story
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Ali says: “He started coming in a few weeks ago, and after a few days I assumed he was going to be a regular customer, and that he was going to buy the same thing every time. We smile at each other, and he tells me about simple things, like the weather.” This is reminding…
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Julie places cutlery, plates and a lighted candle onto the kitchen table. She looks at the clock. Ali will be home soon, after closing the shop and locking everything up for the night. It will be just the two of them for dinner tonight—the girls are already in bed. She sits and closes her eyes…
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He sat down, leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes. His train wasn’t due for another eight minutes. Two trains, then his. Someone, a man at the end of the platform, was shouting about how he hadn’t said something, “…you’re wrong, I didn’t say that, that’s not the way it happened”. A voice…
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Steven was regarding his reflection in a battered old mirror which was fixed on the wall in the corner of the shop. He was holding an old rolling-tobacco tin filled with tarnished keys, and not so much feigning interest in the tin and its contents, but using them as props, to allow himself this opportunity…
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We’d bunked off school that afternoon. Me and Pauline were lying in the tall grass. Henry was sitting away, with his back to us. For ages I looked, at his dark hair, deep black, almost purple, like a crow, and the whiteness of his neck, like ice-cold milk. His head was down, and he was…
Barry Lee Thompson 