on a nearby yacht. A crowd gathered on the beach at the spot where Giorgio had dropped his towel.

The two people who Giorgio thought were following him moved through the crowd and picked up his towel. Unfurling it, they noted it contained nothing. They walked back up the beach to the Juicy Bar.

Giorgio, meanwhile, apologised to the swimmer for confusing him with a drowning body. They laughed about it then parted on jovial terms with Giorgio, swimming back to the beach and the swimmer heading off in the direction of the yacht.

As he struggled onto the beach, his feet sunk into the soft sand at the edge of the shore. His T-shirt and shorts were heavy with water, which cascaded down his legs. He looked up towards the bar and noticed his towel was now draped over the distinctive blue balustrade which identified the Juicy Bar from the other establishments along the coastline.

Walking up the steps to the bar, he could see the two people sitting at a low table. Three glasses of fresh orange juice were laid before them.

“Kalimére! Giorgio. Please join us for some refreshment.”

“Kalimére! Thank-you, I don’t mind if I do.”

As he reached the mezzanine area, he walked past the tables to the railing where his towel was warming in the sun. Drying himself off, he glanced out to sea and noticed the swimmer climbing aboard the yacht.

!46 “You’ve had a busy day Giorgio. Pity he didn't need saving.”

“Yes. An honest mistake. Better to be safe than sorry I always say.”

Sitting down with a view to the sea, his hosts on his right, Giorgio engaged in small talk. Finally, after some cheerful and friendly banter, the killer question was asked.

“Giorgio. We believe you have a USB stick with information on it. Our client would like it back. I’m asking you politely for its return.”

Giorgio scratched the corner of his nostril, wiped his nose with his finger several times and gazed thoughtfully out to sea where the yacht used to be. It was now a diminishing silhouette against the horizon.

“Well! I’d like to help you. But I don’t have whatever it is you’re looking for.”

The two people glanced at each other. One of them reached for a mobile phone and dialled a number. They all looked at each other as they waited for a response.

“You may proceed,” was the order given over the phone. “Your apartment here in Skyros is now being searched Giorgio. You could save yourself, and others, a great deal of trouble if you co-operate.”

“You have my permission to search me and my apartment. I have nothing to hide.”

“So far, we have drawn a blank. But, we will search you before we go.

You’re playing a dangerous game Giorgio, with people who don’t have your best interests at heart.”

!47 “Thanks for the tip. Who are these people I should be looking out for?”

“You’re looking at them!” came a swift, sharp retort.

!48

The Escape Giorgio stepped off the train as it shuddered to a standstill at Kings Cross Station. He walked purposefully along the platform as people poured out of the train in a sea of colour and confusion.

At the end of the station was the escalator to the upper concourse, where the shoe shine boy waited for his passing trade.

This was the main route between the station and the city centre, which avoided the six lanes of traffic outside.

Giorgio waited patiently for the boy to finish with his current customer.

He was in no hurry. Unusually, it was a woman whose shoes had become scuffed or marked. She looked familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place her, although he rather liked the look of her, dressed in a pale blue, body-hugging, full length dress.

She paid the boy and smiled at Giorgio as she left, saying “I’ve kept the seat warm for you.”

“Thank-you,” he said as he climbed into the seat. He wondered what else she might like to keep warm for him as he watched her walk over the concourse in the direction of the toilets.

“Good morning. What can I do for you today sir.”

“Hi ummm. Agh. Just a quick shine today thanks.”

“OK sir, a shine it is.”

“I don't think I’ve ever seen a woman having her shoes shined. Do you get many?”

“Not really sir, probably one or two a month if I'm honest.”

“Really, as few as that? A good-looking woman too.”

!49

Giorgio’s mind suddenly started to race as he remembered where he thought he had seen her before. He wasn't completely sure, but her eyes seemed familiar. Was she one of the people who followed him down to the Juicy bar in Skyros he wondered?

If she was, then who else may be around tracking his movements? His eyes darted up and down the concourse. From his elevated position on the shoe shine podium, he could clearly see down into the station. He realised how vulnerable he was in this exposed vantage point.

He was a sitting target for a sniper or run-by shooting. Giorgio was feeling very uneasy about his situation. He didn’t have anything on him, but that wouldn't stop anyone taking a pop at him. His eyes continued to scour the faces further and further away, checking office windows and gantries to see if anyone was watching.

The shoe shine boy had finished and was trying to get Giorgio’s attention. Finally, he responded.

“Sorry! I was miles away. Keep the change.” He thrust a ten pound note into the boy’s hand and leapt off the podium, scurrying away along the concourse in the direction of the city.

As he reached the down escalator, he noticed the woman in the light blue dress standing to one side. She looked different again. Somehow she had changed. Giorgio ran his eyes over her from top to bottom. The dress was the same, as were the shoes, but something was different.

Giorgio had become distracted by her long legs, shapely figure and sunshine-like smile which seemed to light up the room as she sat on the

!50 shoe shine podium. He hadn’t noticed her hair, or if she was wearing glasses or any jewellery. So what was it that was different?

“Good morning again,” he said as he approached the woman. “That colour really suits you.”

“Thank-you!”

She stepped onto the escalator behind Giorgio. He turned and quipped, “Is there somewhere I can drop you?” He was now very sure that he had met her before, but Skyros was not it. He looked into her face and studied her features. They were certainly familiar, but strangely different. He still couldn’t place her, so decided to flirt with her.

“I feel I know you, but I’m embarrassed to admit I can’t think where from.”

“Funny you should say that,” she replied. “I was thinking the same thing. That’s why I waited for you at the escalator.”

Giorgio couldn't see any distinguishing features on her face. No scars or birth marks and not a tattoo in sight. It looked like her own hair, but he couldn't be sure - hair wasn’t his forte.

Raising his right hand to his chest he said, “I’m Giorgio”

“Carole Morgan. Pleased to meet you.” She put out her had to shake his.

Instead, Giorgio held her finger tips and kissed the back of her hand.

“Delighted to meet you,” he replied.

!51 “Well Carole, do you have time for a coffee? I’d like to find out where I know you from.”

“I’d love too. I don’t have to be anywhere until this afternoon, so I have time to kill.”

“Excellent. We can be time assassins together. I know a nice coffee shop to the right here.”

They reached the bottom and stepped off the escalator. Swivelling on the ball of his right foot broke the vial in his shoe. As they walked towards the coffee shop, the shards of glass slowly cut into his sock.

Carole sat with her back to the wall on the comfy bench seating. This provided a panoramic view of everything that was going on, both inside and out of the coffee shop.

Giorgio went to the counter and ordered two latte’s, one for himself with gingerbread syrup and sprinkles on top - his favourite – and the other a skinny latte. The shop was quiet now after the initial early morning rush.

Putting the drinks on the table, Giorgio said, “I’ve just returned from Skyros after a two-week break. I don’t recall seeing you there,” as he pulled the chair out and sat down.

“Ouch!”

“What’s wrong?” said Carole with a startled look on her face.

!52 “Something very sharp is digging into my foot.” Giorgio slipped off his shoe and placed his foot onto the spare chair. “Oh sorry! Do excuse my foot.”

They both examined the sock and noticed the shards of glass. A small dark red patch had formed on his grey sock.

“I think you should take the sock off and see how bad it is,” Carole suggested. “And I’ll get some serviettes from the counter.”

She picked up the shoe and walked off towards the counter, stopping just long enough to tap the shoe over the bin and remove any excess glass.

Giorgio carefully removed the sock and noticed the damage was worse than he thought. His foot was cut on the underside as well and was bleeding.

“Here you go.” Carole returned with a handful of serviettes. Giorgio took them and started to clean the wound. As Carole bent down to pick-up her bag, she gently dropped his shoe on the floor.

“I have some antiseptic wet wipes in my bag somewhere.” She placed her bag on one of the higher tables and was rummaging away for what seemed like ages. “Aahh! Found them.” She opened the packet and took a few out for Giorgio to use.

“I didn’t realise you were a nurse as well,” he quipped. “You are a woman of many talents.”

!53 Giorgio cleaned up his foot and stopped the bleeding. He decided to ditch the sock and checked the shoe for glass. He found nothing.

“Strange, can’t think how I could have picked up some glass.”

He folded some serviettes and placed them inside the shoe before putting it on. “There, good as new. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and wash my hands.”

He picked up his small rucksack and walked over to the bathroom.

Carole packed away the wet wipes and took her mobile and made a call.

Giorgio returned within minutes and sat down to enjoy his latte. “So Carole, where did we get too before we were so rudely interrupted by my foot?” he chuckled.

“I believe I was playing the nurse and you were my patient. Is this your usual approach to chatting up women?”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Yes. What a great chat up line.

“Hello, would you like to look at my bleeding foot?” They both laughed.

“Does that work for you?” he chipped in as he watched her jiggle with laughter.

“I don’t think so. What works for you?” she giggled.

“Your smile works for me”. Delivered through a beaming grin, his soft, deep, velvet tone resonated with her.

!54 “Why, thank-you, kind sir,” she said coyly. “You’re making me blush,” Her head rolled onto her left shoulder as she winked at him.

“When are you free for dinner?” he asked.

“Oh. Err, how about tomorrow.” I’m staying at the hotel around the corner. They have an excellent restaurant there.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll drop by at seven.”

They finished their coffee but when Giorgio went to stand up, he felt faint. “Phew! Something’s gone to my head.” He steadied himself against the high table.

“Are you OK Giorgio?”

“Yes, I think so.”

After a few moments, they walked off towards the exit. Giorgio unexpectedly collapsed like a skyscraper being demolished. Down onto his knees and then rolled forward and to the left, brushing against Carole as he did so.

“Oh my God! Giorgio.”

Two paramedics were walking down the passageway towards them. They saw what happened and raced towards the scene.

A crowd gathered around the patient in the bustling shopping centre, as the paramedics settled down to do their work.

!55 “Do you know this gentleman madam?” the paramedic said in a calm, commanding voice.

“Ah yes. Oh well no, not really. We’ve just met. His name is Giorgio,” she blurted.

“OK! Thank-you. Giorgio, can you hear me?”

The other paramedic ran to the exit where the ambulance was parked outside in the emergency vehicle zone. He returned, in what seemed like seconds.

“Let’s get him on the stretcher.”

They rolled the body to one side, slid the board underneath and then rolled him back. Once on the board, they transferred him to the main stretcher which had wheels.

The body lay still as the paramedic checked for breathing and asked his name. There was no response. Four short pumps on the dying man’s chest.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi.

Checking for breathing.”

His mate calmly put the defibrillator together and the medic tried again.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi.

Checking for breathing. Quick! I think we’re losing him. I think we’re losing him.”

!56 The medic ripped open the victim’s shirt. His colleague moved in with the pads. “Clear!”

The body jumped. Nothing. No response. They tried again.

“Clear!” echoed through the ears of the gathered crowd as the body jumped once more.

The continuous tone of the heart monitor, as it flat-lined, said it all. It was all over.

The onlookers sighed, and a quiet voice cut through the sound of sobbing. “God rest his soul.”

“He’s gone,” confirmed the paramedic in a hushed tone.

When they wheeled Giorgio away, the crowd dissolved. Carole walked behind with his rucksack slung over her left shoulder and her thumb was prancing across her mobile as she wiped away a tear with the tissue in her right hand.

They loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and Carole climbed in through the side door. Once safely inside, away from the prying eyes of the public, Carole began to strip down to her underwear. A large black handbag was waiting for her in the corner. She unzipped it and took out a different outfit – black skirt and white blouse with black shoes to match.

“It’s OK, you’re safe now,” she reassured Giorgio.

!57 He opened his eyes and sat up on the stretcher with his legs dangling over the edge. “That went well I thought.”

“Yes it did! We were watched the whole time and I think we got away with it. The USB is in safe hands and tomorrow, according to the papers, you’ll be officially dead.”

!58

!59

A. J. Ivory John’s Silent Walk

The solitary walk from his villa in Skyros was a relief.

No more small talk, no need to ask someone how they are or pay respect to the weather. He had left the guests, their chinking glasses, post card chit chat and ascended a stone path winding up the Kochila, uneven, glazed over with cement. There was a strong scent of geraniums and sprigs of honeysuckle hung over his pathway.

Heat and silence.

The world is rarely silent. Beulah’s voice was still in his head. She never shut up. Always had something to say. ‘It’s hot today. I’m off to Tesco now. The dog’s putting on weight. What are you feeding it? I don’t like beans, they’ve never agreed with me.’

Comments inviting no response. Only silent agreement.

The land moved up in gradations. John found himself standing still, staring. Below him were the dazzling white rooftops, flat and irregular, with a glare so fierce their form imprinted on his eyelids minutes after he shut them.

To his right was a garden enclosed by a low lying wall, its parched lawn home to a rotting bougainvillea and a solitary lump of breezeblock. A dripping hosepipe was held together with gaffer tape.

He stopped in the shade of a fig. All around were scattered seed purses, crisp dry. He lifted one, cracking it open along the seam and laid the seeds in his palm.

‘I love her, I love her not. I love her, I love her not…’ Each time flicking it. He thought of Beulah. Like Delphi, Skyros could be his Greek Oracle.

The previous evening his group had visited the Faltites Museum of Folk Art. In a glass cabinet by the entrance was the model of a man wearing

!60 a pagan costume, the top half coarse hair of the goat, and the bottom hessian and rope. It was held together at the waist by a leather belt fastened with large pendulous bells. An ancient connection to the Island, long before St Paul and his message to the Corinthians. John had seen one at the Goat Festival, years before in his youth; this totem, island spirit, a fey, phantom, half human, half animal. He felt the spirit watching him, heard it in the cicadas and the jackdaw, in the breezes blowing over the olive groves and the copses with jagged rocks.

It frightened and fascinated him. How powerful he would feel in that costume, consumed by that form. A great potent warrior.

The seeds blew from his palm.

He thought of Beulah, the marketing manager with her Botox lips and brash donkey bray laugh every evening as she scrolled through Facebook.

By the terrace was a house with chalky doors, inlaid with rectangular squares, blue grey, and matching shutters, surrounded by two Doric columns. John had a recurring dream where he faced a maze, a series of regular corridors leading to more corridors, long stretches where voices echo from spaces and depths, but none was his own.

He stood up, the gravel crunched beneath him. He entered a steep alleyway where soft linen cloth hung over the doorways warding off the heat.

A bandy legged Grandmother was shaking out her dishtowels. ‘Kalimére’ she said to him. But John couldn’t remember the right reply. Words seemed to escape him. He felt something in the centre of his heart, a stone, a rock, a slab of heaviness.

Passing by the monastery, without warning, he farted. A loud, solid eruption and children by the side of the road laughed at him, blowing raspberries as he descended on his spindly legs with the knotted calf veins.

!61 He caught sight of the Aegean in its vastness, a purple azure, wide as the ends of the earth. Blue planet magnificence with all its spluttering, crawling, clicking and songful creatures. He felt himself welling up with a great sadness.

Here on the furthest island of the Sporades, surrounded by unimaginable beauty, he knew it now more than ever. He didn’t love her.

He didn’t love her at all.

!62

Keeping an Eye

Gina was not all real.

Part of her, just like her new acquaintances, had been fabricated, sculpted by human hands.

She did not mention it in front of the gaggle of expat wives flaunting themselves in the changing rooms after a weekly session of Military Yoga, Dubai’s latest fad. Kim as she posed, sucking in her waist, hands on hips, turning and twisting, flaunting a cellulite free arse in the full length mirror.

Glenda had just had her breasts enlarged. She cupped them as her friends admired, their varnished nails grasping to touch the masterpiece of modern day plastic surgery.

‘God bless your hubby, Kim.’ Kim’s face lit, active and engaged. She had married the plastic surgeon.

Gina smiled a Sunday afternoon cocktail smile. Drinks round the barbeque, in an air conditioned villa.

The women didn’t warm to her. Standing on the balcony overlooking the Persian Gulf where she had gone to be alone she heard them below.

Conversation with these women was difficult, limited to home design, up and coming sushi bars, and arguments with unyielding domestics. She made the effort and took the strain but every now and again needed to step out and come up for air.

Glenda started, beautiful, symmetrical Glenda. ‘He’s a lovely bloke, Richard, but his wife’s a bit odd.’

‘There’s something antiseptic about her.’

Kim interjected, leaning forward, feigning sympathy ‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you this, Mike would kill me, but…’

Gina stepped away, stunned, her fragile hands trembling so slightly. She could not face what was coming next. They were about to learn it, her ghastly secret.

!63 The women would laugh, snigger and gasp in horror, not knowing what it was like. The feeling of waking up in a hospital bed, her last memory of crushing glass, splinters and a sharp white light. The surgeons had tried, but they couldn’t save it. After the accident, they removed Gina’s right eye. From that moment on no tears fell.

Then came the prosthesis. She remembered her first fitting with the oculist, Mrs Boast, a stout, practical woman with a pudding bowl haircut.

Richard was in the Far East on business and Gina had faced her alone.

She lay back on a reclining chair as a cold moulding clay was poured into her socket, still tender. Afterwards she got to choose the eye.

Mrs Boast opened a draw next to her desk and there they lay in all their splendour.

Eyes; green, blue, brown, hazel with flecks of gold and hints of grey.

People with every colour had lost their eyes. Life didn’t seem to discriminate against who it took from. A vibrant blue glittered, such an unusual colour to be blessed with. Gina wondered who it was who had lost this beautifully coloured eye and what it had felt like after it had gone, staring back with the one remaining.

In spite of its genius, there is something disconcerting about a false eye.

Gina’s was perfect in colour but poor in fit. It swivelled around, casting itself upwards, like a yogi about to go into a trance, or to the side so she looked like a hammerhead shark.

‘Bloody NHS, bloody fool of a woman’ was Richard’s only comment when he returned. The following week he packed Gina off to the USA to be fitted again by the brightest and the best. Until then she was not to leave the house. It took several attempts before they got it right.

It was a week after the women had found out, Gina and Richard were due at the Burj for a few drinks by the pool. That was when she got her idea. An idea that would have Kim’s husband laughing so much he bust a hernia. ‘Fuck me, you’ve gotta give it to her.’

!64 She put on her dark glasses and ordered a round of drinks, dry Vodka Martinis with the olive. They came with a delicate straw and sprig of garnish flown in from a cooler climate.

She placed all six of them on a tray and took them over to her gym friends. ‘Ladies, a round of drinks.’

The women looked surprised, a bit shocked. She thought she saw one smirk. Kim avoided her gaze, looking down like a shameful dog that had just stolen a sausage. Gina handed her a drink and stepped away.

Then she heard it, a scream followed by the sound of shattered glass.

Kim had removed the garnish and taken a sip, and there, at the bottom of the martini glass, staring up at her in all its glory was Gina’s eye.

Gina had her return ticket to the UK ready. She turned and left.

!65

My Nan

I was 10 when we moved to the rectory in Kalk Bay, South Africa’s oldest fishing port. It was August, 1983, the year of my father’s ordination, his second posting to the mission field.

It was a contrary place of gentle sea breezes and vicious storms, breakers that whipped the harbour wall. There were deep rock pools carved by the currents, boulders as large as elephants, and under the sea, floating kelp forests. In years gone by the port had been used as a whaling station. Later when the beasts were nearing extinction it remodelled as a holiday resort. More recently, as the only community in South Africa to evade the Group Areas Act, Kalk Bay found itself floundering.

My Nan had not wanted us to move there.

Every Sunday we lunched at her villa in Camps Bay with a swimming pool, hanging chandeliers, Cyprus trees and a 100 year old tortoise called Mr Big. She was a robust woman, former deputy head of a girls’ school with big feet squeezed into Bata Toughies. In her youth she had crushed her left patella in a hockey match, the cartilage had withered leaving her with a strange crab like gait.

At lunch on the veranda I sat picking at chicken bones and strands of saffron, scraping a stone on a bench. Nan lit a cigarette, her varnished fingers trembling. She told us kids to go play by the pool. There was something she wanted to talk to my folks about. ‘Grown up things.’

I hid behind the Jasmin trellis. The smell of her cigarette mingled with tropical plants.

‘Colin, you’re not taking the kids to that godforsaken place.’

My father shifted in his chair, a moving chess piece sliding from danger.

‘Mom, we’ve been through this before. It’s my calling.’

‘Calling, my arse. Some regional Bishop needs a crappy post filled and he can’t ask his top men so he shoves you there with your bloody kids.’

!66 She slammed her fag down, raised up her arms, freckled from gardening and bellowed like a mutilated ox.

‘Bloody waste of time Colin. You take those kids and I’ll end the allowance.’

We moved to the whaling station with its fishing boats smelling of diesel, mussel shells and strands of seaweed baked flake dry on the sand.

For six months we never saw her. No more Sunday lunches, pool parties as she sat under the pink umbrella fanning herself. Those fresh afternoons with the smell of cut grass and chlorine.

She arrived one Friday. Walking back from school, dodging the pavement cracks and idly sucking on an ice lolly I saw it, her cream coloured Mercedes with red leather seats.

The house was locked, my parents had given me a key and I found her on the mauve coloured porch, her breath shallow, beads of perspiration on her forehead.

‘Bethy’ she called.

‘Nan,’ I jumped back like a shocked coil.

‘Get me some water girl.’

I opened the door. Nan heaved herself up. There were damp patches under her armpits and a stale smell like a rotting tooth in a mouth with halitosis. She swayed, a big skittle with a large red face. I ran to the fridge, pouring juice and brought it out with a wet towel. Something stopped me from touching this strange creature with a fetid scent.

Her breath slowed. I pulled out a plastic chair. The kitchen was cool.

Then she started to speak…

!67

Juliette Lee Healing Pythagoras

THE HOUSE

(I) The cellar stank of generations of neglect. Lauren felt duty bound somehow to sweep away their shattered hopes but the responsibility weighed flagstone heavy on her back. Their faces and voices tore at the frail threads of her spider web thoughts. She had waited eighteen years before returning.

The black spiked gates screeched as Lauren made her way deeper into the cellar. She wrinkled her nostrils at the musty air and scanned the wall with her torch, absorbing the rows of shelves packed with the junk of forgotten lives. Hiding the photograph in the cellar had seemed a good idea back then. The narrow beam of her torch danced over a brick protruding slightly above the middle shelf. Her heart hammered as she stretched over and slowly prised the brick, then reached in and pulled out a plastic tube. ‘It’s ruined!’ she cried, pulling at the roots of her greasy hair. Lauren had not sealed it properly and the photograph had become damp and mouldy but she could just see the outline of a woman holding a baby. It was too much. Trembling, she stumbled out of the cellar, back up the stairs into the kitchen, placing the curled photograph on the table. She took a glass from the drainer and ran the cold tap.

The freshness of the gushing water was a stark reminder of how unkempt she was. There were so many preparations to make that she had not showered or changed for three days and smiled wryly at how startled everyone would be to see her looking anything other than

!68 immaculate even in jeans. She drained the glass of water in one breath.

She felt filthy with memories.

(II) Patrick leaned gratefully under the shade of the Jasmine covered wall.

The aroma calmed him. Someone had been busy clearing the bottom of the overgrown garden and he stared at the sharply cut bough, a chocolate brown circle encased in light beige like the marrow of a chicken bone resting on a pile of dead scrub. It drew him like a hypnotist’s crazy wheel. His half-finished cigarette hung loosely between his fingers. A careless flick would set this whole scene on fire. He recoiled at how easily his mind spiralled and instead flicked his gaze upwards to the middle of the garden where three towels - pink, lemon and white; hung limply side-by-side on the washing line like three ghosts of past, present and future. How much longer would he have to wait? His patience was thinning as quickly as the last streaks of cloud disappeared in the intensity. Three hours has passed yet here had been no sign of life inside the house. She was in there, he just knew it.

He had not seen or spoken to her since their affair at Port Linaria, fifteen years ago. On leave from the army, Patrick assumed Lauren had been on holiday too. He remembered how the emerald and sapphire sea shapeshifted around the large rocks and how easily she moved in the water, as if she were a daughter of the deep, spellbound to be a woman by day and a sea creature by night. Unused to feeling so captivated by anything, he made crass Irish jokes, his boldness masking insecurity as subtly as a cat flailing in water. He had faced the hollow eyes of death without flinching yet Lauren cornered him with just a smile. Most of all he remembered her laugh, deep and full as she clutched her belly and threw back her head. “Fuck it!” He extinguished the remains of the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and threw it onto the pile of

!69 scrub. He had waited long enough so made his way towards the house passing a tree where a solitary peach hung like a pendulum at rest.

(III)

Her hair still wet, Lauren sat on a heavy wooden dining chair bathing in the early evening warmth her feet resting on a white plastic stool she had found in the bathroom. It was a compact veranda for one complete with portable barbeque, pink withered geraniums in terracotta pots, a yellow washing line strung in a cross from the two front corners of the rusting railings to the middle of each of the sides and grey mottled ceramic floor tiles. The mahogany bi-folding doors behind her were a gaping hole in her otherwise secure cell. Her view was obscured by the white-washed breeze block building in front but over the flock of precariously perched TV aerials and the huddle of chimney pots, she could see the top of the Skyros hills.

Karl was out there hunting like a wolf, pacing and circling, looking for a scent until suddenly it catches a ragged tear in the time-line, signalling that something does not quite belong. She felt strangely at peace on her high altar as passers-by strolled below gabbing in Greek, utterly unaware of the approaching danger. She observed their mundane innocence with a mixture of compassion and envy. Her secret would soon be exposed and there was nothing she could now do to stop it.

(IV) The kettle bubbled wildly summoning Lauren to the kitchen. She watched the switch turning red to blue and slowly poured water over the ‘Taylor’s of Harrogate’ organic chamomile tea bag that she had remembered to pack at the last minute. She picked up the cream

!70 ceramic mug with both hands and carefully examined the little boy in traditional Greek dress on the side. Blue calf-length boots, a blue sword in his left hand and a blue circular disc with a black centre strung around his throat, an orange cumber band just showing through his green full length bell-shaped coat with red cuffs and red lining which was just visible at the bottom of the swell of his coat. He had a shock of thick straw blond hair and a simple face of button eyes and a tiny mouth.

There were two small brown birds, one on each shoulder and he was leaning on his sword, right hand on his right hip, smiling at the bird on his right shoulder. There were two lavender stars, one to his left shoulder and the other level with his right hand. So much symbolism she thought and began to imagine its secret language.

‘Oh, here we go!’

Karl’s sneering voice was like shrapnel in her psyche, a tiny twist could shred her soul. It had taken years of gut wrenching reflection but Lauren had mastered the skills to heal every tear as quickly as he ripped her open. Of all the therapies, religions, ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’ she had tried, it was the monk who had given her the key to freedom, Vipassana meditation gave her access to something pure. She focused on her breath and gently observed as the natural ebb and flow slowly erased his voice restoring balance.

!71 THE SEA TOWN

(I)

The sunrise blared into view toasting the surface of the sea. It was 6:32am on Wednesday 12th August 2015 and Alisha had been missing for five weeks. Lauren watched the roaring sky and bloodied water wrestling with her anger twisting itself ever tighter. Her heart was riddled with so much disappointment, it felt like a pumice stone with a deep scar across the middle. Trust was as vital to life as breath and Karl had sliced through her lifeline. The pain of his betrayal had eased over the past eighteen years but the scar was a constant. The depth of her rage was exhausting and sometimes she felt like the collapsing wax of a long burning candle but she could not afford to weaken, Alisha’s life depended on her staying sharp. ‘I need a coffee,’ she murmured and slowly walked back into town.

(II)

An orange truck trundled past as she sat outside Akauatpa coffee shop waiting for her latte, ‘drop off or pick up?’ she wondered. The barista was busy banging, sloshing and frothing while a middle-aged Greek man leaned against a gateway opposite the coffee shop speaking hurriedly into his iPhone headset. Navy sweat-stained T-shirt, navy shorts, navy flip-flops, Ray-Bans on his head and reading glasses cleverly split in the middle hanging around his neck. He had a full greying beard, large moustache and a lovely smile, the kind of man she instinctively trusted.

Still, she imagined him as captain of a pirate ship, his code of crooked honour tattooed on the inside of his wrist. ‘Invictus’. Her mind flashed to Patrick. At twenty-one, he had been one of the youngest ever recruits to

!72 the Special Air Service and had the tattoo engraved on his wrist in commemoration.

She liked men with an edge, their hard-won wisdom etched into their being. It was nature’s way of forging individuality, every blow of pain chiselling the hollow sound of lies to reveal the resonance of truth. Her ears were finely tuned from years of observing and outmanoeuvring Karl. He was a master of deception, his callousness unfathomable. She shivered at such an absence of soul. ’Stay focussed Lauren!’ she scolded herself and placed her coffee cup back onto its saucer. Something caught her eye. A long black hair caught in the corner of the wooden table. She reached out and gently picked it up. It was strong and wavy, ‘Alisha’ she cried as every hair on her body electrified. She was close.

Think! Why this part of town? She scanned the forked junction. To the left, a bar, a green grocer and an arts shop which was closed. Opposite, the town hall with three mahogany shuttered windows top and bottom, all closed except for the top middle one which was open only a few centimetres and a palm tree standing guard to the left of the building.

To the right there was another bar. Her eyes darted back to the middle window of the town hall. He must have watched Alisha from there. She imagined him running his tongue around his teeth, priming himself to catch his prey. It was time to bait Karl as only she knew how. She drained the last of the water in the tumbler and went inside to pay for the coffee.

(III)

Karl sat in a director’s chair beneath an olive tree, sunglasses sheltering his gaze as he watched a wasp darting in the thick foliage. He loved the anonymity, a careless nobody sipping Jack Daniels in a beach bar. The peach hibiscus sitting on the scrubbed pine table said otherwise. He was

!73 not used to being toyed with. A first-class Harvard MBA student and ruthless in his pursuit of power, he turned everything to his advantage.

Like a ghost of a shark, he cut through obstacles without a trace. Lauren had been no different. His desire for her had bypassed any shard of morality that he may have possessed and the consequences of his unholy fire had changed everything.

Discovering Alisha’s existence had been a delightful shock. No-one outwitted him and surprises were a rare stimulation in an otherwise mundane world of mediocre minds. He had organised the abortion with his usual precision so either Lauren somehow cleverly hadn’t gone through with it or Alisha was another man’s daughter. His jealousy stirred as he rubbed the stem of the hibiscus between his thumb and forefinger, then stopped, stared, closed his fist and crushed it.

!74

!75

Edward Longmire Fur Coat Reunion

It had been a very heavy night. That feeling of euphoria that gripped Paul when he awoke still drunk from the night before, gradually turned to panic when he started to analyse the evening.

The school reunion had been announced with great ceremony on the school website some months before. Paul normally sneered at such functions, and just wanted to write “Move on…please!” in the readers’ comments, but something had held him back on this occasion. He could see there were a number of pupils going from his time and he was curious to see what had happened to them in the intervening years, after the school itself had gone into receivership some years earlier.

It had started amiably enough, in the confines of a slightly ramshackle gentleman’s club in Piccadilly. Even without the aid of name tags, he recognised the distinctive features of old friendships, now submerged in double chins and receding hairlines.

“So, what do you do now?”

“Don’t ask”. Simple enough. At least they were honest.

“So, what do YOU do now?”

“I’m an accountant”. Oh well…you always were a crashing bore.

“I’m a multi-millionaire writer…haven’t you read any of my books?” More like a multi-millionaire knob.

“It’s coming back to me now…didn’t you leave the school in rather a hurry?” another old boy said to him. Before he could answer, Paul was interrupted.

“I think this belongs to you?” A voice came from nowhere, firmer in manner and more direct in tone than a lot of the other old boys he had spoken to so far. A large parcel protruded from the arm of a younger

!76 looking adult who Paul thought looked strangely familiar. Without thinking, Paul grappled with the paper and a large, expensive looking mink stole fell out. It was immediately familiar. It had been his mother’s. He had not seen it in years, only in yellowing photographs.

“I found it amongst my father’s belongings when we were clearing out his things this year.”

“Er…I don’t know what to say. Do I know you? Were we at St. Bede’s together? You’re even younger than me, and with this lot here, that’s saying something!” In his bewilderment, Paul tried to use humour to stay in control of the situation. Just what was this man doing here with mother’s fur coat? He’d always wondered what had become of it.

“I think you knew my brother…Jenkins, Peter Jenkins. Actually he was my half-brother. I went to St. Bedes as well, but most probably well after you had left. I was quite a bit younger than him. My parents had me quite a bit later…an accident we always used to joke! I’m Martin, by the way.”

“Ah…of course…is Peter actually here this evening? I haven’t seen him in YEARS!”

Martin’s face went pale.

“My brother…has been in care for many years. Didn’t you know? I thought you were there when it happened. Nobody has ever really talked about it in our family. He has not spoken since. He just sits and looks out of the window all day.”

“But this is terrible…what happened to him?” Martin’s face betrayed no emotion. He handed Paul a card with a medical logo and telephone number on it.

“Call this number. You can go and see him during regular visiting hours.

It’s about an hour out of London.” And with that, Martin moved on into the sea of faces all gathered round, talking to long lost friends and maybe some new-found ones. Paul spent the rest of the evening making more small talk: it was the only kind of talk he could make after the meeting with Martin.

!77 And now he held the card tightly in his hand, as he lay in bed with his head throbbing. Already it was showing signs of wear and tear from the constant fingering Paul had given it on the train home. Through the haze of alcohol, he was desperately trying to work out just what this mysterious Martin had on him. As he had sat in the taxi on the way back from the station, he had even viewed the card again by flashlight: “Corfield Residential Home. Visit by appointment only”. Paul dialled the number on the card.

Epsom, a classic stockbroker belt town, was about forty-five minutes from Paul’s house in Fulham, over Putney Bridge and down the A3.

Once recovered from his rather stubborn hangover Paul lowered himself into the sports car which was arguably a little too young for him now and without too much trouble was soon at the end of the driveway of the residential home. As he approached, he fully expected to run over a straitjacketed lunatic doing the Charleston or swinging from a tree like Tarzan, but no such visual feasts were forthcoming.

The foyer was similarly undercharged, a solemn nurse, clearly from the Asian region, manning reception with ruthless efficiency, and Paul was soon waiting for a lift to the fifth floor. Like a doctor’s appointment, Paul was interested in postponing the inevitable and was looking forward to the long lift ride when the doors shot open after seemingly seconds and he was deposited in a lowly lit corridor, the smell of antiseptic quietly invading his nostrils as he noted the “Continued Surveillance Wing” notice on the wall. His anticipation rose as he looked at each door, his heart well and truly in his mouth by the time he got to C5. The receptionist had told him not to bother knocking, but Paul did so out of habit. Boarding school teaches you manners, after all.

It was difficult to make out the room in the half-light, but gradually a gap in the curtains let a glimmer of sun onto a single bed, in which a figure lay. This was what was left of his best friend Peter Jenkins? What had happened? The last time he had seen him was a distant summer

!78 holiday visit, when they were approaching the difficult teenage years and friendships were breaking down and being replaced by others from new schools. Now this person – this thing – lay in front of him, prostrate, his breathing barely discernible. His hair was all gone; his eyes – what were left of them – were behind a large pair of wrap-around sunglasses, a spaghetti junction of tubes escaping from the bedclothes in a waterfall of plastic.

The figure in the bed moved his head forward in a barely discernible action. Amazingly, his lips moved somewhere on the surface of what remained of his face.

“Is there someone there? Is it lunchtime already? I’ve only just finished breakfast…the bag is empty. Put another one on the grill before you go.”

“So you haven’t lost your sense of humour, Jenkins?” There was a long silence. The head moved forward again.

“Paul? Is that you? I can’t believe it. After all this time. Who told you?

My brother?”

“There was a school reunion. He was there. I had no idea. I’m in shock. What happened?”

“You don’t remember? You were there, weren’t you? They were all there. Fucking bastards. They told me you were okay, that you had escaped without too much injury. I was relieved.” Suddenly he stopped talking. His head fell back on the pillow from the sheer exertion of moving. Slowly, in disbelief, Paul lowered into a chair and sat back, his mouth as dry as parchment.

“Your brother had a fur coat of my mother’s. They were in his father’s belongings. It sounded like they were clearing out stuff after he had died.

“You mean…our brother”. The statement echoed round the room like a deafening cannon.

“I don’t understand.”

!79 “Our brother. Our half-brother. We were friends, remember. Our parents became friends. My father and your mother became even better friends. Have you really forgotten it all or are you in denial? That sports day, when our families’ cars were parked together. A Bentley parked next to a Vauxhall told its own story.” Another nurse, this time Latino, breezed into the room.

“Time for your bed bath, Mr. Jenkins. Would you leave the room while I do this, please, sir…we like to preserve what remains of our clients’ dignity.” Grappling for explanations that were clearly quite some way off, Paul fled into the corridor and into the arms of an overstuffed chair, which seemed strangely out of place in the cold antiseptic air of the home. Forty-eight hours ago, Paul’s life had been very different. He had been a middle-aged single man, reasonably content with the way his career and personal life had turned out, give or take the odd missed promotion or divorce settlement. Now he was questioning everything.

Who was he ? Was this man in a small room really his old school friend Peter Jenkins?

“He’ll see you again. Don’t forget…no visitors after five…and no edible gifts. It’ll play havoc with his fluids.” Paul couldn’t give a toss about his fluids, he thought…he won’t have any fluids left if he doesn’t tell me what the hell he’s talking about right now. He barged back into the room. A bedside light was now on, revealing more of the room. A few personal effects, paintings, family photographs were scattered about… the sort of room one might have if one was staying somewhere for a long time. Which seemed to be the case here. Peter didn’t waste time.

He never did. It was coming back to Paul now.

“Dad left mum for your mother. They took off one summer evening and never came back. Mum set your family house on fire. I was round visiting you, but you managed to barricade yourself in the bathroom. By the time they’d patched me together into this…this thing, you were

!80 resettled with your father in another part of the country. I was told you were trying for a new start. There wasn’t left much for me to start.”

Paul drank it all in, in disbelief. Small chunks of time loss had indeed hung around in his head for years. He’d discussed it with a psychiatrist in his early thirties. It was true…he didn’t remember leaving St. Bede’s, just starting a new school mysteriously far away.

His mother had left

his father, it was explained to him, but Paul didn’t miss her. She had always played around. But was it possible to block out this much from his memory? Evidently so, according to his psychiatrist. Extreme psychological episodes can induce memory loss as a way of protecting oneself.

Paul glanced down at Peter’s bedside. A black and white photograph leered back in the remains of the daylight. It was a picture of his mother. In the fur coat. Standing with Peter as the boy he had known all those years ago, outside a building that looked suspiciously like the Corfield Residential Home in which they were now sitting. Only the gatepost in the photograph did not say Corfield. It said “St. Bede’s Preparatory School For Boys”.

“You’ve come home, Paul. At last. Would you like another cup of tea?”

Peter lay back on the bed, a wry smile on what remained on his lips.

!81

Suspicion

Suspicion. The dry rot of one’s optimism. The saviour of one’s economic prosperity. It’s a double edged sword. She wanted to go on an activity holiday, meet some new people. He was cautious. She was up to something. She’d always played around. And usually in front of him. As long as it was HIS money, it was okay. Couldn’t he just stop being so suspicious for one second? It would free up his mind.

Everything she did set off a tsunami of suspicion in his head. She wished she’d never married him. He was far too old for her, everybody had said. But he was loaded…and desperate. He would never suspect her.

!82

Psycho Psychiatrist

“Are you scared to talk about it?” Gillian continued.

“No, as long as it’s you listening”, the local woman cried.

Gillian was a psychotherapist. She’d been transferred to the hospital in Jeddah ten years ago and people had always warmed to her maternal, caring face, always willing to listen, always there to help. She’d turned years of abuse in her own family into a resource for patients old and new, and it was for this exact reason that no one ever suspected her when the murders in the children’s ward began.

“Would you like time to think about it? Take these pills…they’ll calm you down” “Oh thanks, Gillian…I don’t know what I'd do without you. The others in the village think you’re a goddess.

“The death of a child is always traumatic…it can take years to get over.

My own twins both died suddenly. The doctors said cot death. I still think about them every day. They’d be eighteen by now. I wonder what they’d have been doing.”

“Oh Gillian, it’s such a comfort to know someone else’s been through this.” Gillian wiped away the villager’s tears.

“Different people coped in different ways. Some mothers have even caused the deaths themselves, but it’s only emerged years later.” Gillian glanced up at herself in the reflection of the window, as the dusk settled over the Jeddan suburb. She would never understand the dichotomy of her personality, how someone who was so giving could turn in an instant, to crave for the thrill of being in control of such a small, innocent child’s life as she slowly asphyxiated it with a ball of cotton wool gently inserted into the infant’s mouth. All clues would be extinguished with its immediate removal and the subsequent disposal in the hospital’s furnace.

!83

Psycho Mackerel Killer

The rope sandals bit unfamiliarly into his feet as he staggered up the hill. The Greek islands. August. At least ninety degrees. In full body makeup and a dark curly wig hiding his closely cropped blonde hair.

This had to be the worst job Jurgen had ever done. And it was still only 9 a.m.

The pathway stretched yawningly in front of him. The pattern of stones would have been almost hypnotic if Jurgen hadn’t been so distracted.

Some piss artist had poured washing-up water down the steps recently which did not help matters and he steadied himself by hanging onto some undergrowth that had conveniently grown out of an ancient wall.

The stench of mackerel from the basket on his back was quite unlike anything he had ever smelt before. He’d done bratwurst in Bucharest, liverwurst in Leipzig…now it was mackerel in Mykonos. Why, oh why were the locations on these jobs always so difficult? But that was always the point, wasn’t it? It wasn’t going to just be handed to you on a plate.

He glanced up at the surrounding landscapes. Houses lay scattered around the hillside like discarded Lego, and for an instant, Jurgen considered he might just retire to here…with a good internet connection and an unlimited supply of coffee. When this madness was over.

When

he had decided to get a life.

A dog suddenly appeared out of the silence and screamed for his attention. Jurgen jumped about a foot in the air and some mackerel flew out of the basket. It worked like a charm, and the dog attacked the fish like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Jurgen felt the nudge of his iPhone. “The Fat Lady Sings at 10 a.m.” A shady grotto memorised from a map the night before duly presented itself and Jurgen slid into position, picking out the familiar tubing from the depths of his fishing basked.

!84 Through the sights of his rifle, he picked out the familiar silhouette of the Greek premiere, frolicking in the pool with a very expensive looking rent boy. A gunshot echoed round the emptiness of the valley, and the politician’s head exploded like a liquefied grapefruit. Jurgen swiftly dismantled his gear as another text arrived. “Thanks, mein leibchen… love, Angela”. It was going to be a long day.

!85

Underground Pace

He walked into the underground station. Immediately he noticed the art deco detail, the symmetry of the tiling holding the eye as it worked its way around the roof.

“Excuse me.” The businessman pushed past him. The lift door opened.

People shot forward. The doors closed. The lift sank.

Doors opened.

Escape. Relief.

When he emerged onto the platform, the same period ambience hit him.

He imagined the station through the ages, the clouds of soot and steam at the dawn of the underground system, the scores of people sleeping during air raids.

“Train approaching”. People moved back. The carriage shot out of the darkness. Doors opened. Flesh fell out. He found a space. Breathed in. Newspapers shuffled. Eyes met. People travelled. He fainted.

!86

Relaxation

Paul waded up the steps of the small Greek café he had found a few days earlier. The sun shone down on his back like a blow torch on maximum and a melanoma couldn’t be far off. He’d gotten here on the last flight on Sunday, and had been gradually unwinding ever since. He glanced out at the sumptuous view of the Aegean Sea, and concluded he could only be dreaming. Children played in the streets, goats ran in the fields. Paul was in heaven.

Gingerly he prised open the lid of his iPad. He swore he’d never check his emails, and now he was only going to read his book. Oh, and maybe download The Times newspaper. Oh, and maybe buy that Bob Marley vinyl collection on Amazon. Paul…STOP IT! George Orwell was in a trench in Catalonia, or so his iPad told him.

Gently a waft of bouzouki came out of the speaker in the restaurant.

Paul relaxed again. Children played in the street, goats ran in the fields.

The sun beat down on the whitewashed walls, and the fat old Greek women poured their washing-up water down the steps. Paul was in heaven.

A gentle ding sounded on the iPad. Oh God. They had Wi-Fi here. It was from work. Images flashed in Paul’s head. Grumpy employees sitting in open plan offices, furrowed brows, muffled sounds coming from shut doors with unintelligible management titles emblazoned on them. Paul laughed out loud in the silence of the Aegean but then noticed the “Urgent” sign on the email. With a deep sigh he pressed “Open”.

It was a message from Stephen Hawking. Or at least it sounded like it with the voice software he’d bought the other day.

“Paul Timberly…due to excessive staff numbers, you’re released from your contract with effect from this exact moment. With kindest regards, Stephen Hawking”. Then he remembered: he DID work for Stephen

!87 Hawking. There’d been a management buy-out the month before.

They’d all had to file into his office and caress his wheelchair or some such corporate brown-nosing exercise. Silly twat. Now he was free.

Paul frisbeed his iPad into the Aegean and ordered the first Retsina of the day.

!88

Sexy Selfie

Paul glanced at the clock on the wall of the conference room. It had been 10.39 a.m. for at least the last thirty minutes. He had not listened to the sales executive’s targets for next year for at least the last twenty minutes, and it was probably beginning to show by now.

Inevitably, he gripped his iPhone, nestling snugly in the special inside pocked he had had his tailor include in all his suits for the last five years.

In a well-practised move, it was now sitting in the palm of his hand and covertly he had deleted three messages from dating websites within ten seconds. He really had over-subscribed to these things, his wife would definitely concur.

When the image came up on his screen, it initially didn’t register. Paul was lying on a massage table, the camera held in selfie position, a small Asian woman behind him grinning like a Cheshire cat, holding a large Mars bar. A jolt of panic went through him. He slid the picture aside, only to find him now in a safari setting, but in the same selfie pose, the same grinning Asian woman now dressed in a hunting outfit, wielding an enormous rhinoceros horn.

What the fuck?!

A third photograph had him on a London double decker bus, wearing a bowler hat, the Asian woman now dressed as a bus conductor, with clearly ticket collecting the last thing on her mind.

Was he dreaming? Suddenly a pop-up came on the screen.

“Don’t look at your phone during meetings”. He jerked up, spotting the Asian Photoshop Sales girl looking in his direction.

“Dinner tonight?” a further pop-up asked.

“Or I tell your wife”

!89

Andy the Arsehole meets Hugo the Hippy

Andy the Arsehole let himself into the bar and sat down in the corner.

Today he was meeting his friend Hugo the Hippy and they were going to have a jolly talk about lots of funny things like world peace and wind chimes. Andy thought Hugo was a right twat but couldn’t bring himself to tell Hugo because Hugo was his landlord and killed for pleasure, despite the hippy veneer and Dalai Lama connotations. Hugo lived with his mother in Basingstoke, as far away from Andy as he could, because Andy was such an arsehole or, as his mother put it whenever he got home for his tea, “a great big fat pair of cheeks of an arsehole”. Andy had lived alone since he was born but was only just beginning to wash himself inappropriately.

!90

Spoof of Other Class Members’ Writing

Slowly she closed her eyes, the honey dewed gloss of her tears seeping down her face like the waterfalls of the Garden of Eden. Her night apparel hung down her vast frame in a gush of chiffon. Folds of skin flapped in the wind as she lovingly moved her arms towards the catering box of Mars Bars in the corner of the temple ante-chamber, where it stood on a trestle table, made of wood from the mythical land of Atlantis.

“Oh, only one more before breakfast,” she cried.

“No, no, my mistress! No more chocolate condiments,” her glittering handmaiden shrieked over the tannoy system.

“What sayeth thou? Not even fun size?” Her chins wobbled with grief and she gripped her handwoven shawl, especially handcrafted for her by the Widows of Achilles.

“Not even fat size, you fun bitch…I mean, fun size, you fat bitch.”

“You’re calling me fat?! You are SO fired!” A jet of chocolate echoed out of her mouth like Vesuvius from the Ancient Tales of Apollo.

“Besides, I don’t need you anymore…I’ve sold my story to Channel 5 Documentaries…they’ll be here with a fork lift truck and a camera crew around 10 a.m.” The handmaiden wept openly. Now she would have to sweep the steps of Archimedes in the Valley of Feta. Still, better than picking half-eaten Mars Bars out of old fatso’s cleavage all day long.

She smiled to herself and ran into the hills to tend to the sheep.

!91

Mary Maclean Beached

Molly breathed in the sea air and let the warm sand trickle between her fingers. Above her on the hilltop little whitewashed houses glinted in the sun. They had walked hand in hand through the cobbled streets, drifting constantly from light into shade and then wandered slowly down the path from the village, stopping to eat fresh figs from the trees, plump and ripe and bursting.

The sea had been warm and caressing and now, full of figs, they lay together on the beach, their fingers intertwined. Molly glanced across at his strong, tanned ribcage slowly rising and falling and at his muscular arms. She sucked in her stomach and hoped her varicose veins weren’t showing.

A succession of young, beautiful girls paraded past, their slim, shiny brown limbs reflecting the sun, but he only had eyes for her. Just as it should be.

She spoke no Greek and he spoke no English, but there was no need for words between them. As if sensing her attention, he turned to her and smiled. A deep smile, full of promise.

Molly felt her whole body smiling

in return. A gentle kiss and then he leaned over to nuzzle her ear.

The nuzzling of her ear was becoming painful. Why were his teeth so sharp? A final determined hard nip jerked her upright and, as she flailed wildly, the cat flew off the bed with a yowl, knocking a full glass of water over the dry-cleaning she had collected the day before.

!92

Walking in Skyros

Sylvia pulled her hat lower as a sudden gap in the trees let through a shaft of sunlight. Behind her, Richard was breathing heavily and she stopped for a moment to let him catch up, the stillness broken only by a dog barking somewhere nearby.

They climbed peaceably up the cobbled steps, flanked on either side by drystone walls and ancient trees. A bright burst of bougainvillea appeared in front of them, shimmering blood-red in the breeze. Light and shadow picked out the living and the dead. The same tree carried both young green leaves and old withered ones, hanging side by side.

Over a low white wall was draped a succulent, its strong, sharp shoots thrusting upwards.

“Just look at that.” Richard pointed across the valley, where little white houses nestled bright against the burnt shrub. “Hard to believe we’ve climbed so high. Looks a long way down.”

Sylvia smiled and looked across at the horizon, where sea and sky melded seamlessly in a turquoise colour wash. She liked to see Richard like this – relaxed, happy, the tension inside him unwound by the simple, slow pace of Greek life. Today was a perfect day. Maybe she’d kill him tomorrow.

!93

Lost and Found

My mother’s Aunt Dorothy had been there for all of our lives, a constant old-age presence. Sunny afternoons being taken round for tea and Madeira cake in her dark, over-furnished sitting room, when we would much rather have been outside, running in and out of the stream or riding our bikes, or fighting. The boys liked fighting and I had to keep my end up.

As we got older it was intimated to us that Aunt Dorothy had had a sad life, lost her young man in the Great War – missing in action like thousands of others. We weren’t interested. Well the boys certainly weren’t and I couldn’t imagine anything romantic involving someone as old as my grandmother. This despite the photograph on the sideboard which I later decided looked like Rupert Brooke. But he wasn’t called Rupert, he was called Eric.

When Aunt Dorothy became too frail to look after herself it was decided that she should move into sheltered accommodation and, as the member of the family with the largest car, I was volunteered to move her stuff. It was all neatly arranged in boxes. She may have been ninety but her generation knew how to get a job done. Four boxes plus Dorothy went to her new accommodation, the other two I delivered to the charity shop on my way home.

The following morning I received a phone call from the warden at Aunt Dorothy’s housing. Dorothy was upset and wanted to see me.

She was in tears. I had never seen her cry before.

“It’s Eric. I’ve lost him.”

Eric? Oh yes, Rupert Brooke. We searched everywhere and then had to conclude that Eric had indeed gone to the charity shop.

Cursing Eric under my breath, I drove back and waited for the charity shop to open. They had unpacked and displayed her stuff with uncharacteristic efficiency. I recognised lots of pieces, but not Eric.

!94 “Yes, one of our helpers bought that for a few bob” said the woman in charge. “She was quite taken with it, but I’m sure she’d let you have it back.”

I drove round to her house.

She showed me lots of photos of Eric, some quite old, some more recent. Eric with his children, Eric with his grandchildren, a young Eric in Paris with a beautiful woman, Eric on horseback, Eric on a beach, Eric standing proudly next to a young woman in a mortar board and gown.

“My grandad” she said. “We had no photos of him in uniform. I’m so happy to have it.”

!95

Working Lunch

He came out of the bank and hurried round the corner, pulling off his wig and turning his jacket inside out. There were so few branches open these days and thank God they had all been cutting headcount. Tying up four people had been exhausting enough. If there had been a dozen he may have had to give up and shoot them.

A lot of work had now shifted online of course, but there was still a bit of cash floating around. Just enough to be worth the effort. He patted his pocket and hoped the bulge didn’t show.

The car was waiting in the next street, not quite in the right place, but whatever, nobody could follow instructions these days. The driver appeared to be asleep and a series of staccato barks were issuing from the radio. Still the driver didn’t move.

Just as he was wondering if he might have made a mistake a large man climbed in next to him with a Kentucky Fried Chicken Bargain Bucket for Four. This was definitely wrong. As he was preparing to climb out the other side, another man got in next to him, blocking his exit. This one had two MacDonald’s Happy Meals with double fries and a large chocolate milkshake.

The one with the bargain bucket handed it to him to hold while he fished out a handkerchief and blew his nose. The driver slid upright, farted luxuriously and took delivery of one of the Happy Meals.

The radio crackled back into life.

“Back to headquarters, I think” said the one with the milkshake. “Take it slowly. We’ll let somebody else pick up that bank job.”

!96

!97

Andrew Stevenson A Good Old-Fashioned Copper

It was a tough case. I’d been working all night. No breaks. No leads. No ideas.

Just a body. A body on a cold steel slab.

Maybe forensics would have something. Maybe. I wasn’t expecting much. I don't hold with forensics. They’re the ones who get all the glory in those TV series instead of the good old-fashioned coppers.

I pushed open the door to the morgue with my foot and yelled at the pathologist, ‘What have you got for me?’

Dr Axelby picked up his skull chisel. ‘Male, twenty-eight years old.’ He pointed to the left forearm of the body. ‘A tiny puncture mark just here. Died at three forty-seven and nine seconds yesterday afternoon.’ Axelby prised off the top of the skull with a neat flick of the chisel.

‘Can you tell me anything about the murderer?’ I doubted he could. It’s not forensics but good old-fashioned police work that gets the job done.

‘I’ve run a few tests.’ Axelby put down the skull chisel and picked up a printout from his computer. I don’t hold with computers but he was keen and I was willing to humour him.

‘The murderer is male. Thirty-seven years and twenty-six days old.

Sagittarius. He’s wearing a dark blue wool and cashmere blend suit from Hardy Amies of 14 Savile Row, sold to him by Peter. The suit, worn over white boxer shorts with navy dots, is complemented by a blue tie with muted yellow stripes, red socks and black Oxford brogues by Loake. He banks with HSBC, likes progressive rock music and supports Arsenal.’

‘Is that all?’ I was getting impatient with Axelby.

‘He is at present walking in a north-easterly direction through Hyde Park. In twenty-one minutes and seventeen seconds, he will enter the kitchenware department in the basement of John Lewis at two hundred and seventy-eight

!98 to three hundred and six Oxford Street. Here he will buy a one-and-a-half litre capacity Russell Hobbs kettle and a Morphy Richards steam iron in white with purple trim.’

‘What colour will the kettle be?’

‘He hasn’t decided yet but I’m betting on cobalt blue.’

It was conjecture but I let it pass. ‘Anything else?’

Axelby removed the brain from the skull and slid it carefully into a stainless steel dish.

‘John Lewis is experiencing a problem with the debit cards of HSBC customers due to a fault caused by Jason in IT who was kept awake all night by a barking dog. The fault will delay your man for a further nine minutes and forty-three seconds. During this time, he will browse the food processors, which are located at the foot of the down escalator from the ground floor.’

‘To the right or to the left?’

‘Six feet exactly to the right.’

‘We work in metric these days.’ I spoke softly. Axelby was new and needed encouragement.

‘The distance from the escalator to the food processor stand is 1.82 metres.’

Axelby opened a freezer box suitable for brains, hearts and livers. ‘I can give you more decimal points if you need them.’

I shook my head. I didn’t need them. I don’t hold with decimal points. I would rely on my good old-fashioned copper’s intuition.

Axelby picked up the brain. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘and watch out for the slippery bit by the Magimix display.’

I looked Axelby in the eye. ‘I’m sure you’re doing your best but call me as soon as you’ve got anything I can use.’

I took the brain from him and squeezed it between my hands to test for damage. There was a compression injury he’d missed. I told him to pull his socks up. He might be new but I’d made enough allowances for one day. I threw the brain back to him.

!99 Axelby held the skull chisel to my neck, pressing on the carotid artery, no doubt to emphasise some further insignificant piece of forensic data he’d discovered. I wouldn’t need it. Good old-fashioned police work was going to get the job done. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this week. Maybe not next. But that’s what good old-fashioned police work is. A lot of maybes.

However long it took, I was going to get my man. If it was a man. Maybe it was a woman. There you are you see. Another maybe.

As I said, it was going to be a tough case. A very tough case.

!100

The Pigeon

I once had to kill a pigeon.

It was lying in the gutter, squashed, mangled, flapping an almost-severed wing.

I stopped and stared. The pigeon was beyond saving. I was late for a meeting. It’ll be dead soon, I told myself. I hurried on.

An hour later, the meeting over, I walked back to my car. The pigeon was still flapping its almost-severed wing. It was beyond saving – but it wasn’t dead. I didn’t hurry on.

I took a cardboard box from a grocery store and put the pigeon into it. I drove to the vet’s. The vet who looked after my cat. He would put it out of its misery.

Friday evening. The vet’s was closed. I drove to another vet’s. Closed.

Another vet’s. Closed. I was going to have to do it myself.

How best to kill a pigeon?

A) Break its neck.

B) Drown it.

C) Chop off its head.

I took an axe from the garden shed. I held the pigeon by its neck on the low brick wall of a flowerbed. I took a couple of practice shots like a golfer preparing to drive. The cat came to watch.

I held the pigeon tight. I closed my eyes and brought down the axe. I stopped. I was about to chop off my fingers. I opened my eyes and brought down the axe.

I chopped off the head of the pigeon.

Blood-spattered feathers. Blood-spattered flowers. Blood-spattered cat. Like a ritual sacrifice.

I stood up, the pigeon’s body in one hand, the head in the other. From next door’s upstairs window, Mrs Penrose was staring at me.

!101

The Freshers’ Conference October 1967. The summer of love had just ended and I was starting university in London. I had grown my hair over the summer. I had grown a beard. I looked rather like Che Guevara.

Nobody had told me that going to a Freshers’ Conference wasn’t cool, that it was unlikely that Che Guevara would have gone to a Freshers’ Conference. So here I was at a Freshers’ Conference and still cool.

My father had driven me down from Lancashire the day before and we had stayed overnight at grandma’s in Luton. That morning he had dropped me off in central London.

I was no longer a schoolboy. I was a student – a student sitting in a circle of other students, explaining my plans for world revolution with a light touch. I was more easy-going than Che. Having captured their imaginations with that, I moved on to my theories of the mathematical foundations of the music of Thelonious Monk. Although one or two weren’t paying full attention, I could tell that the young woman sitting opposite me – the one who looked a little like Julie Christie – was taking a particular interest.

‘All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.’ I caught her eye. ‘But Monk transformed... the keyboard... into...’

My father was striding across the room towards me. He should be on the M6 by now, halfway back to Lancashire.

I coolly brushed back my Che-like locks. ‘Hello, dad. What are you doing here?’

Dad handed me a brown paper parcel.

‘Here you are son. You forgot your pyjamas.’

!102

Oedipus Bay It was a mystery. Fifty of the world’s leading academics had been invited to attend a symposium on Linguistics and Scientific Method at the Orpheus Bay Academy for Arts and Sciences on the Greek island of Poros. Instead, they found themselves attending Sharon Philpott’s workshop, Life is a Metaphorical Rucksack, at the Oedipus Bay Academy for Spiritual Regeneration on the Greek island of Porphyros.

The assorted scholars suspected that something was wrong when they were met at Oedipus Bay by a group of semi-naked bongo drummers and a juggling clown on stilts. The clown threw custard pies in their faces and showed them around the complex: a conglomeration of bamboo huts with no electricity and a communal washing block with no water.

‘Life is a metaphor,’ Sharon explained to the academics on the first morning.

She stood in the centre of a large bamboo-covered circle called the Enchanted Ring, the academics sitting on the ground surrounding her in a circle.

‘A metaphor for what?’ asked Professor Lakatos, Head of Particle Physics at Princeton.

‘A metaphor for life.’

‘But that is circular reasoning.’ Professor Lakatos stood to emphasise his point. ‘A logical fallacy in which the premise is as much in need of proof as is the conclusion.’

‘I disagree,’ said Ted Babcock, Professor of Quantum Mechanics at Manchester. He jabbed a finger at Professor Lakatos and then jabbed it at Sharon. ‘It is a tautology. A self-reinforcing pretence of significant truth imparting no new or worthwhile knowledge.’

Sharon silenced them with her Scream of Mana. Mana, she explained, is a Polynesian concept of a life force seated in the head, although Sharon’s seemed to be seated in her vocal chords.

!103 ‘I can feel negative energy invading our sacred space.’ She gave her Scream of Mana again to rid the sacred space of the negative energy and resumed her place at the centre of the Enchanted Ring.

‘Life...’ Sharon paused to emphasise the significance of her announcement, ‘...is a metaphorical rucksack.’

Fifty of the world’s leading academics shuffled on their bottoms and stared at her. Sharon gave them her Gaze of Enlightenment.

‘I want you all to go away and think about that.’

The academics returned the next morning after a night of thinking about life as a metaphorical rucksack. To illustrate her lecture, Sharon had brought along a real rucksack with which she would have to make do until she could lay her hands on a metaphorical one. She walked back and forth in the middle of the circle.

‘I want you to imagine that you are carrying your metaphorical rucksack through a dark forest at night.’

‘Excuse me.’ Professor Lakatos rose to his feet again. ‘Are you talking about a real forest or a metaphorical one?’

‘I can feel the negative energy returning.’ Sharon halted, turned to face Professor Lakatos and gave him her Glower of Derision. He withdrew his question and sat down.

Sharon began walking back and forth again. ‘Now, as you journey through that dark metaphorical forest...’ she paused to give Professor Lakatos her Glimpse of Forgiveness, ‘...as you journey, you find that your metaphorical rucksack is becoming heavier and heavier, weighing you down. You are walking slower... and slower... and slower...’

‘Do you understand a word of this?’ Professor Lakatos whispered to Professor Babcock.

Babcock shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not a quantum.’

!104 ‘Ah, here we are.’ Professor Lakatos pointed to a woman removing her shoes and entering the Enchanted Ring. ‘Shirley Cochrane’s arrived. She’ll put us right.’

‘Who the hell is Shirley Cochrane?’ Babcock asked.

‘Professor of Conceptual Metaphor at Balliol. World authority on the things.’

Lakatos beckoned Professor Cochrane over and she squeezed in between him and Babcock.

‘See if you can make any sense of this,’ Lakatos whispered to her. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit over our heads.’ He brought Professor Cochrane up to date about what little he understood about the metaphorical rucksack.

Sharon gave him her Glare of Silence. ‘And finally, after that long, dark night, you leave the forest behind you.’ She swept her hands upwards and outwards. ‘Day breaks and you rest in a lush meadow by a clear running stream under the gentle rays of the sun.’ She sat on the ground and dipped her hand into the rucksack. ‘And here you unburden yourself by removing from your rucksack all those heavy metaphors that have been weighing you down...’

Professor Cochrane turned to Professor Lakatos and whispered, ‘You know, there may be something in this metaphorical rucksack thing.’

‘You understand it?’

‘A fascinating concept. Quite simple really.’

‘It is?’

‘A metaphorical rucksack, existing independently of physical or temporal limitation, would be weightless, indestructible and eternal. It has untold advantages over the conventional rucksack.’

‘My God,’ Lakatos shrieked. ‘The implications for String Theory are enormous.’

‘And for the rucksack industry,’ Babcock shouted.

Sharon gave Professors Lakatos and Babcock her Grimace of Disdain. ‘Now tomorrow, I shall be talking about the metaphorical torch.’

Professor Lakatos leapt up. ‘There’s a metaphorical torch as well?’

!105 Sharon marched over and gave him her Gape of Contempt. ‘How on earth would find your way through a metaphorical forest at night without a metaphorical torch?’ Thanks to Michelle Butler for coming up with the idea of a metaphorical rucksack during an evening on Skyros.

!106

!107

Jann Talbot High Heels on the Highway

A story inspired by the tale of the enigmatic woman who was seen struggling up the cobbled pathway in red, high-heeled shoes

The searing heat of the mid-day sun penetrated the jumbled cobble stones on the pathway leading up to the village. In the distance a solitary, bronzed figure appeared from out of the haze.

Her limbs were long and her step languid. Her long, ruby hair hung, like a vine, over her bare shoulders. She wore a tight fitting dress of vibrant green which clung to her body like shrink-wrap. It was then that I saw them: the exquisite pair of red, high-heeled shoes, which elevated her at least four inches above the path. She continued on her way, tottering gingerly over the unforgiving cobbles.

Who was this enigmatic creature, and why was she wearing such attire in this oppressive heat? Maybe a glamorous film star? Or a young girl on her first date? Perhaps she could be the woman I’d seen earlier that morning enjoying rampant sex in the sea?

As she got closer and glanced up, I reeled back in surprise. She had the face of an old woman – weathered and lined.

This woman, I later discovered, was known as Rose. As a child, Rose had never managed to live up to her name. She had been gawky, with long, tangled limbs and a mop of unruly, russet hair. She had always envied her best friend, Poppy, whose beauty would catch the eye of all the young men in the village.

She had been crushed to learn that Poppy was now holidaying in Skyros – her own special place of peace and tranquillity. Would all the feelings of inadequacy and resentment Rose had experienced as a child well up

!108 once again when they met? Poppy probably had regular Botox treatments and would exude the sophistication and glamour of her former years.

However, on surveying her reflection in the mirror before leaving, Rose had noted with satisfaction that, despite her face, her body had aged rather well: trim and taut with only a few grey hairs blushing guiltily amidst her flame-red locks. She had chosen her fashionable outfit and shoes with care that day to enhance her youthful image.

But, as she approached the village, anxiety gripped her like a vice and all past insecurities loomed up menacingly before her. It was at that moment that she set eyes on her friend. Poppy’s face was haggard and worn. Rose felt triumphant.

!109

Location, Location!

Task: to walk silently along the steep, cobbled path leading up from Skyros village to the statue of the poet Rupert Brooke and observe your surroundings

A Silent Walk with a thousand thoughts ringing in my ears...

Silently meandering along the cobbled path, I marvel at Mother Nature in all her splendour. The pale-yellow hills, stretching into the distance; the succulent, green leaves of the vibrant vegetation, whose very being defies the arid conditions.

I smile fondly at Man’s attempt to emulate Nature’s unruly beauty. The white stone houses sit uneasily amongst the rugged, parched hills with their neatly tended gardens of crushed-crimson Bougainvillea, in stark contrast to the wild beauty that surrounds them.

I am suddenly acutely aware of Man’s efforts to claim superiority over nature. A line of pebbles with bold, green lettering spelling out the name of a house, painted on their surfaces, glare back at me. I listen to a white-washed dog barking incessantly, as it lays claim to some Man’s territory.

I walk slowly on; listening, looking, feeling the heat of the sun envelop me. It then occurs to me that even in the throes of death, nature is beautiful. Glancing down, I notice a sea of pale-pink petals scattered on the ground; a bed of fallen leaves decaying silently; a tangle of withering bracken woven into the rock; a proud, up-turned rotting fig: all being lovingly gathered back into the arms of Mother Earth.

I cannot help being struck by the irony of the contrast between this beauty and the ugliness of the man-made structures around me which are falling into disrepair and depreciating year by year: a cracked,

!110 plastic drainpipe; a rusting washing line, long forgotten and abandoned; tired, flaking paint on the once gleaming white walls of the houses.

I look out across the valley and am overwhelmed by a sense of Nature’s vastness and freedom. I bring my eyes back to focus on the pathway in front of me. Anger engulfs me as I see the piles of blue, plastic bags randomly strewn across the landscape like a scourge, and notice the metal gate of a deserted fortress, with its chaotic web of menacing wire on top, clawing the air.

In the distance is the glistening sea with its backdrop of soft haze. I marvel, once again, at the supremacy of Nature’s beauty over the ugliness of Man’s creations. Then I glance across the grey, gravelled square and set my eyes upon the beauty of a man’s body, cast into a grotesque, green stone statue, and sigh in despair.

!111

Despair

‘A word paints a thousand pictures’ Task: A single word given to inspire the imagination

Do not despair, For it is proof that you care.

Care about love; care about life.

That you dare to hope!

From the cavern of despair, wells up a spring of understanding whose waters gently flow over others, bringing them comfort and kinship.

!112

An Ode to Autism

Oh, he’s autistic!

What a shame; what a curse!

But so much freedom to be yourself, To view the world in such a different and unusual way and be able to take pleasure in its myriad of intricate patterns and colour.

To experience solitude, yet be able to embrace it.

A licence to enjoy life on your own terms!

How liberating, not to have to worry about what others are feeling and be oblivious to empathy!

Such a selfish condition: Yet what do I care? Life is Good!

!113

Writer’s Block

Task: to create a character (a ‘battler’)

Christine felt trapped and incompetent. She sat, paralysed at the sturdy oak table, unable to write.

Her hands were hot and clammy and shook as the adrenaline seared through her body. Her mind was a dried-up well. Why? The feeling of self-loathing encompassed her. Failure hung in the air and enveloped her like the dark wings of a bat.

Maybe a sip of water would help and be a river of inspiration to flow through her veins?

Christine’s reverie was abruptly broken by the slam of the front door.

The kids piled in – their joyous, raucous laughter echoing down the hallway. Christine smiled.

“Mum,” one of her sons, Joey, called out. “I have to do a project for homework. Can you help?”

Suddenly, full of purpose, Christine strode across the room, hugged her son and busied herself with collecting pens and paper.

“We have to write about the migrant crisis in Calais,” Joey informed her.

“Don’t have a clue how to start!”

Christine ensconced herself in a chair, her face now beaming with confidence. “Write this,” she instructed Joey: ‘The migrant sat huddled against the wall, shivering. He eyed the passing trucks with intent. The chance of freedom beckoned enticingly, but he was paralysed with uncertainty and unable to move.’

!114

Character: ‘A Battler’ story 2

Christine was one of life’s battlers and although the intense cold gnawed at her like a ferocious rat, she refused to admit defeat.

It was mid-January and the electricity supply to the house had been off since early morning. She was trapped in the house by deep snow and ice hung from the windows like blades of steel, threatening to plunge their frozen tips into her inner being. She glanced down at her hands and was surprised to see that they were white, like a glove. She peered into the mirror and an image of puckered, blue lips, bounced back at her.

In her mind, she felt she could hold out a little longer, although she was vaguely aware that her body was shutting down. Death creeping over her like a ghost. Yet the cold was her enemy – a force to be conquered.

“I will live!” she cried”. Hypothermia said otherwise.

!115

Ceramic Secrets

Task: to create a plot based on a holiday experience in Skyros: I chose my visit to a ceramics shop in the village as my inspiration

Erica gazed through the window of the ceramics shop in awe. Plates with pale-pink petals painted on their delightful, shiny surfaces smiled back at her, beckoning. She stepped inside.

Her eyes swept the room and drank in its beauty. Row upon row of delicate little cups and saucers lined the wooden shelves, as if set up for a child’s tea party. Above them, on the white-washed walls, hung larger ceramic plates, their glaze throwing light outwards across the room, like rays of sun.

Suddenly, Erica felt someone brush against her. She looked up to see a man in a raincoat, striding purposefully towards the back of the shop.

He appeared distracted and tense.

She felt drawn to follow him. The man was studying a set of vases intently. He walked around them slowly, like a tiger circling its prey. He then reached out and tentatively ran his fingers over each vase, starting at the neck, then moving downwards towards the narrow waist and out over the round hips relishing their smoothness, as if caressing the velvet skin of a woman’s body.

Erica stood transfixed. Why was he showing such an uncanny interest in these inanimate objects? Although she could appreciate their beauty, Erica was perplexed by the almost obsessive attention he was paying to each one of them.

All at once, the man’s mood changed. He grimaced and looked decidedly irritated. He hurriedly removed his hands from the vase he had been examining, as if they’d been burnt on a hotplate.

!116 He then walked briskly over to the counter and started speaking to the squat, rotund shopkeeper whose bald head was as shiny as his ceramic plates. The man in the raincoat gesticulated wildly; his voice rose to such a fever pitch that Erica feared that it would shatter the delicate ceramic creations around her.

She glanced at the set of vases in front of her and felt a compulsion to reach out and touch them, just as she had seen the man do. Gingerly, she placed her hands around the body of the largest vase and, with the greatest of care, lifted it into the air like a sacrificial offering. “PUT THAT DOWN!� Shock reeled through her. Erica released her hold on the vase and it fell onto the stone floor, smashing into a myriad of pieces.

It was then that she saw it. An innocuous-looking roll of bank notes, lying at her feet.

!117

Ode to An Ant

Dedicated to our Sophie, who delivered an after-dinner lecture on the virtues of everything organic and espoused protecting all God’s living things. Unfortunately, she had a relapse after being bitten by an ant during her morning yoga session on the terrace and implored management to get rid of the ant’s nest by pouring boiling water over it.

Note: (S.O.L. is an agency promoting organic products)

Oh, Sophie! Sophie! how can it be, That you planned to boil me at 100 degree?

I’ve heard you care about chickens and cattle, Or is this just a rumour and mere tittle-tattle?

I only joined you at yoga to keep fit and trim.

Is that, for an ant, such a terrible sin?

I was minding my business, just scurrying along, When it started to go, so inexplicably wrong.

One minute, the sun was pouring down on my head, The next, it was your leg, Bearing down on me instead.

In panic, my response was to nip your bare skin.

Oh, the guilt and the shame, I now feel deep within.

Mind you, your sister at S.O.L. would be quite aghast at your plan to annihilate me, so very, very, fast.

!118

And I think there’s something else you should know: I’m an ORGANIC ant; not just from Tesco.

But forget it; don’t worry; you’re not a hypocrite, ‘Cos I’m not an ant – I’m only a Nit!

!119

A Parody of Writing Styles

Task: to write in the style of someone else on the writers’ course.

She was bloody pissed off. The dog’s bark had ricocheted off the hills and bombarded her ear drums all night. When dawn finally reared its ugly head, dark rain clouds could be seen, hovering menacingly.

It was the last day of her holiday on the Greek island of Skyros and the weather was going to be foul. The promise of a day spent bobbing lethargically in the swell of the diamond-studded sea, was fading fast and her thoughts turned to all the SHIT she had to deal with before her imminent departure. Packing, printing out boarding passes. Oh yes, and checking she hadn’t left her vibrator buzzing happily under her pillow.

She grimaced. Out by 9:00 am. What did they think this was? A frigging boot camp! She had wanted time to wash her hair after a lastminute morning swim. Then she remembered the Skyros plumbing.

The shower drain wasn’t up to much now, belching back water like a drunk and flooding the bathroom cell.

“Oh fuck! Forget the ablutions – only dirty people wash,” she told herself.

!120

Playing with Pace

The light from the pale moon began to wane as the sun rose stealthily above the horizon. She gently nudged the dark shadows of night that still hung over the sullen hills and took her rightful place, heralding the start of a new day.

In the valley below, a door slammed. Horses whinnied restlessly. The clanging of pots and pans resonated from the kitchens of the little houses, nestling on the valley floor. People shouting, calling, laughing: a cacophony of noise amidst the taciturn hills from which emanated a torrent of water that ran downwards into an azure pool below. A fish surged upwards to the surface, its mouth yawning open to the sun, before plunging back again into the dark depths. Silence resumed.

Suddenly the peace was shattered. Rapid rifle fire echoed around the valley as bullets flew through the air. Screaming. Running. Sheer panic!

!121

Tits Up in Atsitsa

Task: to draw on a holiday experience for writing inspiration.

The air was heavy with humidity and the pungent smell of Bougainvillea as Alex alighted from the coach at Atsitsa Bay. He joined the throng of excited tourists milling around the entrance to the holiday village like agitated ants, jostling for a place to be first to step foot inside. Ah! The start of his long-awaited Skyros holiday.

The village was nestled amidst a lush green forest of pine trees which stretched along the whole length of the crescent-moon bay, like a border of embroidery. Alex gazed towards the clear, calm waters of the bay.

Gentle waves caressed the grey, pebbled beach and lapped the rocks like the wet tongue of a dog. The sun was sinking slowly, casting exquisite rays of soft orange light across the glistening water.

“I’ll show you to your huts now,” the tour leader announced. Alex was jolted back into reality, his reverie broken.

He raced ahead in anticipation and there, before him, stood a quaint, round hut with a straw roof, which looked remarkably like a little fat man sporting a straw sun hat. Alex stepped inside. “Heaven,” he sighed.

“Just Heaven!”

The next morning Alex awoke early while the village was still sleeping.

The air in his hut was soporific and oppressive and his whole body ached. Beads of salty sweat poured down from his forehead. The mosquito net above him appeared like a heavy curtain, isolating him from the world.

Alex was suddenly aware of his urgent need to pee. He wearily hung his legs over the side of the elevated bed and stepped weakly onto the stone floor, which felt cold beneath his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him and he struggled to steady himself.

!122 He lumbered down the steps to the toilet block and was hit by the stench of urine. He reeled back in disgust. Then the acrid taste of vomit filled his mouth and he bent over and threw up amidst the crimson-pink petals of the Bougainvillea tree. The shock caused him to lose control and he suddenly became aware of a warm flow, trickling down his legs. He staggered back to his hut: his sanctuary.

Alex did not register how much time had passed, but when he awoke, he was lying on his bed, pain searing through his temples. How ironic to feel so alone in such a vibrant community.

Alex had been looking forward to the drumming course, the camaraderie, the singing, but now the incessant thud of the drums outside pounded in his ears. The shouts of excitement emanating from the circus school irritated him. The whole world was cruelly teasing him, laughing at his misfortune.

Hot and sticky, he lay, burning up like a furnace. Would this holiday never end?

!123

Playing with Dialogue

By Jann Talbot & Mary Maclean

Task: Each person was given a character to bring to life during a conversation. (the other person had to guess what type of character you were trying to portray). Working in pairs, we jotted down what each other said then had to put the conversation into a scene.

The room was a hive of activity. Boys bantered, girls gaggled and gossiped. Mark sauntered across the bar and scanned the room for familiar faces. In a dark recess sat Isabelle from his writing course. He didn’t know much about her, but she’d provide a bit of light entertainment; someone to converse with before a spot of lunch.

“Hi, Isabelle.” Mark thrust his hand forward to shake hers.

She glanced down, timidly, before placing her hand gingerly in his, giving it a weak shake. “Oh, hello Mark.”

Mark took this as an invitation to sit down. He ensconced himself in the chair opposite, resting his arm casually across the back and spreading his legs out wide.

“So, what do you do for a job, Isabelle?”

“Nothing very exciting,” Isabelle said dismissively. “I work in an office, but it’s fairly low-level stuff. What do you do?”

“I’m a broker,” Mark announced proudly. “At the moment I’m on cloud nine because I’ve just had a huge bonus. The world’s my oyster now.”

“Oh, I’ve never been abroad,” Isabelle muttered.

“Haven’t you?” Mark was incredulous.

“Mixing with others just isn’t my thing,” Isabelle continued apologetically.

!124 “I love this island. The restaurants are so cheap. I’m going to end up taking back most of the Euros I came with.” He folded his arms and sat back in his chair with an air of smug satisfaction.

“I like to eat alone in my room,” Isabelle confessed.

Mark ignored the comment.

“You know, I think the Greek financial crisis has been really good for the Pound. Great for playing the futures market too!”

“Not so great for the Greek people, though,” Isabelle reminded him.

“I reckon my bonus will go through the roof next year.”

“I’m glad for you,” Isabelle whispered, fidgeting uncomfortably in her chair.

“I would suggest we have something to eat, but I find these places so intimidating.” Isabelle hovered over her seat, as if about to take flight.

Mark beamed. “Oh yes, let’s celebrate. I’m flush with cash. I’ll buy you a drink and a very expensive meal.”

“Oh, there’s no need,” Isabelle reassured him.

!125

The King and I

A poem inspired by Steve’s rendition of Pam Ayres ‘Fifty Shades’ at our morning Demos

Did you know that separate bedrooms are a right royal tradition?

They keep royal couples on a constant mission – to woo their partner into their own boudoir, Or on a fantasy night, perhaps into a royal car?

Knocking on her bedroom door, the King will enquire “Darling Bess; have you children, that you’re keen for me to sire?”

“You can enter, but not enter,” she teasingly replies as she runs her vibrator up and down her sexy thighs.

On hearing this coy invite, he slams open the bedroom door And grapples his rampant queen right down onto the floor.

They tussle, writhe, sigh and moan, With the Queen multi-tasking on her new mobile phone.

But alas, when all their ardour’s spent, And the King’s bid his farewell, like a real gent – He must return to his own room and depart Where he’s free, at last, to let out that fart.

So you see, in royal households Separate rooms are a normality To shield royal couples from the experience of reality.

Then, maybe separate bedrooms could do wonders for you too?

You could even add an ensuite with a value-added loo.

But when I dared to suggest this, to my own dear trouble and strife,

!126 She exclaimed, aghast, “What do you mean?” “I’ll just have one more room to clean!”

So here I lie and still remain; stuck in the marital bed Wishing I was by myself, in my separate room instead.

Alone, with erotic thoughts floating provocatively through my head, Being able to forget, just for once, that I’m still legally wed.

Then I come to my senses; reality strikes, and I find that I’m missing my Missus.

The heat of her body, the warmth of her touch and, of course, all her lovely kisses.

I reach out and hold her, tight to my chest And suddenly realise – That a double room is the best.

!127

Marina Viscardi Dog Days

She’s here again! I can hear her footsteps approaching...light, swift, joyful. I have a glimpse of her pink dress through the gate...my heart pounds...her voice...she’s getting closer!

I could recognise that voice among millions. I want to jump out and run towards her. No way! The gate is locked.

I’m here, day in, day out.

I often dream of running. I can still see seas of grass, moved in waves by the wind. I jump up and down, happily barking, I’m light, free, my hair dancing in the wind, my ears dangling down, flapping nicely against my cheeks.

Huhmmmm! The smell of sage among the bushes! The glimpse of lizards! I will chase them among the dried roots.

In my dreams she’s calling me. I run towards her. The ground becomes sandy. I run. My heart opens. I smell coconut oil on kids. They are playing. One of them points at me smiling: “Doggy!” – looking at his dad – he smiles too. A ball! Yes! Let’s play!

My ears in the wind, my paws in the salty water. I jump – “Get the ball back!”

“Well done! Good boy!” My heart leaps with joy.

I’ll do whatever you want to make you happy. I’ll play with you, I’ll wait for you, I’ll silently walk behind you. I’ll look after your house, your family. I’ll love you every day, day in, day out.

But, please, don’t leave me here, waiting too long.

!128

Privy Beauty

“Thank you, Madam.”

I know you won’t even notice me. For you I’m just part of the furniture.

You come in to use the toilet. I’m here to make sure you sit on a clean one. I wait for the previous lady to finish using it, and I wipe the wooden seat for you. Now you can be sure no germs touch your precious skin.

I see people like you every day, from 9 am to 5 pm.

I too used to be beautiful. Then the war broke out. I had to save my life.

I feel old and tired now. I don’t have time to look after my skin, my hair, my clothes, like you. I’m just too tired for that. If you only looked into my eyes you would see some of this. But you’re too busy thinking about your foundation, your mascara. “Thank you Madam," I say when you drop a coin for me, with nonchalance.

You know, I’m saving these pennies. I want to buy a new coat for my daughter. It’s cold here in London. She’s outgrown the one she is wearing.

She’s already home, waiting for me.

Tonight I’ll be back a little later. I’ll stop at Primark to buy the red coat I saw last week. So pretty, it will suit her.

I’ll ring the bell. She'll run to embrace me, her eyes bright with joy.

She’ll open the parcel and say, “Thank you mum!”

You know what? I think I’ll spit on your toilet seat! You’ll think it’s clean, but I’ll know it is not. My Lady, you’ll be surprised, you’ll never imagine how many times I do this to people like you. You won’t be able to tell.

That’s the way I cope with this unfair world.

And it’s freezing cold today. Never felt so cold in my heart like now.

“Thank you Madam!”

!129

The Book Spotter

I’m sitting next to her, wobbling, slightly elongating my neck, looking at her from time to time, swiftly averting my gaze as soon as she moves.

She is reading. We are here, sitting on this train heading to Chalk Farm.

What other journey is she in?

I try to look at her book, to read a few sentences, and guess what book she is reading.

This is what I have been doing every day after the love of my life said, “I need to start a new chapter, and you are not in it!”

So every day I get on the tube, look for a woman who is reading, and try to understand what story she is in. They usually look so taken, half dreaming, all of them: young, less young, more mature, all fascinated by someone who is in there, on their pages. You see, I’m trying to understand what you need to do to be in a woman’s life.

Once I was mistaken for a maniac: I had to pretend I had dropped my wallet so that I could lean down and look at the cover of the book she was reading. She thought I was looking at her legs: a hard back version of The Pillars of the Earth came slamming down on my head!

I know, I need to be more discreet, but I can’t help peeping.

My therapist says I should socialise more and, be sure, I try my best.

So far I have spotted 213 love stories, 105 thrillers, 96 fantasy.

Trains are the best places to look for what I need.

Airports are a no–no.

!130 The other day, in Heathrow airport, I saw a woman reading. She was so taken by the story. I approached, sat down, my neck elongated. I read a name: “Julian Treslove”, and no, no cover. She was reading a kindle.

As soon as I’m home, I thought, I’ll have to google that name, and I’ll find out which story she’s been in. What a headache, though.

Nowadays, with kindles, even harmless book spotters like me have a hard life.

!131

!132