Four months to the day after George Harrison died, Ron was barbecuing Cumberland sausages at the back of his new terraced house, wearing nothing but extra-large boxers and his grandmother’s apron. Fat grease shone on his chest hair. ‘Local paparazzi’s been,’ he said, snapping open a can of Fosters. ‘Yeah?’ His daughter pretended not to …
While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris Read More »
The sisters made a striking pair. My aunt a brassy, sassy redhead; my mom platinum as a new dime. They’d dumped us kids off with our grandmother while they hit the road for Vegas in my aunt’s 1958 Hudson. The “green beetle” we called it. My aunt, widowed going on two years, my mother newly-divorced, …
You pretend you don’t care, but I know you do. Your big family box of PG Tips grows steadily emptier each week. So I bring my own deep-bellied stainless steel strainer, I bring my own parcel of loose leaf tea, the buds jostling in the wax-coated brown paper. You pretend it doesn’t matter if I …
I shall use my time. I will drain it, wring it like a cloth. I shall flannel the faces of my children. I will hold their chins and know the colour of their eyes when they’re closed. I shall play on the floor. I shalt not check my phone or rush out of the door, …
She’s not sure when her heart first started to shrink but she remembers when she noticed it had. It was the day she stepped round the homeless woman outside the train station and tutted at her for being in the way, putting her slightly off course. She couldn’t afford even that momentary delay in her …
We bonded over crystals: you the believer, me the sceptic. Summer days when flash downpours scented the air with rust and an arch of colour framed the sky. Rose quartz and peridot dotted the grass, glass flowers amongst emerald blades. “Here, take this lapis lazuli. It’s the stone of friendship.” A row of creamy opals …
One morning, my mother’s earrings bubble to the surface of my muesli, the garish cobalt blue stones in zero-karat gold swimming among the oats, raisins and flaked almonds. I spy a diamante earring in the dregs of my morning coffee. Then, as I leave the house for work, I see her olive anorak haunting the …
My spirit rests in one of the thirty pieces of your soul’s silver, tendered, a test of my undaunted mettle, I am coin, a victim of the currency that barters with my worth, not a curse, a vengeful seduction, I’m found in the Kabul hoard, amongst the punch-marked siglos, and in the ancient Athenian decadrachms, …
They came from the village right before dawn, covered in thick wool clothes that left just enough space for the arms to move. I could only see their eyes through the gap between the berets and the scarves. They entered the house, an empty skeleton by now, all its contents safe. If anything, I had …
You’ve always wanted it, haven’t you? To move with vacancy. A smile like you’re just about to bite an apple. That girl-next-door quality. You’ve always wanted it. The day she moves in, you see her through the gap in your curtain and you exhale slowly; she has it. It’s there in all the ways …
The elevator is between the twenty-first and the twenty-second floor when the cable snaps, so the passengers have some time to share their life stories before they hit the ground. ‘I married too young,’ says the woman with the red hair and the butter-soft gaze and the lapel badge which reads ‘Baby on Board’. ‘I …
My eyes fix upon Mrs Marshall, immaculate in a starched apron, as she prepares to begin the demonstration. Cherries, heaped on the bench before her, gleam in the light from the high windows. Bowls, glasses, and spoons await, pristine and neat. My breathing stills as she wipes her hands and announces the start of the recipe. …