Dr Martinelli sits behind his desk, stiff as a new-ironed soldier guarding a barricade. She sits, facing the man who isn’t a proper doctor, to her husband’s left, as always.…

You were my first crush. With your long hair and olive glow. Exotic. Not like the fen boys in class with their shaven heads and acne. I looked for you…

Imagine this. You are wandering without maps in the dark forest as twilight creeps in. You are sinking in the snow of a Siberian wasteland. You are drowning in an…

On the bus to her mother’s funeral, and Maizie forgot to bring money. No point to turn back now. Already Ohio. Maizie has no credit card and no friends to…

I do my best to smooth the duvet, its creases swirling like milk hitting coffee. The body in the bed isn’t helping. The dead woman’s beads – borrowed, amber, still…

We sit cross-legged on the polished parquet floor, the teachers on red plastic chairs at the ends of our rows. We chat quietly to our neighbours while we wait for…

As soon as April had a handle on the alphabet, her parents delegated her education to books. On her fifth birthday, they chucked an unwrapped dictionary at her and instructed,…

When I visit my sister in Summer, she says she wants to be the farmer who tills rapeseed, the crow that flies low over him, says she wants to be…

Bryan, parting the Perspex fronds of a 7-eleven refrigerator unit, doesn’t see Nora approach. But his bones quiver as he fetches the milk. Plastic strips down a back, straggle-bun, plaid…

A bee is on the tarmac going slow for sugar. She tells him bees are yawnsome. I mean, look how they surrender after just one sting, she says, and wearing…