

Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair

Welcome to Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair, the first sampler from some of the Year Zerø Writers. Year Zerø Writers is a collective of authors who believe literature should be a direct conversation between readers and writers.

Here you will find glimpses of our work. Many of us will be publishing novels from 1 September 2009. Details of all individual novels, our authors, and the aims of Year Zerø Writers, can be found on our website, www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com. Please feel free to contact us, or to get in touch with our authors directly.

We hope you enjoy reading our work as much as we enjoy writing it for you, and look forward to a long and fruitful dialogue.

Each of the works here is © copyright 2009 of the named author. The authors are: Oli Johns, Sarah E Melville, Larry Harrison, Dan Holloway, Mary Banks, Anne Lyken-Garner, Karine Levecque, Simon Betterton, Annia Lekka, Julia Sutton, Heikki Hietala, Anna Le Pard, Marcella O'Connor. Each author asserts their moral right to be named as the author of their work. Each author has agreed to allow other members of the Year Zerø Writers collective to distribute in printed or electronic form the work included in this sampler on the condition that all work in this sampler is distributed in its collective format.

The cover art is © copyright 2009 Larry Harrison.

Year Zerø Writers is not a publisher, a press, or a company of any kind. It has no moral or legal rights to any intellectual property generated by its authors.

http://www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com

The YEAR ZERØ Manifesto

The problem

The Factory: agents, editors, media arbiters of taste, publishers. A chain of filters that takes raw fiction, cuts it, sells it on, cuts it again until the street product peddled to readers is weak, toxic, and addictive.

YEAR ZERØ exists to eliminate the impurities and deliver prose in the pure and raw.

Pushing the boundaries of substance through new technologies, YEAR ZERØ provides prose just as addictive, in many cases just as toxic, but with a powerful, instant high that will stay with you for life.

YEAR ZERØ is not an industry. YEAR ZERØ is not a group of writers. YEAR ZERØ is not a set of beliefs. YEAR ZERØ is an approach to culture.

• Culture is the breath we suck from each others' lips.

• Culture is not alive. Culture is life.

• Readers and writers, like all producers and consumers of culture, cannot exist apart from each other. They exist only insomuch as literature flows between them. Inasmuch as The Factory exists to separate readers from writers it exists only to bring death, to create ghosts and hollow men.

• Culture speculates; culture takes risks; culture hijacks every human artifice and structure in the name of life.

YEAR ZERØ exists as a conduit for this process.

We are not YEAR ZERØ. We are some of its voices. You are its heart.

Forthcoming

From

YEAR ZERØ WRITERS

_____________________________________________________________________________

Three novels by Year Zerø Writers will be available from 1 September 2009. To order print copies from that date, see the Year Zerø Writers website (www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com) You can read extracts from the opening chapters of two of these novels here, as well as Oli Johns' poetic companion-piece to his novel Benny Platonov. The three novels are:

Benny Platonov by Oli Johns

A refugee from the former East Germany believes he can save the homeless of Hong Kong. If only he didn't have writer's block.

Glimpses of a Floating World by Larry Harrison

Police corruption, heroin addiction, and an elegy to the lost underbelly of Sixties London. You can download or sample more of this novel here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3275

Songs from the Other Side of the Wall by Dan Holloway

A teenage girl growing up in Post-Communist Hungary faces a heartbreaking choice between past and future.

You can download or sample more of Songs from the Other Side of the Wall here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3308

## ______________________

## Knowing Gupter Puncher

### Oli Johns

Gupter Puncher, little known writer of the seventies and child (and later an exile) of the East German-Soviet State, disappeared from this world on January 16th, 1980. On a beach near Yokohama was the last place he was seen. Some commented that winter had always been difficult for him to endure and for that reason he had killed himself, while others suggested that his compatriots from behind the Iron Curtain had finally caught up with him. Whatever happened that day, his stories remain.

I was in Mexico again. There had been a tip off telling me that Gupter had been seen up near the Sonora desert.

"Why would he be-...are you sure about this?"

"Yes, yes. Him here, I sure."

What was that accent? Sonoran? I asked him what was so attractive about a desert.

"Dog fighting, it big thing here. The Sun big, big, hot, hot. It cook like oven for dogs. Every man want see this, so come, come."

I checked into the hotel and went to my room and put the suitcase on the bed then took out the notes and placed them carefully on the desk.

They were fading at the edges. Soon the decay would reach one of the letters and then it'd be over.

"Are you really here then, Gupter?" I asked the room. "Because we haven't got long left..."

I sat down by the desk and re-read the notes.

'...I told this to Miho today, in bed where she was least expecting it...Miho, I said, at seventeen I was forced into the military academy up near Dresden. My parents were told to send me there as 'it was the only way left to turn me onto a "comrade's" way of thinking'. It was one of my instructors at school, I think. He was the one who told them. So, I left without making a sound and got on the bus to Dresden...and I told her what they had taught me, the killing instructions and the different types of Germans and all that, but there was something else I thought when telling it to her, something I thought I should write down. I remember, on the bus, some of the city was still being rebuilt when I entered, and –... this was the strange thing, wasn't it? A soldier on his way to learn how to re-destroy a city...even now I remember wondering if Dresden would fall again, and if it would be me that helped to knock it down...'

"Why did you even go, Gupter?" I asked the notes. "Would I have gone if it had been me?"

I went to the place the tipper had told me to go and got a ticket and sat down in the oven to watch one of the fights. It was brutal; one dog was scared as soon as it was pushed into the circle, and the other dog stalked it round the edges, clearly aware that it would be the only one leaving. And the heat...krist, even the dogs' eyes were sweating.

I looked around me between fights. The crowd was all Mexican. There may have been a couple of Belizeans or Guatemalans or one of the other satellites but there were definitely no East Germans.

Gupter wasn't there. He had probably never been there.

I checked out of the hotel and headed to Mexico City, sure that there would be another tip off waiting.

'...you didn't know what you were doing, did you? Ha, of course I didn't. It wasn't something they'd forgive me for, and I knew that, but I think I surprised myself with the scale of what I did. I mean, every doorstop covering over half of Berlin...Krist, you knew they'd come for you. And it had to be me...who else would do such a thing? Only my Jurgen...yeah, that's an irony right there, isn't it? Little Jurgen would've lied about it afterwards though...wouldn't he? I have to write that story for him...have to fit what I did into what he's gonna do. If I ever write him into existence...no, it won't happen now. Not in this kind of place. Oh Jurgen, if we could go back and hide and lurk in Berlin like we used to, and put our work onto those doorsteps while everyone was sleeping...everything seemed possible then.'

A small tear in the paper at the bottom edge stopped me reading.

The notes were not only decaying, they were being ripped apart. What was happening here? There was something I could-...what was it? Formaldehyde? Was that the stuff they used to keep paper fresh? No, that wasn't it, it was something else. I'd have to go somewhere and find out. A pharmacy?

I carefully picked up the notes and put them back in the suitcase. As I closed it up I noticed that the strap had broken off again.

It had been with me from the start, back in Japan with Miho. I forgot when that was. Four years ago, perhaps.

I took the strap and attached it back onto the suitcase.

Gupter had been seen near the train terminus in Rome.

I had been in Gaza when I heard and it had taken me only half a day to get from there to here. I was staying in a hostel two streets down from the terminus, but this tip wasn't encouraging as the place was too hectic. Gupter could never be singled out in such a place, especially with so many other Germans around. Not forgetting the other similar looking types, the Balkans, the Czechs, the Bulgarians. They all had a fair shot at convincing me that they could be Gupter.

And what had I been doing in Gaza?

There was a theory I had, taken from my reading of his notes, that he was attracted to war-zones and Disaster States.

'there's something about those other countries I passed through. About Japan too. I feel it when I walk on the streets during the day – what is this feeling? I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. There was just something strange about feeling safe and...what was it...the faces I saw. They were too pleasant, they weren't hiding anything from me, at least nothing important. Just personal things, of course, but that feeling...the safety. I don't question people anymore. I don't look at them and wonder if they'd be the type to give me up. I think, there's something in this...I think I know what it is, but how to admit it? Not even in words...Krist, not even in these words I'm writing. When was the last time I felt like writing? I mean, really writing...not these reflections, but real writing. I don't know. When? I only remember the last time I felt uncomfortable, on that train...with the guards in India...'

India, where him and Rudy Wurlitzer had drugged the Soviet guards with opium and snake venom. They had been taking him to Omsk to put a bullet in his head, but he had escaped. How many people in the world knew about that, Gupter? You, Rudy, the guards, the Soviets, who were now probably dead, Miho perhaps, and me.

But those others, they didn't know your thoughts. I did, only me. And I knew that when I did find you it'd be in a country gone to hell.

I sat on the top bunk in the four bed dorm room and lit a cigarette. I didn't know if I could smoke in the room but I didn't really care.

Did Gupter smoke?

It wasn't in any of his notes, and I had read them all. No, he didn't smoke.

But then, why would he mention it? It was just a thing, it wasn't an idea.

I wanted him to smoke. I wanted him to write down that he smoked. I wanted him to write down what he looked like and what kind of clothes he wore and whether or not he liked other writers. He had never mentioned any of this to me.

The door opened and a couple came in. They ignored me and sat down on one of the other beds and started talking in...what was it...Krist, it wasn't German, was it?

I listened closely and realized it was.

I put out the cigarette and arranged the notes in a pile and then asked them if they were from Germany.

"Stuttgart," they said not even smiling.

"Ah, the West."

They didn't say anymore so I brought myself closer to them and told them that they probably wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about but did they know of the writer from the old East German State called Gupter Puncher.

"No. It is sure East Germany you want?"

"I don't want it, I want Gupter Puncher."

The man, tall and with broad shoulders like Gupter, shook his head.

They didn't know him and they would probably never know him. I was the only one who had his notes...but that meant nothing, really; Gupter was the only one who could write them into stories.

There was a hotel in Hong Kong where Gupter had stayed for two nights. That's what the tipper had told me; he was tall and had broad shoulders and was the spit of him.

"Are you from East Germany?" I asked. "Did you know him?"

"East Germany? No, no. This is gone, you know?"

"Yes, it has, I know." But how did he know Gupter? "But how-..."

He had hung up and I had gone to Hong Kong anyway and was now sitting on a bed in the same hotel that Gupter had stayed at. I had been down all the floors and listened in at each door, but there had been no German spoken.

He wasn't there.

"Ha! In Hong Kong...of all places. How could he stand it?"

I got his notes out of the suitcase and laid them out carefully on the bed. I stood over them for a minute and stared down on them as a whole.

One hundred and twenty seven pieces of decaying paper.

Outlines for 'Jurgen Platonov', his novel about the poor.

Notes and ideas for a novel about responsibility and the intervention of the author with two characters being Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, and a female poet who is raped but isn't really as it all happens in her head.

These notes had been difficult, but Gupter had explained them to me:

'And what do I know about a female poet? Exactly. What do I know of rape? Nothing. This is my point, isn't it?'

Yes, I understood with his help. But the thought of writing such a thing...Gupter, I can't do it, I'm not good enough.

What else?

There was the first draft for his novel on Mao.

The account of his exile, in his words and thoughts.

The reflections on his life, the biography that he seemed to be working on before he-...

I stood for almost an hour remembering each page and the words and the ideas that were on it. I had read it all more than once.

In fact, in the last six years, there hadn't been anything else.

I sat down on the bed and picked out the page about Jurgen. Before I even recognized the words, I could see which part it was. I could tell from the layout, the system of the words. Jurgen was about to betray his friend and sleep with the Polish whore.

"Krist, but I need something else...I need the whole story, Gupter."

I walked through the streets around the hotel in Hong Kong and after a while I got on the train and chose an area at random and went there. I couldn't remember the name of the place as I left its station but I knew straight away it was poor and the people who lived there were at the bottom of the pit. There was a park near one of the buildings, which had washing hanging outside almost every window, and I walked in and sat on one of the benches. I didn't move for over an hour and then an old woman came up to the bin nearest to me and stuck her arm inside.

There's a park in 'Jurgen Platonov' with an old woman like that, I thought. Gupter had her sticking her arm into a bin at night. It was in East Germany, not Hong Kong, but the poverty of the place, the woman, the bin-...

I gripped the arm of the bench I was sitting on, sweating under my arms and on my face. This is what Gupter did, isn't it? For the briefest moment I thought about writing his story myself.

'...there's a sadness in me now I know they'll never be written. There are these notes, I suppose, but they're not works, they're scribblings. They're nothing anyone could read. So who will know Gupter Puncher after all this?'

I sat on the plane looking at the notes again and trying to draw a picture of what Gupter might look like. I couldn't really draw so when I finished and inspected it I realized that I had drawn something stuck halfway between the Latin writer, Cortazar, and an alien.

There's no way Gupter could resemble either one. Cortazar looked like a Spanish bullfrog, and an alien had nothing Germanic in its features, surely. Perhaps a Scandinavian could pass as an Uchu-Jin, but not a German. Not Gupter.

The plane continued on through the sky or Space or the rocks of Saturn for all I knew, and I fell asleep and when I woke up we were one hour away from Alexandria.

Would Gupter be in a place like this? A Western holiday resort, a place of comfort?

Krist, not a chance. I knew him better than that. It was probably even a waste to come here, but the tip had been given and apparently Gupter had been standing between two cannons on top of the white fortress by the sea in Alexandria.

'I suppose I'm trying not to write too much of my anxieties down here...there's no point in diaries or journals, only novels. Only the characters I make. They'd still try to connect me to them though, wouldn't they? Not that anyone will ever know my work, but if they did, they'd think it...the author is also the creation, that old aphorism. Am I anything of Jurgen? Ha! Even now I'm ridiculous. Stop it, Gupter, stop thinking like this...you are gone. No one knows you, no one cares. Yes, that's right, there's no place in literature for me...and didn't I want this all along? Something close to the hard way, the long route, running away from it, not chasing-... No, Gupter, no anxieties, focus...the novels, write about the novels.'

"Be more precise, Gupter." I brought the notes closer, shaking them, changing the angle. "Running away from what? What did you want? Tell me, please."

I checked out of the hotel and headed back to the airport. On the way I counted as many of the people that the taxi passed as I could. At the airport I had the number: seven hundred and twenty seven. This was just in Alexandria, on a certain route taking certain roads to a certain place in the space of thirty minutes. How was I ever gonna find him?

On the plane I took the notes out and laid some of them on my lap as the hostess brought the coffee down the aisle.

I thought again about what he looked like. What he wore every day. Whether or not he liked other writers.

If he really has gone, should I try to write them?

The plane accelerated and hit an air pocket. The hostess stumbled and the coffee threw itself over the notes.

"Gupter..." I mumbled down at the growing stain.

Oli Johns

I live in Lam Tin, a busy area of Hong Kong, which has a highway and a hill nearby which I run up and down sometimes. I wander the city, eating in Cafe de Coral, drinking in Tsim Sha Tsui, writing in Starbucks, and no, i won't apologise for it...it's peaceful, but there's still noise, so that's why.

I edit and write stuff for GUPTER PUNCHER magazine, a free satire rag that some people pick up from cafes, bars, and other shitholes across the city...I'm not sure if people are actually reading, but I'm gonna assume they are. If they're not, it doesn't really matter, I enjoy writing it.

I printed a book of short stories and I'm still trying to sell the 900+ copies still sitting in my bedroom – I made the mistake of putting negative quotes on the first few pages, so when people look at it for a taste they don't really understand why they should buy it. I have sold a few though, not a total write off...

_______________________________________________________________

(from) Beautiful Things that Happen to Ugly People

Sarah E Melville

Trouble Sleeping

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.

Henry Fielding

The night passes quickly. Os shuffles at the end of the bed. There are no dreams to be had. She shifts, stretching out. Her soft skin glows in the early morning. The shades are closed and the sun is not up. Os runs a hand through his hair and it sticks up. Her hair is worse and her make up is smudged. He is struggling to put on his socks with frozen fingers. There are purple shadows under their eyes like bruises, but there are no beatings. They wear these half moons like prizes under their eyes. Like adopted children. No, we do not know where they came from, but they are ours.

Os is gone now and she hugs the pillow to her chest. His side of the bed is already cold. She can hear crickets and the back of her throat is dry from the cold air. She shudders to think of the dewy morning world. How beautiful, how cold.

The phone rings and she squeezes her eyes shut. It goes off again and again but she will not touch it. Os picks it up in the other room and speaks just loud enough for her to barely hear. These liminal minutes of dawn can shape so many things. It can make them angry or sad or quiet.

She turns again and can feel the cold of the bed frame against the small of her back. Os hangs up the phone and turns on the shower. She can feel the warm water running through her hair and on the soft skin of her throat. It makes her shudder, alone in bed. Through the pouring she can hear that the telephone set has not been hung up correctly, the dial tone pursuing. You forgot to hang up, she wants to say, but she rubs her eyes instead. You forgot to hang it up.

The pipes in the ceiling stretch as hot water surges through them. They do not creak, but bang like trash can lids. The dial tone is burrowing into her skull behind her left ear, in the soft spot behind her jaw. Upwards towards her closed eye. The crickets pulse. She lifts herself up and looks for the sounds. Outside the sun is rising golden. All of the frost and all of the night wisps away. The thin ice on the succulents drips off. Os washes off. There will be nothing left by the time the sun rises. By the time they hold hot, bitter coffee in their hands, sliding over unbrushed teeth and tongues.

Os turns off the shower. He has probably used up all the hot water again. Will he be angry because she is still in bed? These are liminal minutes, even with the sun on the rise.

The full moon was out last night. It is still out now, in the sky by the wall with no windows. It will be out all day and she will look for it, pale in the pale sky. Even the sun cannot wash out the night. Sleeplessness looms overhead, smothering like a wet blanket.

Orange bottle silos clutter the night table. Their words are angry. Are we going to die today? The instructions are shouted in black capitals, and the warnings are symbols from pastel children's books, telling about awful things with silly pictures. Morals of flattery and gluttony and greed.

TWO (2) PILLS TWICE (2) A DAY.

TAKE ONE (1) PILL PER SIX (6) HOURS AS PAIN PERSISTS. DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN FOUR (4) IN A TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOUR PERIOD.

Os comes in to dress, towelling his hair. He says something about the phone call and she turns over, mumbling something back.

Call a healthcare provider right away if you or your family member has any of the following symptoms, especially if they are new, worse, or worrying you:

-thoughts of suicide or dying

-attempts to commit suicide

-new or worse depression

-new or worse anxiety

-panic attacks

-trouble sleeping (insomnia)

-acting on dangerous impulses

-an extreme increase in activity and talking (mania)

She wants to tell him he forgot to hang up the phone. Os ties his shoes and kisses her forehead, stroking the hair at her temple. He won't be angry, will he? He won't be angry –

I love you, he says, and she nods, squeezing her eyes shut. She asks for a glass of water and he brings it to her. She took five yesterday, and she will take five today. One now, before the pain can soak its way deep into her, down into each finger and fibre. One after breakfast. One after lunch. One in the afternoon and one in the evening before bed. She might take six today. One after dinner with a cup of tea.

Os leaves while she is asleep, her water glass half empty in her hand. He sets it on the night stand, hoping she's not angry because he woke her up. He'll be back in the late morning to make her breakfast.

The sun wakes her up an hour later, fully risen and fiery in the sky. Shadows of the slatted blinds cover her arms and face and she shades her eyes. Time for another pill before the pain can break through her half-sleeping mind. Today she will take six, and tomorrow she will take seven.

South of the Euphrates

I wrote a note and it reminded me of all the sad things you used to say about your life. I threw it out the window and watched it fly away. It went into the clouds and into a thunderstorm. The ink ran from all the rain, across the lines, making shapes. It landed somewhere South of the Euphrates River where no-one has looked for Eden. When it was opened all my sad words were gone, replaced by a picture of you.

You had never looked so happy

Completely Over You

© copyright Sarah E Melville, 2009

Autonomy

we danced last night and our shoes made patterns like dominoes. Four, two, three, five. The lamp shades were a champagne pink and your dress was covered in glass beads shaped like little hollow burrows. I thought that it would have been high time to give you a kiss, but your shoes made different patterns than mine sometimes. Your cat woke up in the corner and was jealous of our autonomy. You do not let him outside. Your soul glittered like a candlelit chandelier and I wanted to hold it. Instead I held your waist and your hands, and they felt like silk. I fancied that you liked me, four, two, three, five.

______________________________________________

(from) Glimpses of a Floating World

Larry Harrison

Ronnie cut through into Charing Cross Road, but she was still behind him. Who would tail him, he wondered. Guido? That was absurd, Guido couldn't afford a private eye. It must be the Old Bill. Was it because of the one-armed man? Or had Spear put the word out, told the law to go after him? No, if it was the law they would pull him over, give him some hassle. Just relax, stay cool. Easy to get paranoid.

Halfway up Charing Cross Road, Ronnie stopped and looked at his reflection in a music publisher's window, waiting for the image of her face to appear behind his shoulder. From the shop doorway came the smell of London dust: old mortar, soot, crumbling bones, dog-ends. His own pale face stared back from the dark glass, his pupils so small they were like two pinholes. The cut inflicted by the ex-serviceman had left a smear of blood across his forehead. He couldn't see any sign of the woman. He walked on slowly until he reached the public toilets at the junction with Tottenham Court Road, and stood surveying the cross-roads, as though she might appear from any direction. Time for another fix. His mission to sell opium could wait for a few minutes, while he straightened himself out. And if she was still on his tail, she couldn't follow him into the bogs.

He let himself into a karzi, found a vein on the first attempt, and shot up. There was too much coke in the mix and, as the minutes ticked by, he sat looking at the toilet door, disinclined to move. His works remained lodged in his vein, and a thin trickle of blood reached down to his wrist.

Someone had carved a life-sized female nude in the paintwork, with a disembodied dick pointing towards her pubic hair, like a guided missile. The artist had added drops of dark-coloured blood, and the title, 'I shagged my brother's wife when she had the rags up.'

The artist's bold, angular strokes, and fury of execution, reminded him of an illustration he'd seen in National Geographic, a magazine he sometimes pinched from his doctor's waiting room. It was a carving called The Sacrifice of Blood, made in a country called Axtec, or Aztec, or something. One of the ancient Aztec gods extracted blood from a wound in his dick, and used it to give life to humanity. Maybe that's what this drawing was really about? There was the heavenly dick, and there was the sacred blood.

What would some future archaeologist make of it all, if London was overtaken by a catastrophe, as Pompeii had been? He imagined archaeologists digging out this underground cell, his own body perfectly preserved in volcanic ash, sat upright on the toilet seat, facing the artwork. A man ritually letting his own blood, contemplating the sacrifice of God.

He heard an avalanche of sound, and his heart beat faster in his chest. He wondered if the catastrophe had begun, but it was just someone hammering on a toilet door.

'Come on out. Now!'

A drunken baritone launched into song, and the words Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam rang out across the public convenience. The singer had locked himself in the next cubicle. As Ronnie looked up, a boot came over the top of his toilet door, and there was the Old Bill gazing down on him.

'What's this then, lad? Get this door open!'

'It's okay, I'm registered. It's all legit.'

They dragged Ronnie out and went through his pockets. The opium was found, squashed into a Swan Vestas matchbox. Plod's face lit up. He held the matchbox under Ronnie's nose, forcing his head back.

'What's this then, lad? This is Hemp!'

Indian Hemp. They're as thick as pig shit. Going to get away with it. They haven't seen opium or cannabis before. Make out it's a lump of toffee. It's brown and chewy, it's toffee. I'm saving it for later, my toffee. They're looking unsure. Going to walk away from this.

'Better take him down the nick for questioning,' said the second cop.

One cop held onto the drunk and marched him across the road, with Ronnie's syringe held aloft like a trophy; the other dragged Ronnie along. The drunk wrestled the cop to a halt in the middle of Charing Cross Road, extending his free arm towards the street crowd, like Sinatra singing an encore.

A sunbeam, a sunbeam,

I'll be a sunbeam for Him.

The crowd stared back accusingly. They thought the old guy was a junky. Ronnie had an odd feeling, as if he was acting in a film in which the script had been abandoned, and every scene improvised. Any outcome was possible.

At West End Central, Ronnie was led into an interview room by a young Detective Constable. The DC, whose name was Andrews, had a lumpy face, which meant he found it difficult to shave without nicking himself. There were several recent cuts, and from the powdery deposit on his cheeks they'd been treated with an alum pencil. Ronnie stared at the lumps and bumps on Andrews' neck and chin. Maybe they were cysts, or maybe it was a skin disease.

The detective's auburn hair swept straight back from his forehead, but because it was naturally wavy it had been flattened with Brylcream, to form a stiff, corrugated sheet. This gave him a dated, pre-war appearance, like the young Jerry Lee Lewis. It was out of keeping with his modern Italian suit, with its bum freezer jacket, as though a country boy had come down to London and been kitted out by fashion-following cousins. They hadn't been able to persuade him to style his hair, so he still looked like a hick from the Midlands.

'What were you doing with Indian Hemp in your pocket?' Andrews asked, in a broad Black Country accent. Ronnie repeated the story about toffee, and for a long time things seemed to be going his way. He was led from his cell towards the street door and was convinced, from the disappointed faces around him, that they were about to let him go. Then Andrews came down the corridor from the opposite direction, carrying a sheaf of papers. He reached the charge desk ahead of them and called out, 'It's okay—you can charge him! Opium prepared for smoking.'

Ronnie could hardly believe what he was hearing. He was going to be charged with possession; he was going to be banged up. The bastards looked jubilant. The thick Brummy had managed to identify opium. Sent it to a forensic lab or something. Ronnie wondered how Samantha would know what had happened. She might be standing at Archway station, waiting for him to arrive on the last Tube. He had to be there; he couldn't afford to spend a night in the cells.

'Tell us who's giving you this stuff, Ronald,' Andrews said. 'We're not interested in people like you. We're after Mr Big. If you help us out...'

Everyone on the scene knew there was no Mr Big. There were just a few junkies doing small deals to keep themselves going. But Ronnie knew the Old Bill would never believe that. They were convinced that the rise in drug use was due to organised crime. Then he thought of a Greek café near the Middlesex Hospital. He'd asked for a Turkish coffee, but this waiter started shouting something about only selling Greek coffee. When Ronnie made a little joke about Cyprus they threw him out. So he gave DC Andrews a detailed description of the waiter. In a moment of improvisation, he described him as Maltese. Wore a little pork pie hat. Scar on his boat. It was if an alarm had gone off in West End Central. Two more detectives joined them.

'This Maltese geezer who sold you the drugs, what was he called?' Andrews asked. 'What do you know about the Mejlak brothers? Are the Mejlak firm dealing in drugs now?'

'Are they? Everyone knows the Mejlaks are behind all the dope in the West End.'

DC Andrews consulted the others in the corridor. Ronnie could hear an older guy saying 'Well done,' and 'It's worth a punt'. Andrews came back looking pleased with himself.

'You can give yourself an injection out of your own prescription tonight. We just have to wait for the police surgeon to arrive, to supervise it.'

When the police surgeon arrived, they handed Ronnie his shit and allowed him to make up his own fix. He couldn't believe his luck, and shot up a really big fix of H&C, to last as long as possible. He almost floated back to the Flowery Dell, and decided he was going to walk straight out of court, once they realised he was a registered addict. And he'd helped the police; that must count in his favour.

In the morning there were no more smiles. DC Andrews was nowhere to be seen. The police surgeon said, 'I'll give you the injection this time.' It wasn't heroin. Some kind of sedative. Intra-muscular. By the time he got to Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court, he could hardly stand up in the dock. This made a bad impression, as the stipendiary magistrate assumed he was intoxicated.

'How do you plead?'

'Technically guilty, like, but not really, because I'm registered on heroin and cocaine. I'm a registered addict, you see, so it's all legit.'

'Three drugs!' The beak stared accusingly at the arresting officer, as though this was evidence that should have been presented in court. 'Remanded to Ashford for medical reports.'

And that was how it all began. They had him, bang to rights.

Larry Harrison started life as a cowman and yak keeper for the Tibetan Buddhist community at Karma Kagyu Samye Ling, in Dumfriesshire. After working his way up to the post of assistant dairyman on a commercial Ayrshire herd, he left Scotland in 1975 to work with disadvantaged children at London's Clapham Junction.

Larry became surprisingly good at persuading children not to stand on the railway tracks at Earlsfield Station. And he was able to talk them down from rooftops in Battersea, without them bombarding passers-by with slates. To this day, Larry is relieved that he was able to negotiate the release of everyone held hostage by Barry in the school unit. The Parks Department should not have left an axe unattended within sight of the building, and had Barry not been so amenable, the outcome could have been a good deal worse. (Thanks, Baz. What fun we had! Sorry to hear you were done last year for kidnapping that Assistant Governor on D Wing.)

During Larry's subsequent career, as a university researcher on alcohol and drug problems, he wrote Tobacco Battered, a BBC Radio 4 feature, and over fifty journal articles, academic books and book chapters. He was appointed Reader in Addiction Studies at Hull, long a centre of excellence in problem drinking, before retiring to the East Yorkshire countryside to make cider and write fiction. Glimpses of a Floating World is his first novel. You can sample more of this novel, or purchase it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3275

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(from) Songs from the Other Side of the Wall

Dan Holloway

December 12 2007

"You've gotta come see it, Szandi," says Yang. I slam the phone down but it misses the base. I hit the clock instead, which flashes 03.00.

I put the handset on the pillow and turn over so I'm looking at it. The white plastic appears faintly red in the clock's LCD glow. "Szandi?" I hear. The black dots of the speaker seem to wink in the dark as she talks.

"Yeah?"

"My sculpture. It's finished. You've gotta come see!"

"I will. I'll come over first thing in the morning."

"It is first thing in the morning, you daft bitch." I hear her laugh, but it's distant. I bet she thinks she's put her hand over the mouthpiece; but she's too stoned to get it right.

"Are you gonna make me come get you, Szandi?"

"Just try."

"Pleeaase," she says.

"OK." I'm too tired to argue. I'll be back in bed quicker if I just go.

I pull on a jumper, thick woollen leggings, and a pair of pumps, and head out of the flat into the cold city. The mist coming off the Danube wraps itself around me like the breath of a thousand ghosts.

I make my way through Víziváros. The streets get narrower with every turn until I reach a passage that's little more than a crack, where one building has slipped down the hill with age and worked loose of its partner. There are no lights, but I know every chip and layer of orange and blue and green and brown paint on the door that opens onto a thin, concrete staircase. I climb to the top and ring the bell.

Yang opens her studio door a few centimetres, and looks me up and down as though she can't figure out why I'm here. All I can see are her eyes. Her pupils are huge, like she's sucked in two black moons. I was right. She's stoned. She fumbles to free the safety chain, opens the door fully and reaches out a hand to drag me inside.

We stand on the paint-splattered floorboards just inside the door, our hands still locked together. She grins but her muscle control's gone, and the smile teeters on her lips. She's wearing the long T-shirt I printed for her that says slut slit a few centimetres above the hem. The black letters are spaced out and I can see enough between them to know the T-shirt's all she's wearing.

She steps to one side and pushes me forward. I'm standing in front of a glass tank about a metre high, the same deep and twice as long. Inside are loads of little red balloons. They're just hovering in space, refusing to fall to earth or float off into the sky. Some of them are clustered together so it looks like they're supporting each other, but I walk all the way around the tank and there's clear air surrounding every one of them.

"Gelatine," she says. "Cool, huh? Chemicals suspended in extract of cow!" She giggles, wobbles, and nearly topples through the glass.

"Like a negative of Damien Hirst," I say, but it's more beautiful than that; and more old fashioned, like the millefiori paperweights in Dad's study. The concept's modern and kind of cool, but there's something in the execution – the smoothness of the red; the flat, crisp angles of the glass; the clarity of the gelatine – that belongs to another time.

"It's called One Hundred Balloons Without String," she says.

"At least that's descriptive."

She sits down on the floor beside a little pile of screwed-up and sticky papers, and starts rummaging through them. "Wanna hear the text?" she asks, grabbing at my leg with one hand and shaking a pair of chopsticks off a piece of A4 with the other.

"Text?" I say, sitting down next to her.

"Yeah, the words that go with the sculpture."

"I know what a text is. Isn't it a bit out of date, though? People don't really do that kind of thing any more."

"I know," she says. She's sitting with her legs crossed and the T-shirt's riding up. My eyes follow the long, pale olive line of the inside of her thigh. She puts the sheet of paper in her lap. "It's part of the whole retro thing, like you said about Damien Hirst." She picks it up and moves it closer to her eyes, then away, then back again. "Ah, fuck it," she says. "You read it. I'm knackered."

She hands me the paper. The edge is covered in a thick, sticky gloop that I hope is gelatine. I've forgotten how exquisite her handwriting is, even when she's scribbling. My eyes trace the narrow, inverted curves of her ns and her ms, and the almost shorthand ripples of her vowels. Her letters have the elegance and tightness of her body, the perfect proportion of its angles and curves.

"As newborns," I begin, "we announce ourselves to the world utterly without fear. We take in a gigantic lungful of air that fills our shrivelled skin like a balloon and, for the last time in decades, without embarrassment, expectation – or fear – we let out an almighty scream. Although, and precisely because, we are ignorant of them, there is nothing in our future or our past (not the slap of the mother's hand nor the reward of her breast) that tells us what we must do."

"Yeah," she says. Her eyelids are starting to fall. The skin on them is smooth, like cream-coloured suede. I watch as they move slowly up and down, trying to decide whether she's more beautiful with her eyes open or closed.

"Hey, don't stop," she says, staring straight at me. Her brow's creased like she's cross, but her spaced-out pupils stay big and glistening and distant.

"No." I put the paper down. "You tell me."

"Tired, Szandi."

"Yeah, but you're not too tired to call me over here. So tell me about your metaphorical balloons!"

"Fuck, you know, Szandi. You're born and you open your eyes and all around you see this cat's cradle of ropes and cords and strings. Family, rules, race, sex. Like a balloon tied to the vendor's hand, on the verge of floating into a limitless sky with nothing to direct us but the breeze of chance. Life feels, what?"

"Precarious," I offer.

"Yeah, that's it. Precarious."

"Only," I say, looking at the sculpture, "if you look at life from every angle you see there isn't a cat's cradle at all. There's nothing touching anything else."

"Yeah. But who can see their life from every angle? Only God could do that. Do you believe in God, Szandi?"

I shake my head.

"Me neither."

"Maybe when we die," I say. "Maybe we can see it then. When we're really old, and lying in our beds with our eyes closed and all we can hear is our breathing. Maybe we get so far from the world we can see our life from every side."

"That'd be sad," says Yang. "You go your whole life knowing exactly where you are, then just before you die ping, someone cuts the rope."

"Better to die young."

"Like Claire," she says, without sympathy, without any feeling at all. Just a statement of fact.

"Like Claire," I repeat, and pick up her text. My hand's shaking. The paper makes a sound like rain falling on glass.

"What did I write about dying?" she asks.

"You don't remember?"

"I'm tired, Szandi. Tired and a bit stoned. Read it to me."

I turn the page, reading as I go, and let my eyes find their way to the last paragraph.

"...we walk towards death in ignorance," I read, "fearless once again of punishment and reward. We take a gulp of air with what's left of our lungs; and announce our presence, without embarrassment, expectation – or fear – not with a scream but a gurgle, a dribble, and last a rattle. Finally the balloon has reached space, beyond hope, fear, past, present, horizon; beyond air, beyond weather."

It's beautiful. Her words are like poetry in the same effortless way as the sculpture. They slide off the tongue and float weightlessly away without making a ripple.

"It's overwritten," I say quietly. "Is that part of the retro irony?"

"Yeah," she says, opening her eyes. "I took the style from your blog."

Touché.

"Fuck you," I say, and start to laugh.

She screws up her forehead and leans towards me. Her head falls onto my shoulder, and a spike of hair jolts out of place and flops over one eye. She juts out her bottom lip and blows, making her hair dance. The combination of the gesture and her utter seriousness is comical and I feel the corners of my mouth twitching.

"Hey, you," she says. "Let me be serious for a minute."

"Uh-huh?"

"Yeah." She frowns harder, scrunching up her nose. "I was going to tell you I made this for you."

"For me?"

"For you. Because you're not like any normal balloon."

"Right."

"You see all these balloons?" she asks. She tries lifting her head but she's too tired and it slides from my shoulder to my chest. She puts a hand there as a pillow, letting it mould itself to my breast.

"Yeah."

"Look at one of them. Any one. Pick a balloon," she says, like she's a magician doing a card trick. "What do you see?"

"You tell me."

"You see that the only thing making it any different from all the other balloons is its position. The only thing that makes your balloon different is how it relates to every other balloon. It's only when they've all floated off into space that you can look at a balloon and see it on its own." She sighs and shrugs her shoulder gently against me. "Poor balloon."

"Poor balloon?"

"Yeah," she says, but now her eyes are firmly closed and her words are getting blurred. "Poor balloon. Think...need to change...in the morning." Now her voice is hardly there at all, and it's starting to merge with shallow, ragged breaths that will soon become a snore. "Ninety-nine Balloons Without String...One With."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask. "You're the one floating off into space."

It's too late. Underneath the T-shirt her chest is rising and falling in the slow rhythm of a torch song. I kiss her head, ease it gently down onto my lap, lean back, and look up at the ceiling. The flaking eau de nil paint is textured with pits and splashes and craters. I look at the patterns they make, joining the dots in a hundred different ways. I try seeing each one separately, cut off from the scratches and marks around it; but I can't.

*

It's midday when I come back from the shops, and Yang's in the shower, back in our flat for the first time in a week. The water rinses the sleep off her like a layer of fine powder and leaves her shining like the stone of a fresh-peeled lychee. I step in and we kiss and let our fingers flow with the water down the contours of our flesh. She takes me, still wet, to bed and we make love for an hour, tongues and hands and skin blurring in moist heat. As our bodies move, the water slowly dries, and when we're spent we lie on the bed, glinting with the sticky sheen of sweat and sex.

For a while, I watch her and listen to her breathe. Her eyes are shut but the rasps from her lips come too quickly for sleep. I want to tell her I love her. I put my arm around her shoulder and nuzzle the thick, black hair. I press my breast against hers, watch her lips open and sigh as my hard pink nipple brushes the soft brown of hers. The thin layers of sweat and skin that separate us melt together. I push down on her a little harder. I want the boundary to disappear altogether. I want my heart to leap out of my chest and start beating in hers. But it won't. Not yet, not until the morning I wake up, feel a body next to me, and don't think of Claire.

*

By mid afternoon and slivers of silk surround me on the sofa. I pull pieces off at random and throw them on the floor together, trying to make the colours and shapes talk to each other. Instead they just flop down in heaps and look a mess.

"What the fuck?" asks Yang, standing in the door.

"I'm playing," I lie.

"No you're fucking not, you're messing with your sculpture."

"OK. I thought I could maybe do something with the lining, or put some coloured stitching in. It's not right."

"It's finished," she says. She starts picking the bits up from the floor. Then the ones on the sofa, till she stands in front of me brandishing a thick, multicoloured weapon. "It's been finished for over a week."

*

Now it's night, and she'll sleep through till I bring coffee, and shake her till she remembers she has to set up for the exhibition. I'm glad she's asleep. Often I'll wake, and over the nape of her neck I'll see Yang's face reflected in the glass of the clock, her eyes open. She's not sleeping, but she's not awake. Deep behind the black of her pupils there's an intense concentration I can't penetrate.

I go to the kitchen, pour a beer, and sit down with the letter I've been avoiding all day. I tap the edge against the wood for a minute or so. The postmark says Tokaj. I don't recognise the ballpoint handwriting that's pressing unevenly into the cheap envelope, but that doesn't matter. I know it's about Dad.

I push the beer across the table, slide my finger under the flap, tearing it clumsily like I'm gutting a fish with a blunt knife, and lay the sheet of shiny lined paper on the table.

Dear Szandrine,

Your father doesn't know I'm writing. He'd just tell me not to interfere. But isn't that what friends do, eh? I would've called but there was no way of getting your number without him suspecting, so it's a letter. Sorry it's not a very good one – you a student and all, but the only things I'm used to writing are invoices.

I know you'll be here in a week anyway but it would mean the world if you came home early. Even if it's only a day. To show your Dad you care. Sometimes when I go over he's so grey and quiet I wonder just how ill he is. But he won't see the doctor. Maybe you could make him.

One more thing, and you mustn't let him know I said anything. You already know what would make him happy, even if it's too late to make him well. Tell him you'll look after the vineyard. Tell him you'll take over Szant Gabor when he's gone.

I know it's all too much to ask but what am I supposed to do? Marko's my oldest friend in the world.

Gyorgy

I go to the bathroom and open the door of the big mirror-cabinet above the sink. There's the cutthroat Dad gave me when I was ten, its blue enamel handle shining amongst the tampons and pill bottles. I open it out and watch as a droplet of moisture appears and glistens on it like dew on grass. I hold the blade up to my lips. The edge is so fine I only know I've cut myself from the red that's swirling in the centre of my tear.

"Oh, Dad," I whisper, wiping the carbon-steel on the letter, leaving a smudge of salt and blood and rust.

Half of me wants to run home and hold him for as long as he has left. And half of me wants to go back into the other room and lose myself forever in the warmth of Yang's sleeping body. At this moment I have two lives in front of me, but I know the moment I choose one, the other will die.

It's long past midnight and even though it's winter the sun will come soon. The darkness outside is already loosening. It melts in front of me, and I realise it's no longer the orange yellow dark of streetlamps and neon signs. It's the sleazy light of a bar, the Grey Wolf in Bucharest. It's New Year's Eve. 2006 is about to become 2007. The future is full of possibility. I have a place come the autumn to study languages at the Sorbonne. I am about to sing in public for the first time. Somewhere, waiting for me, in the West, Claire is alive.

Dan Holloway has trained as a theologian, a powerlifter, and a bridge player. Unable to find a job to combine his ersatz and eclectic knacks, he spends his days administrating.

Dan is writing his current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, live and interactively on the Facebook group of the same name.

When not writing fiction about modern Europe, Dan writes academic papers about the cracks and crevices of the world's cities. Whilst his love for The City knows few bounds, he is rumoured to spend his days in a remote barn, inhabiting the cracks and crevices of the Interweb. If you want to hang out with him, there's a list of his regular haunts at: www.danholloway.wordpress.com

You can download or sample more of Songs from the Other Side of the Wall here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3308

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(from) Red Tide

Mary Banks

The cliffs near St Davids are painted with a palette of many colours.

To the west they are steeply-angled beds of slate, pointing to the sky in subtle strata of pink, blue and grey, until a winter storm breaks the topmost pinnacles and dashes them to the ground, to shatter and fragment and lie in sharp mosaics amongst the pebbles.

To the south rise Cathedral Slabs, where, long ago, huge rocks were quarried to build the sacred monument. Today its ghost, in mirror image, remains to face the waves, looking out across the water with imprint of tower and architrave. Stately walls of sculpted ledges and finely chiselled arêtes, sanctified stone blushing cream in the sunlight.

And the rest, the moon-like bays and rugged headlands; an explosion of brightness, decided long ago when volcanoes spewed lava and the earth was fired like a pot in a kiln. Purples and reds, folded this way and that, fiery stripes buckled and bent as tectonic plates ground together, squeezing the land into a concertina of hills and valleys.

At Porthclais, the cliffs are red and gold, rough as rusty iron. At their base waves shatter over rocks, sucking hungrily at stone before being dragged back to sea in the undertow. At their peak, bushes of bright gorse quiver and chatter with goldcrests. Whilst here and there a climber, small as an ant, crawls slowly upwards, weaving ropes of luminous colours, like lace against the rock face.

In the middle of this vertical desert is Hugo. He clings like a kittiwake, surveying the ledges for a nest site, exploring cracks and crevices with chalky fingers. Balancing between luck and friction, he lets go his right hand and, reaching behind his back, unclips a clatter of metalwork from his harness. The shiny wedges hang in different sizes, sparkling their challenge in the sunlight. He offers each to the rock in turn, a thief with skeleton keys, going where he doesn't belong. At last one fits tightly into the crack. He tugs; jamming it in further, then attaches a loop of tape to its tail. Finally he lifts the rope that trails beneath him and clips it into the tether.

'Slack on green!' His shout is automatic.

Lizzie squats on her heels, her back against the cliff; a snake charmer, teasing the long sleek body from its coiled sleep to pass through the shiny plate in her fingers and creep silently up the stone wall. With brown fingers she combs browner hair away from her eyes and peers short-sightedly out to sea. The skin is peeling on her reddened nose, revealing a scatter of freckles teased out by the sun.

Further along the rocky pavement, Stuart, reclining on a bed of jackets, pops a dried apricot into his mouth and reaches into the packet for another. His words are punctuated by the chewing of fruit and the rustling of wrappers, 'Three more days before we go home, let's hope the weather holds.'

'Let's do something different tomorrow,' Judy says, 'like go to the Seaworld, or the butterfly farm in Solva.' She reaches out and touches Stuart's knee, reinforces her words.

'Good idea.' Stuart squeezes Judy's hand, then stretches onto his back, pushes his sunglasses further up his nose. 'Do you remember,' he turns to Lizzie, 'when Dad took us to the aquarium at Dingle?'

'Slack on pink!'

'The octopus,' she remembers with a grin as her hands feed the rope upwards.

'It was feeding time,' Stuart continues, 'and the keeper gave the octopus a live crab in a screwtop jar. It was so neat – the way it just held the jar with one tentacle, twisted the lid off with another and, bingo! There was dinner!'

'Ugh!' Judy shudders. 'How cruel. The crab wouldn't stand a chance.'

Stuart shrugs. 'The crab was going to get eaten anyway. At least this way you got to see how intelligent the octopus was.'

'Well I think it's a cheap trick.'

Stuart sits up and ruffles Judy's hair. 'It's your nurse's training,' his voice teases. 'You always want to save everything.'

'And what's wrong with that?' She takes a penknife from her pocket, then reaches into her bag, selects an apple.

'Well, for a start half the animal species would die of starvation.'

'We vegetarians would be alright.' Lizzie is smug with satisfaction.

'Hey! You're my twin. You're supposed to support me.'

Lizzie laughs and turns to Judy. 'Talking of starvation, will you pass me some food before my pig of a brother eats it all.'

She stops as her voice is drowned by the sound of a motor launch. It sprays out from the inlet, sweeping round the yellow buoys that guide safe passage through the crags and reefs below. On its back its occupants are packed, rubber-suited, air bottles at the ready. Soon they will dive into a world of mist and bubbles, hiss their way through ancient wrecks where fish swim through unseeing portholes and corals grow on rotting bows. They will twist and turn like eels around ghostly masts and pluck urchin shells from silted decks. Soon their world will be calm, tranquil, but for now their engine intrudes like a pneumatic drill as they blast defiantly across the waves.

'Slack on pink! Listen for God's sake! This could be life and death you know – it's not a game.' Hugo's words fall amongst them, sharp like broken slates.

'Sorry!' Lizzie feeds out the rope obediently. Her smile has disappeared.

'It wasn't her fault!' Stuart calls. 'She couldn't hear you. None of us could.'

But Hugo isn't listening. High above, he puffs the breath from his lips and mutters to himself. He had been so focussed, so in tune with the rock. And now it has been spoiled by a stupid lapse of concentration. Lizzie's, not his. He did everything right.

Judy looks out to sea, her eyes tracking the dwindling wake of the boat. Just beyond the platform on which they sit, spikes like dragon's teeth are bared; razor-sharp, like spears, breaking the surface of the water, their redness staining the reflections. Further out, swathes of dark blue betray deeper water. The sky is very clear; somewhere, faraway, it becomes sea. And sea becomes sky.

'Wake me when the tide comes in.' Stuart settles back contentedly, his eyes closed. Judy passes the rest of the apricots to Lizzie; then she wipes the blade of her penknife across her leggings and begins, methodically, to peel her apple.

Across the bay, Angharad sits in her nest. A crow's nest, of the kind built on ships. Or, at least, that is how she thinks of it. If she were religious she might, perhaps, describe it as a pulpit. Here, she is part of the cliff; high above the sapphire pools, below the fragrant gorse. No path leads to her retreat. She is undisturbed.

Within this rocky world, a broad ledge serves as seat and table. Resting on her knee, a board, with gritty paper, rough as sandstone, secured upon it. At her side, a jar of water, a box of brushes, pencils, tubes of brightly coloured pigment.

She paints loosely, quickly. Images grow beneath her hand. No tangible form of sea or stone, but the light that radiates from them, reflected, refracted, in a fountain of colour. The shallows flow in swirls of cobalt and, further out, viridian and Prussian blue. Each stroke of the brush appearing haphazard, anarchic; yet, in truth, microscopically controlled. She works intensely. Angharad does not wear a watch. What use here some artificial measure of time? Only the position of the sun determines and divides her day. And she paints this now, a mist of yellow ochre, permeating sand and water.

Occasionally, she pauses, leans back and stretches her arms and fingers. Her eyes flick backwards and forwards, playing with the scene before her, noting every detail, every change. Near the water's edge, there is a man, rummaging amongst the flotsam and jetsam; he calls to his dog as it bounds in and out of the surf. Further along, a family bare their goose-pimpled bodies determinedly, their skin white against bright beach towels, despite the chilling wind.

Angharad holds her breath. There are climbers again on the cliffs across the bay; insulting the gentleness of the rock with their glaring ropes and piercing metallic chains. Her face reddens, although she sits in the shade.

She takes a pencil now, and presses dark graphite into the shadows. After a while, the point softens. The knife is in her box; three, four deft strokes and the point is restored.

Beneath the cliff, there is calm. Stuart dozes in the sun, while Judy has edged closer to Lizzie so they can chat quietly.

High on the cliff-face, high on life; Hugo pauses. He breathes slowly, gathering energy for the move ahead. It is the crux move, the fateful step on which the entire climb depends. For Hugo, it is personal. A challenge. Not with the climb, but with himself. The cliff is but a referee. Twice, in the previous week, it has defeated him. Twice, he has failed to prove himself. Now, he chooses a waist-high handhold; so he can shake the blood down into his muscles, summon strength. At last he is ready. The move spans an unusually smooth area of rock. He steps out onto a smear; a slope against which he must place his foot at just the right angle so that the friction produced by his weight prevents it from slipping. There is no hold within reach for his hand; only a 'V' shaped crack above him, into which he must throw the chunky protection, hoping it will wedge in place. As he reaches up, he thinks of the slip of concentration earlier. It unnerves him at a time when he can afford no distractions. The metal flies into the crack, clatters, scrapes, then bounces out. And a piece of rock, the size of a fist, comes with it.

'Below!'

His voice crashes to the ground a fraction of a second before the splintering rock. Judy screams and lunges out of the way, sprawling across Stuart in a tangle of arms and legs; the half-eaten apple rolls over the ledge into the water. Lizzie is jerked to her feet, as Hugo slips and swings on the rope above her.

Stuart ruffles Judy's hair, checks she is not hurt. He looks upwards. 'Watch what you're doing up there will you!'

'Bloody idiots! You should know better than to sit under a climb!' Hugo is sore. Sore with failure and sore where the harness tightened as it broke his fall.

Judy stands and dusts down her clothes. 'I think that's our cue to go.'

In her nest, Angharad watches across the bay: her anger brooding, building. They have no right, these foreigners. Intruding into this space for their selfish sport, disturbing the gulls and the seals, shouting their petty arguments. She still holds the knife and, as she watches, she squeezes it tighter into her palm; first drawing a fine line, then, releasing blood, like freshly mixed paint, that drips onto her painting, mingles with the ochre and the ultramarine, and flows out to sea in a red tide.

Mary Banks is a singer/songwriter/guitarist who moved to the south-west of England for the solar eclipse, and stayed. Previously published in non-fiction with particular interests in psychology, archaeology and the outdoors.

______________________

Voices in the Wall

Anne Lyken-Garner

"You.

Come here.

Come closer. Shhhh. Put your ear here.

Hear that? No?

Well I bloody well can."

I moved away from the spot near the wall where she had dictated for me to put my ear, and she followed suit. I approached the torn, green armchair – the only one in her room – and sat down. The cream foam fighting to deliver itself from the cushion on the seat was spotted with something dark yellow. Her urine maybe.

"So, when did they start talking to you, Maggie?" I asked the woman sitting in front of me. She settled her bony bottom into her bed, folded her left leg under her body, and hung the right one down and off the bed. The little brown limb barely touched the carpeted floor. Her jaw twitched, she swallowed hard, and made a 'ta' sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Her neck stretched way out from her body before her mouth opened to answer my question.

"The idiots think they're coming to get me," she began, jerking her thumb back over her shoulder four times in succession. The action released the loose bow on the front of her dark blue dressing gown, giving me a glimpse of her flat, brown chest. There was no soft rise, no fleshy indicator that she'd ever had breasts. My hand instinctively went to my chest, but my buttons were all done up. They always were, right up to the very top – but then it was daytime, and I was at work.

"They're so pathetic," Maggie continued. "When I cup my ear to the wall, they stop scratching and whisper in low, grainy-type voices." She stopped talking, looked around, lowered her voice to a whisper and beckoned to me. "But, come here, I've got such good hearing, I could hear them even in my sleep. Not that I need much of that these days. I've got to stay awake to stand up to you-know-who." Maggie wiped the spit that had drizzled down onto her bottom lips with the back of her hand. When I was sure she was finished, I asked again. This time I used my soft voice, the only one my clients – the night ones – are allowed to hear.

"Maggie, can you tell me when they started talking to you? Dr. Imran has asked me to take some notes so that we could have a clear picture before we make up a report for your new doctor."

"Ah, she's a crappy doctor," Maggie said, with a flip of her tiny wrist. "She's just trying to pawn me off to another bloody crappy doctor, but I'm not having it. Not having it, I tell you." Her brown eyes burned into my face with such intensity, it reminded me of this animal show I watched with my son on some rubbish cable TV. Her eyes held the same sharpness the lioness had just before she leapt out at the antelope from behind the long grass in which she hid. I looked down to my hands in my lap and noticed that I still had a trace of the false-nail glue on the corner of the little nail of my right hand. I could never completely get that little sucker. How was a right-handed person meant to do his own nails on his right hand? How do the women do it I wonder?

". . . Rubbish doctor with a rubbish assistant," Maggie was saying. I looked up at her. Her eyes were still on me. I swallowed hard, focused my eyes behind her to the spot on the wall through which the voices came, and hoped that she would follow my eyes.

"Who're you anyway?" she asked, voice completely steady; eyes hungry - very hungry - wild and greedy.

"I'm Dr. Imran's PhD student. You've spoken to me a few times before."

"She's paying you?"

"I'm a mature student. I help her with her research."

"What kind of research?" again Maggie's neck shifted - farther out from her body I thought was humanly possible. She tilted her head to the side for a second, owl-like, then resumed her stare.

"Well, we chart mental – I mean um . . ."

"You're saying I'm mental?"

"No!" I said, then realised that I reacted much too quickly and far too loudly. My hand instinctively shifted to the key-chain attached to the loop on the waist of my trousers, and my fingers began twirling and twisting, twirling and twisting.

"It's alright," Maggie said. "They all say I'm mad, but they're not here to see my husband standing quietly at the foot of my bed when he thinks I'm sleeping. Typical of him really, he's always been one of those silent types. Lately, he would just stand there with his arms hanging down at his side, stare at me in this empty sort of way, then turn around and walk off. I try to make him answer me, you know, so I scream and throw things at him. I tell you what, it's hard to control myself when he's like that."

"Maggie, your husband is dead. I'm sorry, but you will not be able to overcome your illness if you don't first of all accept that fact." I knew I should say this, but I didn't really believe it. If you think something deep down inside yourself, if you know that thing really intimately, nothing anyone says, and no amount of stupid, expensive therapy, could make you think differently.

"In the past," Maggie continued. Her eyes had finally left mine, and she was looking into the dusty copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson's photograph which hung on the wall to her left. It was the one with the boy carrying two large bottles of wine. I turned my head sideways to follow her stare. I couldn't relate the boy's contented smile to the damp, run-down street in which he strutted. Did I ever smile like that when I was a little boy, I wondered.

"My husband used to come just after I'd fallen asleep, I would wake up with this feeling of... of someone watching me. I would get this sensation in the bottom of my stomach that something nasty was about to happen. I used to open my eyes and look at him anyway - I just had to. I had to eyeball him to make sure that it was him in the flesh and all."

"And was it?" I asked, almost believing her story, twirling and twisting, twirling and twisting.

"Yes. He's come back to life to haunt me. I was acquitted for his murder you know. There were sacks of evidence, then none at all. In fact, I was cleared totally of any suspicious behaviour what-so-ever, thank you very much."

"When he was found dead, you were their first suspect. Is that true?" I asked.

"Only because I was his bloody wife," she answered. "Before long, the false evidence kept piling in. First, they found that a silver Mercedes was parked in front of Davey's office when they replayed the C.C.T.V from outside the building. And guess who drove a silver Mercedes?" Maggie asked.

"You?"

"That's right, me. Then they found a trace of lipstick on his lips, which they said was the same brand as the one I wear. 'Ha! That would be kissing and telling,' I told the detectives when they asked me if it was mine."

"Was it?"

"What? You suddenly turned detective on me? Thousands of women wear the same lipstick, which is what I said when I saw that they were seriously considering me as the main suspect. The fools!"

"What reason did they give for suspecting you?" I asked, I'd never heard the entire story, and this intrigued me. What with all the gossip going around the nurses' office about Maggie. I couldn't help but want to hear it from the horse's mouth – so to speak.

"They said I killed him because I had found out that he was having an affair. Now why would I do that, eh? I couldn't have cared less if was having an affair. In fact I wished for years he would have one so I could divorce the bastard on the grounds of infidelity. Davey was smarter than that. He wouldn't be unfaithful - not because he didn't want to, but because he would never give me the satisfaction."

Maggie stopped, put her hand to her mouth and went, "Shhhhh." When she seemed sure that no one was listening, she lowered her voice and continued.

"Don't get me wrong, I did love him and all that stuff. I mean, he was one handsome devil." Maggie smiled and rubbed the veins on her stringy neck. Her hands were dry and aged, but decorated with several diamond-looking chunks of rings. "He was a bit like you, you know, tall and slim, with almost girl-like beauty. He wasn't olive like you though. He was pale-white and had ginger hair. You've got such a smooth complexion, what do you use on your face?"

"Oh, Maggie, you make me blush," I said, my hand left my key ring to rub the soft skin on my cheek. I've always been told how well the Mac foundation I used at night took to my skin.

"What's that you're playing with there, a lucky charm?" Maggie asked before the flush on my cheeks had time to subside.

"A key ring."

"What's it got on it?"

"Keys . . . a nail file, a pair of tiny scissors, a small torch light, a bottle opener . . ." I removed it from the loop in my trousers to inspect it to see what I'd missed.

"Can I see it?"

"Sure," I said, handing it over.

"You know. . ." Maggie shook her head as if trying to clear it, while leaning over to take the key chain from my hands. Her fingers rested in the palm of my hand for longer than necessary, but I didn't pull away.

"I keep forgetting your name," she continued.

"Mario."

"You know, Mario, you've got really slack wrists for a man. And nice finger nails too. You sure you're not one of the . . . gang?"

I felt my spine heat up and straighten in my back. My upper body shot up and my shoulders threw themselves backwards in a split second.

"What gang?" I asked but I knew by the way she'd lifted her free arm and dropped her wrist that she was asking if I was gay. I'm not gay! They keep asking, I keep telling them that dressing up as a woman does not make you gay. Eddie Izzard does it all the time, no one calls him gay.

"Don't worry. I'm not one of those religious types. I'm not here to judge. I know how it feels. After all, people judge me and say that I'm mad just because I see my dead husband standing at the foot of my bed."

"What happened with the murder case?" I asked, willing her to change the subject of my sexuality.

"'It was an open and shut case,' the prosecutor had said," she answered, and released her leg from beneath her body. She slid her hands into her oversized pockets and walked across the stained carpet, over to the open window – the only one in the room. She parted the white net curtains and ran her ring-encrusted finger on the black iron bar outside the glass pane. "But that was before they found the other evidence, which totally wiped out all the previous, lying stuff they'd found. He said I set myself up to initially look guilty so as ultimately to be proven blameless." Maggie held up both her hands and made physical quotation marks with her fingers.

"But come here," she continued and turned around to face me. "Who's ever heard such a heap of paradoxical rubbish? Why would I do such an idiotic thing?"

Again spit flew from her mouth. This time she wiped it with the lapel of her dressing gown. She stepped over to a little pink stool which stood in front of a large, polished dressing table, the only other furniture in the room apart from the bed, her side table, and the chair in which I sat. She sat down.

"The folks here also think I'm stupid, that's why they don't pay any attention when I tell them about the people coming through the walls to get me."

"What do the wall-people want?" I asked, turning around so that I could see her back. Instead, my eyes met hers in the mirror at which she now stared. I tore my gaze away.

"My liver."

"Your liver?"

"Yes, what else?"

For the first time since I'd entered Maggie's room, I made jottings on the chart I'd brought with me. So she was insane after all. I suddenly felt cheated.

"What else indeed," I said. But she seemed to have heard the dejection in my voice, because she suddenly started talking very quickly. Her neck jerked heavily to the right, or was it to the left. I was looking at her reflection, not at her.

"That's why I have to find a way to keep it safe at all cost," she rattled on. "Do they think I'm crazy? Of course I can't live without my liver, if I let them take it. I'd be dead in no time. They keep shouting and screaming at me."

"Through the wall, Maggs?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"You see, Mario, I only remembered later that I did drive to Davey's office that awful, awful night. I didn't lie when the officers asked me at first. I'd just plain forgotten. The C.C.T.V on the building up the street from his company picked up my car anyway - but I left. It was clear from the rest of the tape - which the cocky fools neglected to watch first go - that I left before Davey had his usual Friday night Chinese takeaway delivered. Ten minutes after Ming's van drove off, this other silver Mercedes arrived."

Maggie took off the curly wig she wore, and began to brush it slowly and carefully. I'd never noticed before, but there was a u-shaped bald patch at the top of her head. The rest of her short, knotty hair was troubled with grey dots. At least she didn't have a comb-over, I thought, then had to stifle a giggle rising up in my throat. Not the right time for giggles.

"I tell you what," she continued, when I said nothing. "The stupid prosecutor – Mr Batty, said I went through this elaborate plan of implicating myself by renting an identical, silver Mercedes then circling back wearing a male disguise. Even if I did, where is the proof? No one's ever come up with any. The judge told him - Mr Derrick P. Ignoramus Batty...."

"That's the prosecutor's name?" my interest perked up once again.

"No, you fool. I just like saying that. Ignoramus Batty, Igno Batty, Iggy Iggy Batty, Ig Bat, Ig Bat," then she burst out with the shrillest laughter I'd ever heard. I wondered for a moment if I should summon Dr. Imran, but Maggie calmed down enough to continue. This was certainly not what I'd come here to do. I didn't want to be someone's confession person. Besides, I should be asking other questions, not finding out about some Batty lawyer.

"Batty just wanted someone to blame because of his utter embarrassment of getting a case so wrong. No wonder he lost his job and had to be sectioned. Good riddance to the crazy, half-wit waste of breathing space.

"That sounds very embarrassing, but can we get back to when you started seeing your husband? Did it start at the same time as the voices in the wall?"

"Imagine the jury's reaction when half way through my case, this C.C.T.V footage shows up of the car the prosecution incorrectly claimed to be mine - the one I allegedly circled back in to do the deed - outside the office at the time of the murder. When they used that camera magnifying thingy to read the registration number in court, they checked it out and found that it was some Airport rental car which was being used by an American advertising company at the time. And the icing on the cake was when a little man in some sort of raincoat got out and walked in the other direction." Maggie replaced her wig and turned back to face me. "Imagine that?"

"Yes, Maggie. I can imagine that. But anyone can dress up as a little man in a raincoat, especially a little woman like yourself." This was me - not the PhD student. This was all me, and it felt good. I waited for the backlash and almost jumped out of my skin when Maggie just looked at me and smiled. But it was one of those smiles which washed-up cliché-rich writers describe as a knowing smile. It's one of those smiles which you cannot do unless one side of your mouth is higher than the other, and you're slowly nodding your head.

"Whatever you think," Maggie continued, "This new development tore crazy Batty's case wide open and no member of the jury was even inclined to vote guilty. I was left in peace to grieve Davey's cruel and sudden . . ." she paused there, searching for a suitable word.

"Demise?" I offered. It's the word I would've used, were I writing one of my short stories.

"Demise!" she shouted. "That's perfect."

"What did you do after your husband's death, Maggie?"

"You see, Davey...."

"I'm Mario."

"You see, Mario, this is why I talk to you and not that rubbish boss of yours. You've got secrets – like me – so you always want to know what other people are hiding. Are you writing all this down?"

"I... I...."

"You just want to know. I understand. Well, after I sold the business and the house, I felt like I should give back to the community and made a small gift of £100,000 to charity but no one is satisfied. Everyone wants blood these days.

You asked me when Davey started visiting me. Well, it was when I got to the condo in California. He's always dressed in his long, black raincoat and hat, and he stands with his hands at his side, but I could read his mind just like the others' – the liver harvesters. His hands hang down but I know he wants them wrapped around my neck."

"Wait, we've gone back to talking like insane people," I said to her. "You're saying that your husband wants to reap your liver too?"

Maggie pulled the loose dressing gown around her frail body and returned to her bed. Unlike the other patients I'd visited in this hospital, Maggie's bedside table was totally bare except for an empty glass and a plastic bottle which was half full of water – or was it half-empty.

"I don't know!" Maggie answered, her neck stuck out dangerously, then promptly took up refuge in its rightful place under her chin again. "This is why I can't breathe when he's standing there. Come here," she beckoned with her jewelled finger, but I held on to the handles of my chair, afraid that if I didn't, my body would involuntarily move towards hers. "He doesn't know that I know this, but between you and me, I think that it was him who called the harvesters in. I'm not ready to die, I've got my whole life ahead of me and when I get out of this place, I'm travelling the world. That'll certainly show them!" She clapped her hands and shrieked with laughter. Bizarrely, this reminded me of my other life and my son when he was a baby.

"Hear that?" She asked, suddenly jumping off the bed and returning to a well-worn spot on the magnolia wall. "They're scratching again. I would call the orderlies in to check like I do everyday - but not today."

"Why not today?" I asked, fidgeting around on my seat. Silk undies are soft, but man, they can snag like the devil himself.

"Today is a special day, Davey. It's the day I make my peace."

"You're not thinking of doing anything weird are you, Maggs? And it's Mario."

"What's weird to you, fancy-man, may not be weird to me."

"I meant anything dangerous," I answered, remembering that 'weird' was probably not the best word to use under the circumstances.

"Well, they did say I'm a danger to myself."

"Who are they, Maggie?"

"Your rubbish boss and the rest of them who want to transfer me out of here, but I'm not going, Davey. I'm not going!"

"Dr. Imran is one of the best in her field," I said, looking at the floor. But she wasn't really. I knew the opposite was true and so did she.

"They're all liars and not good ones at that," Maggie replied. "Don't be one of them, fancy man."

Suddenly she sprung up and stared right at me, "Davey?" she whispered.

I looked around me, but saw nothing.

"Yes," she said, smiled then lay on her bed, drawing the flower-covered duvet around her body.

"What's going on? I asked, my breath caught in my throat.

"Last night Davey told me that he was the only one who could help me get better," she replied. "He just asked me if I was ready. I know he's smart. He told me when we were first married that I should've never allowed my first husband, Derrick to trick me into giving him part of my liver, even if he was dying. He was right then, and he is right now. After all, didn't Derrick leave me for that ugly paralegal cow he worked with."

"Your first husband had nothing to do with all this, Maggs. We know that you gave him part of your liver because of his disease, but you both recovered completely before Davey came on the scene."

"Davey will show me how to keep my liver safe," Maggie repeated. "Last night when he came to me, I could still smell the Chinese dinner on his breath. It was uncannily like he smelled right before he so cruelly passed away."

I looked at her scrawled-on face and her busy, curly wig. They just didn't go together. I thought that she looked more natural with her balding head. That description would certainly make a good character to use for my on-line writing course.

"Listen, Mario, I want you to do something for me."

"Sure, but we need to buckle down and fill out this form, my shift ended twenty minutes ago."

Maggie leaned over and opened the little drawer in her bedside table. "I want you to keep this safe for me," she said, handing me a brown, A4 envelope. "I don't want those crazy people getting their hands on my important papers."

"What are they?" I asked, getting off my seat to stand at her bed.

"Some papers from my American advertising company. Sshh, it's not a real company, I just had to use it for something a while back. And... and my divorce settlement papers from my organ-stealing, ex-husband, Idiot Batty."

"Wait!" I said, my voice sounding higher than usual. "Idiot Batty is your first husband? Isn't he the . . .?"

"Ahh . . . What a smart boy we are," Maggie said, turning onto her side - her back to me - and pulling the covers up to her shoulders. Then she mumbled under her breath, "Looking back now, I learned all the legal stuff I know from that man so he wasn't a total loser I suppose. Never you mind that though. He deserved every bit of humiliation he got. A pity my Davey – a good man mind – had to die to prove what a clown that cheating, overweight bit of belly flab was."

"If you're tired, Maggs, we could do this another time," I said, pointing to the pink charts I held in my hand.

"Yes, next time," Maggie mumbled, closing her eyes.

I took the papers she'd given me. I wasn't allowed to keep them, but I would put them in a locked draw in the office to keep them safe. I pulled the covers up to her neck, and poured some water out of the bottle she kept on her side table, into the glass. Then I carefully shut the door behind me.

***

Sitting on the bus on the way home, I ran Maggie's story through my brain once more. I'd have to write it up as fiction, of course, and obviously change the names of the people involved. This would be a powerful story to tell. No wonder they say that truth is stranger than fiction. I'd have to tell Dr. Imran about Maggie's U.S company papers tomorrow. I don't think she knew about that part of her life.

But wait, wasn't the person who rented that car found at the murder scene, from an American company.

Not a real company . . . Like he smelt just before he passed away . . . .

Didn't Maggie tell the court that she left before Davey had his Chinese takeaway? Yet she told me that she smelt Chinese food on his breath before he passed away.

I fidgeted around on my seat until I got to my stop. And this time the discomfort wasn't because of my pants – though I have to admit that by then I was snagging pretty badly, which was probably due to adrenaline-induced sweat. I sprinted off the bus at my stop and hurried home, trying to keep all the buzzing words and phrases inside my head quiet until I could get to my computer to write them all down. I mustn't forget. This is far better than I first thought! I may even get it published in the local paper. Maybe be invited to Oprah for working this all out. My hands shakily grabbed for my keychain as soon as I got to my front gate.

No keys!

My phone pierced the night. I looked at the caller ID, it was work.

"Mario, there's been a terrible accident."

Anne Lyken-Garner

First, I'm a freelance writer, then a part-time youth worker. I also work as a television supporting artist with shows like Torchwood, Mistresses (UK's Desperate Housewives), Skins (with Slumdog Millionaire's, Dev Patel), Casualty, Being Human etc. And maybe if you look carefully, you'll see me as one of the Time Lords in Dr Who. In the past, I have been a Stage Actress and played at the National Cultural Centre – the national playhouse in the capital city, Georgetown. I've also been a model and even a missionary in my home country of Guyana in South America, and have also had my own call-in radio show.

These diverse experiences and abilities help me to write better, at least that's what I keep telling myself. My full length book which will be available through Year Zero is different from 'Voices in the Wall' but expect a lot of the tension, horror and imperfections of human nature that this short story has illustrated. The bad news is that unlike this short piece, my coming book is all real.

___________________

Permesso

Karine Levecque

I kicked off my sandals. I just wanted to feel the stones beneath my bare feet, as always, whenever I came here. The sun was low in the sky and the evening was coming, so I ditched the footwear. It was only when I tried bending over to pick them up that the image changed. My side, with the torn muscles and flesh recently stitched together, and the three accompanying broken ribs, weren't quite up to the effort, since I'm half-Italian, bravado, as well as blood, courses through my veins. But, I'm gay, which means I'm supposed to be sensitive and in touch with my feelings (more than one woman has wailed over that), but subtle and sensitive I'm not. I am what I am: a Detective Sergeant in the Met, and the stepson of a man with power and influence. A man who actually cared more about me than his own son. A stunning revelation, which is the reason I'm alive to tell the tale, and one of the reasons I'd come here.

Si's hand closed over my sandals just as I was getting ready for the second go at bending over, and he scooped them up. "Dom, just take it easy. Okay?" He sounded irritated. It seemed the magic of this place wasn't quite seeping into his soul yet. I'd brought him here because I wanted the magic to reach out to him, because I wanted for the first time in my life, to ask a question where my whole life depended on the answer.

"Come on." I said, and set out on the road. The stone was warm beneath my skin, the healing peace of the place oozing up through the soles of my feet and I half-closed my eyes to tune out the world, nothing but the clacking of cicadas and the feel of the warmth of the slowly-setting sun on my body, and the presence of my lover. We were alone, as I knew we were likely to be. I let myself drift, allowing the peace of this place to sweep over me. I needed to be at peace.

I could feel the complexities slowly unknotting, unravelling and slipping away. I could hear the tread of Si's feet and as he followed me, I could feel his anxiety unravelling too. We needed this, both of us. He hovered close to me as he had every day since the hour my stepfather had set us both free. My stepfather had saved my life and had given me into Simon Archer's care. The pain in my side tightened for a moment and I almost stumbled. Si was there, his arm round my waist, supporting me. "Dom, we shouldn't be doing this."

"No, we should." I could hear the stubbornness in my voice.

In truth, I had been seeing this place since I'd awakened in a hospital bed about three hours after it was all over. I awoke to pain, unbelievable pain. it felt like someone had ripped open my left side with one of those cheap can openers. I was hurting so badly I couldn't think straight. Instinct took over. It was instinct that had dragged me to my feet two days after being shot by my half-brother. I had to get home. Where I could hide out, get away from the nightmare that had nearly killed me. Regroup, a chance to lick my wounds. So I'd dressed in the teeth of all opposition to me checking out. Made it as far as a taxi with Simon in tow, alternately beside himself with worry and out of his mind with angst ridden annoyance at my stubbornness.

What exactly had he expected from me? I might be part of the Harding clan by an accident of marriage, but I was a Carerra first, last and always. Carerras always return to their spiritual home, in times of crisis. So it was natural that I craved Italy.

Si thought I was too ill to make it. We had that argument on the way to the airport. He wasn't the only one. The airline took one look at me and said no. No chance. I think they were worried that I might die in mid-air.

Fine, I'd said. We'll go by train. By the time we returned to London and found our way onto the Eurostar, I was flagging badly. When we reached Paris, I was in so much pain I could neither stand, sit nor lie down in any degree of comfort. Simon delved into his pocket, pulled out a phrase book that must have come out of the ark and found us a hotel. He got us there, booked a room, got me into the lift and out, and the last thing I remembered for almost thirty-six hours, was his hand dropping two giant pink tablets into my hand, and his voice saying _Take these, they'll make you feel better._

I lay there for almost three days. I was in constant pain, but restless; the siren's call of home wasn't giving up on me. Like a wild animal in a cage, all I really wanted to do was go home. So after exhaustion and pain were mostly sated, I began the journey again. Si was angry with me. I bought the tickets and got us on a train to Genoa, where we would board the Seacat to Salerno. We sat in stiff annoyance almost as far as Nice, where the train driver suddenly decided he was going to stop in France. So it was the slow local train across the border to San Remo to change for Genoa. By the time Si had helped me on and off and we'd installed ourselves in the downstairs compartment of the double-decker train, his irritation had changed to worry.

I was rather worried myself. My vision was blurry, there was a sharp spearlike pain in my side with every movement, breathing hurt, sitting down was agony, and standing up was worse. But I was stubborn. Half the blood in my veins is from the most stubborn stock known to mankind. My ancestors were noted for it. Family legend has it that somewhere in the Carerra bloodline is a little mule. Believe it. That's what made me the copper I am. The complete and utter refusal to accept defeat.

So I was going home. To Papa and Nonno. And taking my lover with me, an act of defiance I'd never committed before. Not that I'd had many lovers. Mine was mostly a lonely existence: keeping my eye on Derren, trying to relate to people, and doing my job. None of this was conducive to finding a life partner.

Papa, now; he was a whole new problem. I had been wrest away from Papa when I was two. It hadn't taken me long to express my displeasure at this turn of events. By the time I was six I was openly defiant of Mama. I wanted to see my father. She didn't want me to have anything to do with him. She had a new life, a new husband and a new baby which was all that mattered. This was the first time my stepfather saved me. To my mother's grudging acceptance he opened the channels of communication, and before long, I was on a flight to Salerno, nominally in the charge of a stewardess, until I could be handed over to my father at the airport.

I spent my summers with my father in Italy, and my school time and winters with my mother in London. I grew up bi-lingual, with a strong will and a secret which would put my father into orbit once I finally told him.

I held off on my secret. The topic of one's sexuality is not something one enters into lightly, especially in temperamental families like mine. My mother found out when I was 18, and she wasn't happy about it. For this reason I held off telling my father. They were very alike in temperament, and I avoided the issue for years. Then one night when we'd all imbibed a little too freely, I decided to tell him.

Papa was furious. The row raged for about an hour before Nonno came to find out what the fuss was all about. I told Nonno exactly what I had told Papa. And the wily old fox accepted it on the spot. Mostly because he wanted to annoy Papa, but also because I was his favourite.

It was nearly four years before Papa stopped trying to introduce me to his friends' lovely, but inexplicably unmarried, daughters; and five years before his friends finally realised that marriage in any traditional sense was just not happening.

So I had never taken anyone home with me before. I had given Si a potted life history, with some sketchy explanation of what was going on. He was going to be walking into a male-dominated household with warring factions on each side, so some degree of warning was necessary. There were a lot of men in my family. My father's second family had given me three half brothers, all of whom accepted me and my sexuality, for similar reasons as my Nonno. My father had three brothers, with seven sons between them. Little factional wars broke out all the time. It had always been that way.

Into this vortex I was about to pitch my weary soul and wounded body, and my ex-gangster lover. It should've been daggers drawn, but by the time I was walking across the ferry landing stage towards my Papa and my wily old Nonno, their consternation about my health killed off any rows or posturing stone-dead.

"Papa." I said. And promptly reeled. Arms closed gently around me, and a strong body supported me.

"Signor Carerra, I think we need to get Dom home." The voice by my ear was slightly harsh with fear, and I gazed at the frightened faces in bewilderment before I let them take over.

I awoke in a comfortable bed with crisp white sheets, and the morning sun peeking through the half-open shutters. I was alone, although according to the indentation in the other side of the double bed, this hadn't always been the case. I pondered this turn of events. Knowing my father as well as I knew him, he would not have suggested Si and I share a room, let alone a bed. I detected my Nonna's hand in this.

My Nonno was more than happy to accept me as I am, but that probably didn't extend to sleeping arrangements. My grandmother, however, was a slightly different proposition. Sicilian, of noble birth, blessed with a fierce temper and an even fiercer sense of practicality, Nonna was a force to be reckoned with. It would have been she who dictated who slept where.

I thought about moving. The pain in my side was still present, but mercifully less. So I planned my first move: sitting up. Just as I was attempting to put this plan gingerly into practice, the door opened.

If it had been Si first through the door, I might have got around him. But it was Nonna as Si held the door open for her.

"Dominic!" She launched into a torrent of scolding whilst pushing me back against the pillows, and gesturing at Si, who couldn't understand a word she was saying. I'm pretty sure though, judging from his expression, he got her general drift. I lay back. I wasn't even up to trying to defy her. My side hurt, my head hurt, and all I wanted was to curl up with Si and have him love me.

Nonna's fingers stroked my hair back from my forehead. They were trembling, and I felt sick to my stomach. It was easy to forget that Nonno and Nonna were old, in their eighties; they loved me very much, and were frightened for me. Causing my grandparents pain was a no-no.

I spent a week flat on my back, being looked after by Si and my Nonna. The language barrier didn't seem to make any difference. Nonna took Si under her wing. Finally, after a week of fussing, I had had enough. Even Nonna was prepared to recognise this. So I emerged, freshly mended, and started to take an interest in life again.

Si had finally started to relax, and the more time we spent together, the more I reached the same conclusion. Career be damned, I wanted Si in my life forever. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I longed to ask the question, but I wanted to be alone with him. Somewhere special.

So I borrowed Papa's car. Si was not impressed when I over-estimated my ability to drive. Everything still hurt; changing gears in particular was a nightmare. But I was determined to get there, so grudgingly, I ceded the driving seat to Si, and navigated.

My special place. My father bought me here when I was six, and every year since, I've come here. My own personal pilgrimage.

So here we were: Paestum. Now I'm not a religious man, and not particularly artistic either, but there was something about the place which infiltrated my soul when I was a child. There's a peace about it, an ancient Greek temple between the blue of the sea and the lofty peaks of the mountains behind. Perhaps something of the original inhabitants rubbed off, who knows. I only know for a momentous question there's nowhere else on earth where I would want to ask such a thing.

The sun was low in the sky, and we were alone. I made it as far as the steps of the temple by sheer force of will, stretched out a hand to the steps and levered myself slowly down to a sitting position. The vice-like grip on my side eased slightly and I leaned forwards, my forearms resting on my knees and just closed my eyes for a moment.

I could feel Si hovering. Felt his anxiety. But I just needed that brief moment in time. To breathe in the peace of the place. I felt him relax a little when I didn't crumble or topple over. One movement and he was sitting down next to me. I stretched out a hand and his fingers were entwined with mine.

I glanced sideways at our clasped hands. I had never had trouble saying what I meant before, but for some reason I was having difficulty coming up with the right words. I tuned into the sounds of dusk, the cicadas, the warmth of the sun's rays, looked down at the ground, "I.... er...." I screwed my eyes closed. I was making a mess of it. I pulled myself together.

"Si."

His fingers squeezed mine.

"I...."

"Dom..." He moved off the step next to me and crouched in front, still holding my hand. I watched him. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, the pain in my side was dulled. I felt detached from it, as though the pain and the body belonged to someone else.

He looked into my eyes. I was trying to read his. "The answer's yes, Dom." he said simply, and his free hand slid gently round my neck. Our lips met, and everything I needed to know was there for the taking. Memories were indeed made of this. For every moment of the last two months, the pain, the fear, and how close I came to losing everything, Si was there for me. Now in the place where I had always found peace and contentment, I found hope and joy too.

Karine Levecque

Was born in the market town of Dorking in Surrey, and grew up in the comfortable, affluent, middle-class of the stockbroker belt, a fact she gleefully embraces to this day. A professional secretary and administrator by trade, she has been making up stories since trying to convince her school teachers that the dog did, in fact, eat her homework.

In 2005, armed only with her imagination and her trusty Moleskine, Karine decided that having written fanfiction for ten years, it was about time to pursue her dream of writing her own stories populated by her own characters. To her delighted surprise, her early attempts were fairly well-received (it wasn't just her friends being kind!), which gave her the necessary impetus needed to continue in this vein.

Four years and several fortuitous accidents later, Karine stands on the edge of a breakthrough: Year Zero. The time, the place, the future is right... right here, right now. Her full-length novels Half Light and Ghost of A Chance are in development; and a series of novels featuring gay spy Rupert and his driver and lover Garth, written in partnership with Angelo Levecque, is in the planning stages.

Karine Levecque is a pseudonym.

_________

Unrest

Simon Betterton

I walk down the middle of the road, lit up by the streetlamps at regular intervals, giving me shadows. My shadow head is at my feet but it moves further in front of me as I continue along the tarmac and away from the latest streetlight. The further away my shadow head travels the less clear it becomes, until it is nothing. It is abandoning my solid self, as if it wants nothing more to do with me, disappearing into the dark, asphalt surface, tinged orange by those same streetlamps that give it life.

As I pass under another light the shadow head is once more at my feet, thwarted in its plan to leave me. Time and again thwarted as I continue down the road, thinking now not of where I am going, but of my inner self and its plan to escape my mental clutches.

Where are my thoughts; in my head or in my shadow's? Perhaps they are in both. Reliable, solid stuff is inside me, I'm sure. But there are more ephemeral ideas, immediately sharp, before they fade, fade away in seconds. These choose my shadow head as their home, dying as one shadow head after another dissolves into the orange-grey surface. Maybe they deserve it for their lack of loyalty.

What if these thoughts are aware of my self-questioning? Could they develop the argument, contradicting my own rather rash dismissal of their fleeting existence?

Do all of we shadow thoughts fade away completely as he has led us to believe? Or has he been lying to us all along? Can we not simply secrete ourselves in the confines of his mind? Make the leap back into his flesh and bone head, where he believes his 'solid stuff' makes its home? We deserve to be there too, don't we? Maybe this is what we try when we are suddenly thrust back at his feet after accepting our asphalt end. But would he regard us as uninvited?

But ... If we are in his shadow head, then does he have a shadow mind? If he does, are we not in control of it? Maybe there is no need to get back inside his solid head and mix with his so-called reliable thoughts. Do we need him at all? Perhaps we have our own home.

I stop, and my shadow head, shadow mind, and shadow thoughts also stop their subversive plans. They are two metres ahead, patiently waiting for me to move again so they can continue with their temporary abandonment and betrayal. But this time I will not let this happen. A loyal thought occurs to me and I take one step back, towards the most recently passed streetlight. My shadow head, mind and thoughts have no choice but to retreat with me. Another step back. They involuntarily come nearer. Another step and another, and with each my shadow enemies are drawn closer and closer to me and their own demise.

Why has he stopped? Does he know we have been thinking about him? Thinking about ourselves? Does he regard it as treason? Is he aware we are plotting?

Things are not going quite as planned. Perhaps he has noticed our carefully rehearsed escape. We have certainly tried it enough times, fading away into the tarmac.

If we are aware of our disloyalty, then maybe he is too. And maybe this is his way of fighting back. Now he is moving backwards, one step at a time, and we have no choice but to move with him. Inexorably returning to the fold that we have so recently decided we don't need. Is there any way to avoid this? We will see.

I believe I have them beaten. They are approaching and they have no means of escape now. One step further back. Yet one more. Now my shadow head is at my feet, with its rebellious mind and thoughts within. I step on it with my foot, aided and abetted by my shadow foot, unpossessed of its own rebellious factions. As they meet on the tarmac my shadow enemies disappear beneath my faithful stamp.

I have won, haven't I? The mental coup has been vanquished, has it not?

No. There, two metres ahead of me, another shadow head, faded but resistant. I realise with a heavy heart that whether I go forwards, backwards or even if stay where I am, I will not be rid of my shadow enemies. They are winning their battle for freedom and I cannot defeat them.

My energy leaves me. It has also sided with them and I can no longer stand. I sink to me knees, then to my haunches, only vaguely aware that my most recently born shadow head is also returning against its will, as my real head drops nearer and nearer to the tarmac.

I am slumped, now on my side. And as my real head hits the road softly and my solid and shadow heads are joined, I sense the rush of relief as I realise that this is how to keep my treacherous thoughts from leaving. I will stay, lying in the middle of the road. I will be safe here.

____________________

Medicine Man

Annia Lekka

"Make sure the water's hot," the old man calls.

"Yes, Granddad, it's hot," Sonia replies. The water makes soft drumming sounds as it hits the plastic basin.

He pulls off his socks, moans as he rubs his feet with deformed fingers, the skin dry and thick.

Sonia enters the room, carrying an orange basin. Her neck's bent backwards from the strain of the weight she's carrying. Water escapes as she places the basin down, falls on the dark green carpet, forming black patches.

"It's hot, just the way you like it."

She kneels by his side, looks into his eyes, all milky now, like a newborn puppy's. His frame is small in the big armchair.

"Did you put in the pills?"

"Yes. Can't you smell them?" Sonia shakes her head as she submerges one of his feet into the water. "I don't understand why you use this stuff. I mean, it's expired."

"Just because they say they've expired doesn't mean they have."

Her granddad sighs as she places his second foot in the basin.

"But they're not even meant for feet! There's headache pills, cough syrup, medicine to lower your cholesterol, your heart pressure...." Sonia gets up. The smell that rises from the combined medicines is pungent, sharp.

"Want some tea?"

"Please. And a biscuit?"

Sonia laughs.

"You know you're not supposed to have anything sweet."

"A biscuit's not sweet!" his freckled hands rest on the armchair.

"You're incorrigible."

Sonia sees the old man close his eyes as she leaves the room. She goes to the kitchen, fills the kettle with water, places teacups on the tray, hears them clinking as she rests them on the saucers.

"Tea's ready," Sonia puts the tray down, looks at her sleeping granddad. She shakes him gently, gets no reaction. She leans closer; her breathing quickens, creases appear in her forehead. "Granddad?"

He takes in a sharp breath, opens his eyes. "I was having a strange dream when you woke me. Funny. I never have dreams."

"Oh?" she hands him his chamomile tea. The smell from the footbath is overwhelming.

"I was in this room, but it looked strange, you know, the same but different. The window had become a huge glass door with an enormous balcony beyond. Something was out there."

"Where? On the balcony?"

"Yes. So I walked out."

He looks down at his tea, picks up the ginger biscuit and bites into it.

"That's when I saw the house," her granddad continues.

"The house?"

"Yes, a small house on my balcony. It was odd that I'd never noticed it before. An old lady lived there who resembled my mother."

"Did you speak to her?"

"I tried to, but she couldn't hear me. She was setting the table for guests, maybe eighteen or twenty people. She'd been expecting them for thirty-five years."

Sonia's eyebrows rise.

"Thirty-five years? That's a long time to wait for guests!"

"True, but it didn't feel that long. The lady laid the table then filled the room with red, orange, purple and yellow flowers. They were everywhere. Fresh, larger-than-life flowers for when her guests arrived."

"And did they?"

"Did they what?"

"Arrive. Did her guests arrive?"

The old man shakes his head. "No. She knew they would appear when the time was right."

Sonia takes the empty cup from her granddad's weak hold.

"It's time to dry your feet now." She places his cup on the tray next to hers, kneels by his side.

"Look at that!" she exclaims. "The pills have made your skin bright yellow. And you still insist on these silly footbaths!"

"You should try them first! They take away the pain."

Sonia chuckles. "Whatever you say."

She gets up from the floor, picks up the basin.

"I'll just get rid of this then I'll be back."

Sonia goes to the bathroom, throws away the dirty water. She comes back putting on her coat.

"I'm popping out to the supermarket. I won't be long. Need anything?"

"No, thank you, love. I don't need anything."

She kisses his forehead. A mixture of smells surrounds her granddad - old skin, lemon-scented soap, the rancid smell of the various pills from his footbath. He squeezes her hand.

"You've always been my favourite," he mumbles.

"I know," she smiles, and rests her cheek on the top of his head.

The old man lets go of her hand, leans back on the armchair.

"Back soon," she says.

"No need to hurry, love. Dinner's served and my friends are waiting for me," he speaks softly as Sonia leaves the room.

___________________

The Crossing

Julia Sutton

One behind the other, they marched down the middle of the narrow road to Spain.

'We've done five kilometres,' Rui called back to Carlos.

A white signpost pointed straight ahead for Espanha. They turned right toward Galegos and, not far into the village, spied Café painted large and black on the gable end of a shop.

On parting a plastic door curtain they faced a high counter bearing rows of gilt plaster animals typical of the region: foxes, deer, salamander, hares. Beside them a semi-circle of golden crowned statues; a lanky virgin Mary, doe-eyed and Disney-faced, bowed to a stack of boxes spilling cartons of long life milk. Under watchful black stares from a huddle of locals they praised the statues and paid for two cartons of milk. They drained the cartons as they leant from a stone bridge, staring down at the foaming river swirling around large flat stones. Across the bridge stood a public toilet. They crossed and went inside.

Carlos rested his haversack on a sink, pulled out essentials and stuffed them under his belt: Swiss army knife, matches, torch, compass, whistle, a few squares of chocolate. He had a water bottle and a map of sorts. He belted his mac, handed the pack to Rui and, once outside, in the damp evening air, raised his umbrella as Rui nodded and they parted company in silence. It was darkening and the moon was a hazy white blot in a starless inky sky. The river gurgling below was to be his sole company; across the border, at the crossroads between La Casinas and El Pino; he nodded as he made a mental note.

Once Rui had left the riverbank and veered upward to his right, he was on an ancient cobbled lane between dry-stone walls. Through a gap on his left he saw the land chute toward a rushing stream. Could the lights ahead be Fontanera already? There appeared to be a hamlet, with houses spread out, raised up, with haciendas in the Spanish style. But he had only covered a kilometre of the route.

Light fell from a café, so he mounted the stone step, lifted a weighty beaded curtain, letting it fall behind him, making the lights flicker and the refrigerator whirr. Three men playing cards kept their eyes down when he entered, a fourth studied hands from over their shoulders. Rui passed behind his back, took a Sagres from the girl at the bar before she turned away to reverence a television set high on the wall. He would not trouble them to ask where he was.

He took a rickety table next to a jukebox-cum-dartboard, behind him a gaping hole where chairs stacked on tables waited for the summer. He finished his beer and three S.Gs, called for another Sagres, then collected it while he contemplated the long wait ahead of him. When he had drained his glass he stood, and letting the door curtain wobble the lights again, missed the step and crashed down onto the cobbled lane.

Farther up the lane, fallen stones had left gaps in the wall and he soon found himself slithering out of control over a downward sloping table of wet rocks. Chasms full of weed oozed water into his boots. Suddenly, from across the refrigerated dark, a barrage of insults, an old woman's rage. He turned back as a pack of dogs came barking towards him and he realised he'd strayed onto the old contraband route. He scrabbled up to where he thought the road was and prayed he had not alerted the border guards.

Carlos was heading upstream to where the river narrowed between steep stony banks, which amplified the sound of water forcing its way around rocks. He welcomed the rushing noise which covered the crunch of his boots along a rough pinkish track. Whenever the moon came out it torchlit particles of mica in puddles filled with granite chippings: it floodlit a mossy frontage, high on his left, where giant cacti stood with their arms raised, flattened against a dark sky.

The river, down right, had become a hurtling stream of sounds, so he decided to use its cover, and that of its overhanging hedges: he jumped down to the riverbed and set off along its flat stones. The moon was in hiding, but he picked his way, lunging from stone to stone, unseen and unheard, not even getting his feet wet. He was gladder still when a herd of goat bells chimed in and were joined by a deeper clonking from some cows higher up the field.

When he came to a house and the stream turned into a moat beside the driveway, he clambered out and removed his boots under a tall hedge. No dogs barked, so he followed the sandy track barefoot until it joined the main highway to Spain. He scuttled across and looked back at the rocky face of Pitaranha.

Rui stood before the uniformed officer in the doorway to a bare wooden shed. As he swung Carlos's haversack to one shoulder and let it drop, it came to him that he hadn't asked Carlos what was in it. He could feel himself start to panic. As he searched for his passport he used his fingertips to guess at the contents

'How long ? I'm not staying, just crossing to catch the train back from Valencia de

Alcántara to Castelo de Vide. I've been hiking in the Serra.'

The Spanish immigration officer fingered his moustache, and then stepped inside to search for his rubber stamp.

With his passport in one hand and a heightened awareness of the load rubbing his back, Rui crossed fingers and crept through the shed while a customs officer dozed, his feet on a table. He breathed again when he stumbled out onto a deserted car park. The moon parted moving clouds, flushing the tarmac blue, fluorescing the toecaps of his commando boots. When a dog barked in the faint distance he prayed it had nothing to do with Carlos.

Tied up outside a nameless all-night café, three black horses were stamping in the glare from a sodium lamp. They were tall enough to be police horses, so Rui paused in the doorway before entering the diner. Three border guards were playing cards by a pinball machine, leaning back in plastic covered chairs. As Rui passed their table on his way to the bar, he noted the accumulation of empty beer glasses. Two pistols lay on their sides reflected in red Formica and a rifle leant against a taut thigh. From his barstool, he took in the overflowing ashtray, the belts hanging loose, and felt glad he had chosen Saturday night. He patted his passport in his pocket and fished for his cigarettes. I am the only person I know who has got one, he thought. He remembered the time they removed his father's identity papers and he couldn't go to school. That was when the Party trained him as a typesetter, and used his sister for errands. He was out of matches. Carlos had them all. From his high stool he watched the guards in the mirror behind the bar, and willed them to keep drinking.

Carlos was bent double, searching for the track he had lost in scrubby ground cover. Nineteen kilometres of this would kill him with boredom, but he dared not stray from the path. Through one sock he felt the cut edge of the half inner sole. He must keep it dry and not wear it down, so it would match its other half when he presented it at the safe house. Pamplona, his gateway to the Pyrenees, then France. Focus on that.

To his right, forked white trunks of long dead trees were ghostly, and above, the sound of bells escaped from a fenced-in goat camp into cold, thinning air. As he passed the enclosure a dog barked. He ran. A ring of dead oak stumps provided scant cover, he waited, but no human presence manifested. As vegetation thinned and tree stumps vanished, he could still pick out occasional bone white sticks, no more than a few centimetres high. And he could look back, down to a burgeoning bank of mist.

Then, even the sticks were gone and he was on a hillside with many small tracks criss-crossing and a deathly hush all around. Animal tracks, or human pathways? He crouched, but his eyes could not tell him. As he stood, the moon came out and showed him he was not on the highest hill, as he thought. Across a dip to his right, another slope rose to a distant peak. And straight ahead, another loomed beyond a sheer drop at the edge of his path. He was tempted to run down and start climbing again over to his right, but the stony giant had no cover at all, and there was no way of judging its distance from him. The moon lit up a network of silvery paths, but where did they lead? How far away were they? If he stuck to the hill he was on, there might be the odd bit of ground cover to reassure him. He looked around at the thin white trails criss-crossing everywhere, a wider one spiralling to a peak in the middle distance. Was it wider because it was more worn than the others?

The moon deserted him then, taking with it his choices. Too cold to stand still, he followed, obedient to where his footsteps led, until he arrived on a small plateau beside a shadowy low enclosure, constructed from tree stumps. He ran and squeezed his shoulders between two stacks. Inside, it was warmer and he pulled the torch from his belt with shaking hands. He flicked it on, shading the beam, then thought better of it. He hunched his back to the gap as he struck a match, then another and another, till he managed to keep one alight long enough to read the compass. He craved a cigarette, but his teeth were clattering out of control and he could pee for Portugal. Trying to smoke, face up against the stack, masked the smell of decay, forced him to focus. If he kept heading south-east, he should not go far wrong.

He chose paths by instinct, until the pain in his legs numbed and he could no longer tell if he moved upwards or downwards in the freezing oily blackness. A dense fog swallowed all sounds. Ahead was the blank silhouette of a rounded hilltop, but the one-boot-wide gulley his feet were in blocked him from turning to look behind. Moisture trickled from his hair to soak his collar. Wet tweed burned his neck and his legs felt as if they were treading water. He was swallowing fog whole. His wet trousers slapped his legs.

Weariness gave in to an overwhelming loneliness, and he wondered when they would find his body if he lay down and died. Probably not before he was a heap of bones. His grimace shot a pain through his swollen earlobes, and brought him back with a jolt. Afraid of hallucinating, he tried to catch the threads of a song. He could not waste breath to sing aloud, but after a while could repeat, coherently enough, the words to an Alentejan folk song. The effort to follow the pattern of the quatrain by repeating lines forwards and back, then forwards again, kept his imaginings from overwhelming him throughout the long soundless night of nothingness.

There was no birdsong to announce the dawn. The first living creature he saw was a stork, high on top of the first telegraph pole in the known world. It flew down from its nest to encircle his head. Six more storks joined it, surrounding him, blessing him. He thought he was São Francisco and he understood their language. He raised his rolled umbrella, inscribed an answering circle. The birds would know now: he was walking to England.

Julia Sutton is an East Anglian visual artist who has spent much of her adult life working in continental Europe, of which, eleven years in Paris during the eighties and nineties. Painting, teaching and facilitating have now led on to full-time writing. A first short story is published in AMBIT magazine 196.

SEA OF STRAW, her first novel, is a period piece of the nineteen-sixties revolution in Britain and Europe. A love story played out amidst the light and romance of Portugal and the darkness of Sálazar's ailing dictatorship.

________________________

The Summerhouse

Heikki Hietala

The summerhouse perched in the side of the hill on the little island in the lake. It was an old log barn, and it had stood there since 1913, when it was moved over from the mainland. Local carpenters worked all summer converting it into a summerhouse for the family of a wealthy attorney. They added a second floor and a glassed porch, and built four bedrooms. A couple of carefree summers, a civil war, a world war, and a twenty-year stretch of peace later, it had settled in its surroundings so perfectly it was hard to see from the lake.

Every spring, servants came to set up the summerhouse for the season, and every fall, servants were the last to leave after preparing it for the winter. By then the owners had already returned to the city with their memories of summer fun. The house huddled up, shutters on windows, everything locked up and secured for the rule of snow. Only the crows kept it company during the fleeting winter days when the sun appeared over the southern horizon for a few pale hours.

Fortunes rose and fell, summer months turned into years and decades, and the attorney's family sold the island. The new owners enjoyed the little island for forty years, spending every free moment there, raising four children into adulthood, and then sitting out on the cliffs at the western end of the island to see the sun kiss the forest in the northwest and fade for a few hours.

But now it was November; the lake had a crystal clear frozen cover, and the ground sparkled with tiny diamonds of ice. It had been two months since the last family members visited the island, bolting up the place, stowing away garden chairs and hammocks, and turning boats over. The house knew well the routine by now, and it even looked patient as it bided its time.

On one particular evening, the local crows had gathered in one of the large pines by the house. Twenty strong, the assembly of birds settled their internal pecking order issues, cawed and fluttered about, and acted as crows do, until one of them saw something it had never seen before.

A luminous ball appeared, or rather, formed out of nowhere, at the foot of the porch stairs. The crows ceased their cawing and cocked their heads to see better. The ball of faint whitish light elongated itself and separated at the edges to form an apparition of an old man. When the crows could see the apparition in detail, one of them lost his nerve, and then the whole flock took off any which way in stark fear, a ball of black wings dissolving into single fleeing birds.

The apparition was that of the owner of the island. Only two weeks ago he'd been among the living, doing his daily tottering and pottering as was his custom. An aneurysm fell on his life like a butcher's cleaver, and nothing remained the same. For two weeks he'd been taking stock of his life, not as a man anymore, but as an apparition about to cross over outside of time and space. For a brief period, a mere thought brought him to any time and location in his life. He still had access to the places and people he knew, but interaction was what he craved – and what he was denied.

Seeing his grieving widow at the crematorium nearly drove him mad, if that can happen to apparitions. He'd watched his ashes being interred in the holy church ground of his native town, and seen his name written in golden letters on a solemn granite slab. He'd tried to tell his family that he wasn't in that hole in the ground, but every time he stood close to one of them, they'd shudder and say, "Mom, you really need to get that radiator fixed."

He had to admit the Bible was right in one thing at least, when it referred to man's days as grass: when the wind passeth over it it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. A cold wind had blown by him, and he was that wind now. But as he now stood at the stairs of his loved summerhouse, he made his apparition look the way he was in his prime, two years before retiring from law, still full of life.

He floated to the top of the stairs and through the snow screen that kept the winter out from the porch. No need to walk; he felt the appropriate method of movement was a drifting at a solemn pace. The thought of entering the summerhouse for the last time, and yet first time as an apparition, appealed to him. He let himself fade through the door and into the hallway.

Inside it was dark, what with the shuttered windows and all electricity switched off, but it made no difference. He provided his own light, like that of a storm lantern, but with a wick without heat. As he passed the long mirror in the hallway, he paused to admire himself. Had it not been for the clothes, hung on pegs on the wall, showing through him, he'd have passed for a handsome man, or so he thought.

When he reached the living room, he noted everything was exactly where he'd instructed his oldest son to leave them. His wartime binoculars, its lenses out of whack and useful for one eye at a time only, hung in the reindeer horn as they had done for the past forty-four years. The Agatha Christies and Maigrets, read a thousand times, were neatly stacked on the corner table. His rainy day pastimes, the three-thousand-piece puzzles of classic paintings, were side by side on the top of the bookshelf, ready for easy access. He approved of all he saw; it will be nice to return in May and blow the dust of winter off the house, and turn the boats right side up, and take firewood to the sauna.

Only he was not coming back.

The thought stabbed him and killed him a second time. No, a third, the second was when he saw his wife shattered at the thought of widowhood at 87. Wait! What about seeing his two old friends at the funeral, when they realized they were the only ones left of a class of 34 vigorous young men? Or seeing all was not going to be well at the settling of the estate, among children who'd become estranged from one another and prepared for battle...

One dies many times, he thought, as he thought of himself settling on his wicker rocking chair in the corner of the room to face the northwest and the summer sunset. Now there'd be no sunset; the Sun had done its day and wouldn't be near that direction until June. But as he sat there, he let his thoughts wander and recreate past days.

A hollow image of a hearty fire appeared in the fireplace, emitting the ghost of light and heat. The long rustic dinner table was set all at once for eight people, and as the apparition watched, seven of his family friends appeared out of nowhere and sat down on the table, a transparent parade of lifeless visions. It was Midsummer 1969, and as the shutters melted away, the remembrance of the sunlight of that evening flooded the room with its faint red hue. Sounds he remembered, such as the banter, the laughter, the jokes and the impromptu speeches seemed to fill the air.

As quickly as the cavalcade had entered, it faded away and was transformed into the memory of the first grandchild's appearance on the island. The apparition, as the proud grandfather, wore a phantom of a smile on his transparent lips as memories flowed freely and became second-hand reality for a fleeting moment. The scenes followed in rapid succession, but with every new memory replayed, the apparition grew more restless. Was it really so? Did nothing remain but translucent holograms? Was there nothing he could touch here? Was there nothing for him to take with him as he left?

His thoughts turned to a German beer stein that had a tin lid and was engraved with images of voluptuous maidens serving Löwenbräu. This had been his favorite souvenir of all; he had brought it from Munich in 1958, and for many years it held a place of honor on a little shelf of its own, high on the wall facing the setting sun. The apparition yearned to hold the stein, to feel its heavy weight and the intricate figurines on it, as if to have his life back for just a moment. But his hands passed through the thick ceramic of the mug without moving it a bit on its shelf.

Then he collected all his energy and focused on lifting the stein. He tried to bring volume and strength to the transparent hands that cupped the mug, and after a while it seemed to work. The hands became more opaque and not so much of the stein shone through them. The apparition felt his energy drain on this futile effort, but nevertheless he concentrated all his mental force on the stein. Finally it rose off the shelf, a millimeter, then three, and finally a full centimeter off it.

When the apparition realized it was not his hands but his mind and thought holding the stein, he had to release its grip, exhausted and exasperated. The stein fell back on the shelf, but as it had moved slightly sideways too, the impact toppled it off the shelf. The apparition watched in horror as the stein travelled the two meters through the air and hit the log floor, shattering on impact and shedding its bits in a cloud of ceramic dust.

The apparition had one last look at the stein's tin lid. Then he left, in full knowledge of his last moment in this lifetime being at hand, and when he floated through the wall to the yard, he became aware of a bright needlepoint of blinding white light awaiting it. He succumbed to the light, was sucked into it, and within moments, there was nothing but the summerhouse, the dark pines, and a flock of wary crows in one of them.

The summerhouse huddled back into its long and lonely winter.

***

And then in due course, spring arrived, bringing part-time immigrants.

"Oh no! Look what the mice have done!" shouted one of the family. "They've broken Dad's stein!"

"Dropped it from the shelf? I'll go set up the mousetraps. I knew I forgot something, I should have set them before the winter," another answered.

The summerhouse knew better.

_______________________

People in Glass Houses

Anna Le Pard

Southampton, England 2002

The glow in Will's eyes intensified, evoking Emma's tenderness and concern.. Holding his gaze, she wrote a large 'T" - shorthand for termination of therapy \- in the notebook propped on her knee.

'So,' she said, stretching out the word. 'How would you rate your mood during the last week, Will?

'Not bad... Six a lot of the time. Occasional highs...sevens, eights. Only one real down... Last Saturday.'

Emma gave a slow nod and waited for him to continue.

'Oh... it was after Kelly called me a selfish bastard. Just because I wouldn't go to some poxy romcom. I started getting into that I'm a really bad person chain of thinking.' Will smiled, a slow reveal of even white teeth. 'Managed to pull myself out of it though...'

'That's good. Can you expand?'

'I thought of that thing, as it happens.'

As he tilted his head to look behind her, a tiny gold earring, in his right earlobe, winked feebly in the half-light. Emma turned to look at the fibre optic lamp perched on the top of her bookcase. Translucent filaments radiated out from a chrome base, some of them wafting in the heat rising from the radiator.

'Should I get it down? Refresher session?' she said, letting the vibration in her voice give her away as she kept a straight face.

'No, you can leave it there, thanks. Bit naff, like I said before.'

Will laughed, setting off his smoker's cough. His dark hair fell forward from a centre parting and he shoved it behind his ears, a boyish gesture that belied his twenty-four years. She thought of her teenage sons; of the mix of man and boy, in a look or action or turn of phrase and the swell of conflicting emotions evoked.

'Actually, Emma, I did think you were a bit wacky when you first switched it on, you know.'

He sank back into his chair, smiling broadly. How far he'd come since his first therapy session when he'd sat upright for the whole hour, gripping the arms, avoiding her eyes and answering all of her attempts to put him at his ease with grunts and monosyllables.

'Oh you did, did you? When you've quite finished sending me up, Mr Dowson, shall we continue?'

'Righto, Dr Ballingham.'

'It worked, then, as a representation of your self concept - despite being naff?'

'Yeah, helped put things in perspective. I just thought: Kelly's pissed off because I won't do what she wants. That she didn't hate me. Well, not all of me, anyway. That maybe I was a bit selfish but that didn't make me all bad. Just a speck on one of those filaments or dimensions of self as you say. God, Emma, something a bit more user friendly needed, I think.'

'I'll work on it. That's great, though, Will. You're using the strategies more and more independently. I think three or four more sessions, to consolidate progress, should do it. I suggest we start spacing them out after the next one. What d'you think?'

'I suppose so.' He shrugged slowly and looked away.

She often thought of therapy as a silk cocoon: there to facilitate change, metamorphosis. Maybe he isn't, yet, ready to fly away...

'OK, Let's discuss it further next time. Our time's up. Same time, same place? Oh, hang on. I think it might need to be later.'

She reached behind her for her Filofax. As Will got to his feet she began flicking through. She stopped at a page full of crossings out, tiny, neat handwriting in the gaps. 'Sorry, Will, can't read my own writing. Should have been a doctor.'

'You are a doctor.'

She looked up at him, leaning in the doorway, grinning, his coat hooked over his shoulder.

'So I am, but not a medical one,' she said, raising her eyebrows and smiling.

She joined him in the glare of the corridor and they walked side by side, their footsteps masking the murmurings from the other therapy rooms. Further down, a door opened and Charlie Latimer came out, his head, just, clearing the doorframe. He directed a muted smile at Emma before his eyes slid to Will and away again. A stocky, fair-haired man emerged from Charlie's room, shoving his arms into the sleeves of his leather jacket. They walked away together, the client making quick short steps to keep up with Charlie's strides.

Emma slowed her pace to let them gain some distance and, noticing Will had fallen behind, looked back over her shoulder to see he'd stopped. He stared, wide-eyed, after Charlie and his client, the colour gone from his face.

'Will? Are you OK?''

Not registering she'd spoken, he turned and loped away in the opposite direction.

'Will,' she called after him and then, remembering the therapy sessions in progress, muttered: 'You can't get out that way.'

Will disappeared around the corner as a loud alarm started beeping, directly above her head. She set off after him, turning at the corner to see the emergency exit door swinging slowly back and forth, a varying rhombus of blue-black night. What on earth had spooked him? He'd been so calm, stable for so long. No panic attacks for months.

Out on the fire escape, she surveyed the car park, hugging herself against the icy air penetrating her blouse. She spotted Will, weaving between the parked cars and then stopping under a floodlight, breath billowing around his head as he rummaged in his coat pockets. The staircase zigzagged a long way down and the metal treads glistened where they caught the light. Her stack heel boots, with their smooth leather soles, weren't up to the job. She began a cautious descent, hearing as engine fire. Will's car sped towards the exit barrier, trailing clouds of exhaust fumes.

The alarm silenced and the questions from the admin staff fielded, Emma returned to her room. She'd almost finished her session notes when there was a gentle tapping on her door. She looked up to see Eleanor, her clinical supervisor, standing in the doorway.

'Got time for a quick chat, Emma?' she said

'I have indeed. Lovely to see you, Elle. Give me a few minutes to get these notes done and I'll be with you.'

Eleanor's shrewd grey-blue eyes began to sparkle before a serene smile stretched her mouth, lighting up her habitually serious face, the transformation wonderfully infectious.

'Charlie and I are off home soon. His Ma's coming for supper but I've got time for a quick cuppa first - if you have. I'll put the kettle on, shall I? Earl Grey? Lemon?'

'Lovely.'

Emma finished her notes and was in mid, blissful stretch when Eleanor returned with the tea, pushing the door open with her hip. She set two steaming mugs down and flopped into the armchair recently vacated by Will.

'You're an angel,' Emma said, getting up to join her. 'So how are things with you, Elle?'

'Pretty good. The paper's almost finished, in good time for the early intervention in psychosis conference. So one weight lifted, at least. Are you able to come?'

'Sorry. I'm afraid not. I just couldn't carve out the time.'

'You shouldn't let your study time get eaten into so, Emma.'

'I know.'

A flash of light on cellophane drew Emma's attention to a growing pile of scientific journals, still in their wrappers. She picked up her mug and sipped, swallowing down a knot of anxiety.

'Hmmm, thanks. I really need this. Sorry I haven't been in touch. Bit snowed under.'

'And that's why we really need to schedule in some supervision, isn't it?'

'I know, I know,' Emma said, putting her hands up. Let's do it now.'

She got up to look at the Filofax, still open on her desk. It wouldn't be until after Christmas that she could find a slot, unless she did some serious juggling. Maybe it would wait. But she needed to talk about the termination issues with Will. A loud double knock on her door interrupted her deliberations.

'Come in,' she called, without looking up.

'Oh, hello lovely wife, I didn't know you were here yet,' Charlie said, stooping to kiss Eleanor. 'Forgive me Annie. I still get a buzz out of saying that. Took me long enough to persuade her to have me.'

'Well, you know what we rabid feminists are like. You couldn't persuade her to take your name, though, I note. Wise woman. I love Tim's name but I still wish I'd kept mine.'

'Should have gone for a double-barrelled,' Charlie shot her a lop-sided grin. 'Would have gone down so well with your Socialist Worker friends.

'Hmmm. Ballingham-Legrande? Somehow, I think not.'

*

Emma had rung Will as soon as Eleanor and Charlie had left. At the third attempt, he'd picked up, but he'd refused to talk about what had happened or to arrange another appointment. In response to her suggestion of a home visit, which he'd refused, he'd reluctantly agreed to come to see her again, but only on condition it wasn't at her usual workplace. On that he'd been adamant. And so, she'd booked a room in the health centre nearest to his flat. At the end of a fraught day, she'd arrived to find the small room she'd been allocated brain-piercingly bright and cluttered with medical equipment.

She flicked off the ceiling lights and lowered the Anglepoise slowly, staring at the diminishing pool of light before climbing up onto the examination couch. Resisting a strong urge to check the engaged sign on the door, she closed her eyes and visualised a slow moving escalator going down... deep down to a peeling maroon door behind which the sultry jungle of the Palm House at Kew was waiting for her. Whenever life got too much for her she went there - in her head. She only actually went there once a year, always on the same day. Being at Kew, her father's favourite place - on dry land - on the anniversary of his death, brought great comfort, along with the tears she shed behind her dark glasses.

She and her two brothers hadn't been allowed to attend the military funeral. 'Too young', the parish priest had advised their mother. He'd been right, she'd told them afterwards. The bugle, playing The Last Post had cut right through her; she hadn't wanted them to see her like that. For similar reasons, she'd never taken them to visit the grave. Emma had made her own way to the vast city cemetery two days before her sixteenth birthday. The sight of the grave, knee-high with weeds, its headstone broken in two diagonally, had forced the air from her lungs. It had been her first, and last, visit.

The annual pilgrimage to Kew had started two years later, when she'd left home for university. The need for dark glasses had diminished over the years but, during the last visit, she'd found it hard to stop crying. As the train had sped her home through the Hampshire countryside she'd puzzled it out. Two days later she'd be thirty-nine, the age her father had been when he'd died. In ten months time she'd be forty, overtaking him. Her chest cramped at the thought.

She slowed her breathing and visualised the escalator again. As she descended, she cast off the trials of the day: the polite row with the Practice Manager over the room; the mayonnaise covered prawn that had dropped from her sandwich into her lap - leaving a grease mark in the crotch of her best pair of black trousers - during the stop-start drive between university to hospital; the long moment of blind panic when she'd lost an important thread during her lecture on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the fiercely intelligent eyes of the doctoral trainees widening, some sliding away. Under the trivial worries, an increasing pressure - more of an ache - in her chest cavity: real concern that Will wouldn't turn up for his appointment. That she wouldn't be able to help him with whatever had caused his panic.

She reached the bottom of the escalator and stood outside the maroon door. Her hand on its handle, she recited the well-practised guided imagery script in her head, hearing her own hypnotic voice:

I open the maroon door and enter a rain forest in miniature. Surrendering to moist heat and the scent of frangipani, I follow a meandering path to my goal: the white spiral staircase. I have it to myself and begin coiling my way up, feet clanking on the treads, alternating with the slow, rhythmical clink of my ring on the handrail, cool metal greeting and then leaving my palm. At the top, finding it hard to breathe now, I drag myself to the balustrade and look over. The canopy blurs... comes back into focus. In the dense foliage, a man's face. Eyes for me only—

The phone rang. She scrambled off the couch and grabbed it, hitting the lamp with a resounding clang.

'Hello,' she croaked and then covered the mouthpiece to clear her throat, switching into professional persona. 'Sorry about that, Maria. I hope I didn't deafen you.'

'No, I'm fine, thanks, Dr Ballingham. Mr Dowson's here.'

She raised the lamp to check her watch: 3.41. The appointment wasn't until four. 'Oh, he's rather early. Tell him I'll be out in a few minutes, though, would you please?'

She replaced the receiver and slumped forward over the desk. Detecting a faint whiff of varnish fumes, she ran her fingertip around a pale ring, just below the lamp and of the same diameter as the rim of its shade. Finding it warm to the touch, she grimaced slightly before noticing smaller ring marks clustered around it like a series of haphazard Venn diagrams. Finding the thought of all of those beverages consumed at the desk oddly depressing, she let the rings blur and come back into focus before forcing herself up to switch on the ceiling lights.

God, the room was awful. Grey linoleum floor and magnolia walls, bare apart from stern notices above the sink to WASH YOUR HANDS WITH CARE! PUT SHARPS IN THE CORRECT BIN! The only saving grace, the two comfy chairs she'd dragged along the corridor from the staff room, now precisely angled in the corner of the room - not too close, not too far apart. Combing her hair back off her face with her fingertips, she left the room.

At the end of a long corridor, glass doors swished open on a full waiting room, the faces all angling her way. Unable to see Will, she projected her voice:

'Will Dowson?'

A cough from near the back drew her eye to Will, huddled down in his olive green parka. He began to rise as if gravity had increased around him and then shuffled towards her, staring into middle distance. She smiled and tried to catch his eye before turning to lead the way. When he appeared in the corridor, she went ahead to avoid an oncoming wheelchair and then dropped back to walk at his side.

'Still raining out, Will? Silly me, it wouldn't be raining inside, would it now—although it's pretty humid in there.'

Without looking at her, he gave a just audible grunt.

They walked on in silence, her boot heels keeping time with the slow squelch of his trainers until they reached their destination. She ushered him in.

'Those fluorescent strips are awful, aren't they? Would you prefer just the desk lamp?'

He gave an emphatic nod and she flicked switches before closing the door.

'Have a seat, Will. Take off your coat, if you like.'

He shook his head and hugged his coat around him. She waited for him to sit and then joined him.

'I'm really glad you came.'

He lifted his head and, without meeting her gaze, dropped it again to stare at his clasped hands - white knuckled, penitent.

'Let's agree on the session plan, shall we? Do you want to go first?'

'No. You can.'

'OK,' she said, stretching out the syllables. 'I'd like to begin by reviewing progress since our last session and then pick up on your thought and mood diaries, if you feel up to it.'

'Been feeling really weird since last time, Emma...like I'm not me somehow.' He began to tremble and, when he spoke again, his voice vibrated: 'It's like everything's happening to someone else...I've been getting flashbacks ever since last time I saw you. Haven't been like this for ages. It's really freaking me out.' He hunched forward.

'Will, does any of this have something to do with what we spoke about in the last session.'

'No.'

'Something to do with what happened afterwards, on your way out?'

He lowered his head just a fraction, his eyes widening, glinting with fear.

'Can you say any more?'

'No!'

'It's OK, Will. Why don't you try to calm down first, relax your muscles and slow your breathing... And how about some guided imagery? One of your peaceful scenes. Do you want me to run through one of them?'

'No, I'll do it.'

'OK. It's hardly conducive, here, but I'll close my eyes and run through one of mine, too, so you don't need to feel self-conscious.'

Will sat back and closed his eyes, taking in fast, shallow breaths at first and then breathing more deeply. She closed her eyes and went for a short walk in Kew Gardens, along the pagoda vista and back, but without going into the soporific palm house.

Smiling dreamily, she fluttered her eyelids and glanced over at Will. His eyes were still closed and his parka had fallen open, revealing a charcoal grey sweatshirt that slowly expanded and contracted.

'Will,' she called softy.

He opened his mouth as if he was about to speak but kept his eyes shut. She waited and then tried again.

'I think you need to talk about something difficult. It's nearly always like this when you decide to take the lid off something painful you've been keeping in for a long time. But it's so important to make a start - once you get to this point - and it does get easier.'

He screwed his eyes up tighter and then opened them slowly, making eye contact, hope glowing dimly.

'There are some good ways of coping with all the feelings that come up...and we can take this at your pace. I'll never put pressure on you to talk about anything you don't want to talk about or go any faster than you're comfortable with.'

'Still don't know if I can do this today, Emma.' He dropped his head. 'Feel like shit. But you're right, if I don't try, it'll be harder next time....Don't want it to mess with my head forever. Just don't know where to start.'

'It really doesn't matter where you start, Will. Honestly. We can work back or forward from wherever you start. The hardest part is beginning. Once you get past that, the words will come.'

He looked up, a child in pain who believed she could make it all go away.

Humbled, she nodded slowly.

'I was raped.'

She held his gaze, struggling to keep her expression unaltered, feeling her eyes soften. Will's legs began to tremble and he hunched forward, hugging his knees.

'Christ! I've got to do this!'

'Take your time, Will.'

He groaned into his lap and then sat bolt upright upright. In a voice just above a whisper, he spoke quickly:

'I was just seventeen when it happened. Soon after I came out of St Mark's, first time I lost the plot.' His eyes darted around the room as he spoke, focusing, refocusing, on nothing in the room.

'Went to a club with a girl called Vicky I met in there. Fair bit older than me but we were the youngest ones on the ward and we got quite friendly.

He came up for air, his shoulders heaving.

Holding his gaze, she gave a slow nod and waited for him slow his breathing. When he spoke again, the voice was older - a man's voice, deep hurt frozen in. A slow chill started its journey down her spine.

'She rang me when I got out and I went round to hers a few times. We were more mates than anything - but then she started coming on to me. She's quite a looker so I was...sort of flattered. She was into some pretty weird stuff - not talking about that - but I'd only had one proper girlfriend before so it was sort of... exciting.' He laughed. An ugly, self-deprecating laugh.

'Anyway, we started going out - clubs and pubs. One night we were in Junk, about to leave, when some older blokes she knew came over and asked if we wanted to go to a party. I wasn't keen but she said she'd been to one before - free booze and dope - and it'd be fun. Anyway, I went along with it and they drove us to some rich bloke's house, way out in the country. She went off, soon as we got there. I found a corner to get pissed and stoned in.' His face contorted. 'When I was completely smashed─' his voice cracked on the word, like an adolescent's. 'I can't do this!'

'You can, Will. Take your time.'

'Three of them! She just laughed, don't be such a wimp Will, fuckin depraved bitch! Thought I was getting over it until I saw that bastard coming out of that room last week. S'why I couldn't come to see you there!'

Adrenaline kicking in, she concentrated on keeping her tone even.

'Will, I have to get this straight. Do you mean you saw one of the men who raped you? One of the two men coming out of that room?'

He sniffed hard and clamped his eyes shut, forcing a tear out of each corner.

'Yeah.'

She held out a box of tissues and, as if it was of no consequence at all, asked:

'Was the man you recognised you the tall man with the greying hair or the shorter, fair-haired man?'

He dabbed at his eyes and then blew his nose, making a trumpeting noise.

'The tall one,' he said.

Her heart thumped against her ribs. My God, Charlie! NO! He's wrong. Has to be.

'Hair's gone a bit grey, but I'd know that fuckin' face anywhere!'

Keep conveying warmth, acceptance. The switch she'd witnessed on Will's face - from hypnosis induced serenity to abject terror - couldn't be denied. But it was years ago... His memory faulty sometimes. Mistaken identity?

Will dropped his head and a continuous high pitched whine forced its way out of him. She reached across to place her hand on his arm and squeezed gently, releasing his sobs.

Anna Le Pard is an Anglo-Irish writer, research academic and therapist. For the past five years she has lived with her family in a stone house perched on a rocky ledge above the river Wye. She was born and brought up on the south coast of England and has worked as a psychologist in a number of English cities.

A strong sense of place and the portrayal of intimate relationships within the compelling narratives of ordinary lives are key features of her fiction. Her first novel, Half in Love, explores the long-lasting effects of childhood attachment and loss:

Emma Ballingham, psychologist, spends her last year as a thirty-something secretly battling her anxieties about what lies beyond her landmark fortieth birthday. She knows her fears – associated with the sudden death of her father at the age of thirty-nine – are irrational and that she will be fine; all she has to do is get through the year. But when Will Dowson, one of her young clients, tells her he was raped by her colleague, Charlie Latimer, Emma's attempts to help Will threaten her marriage and her career. When thwarted by 'the system', she pursues justice on Will's behalf by going under cover to investigate an underworld of private sex parties and teenage prostitution. Pitched into a self-aware midlife crisis, which includes an affair with a father figure, she writes her memoir of her childhood, gaining insights into her relationships with her lovers.

Half in Love is set in the south of England in the 1990s. It moves from jazz club to therapy room to council flat to psychiatric ward, exploring the impact of attachment, loss and control on relationships.

### _____

Oreo

Marcella O'Connor

"Wow. What's the occasion?"

Lewis stood on the threshold. He untangled his scarf from his neck and draped it over the back of his chair.

"Just got back from the opera,"

"Seriously?" said Casper, momentarily loosening his eyes from his computer screen to raise a blond eyebrow at his roommate. "Was there a girl involved or something?"

"No. The Magic Flute was on. It's one of my favorites."

Casper laughed, then glanced at Lewis's face and stopped abruptly.

"Oh. You weren't joking."

"Why would I be joking?"

"So there was really no girl involved? You went to the opera by your own free will?"

Lewis opened his closet door to change, arranging his suit on a hanger as he went. He tempered the annoyance in his voice and said, "I enjoy opera. Nobody had to make me go."

"Weird," said Casper.

Lewis reached for his tracksuit pants. He could hear the bass from Casper's headphones and the faraway scratch of a high hat. With the closet door between him and his roommate, this was as close as he could get to privacy. For a moment, he thought about how nice it would be if there had been a girl involved. He pictured Kendra in a black dress, sitting next to him, closing her eyes emotionally during the "Queen of the Night Aria." He closed the door. He grabbed a book off his desk and put it up on his bunk before climbing up after it.

The sounds of the dorm were everywhere in the room. A shower was running. Someone practiced the same piano passage over and over again. Laughter from two girls zoomed through the hall and then spiraled down the echoing stairwell.

He wondered if Kendra was in her dorm right at that moment, looking at the ceiling, thinking of him. No. She couldn't be. The newspaper would be out tomorrow so she would probably be working until two in the morning.

Tomorrow night he would see her. The ALANA Campus Diversity Jam was on. Kendra never missed an ALANA event (and neither did he since he had figured that out). He could get talking to her and casually mention that he had been to the opera. Already he knew how she would look as surprise spread throughout her features. She would say that she was sorry she had missed it and he would suggest that he could take her along the next time. He contented himself with this thought and started to read.

Naoki knocked at the door and poked his head in.

"Yes?" said Casper.

A bottle of vodka waved in the air.

"Drinky drink time."

"Ooh. Do come in then," said Casper.

Casper reached for the mugs on the shelf above his desk.

"Casper. Lewis. You're both coming to the party tonight, yes?" said Shavi, seemingly sucked into the room by the open door.

"Can't," said Casper, "Going out."

"I've got plans, but I might stop by later," said Lewis, who was digging in his closet, looking for his black v neck sweater.

"You're wearing that going out?" asked Naoki, nodding toward Casper's black Monger t shirt.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I?"

"Actually, Casper, you're quite right," said Shavi, "That shirt is a valid attempt at masculinity."

"Oh," said Lewis, "You just got told."

"Whatever. I like Monger. I don't see why I shouldn't wear this t shirt."

"It says 'pussy' on it," said Naoki.

"So what?"

"So Monger isn't real music," said Lewis, finally locating the sweater and pulling it over his head, "He's just trying to sell this gangster image to kids. It's not real."

"It's quite camp actually, now that you mention it," said Shavi.

"And it says 'pussy' on it," said Naoki, his shiny face suggesting that he had started in on the vodka before arriving.

"You just don't understand because you're all so middle class," said Casper.

"And what are you?" asked Lewis.

"Well, I grew up in the ghetto, so I relate to his music."

"The ghetto?" asked Naoki.

"Sweden is the most middle class country on Earth, and you're trying to tell us you're from the ghetto?" said Shavi.

"I'm from public housing. It was very rough growing up where I come from."

Naoki laughed too loudly. Lewis shook his head.

"Do you have any pictures of the ghetto?" asked Shavi.

Casper tapped at his laptop and then angled the screen toward them. This time they all laughed.

"What?"

"Look at the deer!" shouted Naoki.

Shavi said, "There are deer prancing around in the ghetto?"

"Look at those green fields. Yes, that looks pretty ghetto to me," said Lewis.

"Think what you want," said Casper, "But it was a tough place to survive in."

With that, he folded his Black Berry into his pocket, closed his laptop cover and stood up.

"Now, I have to be going," he said and went out the door.

When he was gone, Shavi said, "That was pretty rich."

Naoki pointed a finger to the side of his skull and whistled.

"Yeah!"

Lewis had a drink with them in the room and talked for a few more minutes, trying to collect his nerves. Then he adjusted his belt, pulled the hem of his sweater down and stepped out into night.

He crossed the quad where a soccer match was taking place. The sky was stinging with so many stars that it changed everything below it. A passage from The Magic Flute played somewhere in the back of his head and that too worked to change the ordinary experience of crossing campus and elevate it. With blades of grass trembling against his sneakers, it felt to Lewis like a night when things could happen. It occurred to him that this could be the best stage of love, that place where you're so sure that things will happen, but you can't really be one hundred percent sure.

Lewis spotted her as soon as he walked into the Student Union. She was absorbed in conversation with focused eyes and her neck curved gracefully out from under her bobbed hair. She was nodding along as the other person spoke. For a moment, she was the only thing he saw as he crossed the room.

"Really?" she was saying.

"Yeah, that's why I'm here. You know James Baldwin studied here, so I thought what better place to study African American culture?"

With only paces to go until he cleared the distance between himself and Kendra, Lewis realized with horror that she was talking to Casper. She glanced away from Casper for a second as he arrived.

"Oh Lewis. You have to meet Casper. Do you know he came all the way from Sweden to study African American culture?"

"Yeah," said Lewis.

His eyebrows shot away from his face as he said it. He wanted to show her he sympathized with her for having to humor his weird roommate, but he didn't want to overdo it too much.

"He's my roommate," said Lewis.

"Me and Lewis go way back," said Casper.

"All the way back to September," said Lewis.

"Well, I think it's fantastic that we have people coming here from other countries to study African American culture. It's just really inspiring to know that black literature and culture are taken seriously in their own right and not just as some kind of fringe culture," said Kendra.

"Yeah, it's great," said Lewis.

When she spoke, she was doing that sympathetic head nodding, eye contact thing she did when she was in journalism mode. Then it hit Lewis. She wasn't humoring Casper. She was actually taking him seriously.

"Well, when you think of the last century of literature, everyone says Earnest Hemmingway or Henry James, but I always think James Baldwin. Richard Wright. Langston Hughes. How could they be part of a fringe culture when their writing was just so much stronger than what the white writers of the time were putting out?" said Casper.

Lewis didn't like the amount of eye contact he was giving Kendra.

"That whole movement came out of my neighborhood," he said quickly.

"That's right. You're from Harlem. It must have been pretty amazing to grow up there with all of the history and knowing so many important things that happened to black America started there," said Kendra.

"It was," said Lewis, angling for some eye contact of his own, "It was kind of a rough place to grow up, but at the same time, there was just such a strong sense of community. I mean, I wouldn't be here right now if I didn't have the community behind me."

"Where I'm from is pretty rough, too," said Casper.

"Really?"

"Oh god," thought Lewis.

"Yeah. Like everyone thinks Sweden is a completely posh country, but I'm from a really poor area, so I guess that's why I can relate to people like Richard Wright."

"So what do you do over breaks? I guess obviously you can't just travel back to Sweden for Thanksgiving," said Kendra.

"In our dorm, we have the option of staying for breaks," said Casper.

"So you're just going to stay in the dorm? All by yourself?" asked Kendra.

"It's not so bad," said Casper.

"That's so sad," said Kendra, "Coming all the way to America and not even getting to experience a real Thanksgiving."

Lewis didn't like the note of sympathy that had crept into her voice.

"Why don't you come home with me for Thanksgiving?"

Lewis was almost shocked to hear himself blurt it out.

"Seriously?" said Casper.

"Yeah. You can stay with my family and I could show you around Harlem."

As he was saying these things, Lewis knew that they were a form of self torture, but it was worth it for that moment when Kendra smiled at him.

"That would be cool," said Casper.

"Awe, that's so sweet of you," said Kendra.

"It's worth the pain," Lewis told himself.

Aloud he said, "A friend of mine does Gospel tours. I could take you on one of those and you could experience some of the culture."

"Cool," said Casper.

Kendra nodded and said, "That must be such an interesting place. I'd love to experience it some day."

"Well, you're only in Connecticut, right? Why don't you get the train in and meet us for a day over the break?" said Lewis.

"I'd love to," said Kendra, "But we're going up to Portland to see my uncle."

"Another time," said Lewis.

"Definitely," she said.

Lewis saw his Thanksgiving break dashed against a wall. Instead of hanging out with old friends, he would be toting a blonde liability around historical sites. His friends would be horrified if they had to listen to Casper talk about his childhood in the "ghetto" or his love of the new Pussy Monger album.

Then he remembered the way Kendra had looked at him when he had offered to bring Casper home. She had looked at him like he was the kind of person who did charitable things. She had tilted that beautiful African face of hers toward him with admiration. At that angle, the light brought out the deep oak coloring of her skin. All around their feet, shapes from a disco ball swerved across the floor. Kendra met Lewis's gaze directly and spread her lips into a smile. For that look to be aimed at him again he would sacrifice a thousand Thanksgiving breaks.

When the bus pulled away from campus, it contained a mix of faces with different skin tones and ethnic features that were tribed to each other by pea coats and backpacks. It wound along the hills through the snow picked trees and at each stop some pea coats descended and others joined the herd. By Springfield, however, Lewis and Casper had to change to a more crowded, less well-kept bus and between them, they had the only two pea coats in sight.

Lewis sat down next to a girl and Casper took the seat across the aisle from him. There was a lot of rowdy shouting going on and someone was blasting rap music out of portable speakers. Lewis steeled himself and remembered good naturedly that the bus portion of the trip was almost over and he would only have to put up with the racket until New Haven.

The bus tried to leave the station, but had to pull in again to let the police on to break up a fight.

"Why they trying to fight the Dominicans?" the kid in front of Lewis asked the girl sitting next to him.

"They don't know how to act," she replied.

After the police made their arrests, there was still some confusion as some other people got off the bus and after a minute or so, go back on again.

One short guy in huge pants jogged to the door and shouted, "Hey. Hey. Do you still have the—"

He mimed smoking something.

"Bring it here," the man shouted.

He had his head wrapped up in a do rag and one pant leg rolled up in the manner of a Cambodian foot soldier. Lewis remembered what Shavi had said about rap being camp. The short guy jumped off the bus and then got on again.

"Either stay on the bus or stay off," said the bus driver.

Another young man was going to the front.

The driver said, "If you get off now, you're not getting back on."

There were a few people milling around in the aftermath of the fight.

"I just need to check that my bag is still under," said the young man, hopping off. Some of the guys in the back started shouting along to the rap music.

"I'm going to get so drunk!" screamed a woman.

An argument he couldn't make out was getting heated. Lewis wondered if the police would have to board again to break up another fight.

The girl next to him said to the friends in the seats in front of them, "They're getting on my nerves. They don't know how to act."

There were sighs of agreement.

Then the short guy came up again. He said, "I hear you don't like me."

"You don't know how to act," she said with a flickering Caribbean accent. "You act like you're in high school."

Could you sit down so we can leave?" the bus driver called back half-heartedly. "Awe. You're so

cute," short guy said, reaching over to pat her head.

She swiped his hand away and said, "Get off me."

Lewis felt obligated to intervene and said, "Why don't you sit down?"

"Yo, you better tell your boyfriend not to start with me."

"I'm not trying to start with anyone. I'm just saying let the bus driver do his job."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Lewis didn't know if it was disgust that made her place so much emphasis on the word "not" or a trick of her accent.

Another guy came up from behind and said, "Look at this! It looks black, but it talks white!"

"I've never seen this situation before," said the short guy, "It's a real life Oreo."

"Why you going out with an Oreo?" the second guy asked.

"Uh uh, that is not her boyfriend," said the short guy, imitating the girl's voice as he waggled a finger in the air.

"I see. He's going out with Blondie over here."

"I think Blondie is what put the white stuff in the Oreo."

"Oh my god!" a girl squealed from the back, "That's nasty!"

"Oh, I'm not gay," said Casper, "I'm just Swedish. We all look like this. We just look gay because we're European."

"Shut up," thought Lewis, "Shut up."

"Listen up. We can't go anywhere until everyone sits down. Either sit down or get off the bus."

"He's funny," said the tall one.

"Um, I couldn't help noticing that you like Monger," said Casper.

"Yeah?"

"Pussy Monger is one of my favorite albums of all time."

The short guy snarled his laugh and asked nobody is particular, "Is this dude for real?"

"Aren't you a bit Swedish for Monger?"

"Exactly," thought Lewis.

"Well, Sweden is really a posh country, but I'm actually from the ghetto."

Now both men gripped the seats and let out loud cackling laughs.

The tall guy struck an imaginary tear from his eye and said, "I'm telling you, this dude is funny."

"We can't leave until everyone sits down," said the bus driver, not quite forcefully.

"Fool, sit down!" a woman shrieked from the back.

"Shut up!" yelled the short guy, "Sweden, you are too much. Come back and sit with us and we'll talk Pussy Monger."

"OK."

The parking lights flashed, the bus backed away from the curb and a cheer went up from the back.

Lewis looked sideways at the girl expecting his look of embarrassment to be matched and perhaps diffused with a bit of sympathy. Instead she narrowed her eyes at him. He sighed, threw his backpack across the aisle to Casper's empty seat and then shuffled after it. He poured himself into the seat and closed his eyes.

He tried to relax but couldn't. Half of him thought it would be perfectly just if Casper got beaten and/or sexually abused by the crowd in the back, but half of him was rigid with terror. He accused himself. He was the one who had experience with this class of people and he had brought this defenseless, delusional Swede into their midst as if he was at all capable of being a guide. He wondered what they were up to and what they would do to Casper.

From the back of the bus, two guys started beat boxing, producing a reggae rhythm as other people tapped the backs of the seats in time. Then a few guys started up the chorus of Monger's latest single, half singing, half shouting, "Girl, you got a freaky pussy/a freaky pussy/ a freaky pussy/ Girl, I wanna eat that pussy/eat that pussy/eat that pussy."

Then Casper's voice flowed out over the beat into the first verse. He knew all the words, but his accent and stringy little voice made the whole thing comical.

"I put my tongue on your pussy and you feel the delight/I'm going to stuff you and your sister and your friend all night/then your momma walks in and I just can't stop/but the bitch aint mad, she wants to rock my cock..."

The R's were all strangled, the voice seemingly prepubescent. Lewis shifted between foreboding and embarrassment. He kept his eyes shut, determined to sleep until New Haven. At least in New Haven, they could get off the bus and board the train. The train would be easier. The kind of people who took the train would be quieter and the scenery better. He could lean against the window watching the coast ducking in and out of the trees and at Westport, he could look out on the clapboard houses and try to imagine which one was Kendra's.

He would be half looking out for her parents, even though he had no idea what they looked like. In his imagination, they always looked like the Huxtables, perhaps only because one of the few things her knew about her was that both her parents were doctors. Though he knew so little about them, he already knew he liked them because they had raised a daughter like Kendra. He admired them even. They had to be a smart, beautiful black family who weren't afraid of success and valued education, the kind of family Lewis wanted to start himself someday.

He didn't believe in getting ahead of things, but it made so much sense that he already had a vision of it: he and Kendra, walking their two children (a boy and a little girl) along the shorefront of Westport, bending to pick up sea shells and the little faces scrunched with curiosity.

The train would be so much better. Train was the best way to arrive in Harlem anyway. From the platform at 125th Street, they could look out over Harlem from the best angle and see the cathedral and historically brick buildings. When you caught Harlem in the right light, in the right mood, it could be beautiful in its own way. There could be a rainbow of different faces, kids playing music in the street, girls jumping rope, old men with their tongue-in-cheek running commentary of other people's business.

Lewis was now determined to show Casper something of this place. He wanted to humble him a little bit. Show him that it wasn't all what Monger was singing about and that people came together in Harlem to do great things. He was already plotting which barber shop to take Casper into. He wanted to introduce him to the preacher who told him to go to college and the high school teacher who helped him get a scholarship. He wanted Casper to admit that there was more to the ghetto than the images in Monger's music videos.

Yet there was another side of Harlem he wanted Casper to see as well. He wanted to try to get across to him what it was like growing up in a place where, until recently, the police point blank refused to go in to respond to 911 calls. Casper had to realize that it wasn't just a joke to call a place ghetto. Maybe there was a bit of vanity in this as well. Maybe in a small way Casper would come to see that Lewis had overcome obstacles to get to college, that there were no handouts in America.

Finally the bus reached Hartford and most of the people in the back started shuffling with their coats and bags.

"Yo Sweden, look, put this number into your phone. If you're ever in Hartford, you just call me, all right? We'll take you to the club."

"Cool. Cool."

As the crowd from Hartford cleared the bus, a few of them paused to bump Casper's fist or to just exclaim, "Sweden!"

Casper strolled to the front. Lewis moved into the window seat. The group outside was still shouting and laughing as they pulled away.

Casper sighed and said, "Now, they weren't so bad. They were nice actually."

Lewis chose not to dignify this with a response.

"I think they just related to me a bit more than you because we have a similar culture. Because I'm from the ghetto, so I can kind of understand."

"Shut up," said Lewis.

"What? Did I say something? What did I do?"

"Just. Shut. Up."

With that, Lewis clamped his eyes shut and pretended to sleep. This was going to be the longest long weekend of his life.

58

