serial fiction
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They sit next to each other on the couch. The only light is from the kitchen and the moon. There is a faint tang of Sharizad’s sickness hanging somewhere in the room. “Carry on with the story,” she says. The sides of their bodies are touching. “It’s finished,” he says. “There isn’t any more.” “There
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She eats the last piece of lamb on her plate (having saved it till the end, as usual) and puts her fork down. She’s tempted to run her fingertips over the plate, to scrape all the sauce up, and then to suck her fingers clean. She’d do this if Ali wasn’t there. “So why are
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“The first time he came in, he told me that he was buying the bottles to give to someone at work, to add to a farewell hamper. He told me about how they had bought this fellow enough gifts to fill a box, that they were going to wrap it all up in cellophane and
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She thinks for a moment; not about the stew but about the story that he’s started. “So he’s dapper,” she says, and he frowns. “He wears office clothes then,” she says, and he nods. “And he comes in to the shop every day, almost, after work, at four o’clock, or just after, and he
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The kitchen clock stands on top of the fridge, leaning against a dented tea-tin filled with loose change. Julie becomes aware of its patient ticking. She has asked Ali, many times, to hang it on the wall. She’s indicated the space she has in mind, over the door to the living room, but he hasn’t
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