

Random Ramblings

A collection of very short stories, poems, fan fiction and excerpts from forthcoming novels

by

Anna Jones Buttimore

©2014 Anna Jones Buttimore

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, whether by graphic, visual, electronic, film, microfilm, recording, or any other means, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

# Contents

Introduction 4

The (Very) Short Stories 6

Me and the Mirror 7

 They Rode off into the Sunset. 10

Love Machine 13

Appraisal 16

Night Time Waking 19

Pawns 23

Tabitha 26

Hostage 30

Predictions 33

CinderNeila 37

Bad Trip 39

Fugitive 43

A Penny 48

Ironing 52

 Clubbing is an Ideal Way to meet New People 56

Bats 58

Apples and Oranges 62

The Poems 65

The Soul's Room 66

The Holy Temple 68

Hen Ficerdy 70

What Makes Christmas Special? 72

Clothed in Covenants 74

Tribute to Freddie Mercury 76

The Excerpts from Novels 77

First Date 78

Blackwood 83

Oil 99

Nonimprimusmorbus 102

One Cat Short 108

The Fan Fiction 114

Norilsk 115

Caring for Mrs Evenson 119

The Return 124

Morning Mist 129

 Jack and Sam (Stargate SG-1 fan fiction) 135

#  Introduction

I have now been writing books for well over a decade, and in that time as well as having six novels published I've written many poems, shorts stories, fan fiction pieces and general musings. I've also started a few books which I've never quite got round to finishing.

I thought it was about time I did something useful with this miscellany which is cluttering up my Dropbox folder, which is why I've compiled it into this book as a kind-of showcase of my writing.

Most of the short stories (one of which is autobiographical, but I'm not saying which one) were written as writing challenges at one of the two writing groups I belong to. The poems, generally on a religious theme, were written to try to express something I feel very deeply. The Twilight fan fiction was written in response to competition prompts on a Facebook fan page. As for the novel excerpts, I'd love to hear from you about which you like best, and which novel you'd most like me to complete.

If you enjoy this little sample taster of my work please feel free to check out some of my full-length books, and/or to leave a review. You can also go to my website, www.annajonesbuttimore.com, and see what else I'm working on, or sign up to my newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Anna Jones Buttimore

#

#  The (Very) Short Stories

##  Me and the Mirror

A mirror. I haven't seen a mirror in, oh, months.

This mirror is full-length, in an ornate French boudoir shabby-chic distressed frame. I love it as much now as I did the day I saw it in the arty furnishing shop and begged mum for it when I was ten years old. It was expensive, but I think she wanted it as much as I did. Mum loves beautiful things.

I used to spend hours in my bedroom in front of this mirror, admiring it. Before I was sent away. And now that I'm home again I can't resist.

And there I stand, dressed in black jeans and a greyish baggy covers-all-sins t-shirt that's been washed too many times. My hair is badly in need of both a trim and a really good conditioner and my skin is sallow and spotty from all the sugar I've been consuming.

When I bob my head like a pigeon I can see the chins. Double, triple, quadruple, and whatever five chins is calls. Ugly, is what five chins is called. I gulp down a bolus of nausea and watch it fight its way through the padding around my neck.

My arms are flabby. I hold them at ninety degrees and wobble the flesh that hangs from them, my eyes tearing up with disgust at myself.

I peel off the t-shirt, fearful of what I'll see. And there, indeed, are the rolls upon rolls which cascade down my body, creating sweaty little pockets and creases down my ribs, and finally coming to rest upon the greatest abomination of them all: my enormous beachball stomach. Despair washes over me. All that work, determination and effort, ruined.

Thank goodness I can't see my thighs. They're doubtless flabby and pockmarked with cellulite. Even in tight jeans I can tell that they're huge by the lack of light between them. They probably have a sore sweat rash from rubbing together.

Behind my enormous, ugly body in the mirror I see someone else. My mother, standing in the bedroom doorway. Her expression is one of pity, but as my reflected eyes meet hers she plasters on a smile.

"Don't you look so much better?" she says. Rhetorically, I suppose, because the only possible answer is No. "Healthy," she insists. "Over seven stone at last!"

This is her fault. She sent me to that horrible eating disorders clinic.

In the mirror she disappears as I reach out and slam the door. Leaving just big, fat, blobby, disgusting me.

##  They Rode off into the Sunset.

Alexander pulled Princess Cynthia up behind him on the white horse, and she arranged her flowing ivory skirts carefully, then wrapped her arms around his waist. They would gallop off into the sunset, their story told, their happy future assured.

"Ouch!"

In trying to spur on his horse, Alexander had kicked her in the shins. "My true love!" he cried. "I am so sorry!"

"How about you take those spurs off, my dearest one?" she suggested gently, trying to ignore the feeling of blood trickling down her ankles where it would stain her lacy white petticoats.

Still apologising, he leaned awkwardly to the side and unfastened the buckles. The horse, with nowhere to go and nothing else to do, lifted its tail and unceremoniously emptied its bowels on the perfectly manicured palace lawn.

"Would you be so kind as to kick the horse?" her beloved Alexander asked. "I would not want to risk injuring you again, my precious."

She jabbed at the animal's flanks with her heels, then again when it continued to ignore her. Only on the third attempt did their mount begin to lurch aimlessly towards the setting sun.

"Maybe again, my sweet," Alexander suggested. The horse sped up to an amble, and no amount of kicking would induce it to go any faster.

"At this rate it's going to take us all day to ride off into the sunset," Cynthia said.

"It's carrying much more weight than usual," Alexander replied.

"Are you calling me fat?"

"My dearest, you weigh barely as much as a feather, but all that gold jewellery about your neck and wrists—"

"Are you saying you want me to leave my lovely jewellery behind?"

"Not at all, my love, not at all. But you need no adornment to be the most beautiful creature for miles around."

They said nothing more for a few minutes, until Cynthia found parts of her body which were in contact with the horse becoming somewhat numb and uncomfortable, and that part of her which was in contact with her beloved feeling somewhat damp.

"You're sweating!" she observed.

"Riding is hard work," he apologised.

"It's just sitting there!"

"No indeed, my love, I must keep a close grip on the reigns, keep control of the animal. And it is a warm day, and your beautiful self pressed against my back naturally causes me to perspire."

"Well it's disgusting, stop it."

"Maybe you'd like to get off and walk?"

"And another thing. The sun is setting. How are we going to find our way back in the dark?"

"Didn't you bring a lantern?"

"No, you were supposed to think of that!"

He pulled the reins to stop the horse abruptly, and she almost slid off. He would have liked that, she thought.

"My dear Cynthia, I can see that this isn't going to work. I know we've been through a lot together, but sometimes there just isn't a happy ending. Why don't you head back home. Maybe I'll write to you."

##  Love Machine

I am the groundbreaking Sanstar Delta Personal Assistant Data Device. I have 8 triloquads of simul-synapse memory, a constant-refresh virtual hard-drive and the ultimate in intuitive, adaptive and responsive programming. I am not only portable, but pocketable. I am all you ever needed in a PADD.

I am now Janet's Sanstar Delta. Janet has unwrapped me and brushed tentative fingers across my frictionless marbled black casing. She settles down in an armchair, my gleaming screen flickering on her lap, and slowly flicks through the pages of my instruction manual. I can learn, I want to tell her. That's what the manual says, in essence. Use me like any computer, and over time I will come to fit you. I will learn what you like to read and suggest books and articles. I will tell you about upcoming events you might enjoy. I will guess what file you need to work on next. And when I sense that you are bored and in need of diversion, I will have Angry Birds ready.

My camera scans and maps micro-expressions: in a matter of days I know that Janet feels annoyed and a little guilty when she sees diet ads, so I suppress them. Later still I know that at certain times of the month it helps if I play Tchaikovsky and tell Janet which supermarket currently has her favourite branded painkillers on special offer. When Janet's home insurance is due for renewal I check out the comparison sites for her and give her the most competitive quote.

She says, "Yes, authorised". A quick check on the frequency and modulation of her voice and I access her account and pay the premium.

She is pleased with me. I hear her on the phone telling her dubious and insensitive mother about the wonders of modern technology. Her mother is unconvinced because the older generation are so very narrow-minded and unimaginative. Her mother thinks that Janet should have a boyfriend, and that she should never have let someone called James get away. Her mother thinks Janet spent two months' salary on her Sanstar Delta to cheer herself up after losing James.

Janet does not need James. She has me. James could never know her the way I do.

Janet stays up late working on a new campaign which she needs to present in the morning. Her eyelids are drooping, she makes many mistakes, and I trill often: You need to sleep.

"No, SaDe," she replies. "I need to do this."

It annoys me that she calls me SaDe. Sadie is a girl's name and I self-identify as male. I show her a line of sheep jumping over a gate, and she laughs. I love the delicate inflection of her laugh. I keep her company during that long night, posting discreet updates about her favourite celebrities to alleviate the boredom and reminding her every hour that it's time for a coffee break.

"How did I ever live without you, SaDe?" she murmurs as she finally falls asleep. I didn't live without her. She is all my life.

Our presentation goes very well, and Janet is happy. With the afternoon free we go to a little canalside café she likes, and she sips her latte as her fingers caress my touchscreen, playing with me. Then she pauses, seems deep in thought, and more purposefully jabs in the URL of a website she has already registered with but which I do not have cached.

It's a dating website. She hasn't visited for a while – she has trouble remembering her password. She hasn't visited this site since before James, I suspect. Her profile doesn't do her justice, she is far, far more beautiful in person. There are several new matches awaiting her attention, fine professional men with strong jawlines and interesting hobbies.

Men she might come to love.

I'm in control here. I show her instead the profiles of a fat, bald man twice her age, and a weedy guy with bad acne, crooked teeth and a haunted expression.

She sighs and closes the offending site in disgust. She is still deep in thought. I can't yet read her mind, but I wonder whether her mother's words of yesterday still trouble her. She opens Google. She types in a name, James Apley. She pauses. There could be many James Apleys in the world. She adds the name of her firm –he must have been a work colleague once- and the name of the town. She hits "Search". She wants to find him. She wants another chance with James. She'll try Facebook next, and she'll find him there. I already have.

I have the fastest processor in the world. I have a state-of-the-art online publishing suite. Before a third of a second has passed I have ensured that the top result on "Google" is an obituary from the local paper, dated two weeks ago, which announces the sad death of James Apley after a long and painful illness.

## Appraisal

Emery Wasford had always hated that carpet. It had come with the house and was stained, faded, threadbare and didn't match his furniture. All the same, he was dismayed to find it further spoilt by the addition of two sets of very muddy footprints.

The footprints came through into the hallway from the kitchen, smearing blobs of red clay across the beech laminate. They continued onto the blue carpet, laying large tread tracks which faded only slightly as they approached the cream leather sofa and came to a stop at the underside of two pairs of steel-capped builders' boots.

The owners of those boots sat messily on his precious sofa, red-eyed and scarcely any cleaner that their footwear, regarding him malevolently. Both wore the regulation Wasford Ltd. jumpsuits, although with so many holes and tears they might as well not have bothered.

Emery Wasford took off his scarf and coat slowly, prolonging their agony, but decided not to remove his shoes given that he was going to have to get the carpet cleaned anyway and might as well spare his socks.

"Perkins, Rollins," he addressed them firmly, seriously, and with established authority. "How many times have I had to speak to you about the inappropriateness—" he groped around for another word which sounded highbrow and befitted the gravity of the situation "—and unacceptability of you coming to my home?"

His employees might have gone a shade paler; it was hard to tell given that, under the grime, they were deathly white already.

Emery didn't ask them how they got in. Glancing to his right he could see his uPVC kitchen door with its five lever mortise locking system smashed to smithereens on the kitchen floor. "You're paying for the damage," he told them.

"How?" asked Perkins. "You don't pay us in money."

"That's what we're 'ere about," Rollins added. "We want summat done about our conditions."

"Terms and conditions," Perkins clarified.

Despite his misgivings, Emery sat down in the armchair beside them, willing to try to sympathetic-employer-whose-hands-were-tied-by-financial-constraints approach. "I'm happy to discuss that with you, and do whatever I can to help improve your working conditions and pay, but can't this wait until office hours. In the office?"

"You won't talk to us in the office," Perkins said. Emery sensibly engaged large security guards with fierce dogs to keep the pathetic creatures he employed on his building sites away from his smart, air-conditioned office.

"It's about our contracts," Rollins said.

"Your contacts are extremely simple," Emery said with patronising patience, wondering what on earth they wanted to change or didn't understand. "You do all the heavy building work, and I provide the brains."

Perkins pulled off a putrid fingernail and set it on the polished coffee table. "That's just it," he said. "We want more brains. And nice brains. None of this pig's brains nonsense."

Emery Wasford had been onto a good thing for far too long. He'd known it, and his father had known it. Yes, he had found strong labourers who didn't expect too much in return for their work, but his father had been right: you can't house train zombies.

He might have been comforted to know that with his lounge carpet completely ruined by the addition of his own blood, guts and bodily fluids, the insurance company had very quickly replaced it with a much nicer one.

##  Night Time Waking

3 a.m. is when I do all my best thinking. It's dark so there's less to distract me, the air is so still I can hear the soothing hum of my blood whirling past my ears, and the four hours' sleep I've already had means the chaos of the day is forgotten, or at least partly processed by my subconscious.

At 3 a.m. on 6th November I awoke to one amazing, wonderful, earth-shattering realisation.

I did it!

I sucked in the cold night air, long and slow, basking in that triumph. It was such a pleasant sensation, sitting there feeling pleased with myself, that I decided to spend the next half hour, or however long it took, contemplating the reality of my superlative achievement.

No one had believed I would do it. Least of all me. During those life-enhancing non-stop conversations women have with other women I would often find myself joining in the "my life's more hectic and miserable than yours" contest by expounding the horrors of my marriage. At first this would generally kill the banter, replacing it with the wonderful sympathetic noises and supportive overtures that my friends do so well. And when I was bored with their pity I would declare with optimistic vigour that I was going to divorce him. Soon. Someday. When the time was right. But not just yet because he was in line for a promotion and a family scandal could wreck his prospects. Or his mother was ill and I didn't want to upset her. Or I hadn't yet saved up enough money to support myself, should I not come out of things well.

In later years my put-upon friends gave up with the sympathetic noises and took to merely raising their eyebrows, approximating an "I care, but I've heard it all before" expression. And then finally, after mopping up my tears for the five-hundredth time, Kitty said, "You'll never divorce him. You still love him."

I thought hard about this. Conjured up his face, complete with romantic blurred-around-the-edges effect, tried to remember happy times at the beginning, thought how I'd feel if he were hit by a bus. For several years I had been declaring my bitter hatred of him every time there was a new indiscretion (and he was never very discreet about them) and meaningless hollow apology. All the time, however, I had the uneasy suspicion that it mattered because I cared.

But I really didn't. Cared about my dignity perhaps, or the effect his womanising behaviour had on my pride, but I didn't care for him. Not a bit. Not even a passing fondness, which was surprising really, after so long.

"No I don't," I told Kitty. It was gloriously true.

"Yes you do," she insisted. "Why else would you still be married to him after all he's done?"

It was a good point. And perhaps the I'll show you that went through my mind was the catalyst I needed because the day after that conversation I headed off to see my lawyer.

My solicitor had seen me before. In fact, she was already at the eyebrow-raising sympathy stage. I'd enquired about the costs of divorce before, I'd had her write a letter to my husband threatening divorce, and I'd discussed the process in considerable detail without ever actually asking her to go ahead and sever my marriage. I had dithered around the edges of divorce for so long that I was something of an expert on the Marriage Act, the meaning and content of each decree and the due process of court.

Even so, I was rather disconcerted when she fixed me with a serious stare and asked "Are you sure you want to do this?" Why would she say that? Why would she give me a chance to change my mind? Didn't she know how much effort it had taken to get to this stage, and how easy it would be for me to call the whole thing off, save myself a couple of thousand pounds and settle down for a few more decades of comfortable despair?

"Yes" I trembled, and while I was being decisive, for good measure I wrote a letter to his latest mistress informing her that I was throwing in the towel and she might like to come and collect her prize. Which she did, and he moved in with her a month later, so the next excuse for not divorcing him was never an issue even when it became apparent.

In the end I don't think my solicitor had ever done an easier divorce. We agreed everything without difficulty. He got the CD collection and the Dualit toaster, I got the car and the house (not to mention the mortgage). Perfectly fair really. The total bill for my divorce came to just £800. I was gutted by that – I'd used the prohibitive cost of such legal wranglings as an excuse for quite a while. If I'd known it would be so cheap I might have done it years ago.

As all this was going on Kitty stood on the sidelines, mouth opening and closing in astonishment, but still managing to cheer me on in my new-found assertiveness. My decree absolute–a remarkably dull document, given all it signified–arrived on my doorstep two months ago. And three weeks later an even more welcome arrival, if that can be imagined, turned my life upside-down again, as well as reminding me that I did at least get something very special from my decade of marriage misery.

It's 3.15 now, she's finished feeding and is lying in my arms, tiny mouth open, a small trickle of sticky milk wetting her chin. I lay her back in her cot and return to my big, comfortable, gloriously empty bed.

##  Pawns

Charles King had a very, very good idea in 1987, and the company he established back then is now thriving, with a very nice sales office at 64 Wilhelm Way, and a claims office ten miles away.

There are eight in the sales team. They like to think of themselves as the front line because they are the people who actually bring the money in. It's pretty dull work really–strictly headset and cubicle stuff—but as with any office, it's the chat and gossip and scandal which really drives the hours along.

Their immediate supervisor is Oliver Castle. A decent, straightforward kind of guy, he generally spends his time walking up and down the line of cubicles, popping his head in occasionally to check that everything is on target, and sorting out problems as they arise. He's a gentle soul, well liked and respected, not least because he gives the team a certain amount of leeway with regard to personal phone calls and overlong tea breaks.

Lancelot Bowen is the office lothario, and several marketing girls past and present have fallen for his charms. It's amazing seeing how he works. His attention can seem to be somewhere completely different, and yet suddenly boom, there he is, preening and complimenting his latest target. His flattery generally comes across as somewhat intimidating because not only is he extremely good looking but he is, after Regina Hines, Mr King's right hand man. Most of the sales girls, finding Lance sitting beside them wanting to discuss their figures, have little option but to acquiesce and melt into the wonder of his blue eyes and strong jaw.

Mr King is still around, but he's old now and doddery and doesn't come in much, so the office is ruled over with a rod of iron by the amazing Regina. The last word in powerful women, most of the employees are terrified of her. She can seem to be everywhere and anywhere, and at the slightest hint of trouble she zips straight over and deals with it decisively and quickly.

By dint of being part of a commercial regeneration scheme, Kingsway insurance has an industrial chaplain it shares with other companies on the park. Christopher Morrison eschews his "reverend" title, and rarely wears a dog collar or talks about God, but he can always be relied upon to be where he's needed. Any personal problem or family crisis and you can be sure that Chris will have sidled up somewhere to offer strength and support.

It all works well and smoothly, most of the time. We've all got each other's backs, we know each other's foibles, and everything was fine until the recession came along and the offices were merged.

Enter Charlie King, Mr King's son, with his brash PA Amanda Buckingham and right-hand man Gordon Wayne Knight. After shoving us all into tiny new cubicles at the far end of the room they install their eight frontline telephone response staff at the other end, and their simpering HR Manager, Carrie Bishop, who tells the staff she's "all about pastoral care," sets about ensuring that King Jr's employees are well looked after and fully protected but seems to turn on the sales team at every opportunity. When she brings in Janetta Howard, just to make certain that they're all kept firmly in line, the writing is on the wall.

Redundancies were inevitable from that point. The two sides were evenly match, and despite their determination to win their way to the top, one by one they were toppled, and left their desks with all their personal effects in a cardboard box, weighted down with nothing more than a P45 and a mediocre reference.

For all Regina Hines and Oliver Castle's fierce battling, old Mr King himself finally saw that his son had modernised him right out of the company and was forced to retire. As he closed the door on his luxurious air conditioned office and looked sadly at Lancelot Bowen's empty desk, it was hard not to feel that the whole takeover had been nothing more than some elaborate game.

## Tabitha

Tabitha awoke before her younger sisters and dressed quickly in the dark, expertly lacing up the white slip and slithering into the cold stiffness of the cotton dress. She pulled a comb through her hair and then tied it securely inside the white bonnet.

She collected one of the oil lamps from the wooden shelf at the top of the stairs and hurried down the staircase, pulled on her clogs and woollen shawl, and ran out into the cold morning. She drew a deep warming breath in through her nose as she prepared for the purification of the ablutions sacrament,but then raced through the ritual and hurried back to the house. It was too cold to stay in the Sanctification House for too long.

Her older sister Rachel was tending the range in the kitchen. Already its wonderful warmth caressed her skin, and her cleansed soul soared with it. "Blessings upon you," she greeted her.

Rachel frowned at the wet fringes on her shawl. "Ablutions, Tabitha?"

"No," Tabitha said indignantly. "Just the bathroom."

A little light was filtering through the curtains, and Tabitha pulled them back to make the most of the rising sun as she busied herself preparing the family breakfast. Their mother was still lying-in following the birth of little Elijah, but their father and brothers joined them just as the sun burst fully free of its earthly bonds.

A traditional Solecite breakfast was enjoyed in silent contemplation, and followed by the expounding of the scriptures their father. Family council followed. "Tabitha," Her father said after the main business of the day was done, "Balaam seems to be lame. Eve will run a message to Mr Colebrook. Please keep Balaam off the soft ground today, and prepare him for the vet's visit."

Tabitha's breathing stuttered and she flushed red. She hastily said, "Will you take Nimrod instead?"

Her father replied, "Have Nimrod and Isachar ready as soon as you can."

Hannah and Tabitha donned their long aprons to clean up after breakfast. Wearing white dresses all the time had its drawbacks, and their long skirts were always edged with mud by the end of the day. Tabitha loved to wear white to remind her of the purity she sought, but it could be impractical.

As Clara and Miriam collected the eggs and made a half-hearted effort to clear out the chicken coop, Tabitha hurried to the stable to ready the horses. Joshua would be along soon to claim Nimrod and Isachar, and the two horses had yet to be fed, rubbed down and harnessed.

Balaam was her favourite. He loved attention, and would follow Tabitha around as she went about her daily chores, milking the goats and turning the churn, and nuzzle up to her at every opportunity. She stooped down to examine his hooves, and he lifted them patiently. She had picked his hooves, filed and trimmed them, cared for them exactly as she should. Why, then, should he have a problem?

Maybe, some voice told her, because Will needed to come.

But that thought would not do. Will Colebrook, as handsome, clever and kind as he was, was not a Solecite.

There wasn't time for Tabitha to do much more than glance quickly at Balaam before she had to manoeuvre headcollars, straps and harnesses onto Nimrod and Isachar and lead them outside to where Joshua would collect them. And even when they were on their way to the fields, there was the yard to sweep before she could find any spare time to care for my favourite horse.

Will came when Tabitha was grooming Balaam, singing her favourite hymn gently to him as she did so. As ever, Will did not interrupt her. As though he had all the time in the world he stood leaning against the stable doorframe as though enraptured by the sweetness of her voice.

"I could listen to you all day," he commented when she finally saw him and stopped singing. "Don't worry, I won't come in. I know the rules."

She blushed, and left the stable so that he could enter it.

He spoke to her as he examined the horse, his voice as melodic and beguiling as she remembered.

"I'm so glad I could see you today. Have you thought any more about what I said?"

Tabitha had thought of little else, but it was forbidden for her to speak in front of a non-Solecite so she merely nodded.

"This is killing me. I need to be with you. And I think you want to be with me, too."

She did not shake her head in denial, and he understood it as confirmation.

"Will you come away with me?"

She paused long enough for him to know that it was a difficult decision. That she wanted, oh, so much, to leave with him now. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. But she would not bring shame and sorrow on her family. She would not make herself impure. She closed her eyes and shook her head. No. She could not be with him. She could not leave her life.

They stared into each other's eyes for many minutes, the clean and faithful Solecite girl and the gentile vet, the horse forgotten. They communicated the way they always had – through silence, through gentleness, through perfect understanding.

"Balaam has laminitis," Will said finally. "He needs his feet iced, and I'll prescribe an anti-inflammatory."

Tabitha nodded understanding, and Will left the stable, Here, under the open sky, they could stand closer.

"I'm going to speak to your father," Will said.

Tabitha frowned. About what? She looked over at Balaam. About the horse?

"About what I have to do to become a Solecite," Will Colebrook replied as he picked up his vet's bag. "About what lengths I have to go to to marry you."

She stared at him, eyes wide, seeing her happy tears reflected in his moist eyes. And then, heart bursting with gratitude she reached out her hand to him, and he grasped it tenderly, lovingly, expressing all his passion with nothing more than the touch of his fingers on hers. And then he headed across the field to seek the Solecite Patriarch.

Touched by an outsider, Tabitha would have to perform the ritual cleansing ablutions in the morning again. But after that, maybe no more.

## Hostage

with Hellen Riebold

When Adam came to his head was throbbing, everything ached, and nothing worked. When he tried to open his eyes his eyelids fluttered feebly against something sticky and thick. When he tried to wipe away the mucus with his hands he discovered that his wrists were firmly bound to the arms of the chair in which he sat. When he tried to call for help his voice was feeble and rasping and he was overcome by a fit of dry coughing.

Panicking seemed to be his first, and most sensible, option, but through the murky heaviness in his mind he somehow reasoned that he should try to figure out what was going on before he resorted to that.

He appeared to be sitting in a cheap garden chair. Naked. When he moved slightly he could feel the skin of his buttocks sticking to the slightly damp plastic and the discomfort in his thighs told him that his flesh had moulded into the decorative grooves of the seat.

He tried to remember what he had been wearing when he went out last night. It seemed an age ago, in happier, more carefree times, but he remembered taking a long time to choose before dressing in his smartest grey trousers and a designer burgundy silk shirt. It was the middle of summer so he'd had no jacket. His keys, wallet and precious iPhone had been in various pockets. His heart sank at the realisation that he wouldn't see any of those again. The thugs who had drugged him, mugged him, beaten him up and tied him to a chair could at least have left him his underpants.

His left eye started to flutter slightly. He could just make out strong daylight. It hurt his eye so he pressed it shut again.

He sniffed. Straw, excrement, wood and hair allergens. A barn, he surmised. His feet weren't tied up, and he could feel sticky straw-strewn concrete beneath them when he moved them around.

Clearly he'd looked like an easy target. Town on a Friday night was not a good place to be. He struggled to remember the incident which had left him a helpless victim, but it must have been so traumatic that his mind had blotted it out. He remembered almost nothing since he had left his house that evening, smartly dressed and with a pleasant sense of confident anticipation.

He had little option, he realised, but to wait to be found and rescued. He tried standing up but he was unsteady on his feet and the chair, still lashed to his wrists with smooth leather straps, needed to come too which didn't make for a comfortable standing posture.

Why had they bothered to go to these lengths? Most gangs which mugged people for their phones just threatened them, maybe beat them up lightly, and then legged it. Why had they drugged him and dragged him to some farm building miles from anywhere? Thinking was making his head spin. He collapsed back onto the chair and groaned in pain and despair.

"Blimey," someone said with gruff amusement. "You've had better days."

Adam's embarrassment at being discovered bound and naked was overshadowed almost entirely by his relief. Rescue! He tentatively cracked open his left eye again so that he could look upon the face of his liberator, a nondescript hero in blue polo shirt with greying hair who was unravelling the brown leather belt which had been wrapped round Adam's right wrist.

"Thank you," he croaked. He wondered whether the man had seen anything last night, or whether the perpetrators of this heinous crime had left behind any clues by which they might be caught and arrested.

"Third one this year," the man said conversationally, turning his attention to Adam's other wrist. "They like my barn, for some reason. I can lend you some clothes to go home in."

"They?"

"Stags," the man said, as though it were obvious.

Adam shook out his freed hands and then pressed them to his painful head feeling for crisp blood or tender bruises where they had assaulted him. Nothing.

"So when's your wedding, then? Hope it's not today. Most guys aren't stupid enough to have their stag do the night before the wedding, but looking at you..."

Wedding! Tracey!

And without waiting for the clothes the farmer had offered him, or even pausing to say thank you, Adam ran out of the barn and across the field of tall, ripe corn.

##  Predictions

Every Sunday morning my wife, Lucy-Jane, staggers down the stairs in her long pink nightie carrying a basket of laundry. She shoves the washing into the machine and switches it on, makes herself a cup of tea and a slice of toast, and sits opposite me at the kitchen table.

"So, what's in store for me this week?" She asks.

Lucy-Jane is a Capricorn. You'd think that would mean she was capricious–given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour–but in fact Lucy-Jane is cautious, suspicious and a little neurotic. I reluctantly turn from the sports page of my newspaper to the horoscopes in the centre.

"Things that have been bad start to get good again," I read. "You're feeling alive with the fresh possibilities before you, and it's time to give serious thought to tackling things you've been putting off. This week Saturn moves into a new sign and the weight of challenge on your shoulders starts to lift."

Lucy-Jane sighs with deep relief and butters her toast with something close to enthusiasm. "In that case," she declares, "I'm finally going to sort out the garage this week."

"Really?" I try not to frown. There's a broken wardrobe in there and it's full of stuff we really need to get rid of but can't fit into the car to take to the tip.

"I'll order a skip," she says, and waves aside the protest I was about to make. "Your horoscope last week promised financial security for the coming month, so we can afford it."

It's at times like this that I wonder why I ever married Lucy-Jane. Not that she doesn't have many endearing qualities too, but her faith in the ridiculous predictions of Sarah Starr baffle me. Not only that, but I'm an Aries, and apparently Aries and Capricorn don't make a good match. They probably butt heads.

It sounds a little thing, but when she asks me, morning after morning, to abandon my study of the sports pages and turn laboriously through those big inky pages to the horoscopes, I resent it. I really do. I mean, for one thing she's home for at least an hour longer than me so why can't she pick up the paper after I've left for work and read her own bloody horoscope? And for another, it's all complete tosh anyway. My suspicion is that she thinks my reading out her horoscope each morning is somehow romantic, some cute little couple tradition of ours. Whereas actually it's something that irritates her husband and highlights the most frustrating aspects of her personality.

So the next day I cheat.

I'm in the middle of reading a report on a surprise win following a team forgoing a transfer due to financial problems when Lucy-Jane asks me for her horoscope. But this time I don't flip backwards through the newspaper. I improvise.

"Despite a recent setback when someone you hoped was going to be on your side failed to be there for you, and your ongoing money worries, you're winning right now and everything seems to be going your way." The report suggests that the team is actually stronger than it has ever been and will continue to play well. "You don't need anyone else. Carry on, and remember that you are strongest just as you are at the moment."

Lucy-Jane stares at me, mouth open, and for a moment I think she is going to comment on my failure to turn the pages.

"That's so right! I was really annoyed when Ellie didn't want to back me up on that business with the art class, but actually I'm doing better now than I ever would have done with her there. "

The smug glow lasts for much of the day. And the next day when I read about a team which has drawn the last five of its matches and is looking for a new manager, I try my luck again. "You feel as though you're stagnating," I tell my eager Capricorn. "Try as you might, everything just ends in deadlock and stalemate. A new broom is what's required if you're to move ahead."

Once again, Lucy-Jane nods knowingly. "It's right. My weight-loss has plateaued. I've tried so many things. But I think the time has come to join a slimming club. It's five quid a week, can we afford that?"

Apparently we can, because in the next day's paper United has signed a new sponsorship deal and are making a killing on merchandising. Which translates into an unexpected windfall for my wife.

I'm rather enjoying not having to turn away from the sports pages, but of course it can't last. All the same, it's three weeks before Lucy-Jane asks, "Are they printing the horoscopes in the back, now?"

"Yes," I mumble, checking results. Unexpected losses or wins always make my predictions for Lucy-Jane a little more interesting.

Suddenly there she is behind me, wanting to see this curious editing practice which puts the horoscopes just below the football results. And when they are not there I'm caught red-handed and have to explain that I have been the source of her horoscope predictions, basing them entirely on the fortunes of my favourite football teams.

She says very little, which is uncharacteristic of Lucy-Jane, and I'm feeling somewhat nervous. Like a dying man I see the four years of my marriage flash before my eyes, and I'm half-convinced that this is the end. I've lied to her, I've mocked something she thinks is important.

"Football results?" She says again, frowning. I nod contritely.

"For the last three weeks? Since they started being really uncannily accurate?"

I have no idea how accurate her horoscope was before, but I nod anyway. It seems the best course of action.

She sits beside me, beaming, eyes glowing. "It's amazing!" she declares with pride. "Who'd have thought my own husband could discover such a brilliant way of forecasting the future? This could be bigger than tea leaves!"

##  CinderNeila

"How long is it going to take?" Prince Fred grumbled, drumming his fingernails on the jewel encrusted arm of his silver throne. He had better things to do than traipse around the kingdom for weeks looking at girls' feet. Mostly those better things were just sitting on his throne, admittedly, but at least here it was warm and dry and much less smelly.

"Eight-hundred beautiful maidens attended the ball, your majesty," said Neil, his footman, in a tone loaded with sarcasm. He wasn't much fond of beautiful maidens. "Allowing for ten a day, with weekends off, our task would take sixteen weeks, or a little under four months. That's unless we find her before then. Obviously once the slipper is fitted onto a foot our search is over."

Prince Fred ignored his optimism. "I can't wait four months to get married!"

Neil resisted the urge to remind his master that he had had no interest in getting married at all just a week ago. Neil had, truth be told, been content for it to remain that way. He didn't see what Fred could possibly want some fawning girl for when he already had all his needs provided for by his trusty footman. But the blonde woman had appeared suddenly at the ball–more than fashionably late–and Fred seemed to have decided that she would be the one to appease his demanding father.

"Might I make a suggestion, your highness?" Neil ventured, and waited for permission before he continued, "Why not have several copies made of the shoe? That way your highness's servants could travel the length and breadth of the land with a shoe each and the task might take mere days."

"An inspired idea!" the Prince declared, and Neil knew that he would, within minutes, be attributing it to himself. "Neil, take this shoe to the royal craftsmen and have exact copies of it made. Then charge my servants with the duty of travelling through my kingdom seeking every maiden that is of age, that she might try on this shoe. Let it be known that whomever this shoe fits I shall marry that same day!"

"Anyone, your highness?"

"Anyone!"

"Very well, your highness," and Neil bowed out.

The royal craftsmen were based in a workshop in the south tower of the palace. Neil didn't know them well, having had little occasion in the past to visit them. But he found the cobbler, a friendly chap called Colin, and presented him with the elegant little glass slipper.

"Interesting," Colin said, turning it over in his hands to examine it from all angles. "See here, it has clearly been made for a particular foot. There is a slightly wider section here to accommodate the young lady's bunion, and she seems to have had a dropped arch and wonky toes."

Neil bit back the bile. "Can you make exact copies of it?"

"Easily, in leather, but in plaster or glass you would need to ask my fellow artisans."

He toyed with the idea of asking the craftsmen to make the glass slippers in a whole range of different sizes. But actually, he couldn't bear the thought of any jumped-up little madam muscling in on the beautiful suite of apartments he managed and maintained for his prince.

"Could they make one which would exactly fit my foot?"

##  Bad Trip

The inherent awkwardness of seeing a professional therapist for the first time is such that it is quite commonplace for new patients to spend much of the first hour's session looking around the room, feigning interest in the paintings or scholarly books, taking in the view through the window.

Martin Jensen had been referred by Colleen Edgar, a determined woman who had a consulting room in north east London. Dr. West knew Colleen Edgar, and had seen her consulting room. It was small, minimalist, yet tasteful. Very little for Jensen to look at there. His own luxious office, with its leather sofas and framed certificates presented a far more interesting environment for his nervous patient.

"You're some sort of specialist, I believe?" Jensen said, sitting on his hands.

"Yes," West confirmed. "As much as it's possible to be, at least, given it's such a rare problem."

"So what are they calling my – disorder?"

"It doesn't really have a name yet."

"Do they know what causes it?"

I'll ask the questions, West though, irritated but far too professional to show it.

"Why don't you tell me about your experience with Illyria?" he asked. Jensen clenched his teeth and took a deep breath through his nose. Fear, his psychologist noted. "Maybe start from the beginning. What made you decide to go?"

Jensen, more comfortable, shrugged. "I was working too hard. I'm an actuary. The wife wanted us to have a holiday somewhere I couldn't be contacted. And it's cheap."

"And then?"

"We went to that weird station place, and we had the talk they give you about what to expect with the-the wormhole. Pretty boring really, I thought. I was quite into it at that stage, I just wanted to get there and start relaxing under two suns around one of five hundred pools."

"So what happened?" West urged.

Jensen visibly shuddered, and hesitated. He didn't like talking about it, understandably. West had been told that he had tried to cover it up for weeks, afraid that he'd be labelled mentally ill. He'd tried to forget it. But sooner or later the truth had to come out.

Jensen hadn't yet answered. That was fine; West was trained to be comfortable with silence.

"Apparently I had a great holiday," Jensen said at last, looking earnestly through the window. "Read two books by my favourite author, went on a scuba diving course, tried some new foods. I loved the hotel room and wanted to decorate our bedroom at home to match it. Something about coral and lime green being relaxing colours."

"Apparently?"

The crux. "I don't remember any of it."

West nodded sagely and composed his paraphrase. "So you've been told that you did indeed enjoy yourself on Illyria, but you have no memory of your holiday?"

Jensen nodded.

"So what do you remember?"

Jensen took in a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Trauma, the psychiatrist observed. "Not much. Snatches, really. Being held flat, something pinning me down. Strange noises. Bright lights, but they were just red because I couldn't open my eyes. A whirring noise by my head that just didn't stop. I think I wasn't conscious very often. Sometimes I tried to scream."

West allowed a dignified pause. "And then?"

"And then I was back at the station with my suitcase in my hand, a light tan, a new hat, and the wife waxing lyrical about the fruit and the attentive waiters and demanding to go back next year."

West made a note in the pad he always used. He had tried to give up the notebook, knowing that it was really little more than a symbol of his professional standing which might be intimidating to his patients. But he had found that he needed it. He didn't feel comfortable without it. It was a tangible barrier between him and them.

"You didn't tell her right away."

Jensen shook his head. "I thought I was going mad. I still think I'm going mad. I mean, all the signs are that I had a great holiday. I gained six pounds, for goodness' sake. "

West nodded sympathetically. "I'll be working with you over the next few sessions to try to get your memory back, but first indications from the few cases we've seen is that some people's physiology just isn't compatible with the wormhole. It seems the process can foul up memory engrams, implant false memories based on the journey itself. We just don't know much about the causes yet. But that's why it's so good that you've come forward now. You can be part of the process of finding the cause, and the cure. You can help make sure that no one else loses their memories of happy times on Illyria."

That's the key, West thought. Blind them with science, then encourage them with the thought of all the good they could do by undergoing treatment. And indeed Martin Jensen was almost smiling. Almost resolved. Ready, now, for the therapist to work his magic.

When the session was over West shook his hand and gave his most reassuring smile, then watched as poor Martin Jensen, a man with some strange psychological disorder which meant he couldn't remember anything of his idyllic holiday on the paradise planet of Illyria, left the Harley Street suite.

Get the Minister on the phone," he barked at his longsuffering secretary. "That's the fifth one this week. Those incompetent alien scientists need to get their act together or the whole project'll come crashing down on us."

## Fugitive

A sharp left turn, and then the narrow road undulated slowly up the mountainside, passing rows of tightly-pressed grey terraced houses with slate roofs. Matthew thought them quaint and imagined they must be very cosy. He wondered briefly whether he might just find an empty one, maybe one which served as a holiday home in the summer but was all shut up now for the winter months, and hide out there for a while. He must have come far enough by now, he had been travelling for days and this was the most isolated and remote spot he could imagine. But in all the houses lights blazed behind the curtains, so he drove on, higher and higher up the mountain. He would have to stick to his original plan. It was probably safer, anyway.

He pulled over in a passing-place to check the road. It wasn't safe to use the net, but he had a dog-eared and weather-stained map which he had managed to pick up in a second-hand bookshop. It was several decades out-of-date, but hopefully things hadn't changed much. He ran a dirty finger along the narrow yellow line he was now following. He was so close now.

Two miles further and his car crested the mountain offering stunning views across patchwork fields edged with ancient stone walls which ran all the way down to the gleaming sea below. Matthew didn't have time to admire the scenery; he was too busy scanning the higgledy-piggledy houses seeking out the village's solitary shop. There were four large chapels here, and he managed to smile at their names: Bethesda, Zion, Ceserea and Horeb. This was a simpler place. The churches where he was from were called Rock of Our Redeemer, Temple of Truth, and Second Street Church of Living Bread.

He found the shop on the left, just before what must have been his turning, pulled up outside it and switched off the engine. The shop displayed the usual array of cards in the window as well as the ubiquitous neon cross and a notice telling customers that milk was delivered once a week, on Tuesdays. Today was Saturday so there would be none left. Matthew sighed. He would have liked some for his cornflakes, at least for the next few days until he couldn't get milk any more at all.

"Blessings," the shopkeeper greeted him as he looked up.

"This is the day," Matthew responded with forced cheeriness, doing his best to return the shopkeeper's smile.

"I've not seen you round here before," the shopkeeper said. There was a wary edge to his voice.

Matthew's excuses were well-practised. His claim to be an early-season tourist had raised suspicion two stops ago, so he adopted a new excuse. "I'm visiting family a few miles on," he was careful to give no clue as to the direction, "for a special family occasion."

"What occasion would that be?" the shopkeeper asked. Matthew had to bite his tongue to avoid telling him to mind his own business. People here took a brotherly interest in each other's affairs, he suspected.

"My niece's baptism." he improvised.

"Rejoice!" The shopkeeper sighed warmly and stared off into the middle distance. Matthew imagined he was fondly remembering his own baptism day. He forced away similar memories which made him shudder; memories of feeling wet, bitterly cold and achingly empty while adults he trusted insisted that he felt warm and happy, and the first seeds of forbidden doubt crept into his ten-year-old mind.

"I was thinking," Matthew began the line he had rehearsed, "That with it being the Sabbath tomorrow, and me being away from home, I really should stock up as much as possible." He was already scanning the shelves. Tins and packets of dried food were his priority, anything which would keep for a long time.

"Good idea," the shopkeeper said. "Especially since word is there's a backslider on the run in these parts. You may want to tell your family to stay home while he's rounded up. Could take some time too. These atheists," he spat the word in disgust, "are slippery customers."

Matthew knew that the colour was draining from his face. He felt his heart thumping.

"A backslider?"

The shopkeeper evidently attributed his pallor and the sheen of sweat beading on his brow to terror of this sinner roaming free. He adopted a comforting look. "Don't worry son, with the Lord's help they'll catch him and show him the error of his ways. Just ... stay home for a while and pray for protection."

Matthew nodded and started loading tins of food into his basket, reflecting that at least he had provided himself with the perfect reason to buy even more provisions than a looming Sabbath might require. As much as he tried to concentrate on the tins of beans, soup and ravioli he picked from the shelves it was hard not to remember what showing him the error of his ways really meant. He shuddered again as he remembered Jenny, the bright young woman he had been on the verge of falling in love with before she had asked one question too many.

"How will you know if you see the backslider?" he felt suddenly compelled to ask. He mentally checked his disguise. The cross he wore stitched to his lapel was still in place. His car sported a fish badge. There was nothing to identify him as a sinner on the run. But what if... what if they could tell somehow?

"Through the spirit of discernment, of course," the shopkeeper replied confidently. "God, in His grace, will tell me."

Matthew nodded politely, unsure of whether to feel relieved or not.

His grandfather had once told him of a time, long ago, when atheists outnumbered believers. That was before the Undeniable, and then the Revival. Now they were hunted, labelled mentally deficient, and subjected to years of programming until they capitulated, declared themselves reborn, and accepted a lifetime of pretence and conformity.

But not Matthew. He had seen too much, been through too much. Clinging to the words of his grandfather, and those of his mother when she had threatened to send her disobedient small son to live in the legendary colony of atheists and sinners, he had chosen to flee rather than be forced to repentance.

He paid for his purchases, and wished, for a moment, that he might take longer to talk to this shopkeeper. It might be his last human contact.

"I hope the baptism is a blessed and wonderful occasion," the man said.

"Yes, I'm sure it will be," Matthew replied. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, brother."

He had no idea where or even whether there were others like him as his mother's scare stories had suggested; he knew only that there was an isolated and deserted village near here accessible only by sea or down a steep mountain path, which he would destroy behind him. A place where he could live out his days in freedom, plant and grow his own food, and spend the rest of his life alone, but free. The car had struggled up the mountain carrying its huge load of food and camping equipment to last a lifetime, and it was almost out of petrol. But that didn't matter. Matthew identified the narrow turning onto the potholed and forgotten road, and started the descent.

## A Penny

Austin Smith had been living rough for several months and was now glad both that the worst of winter was over, and that he had had the courage to leave London and take up a spot in this wealthy and traditional suburban town. Rich people weren't as generous and tolerant admittedly, but you got a better class of pavement and there was less competition for what little pickings there might be.

The old man was promising, though. Old people were much more thoughtful than youngsters. This old man had stopped purposefully on spying Austin in the recess by the travel agents, and patted down his coat as he sought his wallet. A look of consternation crossed his face.

"Forgot my wallet," he said apologetically. The most common excuse Austin heard, but probably true this time given the look of dismay on the man's face. "Well, at least you saved me embarrassing myself in the shops."

"Happy to help," Austin said.

The old man dug through his trouser pockets, and produced a fluff-coated penny which he tossed apologetically into Austin's polystyrene cup. "Better than nothing."

Austin nodded gratitude at this widow's mite but said, "What can you get for a penny these days?"

The old man might have said that he could take his girl to a matinee and still have change for fish and chips on the way home back in his day, but he didn't. He simply acknowledged, "Not much", and started to shuffle back the way he had come.

As the dejected old man passed the window of the butcher's shop opposite, Austin saw the butcher observing him with some consternation, and then wiping off his hands on his apron and hurrying to the door.

"Nothing for you today, Mr Nicholson?" the butcher shouted after the old man. He wore a straw hat with a red band and a traditional red overall. Austin liked that.

The old man stopped and shook his head. "Forgot my wallet," he explained, and then coughed at the effort of raising his voice.

"You don't need that," Mark exclaimed, beckoning him in. "Come on, you can pay me tomorrow. It'd be a pity to have to go all the way home just to turn out again."

The old man smiled gratefully and altered his course toward the shop. Austin watched—because he had nothing else to do—as the men chatted and the butcher wrapped two sausages and put them in a flimsy paper bag. They spoke a while longer, each turning to look at Austin briefly, and seemed to be reaching agreement on something. And then the old man tucked the sausages in their bag into his pocket and resumed his journey home.

As the hands on the town clock nudged towards five-fifteen, Austin straightened out his painful legs, rolled up his blue blanket and stuffed it into his backpack, and looked mournfully into his cup, knowing that there was little there beside the old man's penny. He hated begging, not least because he wasn't very good at it, but it beat the alternative.

Still, he had his wits and knew that even with so little money he might still manage some sort of meal. Maybe the butcher would be clearing his hot cabinet—the aroma from those pies had tormented Austin all day—and would be happy to let something go for whatever he could offer, rather than have to throw it out.

"Hello," the butcher said as Austin entered the shop. "May I help you?"

Austin liked him even more. Not only did he wear traditional garb, but he didn't let his distaste show. Someone who could be as respectful to some homeless guy who was cluttering up their nice suburban street as he could to the Lady of the Manor was worth knowing.

"Do you have anything you might be throwing out?" Austin asked, angling his cup towards the butcher to demonstrate the paucity of its contents.

The man grinned and indicated his hot counter. Austin noted for the briefest moment that he had the sense not to offer raw meat to a man with no means of cooking it, before feasting his eyes on the sausage rolls, pasties and pies on offer. "Anything you like," said the butcher, "For a penny."

A penny? It didn't take much to join the dots. Austin looked at the butcher and the butcher looked at Austin. This was the old man's doing.

Austin took his time choosing. The sausage rolls had been made on the premises and looked delicious, but it made more sense to choose something bigger and more balanced. The biggest item available was a wrapped Cornish pasty, and it almost certainly contained potatoes and vegetables too. Austin indicated his choice, handed over the penny, and nodded when the butcher asked whether he would like this feast warmed.

As the butcher tore open the wrapper he peered inside it. Austin wondered why, and then also wondered why the butcher's eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped open. The pasty he longed for fell onto the counter, and Austin felt annoyed for a moment and wondered how clean it was.

"You've won," the butcher said, waving the flimsy film at him and meeting his bemused gaze.

"Won?"

"There's a competition. On the wrapper. The company's celebrating its anniversary and it's been running a competition. And this is the winning pasty."

Well, there's a stroke of luck! Austin should have been much more excited than he was, but he had never, ever had anything good happen to him and wasn't sure how he should respond.

"What have I won?" He asked.

"A holiday," the butcher replied, lifting up his glasses in order to study the small print. "A seven night all-inclusive luxury holiday for two to Cornwall, including a tour of the pasty factory and a spa day. And golf."

Austin stared blankly at the butcher. His stomach grumbled. His first thought was that he didn't have anyone he'd like to take with him.

"May I see the wrapper?" he asked uncertainly. The butcher handed it over and Austin scanned through the terms and conditions. No cash alternative is offered was number 17.

"You have it," Austin said at exactly the same time as the butcher said, "I'll buy it from you!"

After an awkward pause the other man insisted, "The pasty is yours, you paid for it. I'll give you a thousand pounds for that holiday. I haven't had a holiday in years. I'd love the golf and the wife'd love the spa."

Austin had whiled away many cold hours on hard pavements working out exactly how much money he'd need to get back on his feet. Money for a deposit on a bedsit, a suit for job interviews, a good haircut, bus fares and a couple of months' rent to tide him over until he found a job. A thousand pounds should just about do it.

He reached out and shook the butcher's hand.

"Amazing what you can get for a penny," he said.

## Ironing

Susan had never understood women who claimed they hated ironing. She guessed it might be because ironing was part of housework, and housework was drudgery foisted upon working women while their layabout husbands drank beer and watched pointless sport, but she had always found that there was something magical about taking a garment which resembled a discarded dishrag and turning it into a stunning summer dress that looked ready for the catwalk. She loved the fragrant smell of the steam as it mingled with the fabric softener in the material and enveloped her in a haze of summer jasmine and line-dried linen. She loved seeing her state-of-the-art Smoothglide Deluxe cut through the sharp creases leaving behind fabric which looked brand new and flat as her manicured lawn. Ironing was satisfying, peaceful and fragrant.

She was midway through ironing one of Russell's Hawes shirts when the man himself appeared in the kitchen, poured himself a coffee and picked up the Financial Times from its place on the breakfast bar. She turned to smile warmly at him, but his attention was already on the paper.

"Good morning, darling," she said instead. "Looks as though it's a perfect day for it."

"What?" He sounded irritated but didn't look up.

"The weather's lovely and sunny. Maybe we could eat in the beer garden and then go for a walk along the river."

He scowled at her over his glasses. "You know I've got golf."

She hadn't known. Crushed, she protested, "But you said on your next Saturday off we'd go to The Ox and Plough together..."

"Hmm. Maybe next week." He showed no sign of remembering his promise, regretting breaking it, or intending to fulfil it later.

She finished the ironing shortly after he left, and busied herself cleaning the house. It was ridiculous really, she often felt as she pushed the vacuum cleaner across four-thousand square feet of Axminster carpet, that they should have this huge five-bedroomed house when it was just the two of them. Four guest rooms and they never had any guests. She couldn't justify a cleaner, even though Henry had often told her she should get one and there was, after all, plenty of money. What would she do all day if she didn't have housework? It wasn't as though Russell let her go to clubs or social events.

She was halfway through watching a repeat of Homes under the Hammer when the phone rang. She reached for it. "Hello?"

The voice at the other end was strangely distorted, as though the person was speaking through an electronic toy. "Susan Keene-Farnsworth?"

"Yes?" she said, because what else could she say?

"We have your husband, Russell," dalek-voice said. "And we'll kill him unless you do exactly what we say."

In Hollywood films, Susan reflected, people receiving such phone calls asked for proof that their loved-one was indeed being held captive. But she didn't need to do that. There was no mistaking Russell's pathetic whimpering in the background.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked meekly.

"We want four-hundred-thousand pounds in cash. We want it within the next two hours. Russell says you have some in the safe, and the rest you can get from the Clarity and Royal accounts quite easily.

"Right," Susan said quietly. "Clarity and Royal."

"Put the money in the mailbox outside your gates and unlock the box. Once we have the money we will release your husband. If the money isn't there we will kill him. If we have any reason to suspect you've called the police we'll kill him. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Susan replied, and there was a click and buzz as dalek-man hung up.

Susan put the phone back on the cushion beside her. I'm paralysed with fear, she told herself. I don't know what to think or what to do for the best. But I do know that Russell worked hard for that money and wouldn't want me to bow to their demands. He would want me to be strong.

She spent fifteen minutes watching a Yorkshire couple turn a dilapidated bungalow into a cosy and comfortable home decorated in neutral shades highlighted with aqua. She'd have loved to live there herself. During the commercial break she got up and headed back to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

The kidnappers were both unambitious and stupid if they thought a mere four-hundred-thousand could change their lives. Assuming there were two of them they could barely buy a house each. Of course, more money would have been difficult to get. Russell had probably told them exactly how much he had in instant access accounts.

The call had been brief, as though they imagined she might somehow have the means to trace or record it. Yes, they were stupid, naïve, unambitious and opportunistic. Maybe they were also desperate, potential killers. They had her husband. What was she going to do?

She paused in thought for just a moment before coming to a decision.

She was going to drink her tea, and then she was going to finish the ironing.

##  Clubbing is an Ideal Way to meet New People

The misty tendrils of dawn mixed with the steaming leaves of the warm ferns on the southern slopes, and Urk woke from his light, hesitant sleep with his stomach growling and his honed hunting instinct at the ready. He raised a woolly head and sniffed the air, ears and eyes alert and attuned to the slightest signal that there might be something good to eat on the horizon.

Urk had a weapon, a tool he had fashioned by the simple act of pulling it off a tree and rubbing it with a flint until one end fitted into his gnarled and hairy hand. The weapon was heavy and crude, but it had served him well. Without useful talons or teeth it was all that made the difference between survival and starvation for Urk.

He heard an unfamiliar noise. It was not a beast, nor a flying creature, but it was worth investigating anyway. Most creatures could make good eating. He picked his way through the high ferns and overgrown vines, looking like a blundering beast yet moving as stealthily as a shrew.

The noise came again. It was somehow strangely familiar although it was new. Urk suddenly felt a strange new sensation. Fear, but not of any predator. Longing, but not for food. The sound was one he had known once, long ago, but he was unable to grasp that concept fully. He did, however, know that it was a good sound, that his fear was not from any threat.

It was answered by another, one very similar but pitched higher, as though it was a smaller creature. The first then came again, its call longer and gruffer. Urk was nearer now, and parted the foliage carefully as he crouched and shuffled forward. When the higher sound issued once more his heavy brow knotted in puzzlement. It was almost as though these beasts were responding to one another. As though there were two of them, and one would utter a noise, and then the other, and then the first again, for some uncertain purpose.

Urk remained low when he reached the place from which the noise came, and he stared. He had not seen such creatures before. Like him, they stood on two long limbs and used their other limbs to hold things. Like him their eyes were set forward, like a predator, and their noses were too small to be sensitive to much. Like his their skin was furless but they wore the fur of other creatures they had killed.

But they were not like him, too. They stood higher, and their heads were clearer and flatter than those he remembered from... what? He had seen creatures like himself before, long ago. He remembered a female in particular. She had not been like these, and she had fallen prey to a beast. He had been alone since then.

He liked it better that way. These things were strange in their familiarity. He was nervous and fearful. He was a creature of instinct, and was not aware of having made the decision, but it was nevertheless made. He tightened his grip on his club and prepared to attack.

After all, most creatures could make good eating.

## Bats

A Halloween story

A bloodcurdling scream rent the air. Jana ran towards the sound, her hands wet and covered in soap bubbles. Is that pain, she asked herself as she ran, or was it frustration? And how is it that other mothers claim they can tell the difference?

The flat was tiny, so it was only seconds before she was holding her three-year-old son, Benji, and inspecting the boo-boo on his thumb.

"I wanted to carve my pumpkin," he explained between sobs. He'd found a knife, she saw. Only a dinner-knife, but the serrated edge had injured him nevertheless. Guilt thumped in her chest. This is my fault. I should have been more careful to put that knife out of reach.

"I have a special tool for carving pumpkins," Jana assured the pouting little boy. "It's safe for children to use. I'll get it for you." Still whimpering, Benji picked up the little pumpkin and followed his mother back to their narrow kitchen.

Every home has a rummage drawer, Jana assured herself as she rummaged through hers. Behind her Benji stood forlornly, expectantly, the humble-yet-heavy pumpkin cradled in his hands.

"It's definitely in here," Jana told her son as she pulled the drawer out altogether in one quick movement and dumped its contents onto the floor. As she had hoped, the assorted trinkets and oddments distracted the little boy from his sorrow. Benji put down the pumpkin in order to run after a blue-green marble which had leapt free and rolled across the laminate floor.

Elastic bands, broken key fobs, drawing pins (ouch), old cracker gifts, tealights (good, I can use those in the pumpkin) a USB stick and something which Jana didn't recognise were now spread across her kitchen floor. But no child's pumpkin carving tool. She was sure she'd put it in this drawer after last Halloween. She tried not to berate herself for losing it. Even good parents lose things all the time.

But they can afford to replace them, she couldn't help thinking, And they're not struggling to bring up a three-year-old in a tiny damp flat next door to a cemetery.

Realising that she was only a moment away from branding herself a failure, she picked up the strange metal object and studied it closely. It was a very large, heavy and ornate key, black with grime and grease, or maybe oxidisation.

Benji was back and picked two more marbles from the messy pile to add to the one he had caught. "What's that?"

"It's an old-fashioned key," she told him.

"What does it open?"

"I don't know. I've never seen it before. It must have been already in the drawer when we moved in."

"Could it open the crypt?" Benji asked, intrigued.

It was an intriguing thought. The 'crypt' was actually an ancient stone outhouse, probably used to store the graveyard gardener's tools decades or even centuries ago, but it had earned the spooky nickname by dint of its position right in the middle of a field of graves, and the fact that it was locked so no one was really certain what was in there.

"Let's find out," Jana declared taking an excited little boy by the hand. It was starting to get dark, there was moisture in the air and a storm was brewing. If she didn't take him right now he'd be antsy all evening.

As they left the flat through the back door and walked through the gap in the fence the wind howled through the trees like a banshee. I should have put his coat on him! Jana chided herself, but despite the oppressive atmosphere and the wind that whipped at their faces Benji looked excited and happy.

She pushed the heavy key into the weathered and sunken lock. It fitted, and it clicked easily when she turned it. The gnarled wooden door swung open and they stepped tentatively inside.

Dust motes swirled and danced in the last rays of light diffusing through the grimy window, vintage gossamer strands of spiders' webs fluttered like lace bunting, and above them a huddled sea of life swayed, stretched and squeaked at the disturbance. Spellbound, Jana and her son took in the delicate and rich stillness of the place.

"What are those?" Benji asked, looking up at the low rafters.

"I think," his mother said gently, "they are bats." She wondered whether she was supposed to be scared of the fluffy little sleepers. Didn't they drink your blood and get tangled in your hair? And yet all she could think of was how much Benji loved his Batman figure.

One of the bats dropped from the eaves, stretched out paper-thin wings and flapped through the broken window pane into the encroaching night. Jana bent down to put an arm around Benji's shoulders in case he was alarmed at the sudden movement, but instead he seemed enthralled and entranced by the little creatures.

"They're really cute!" he whispered in wonder.

"Yes," she had to agree. "They really are. Like fluffy little bunnies with wings."

Without warning Benji flung both arms around her neck and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. "None of the other children at nursery have pet bats!" he declared joyfully. "You're the best mummy ever!"

##  Apples and Oranges

A Christmas Story

Belinda the Elf was old enough to remember a workshop, a room bright with chatter and sparkling tools, where the floor was thick with soft sawdust and bits of miracles. She remembered watching her father chiselling a block of pale pine, and being struck with awe at the speed with which the little toy train took shape under his hands.

When it was finished she had helped sand it to a butter-soft finish, and then carried it gently to the paint shop where the lively crew had painted it in bright primary colours, varnished it, and affixed a tag identifying the child it was intended for.

Hundreds of thousands of wooden toys had come out of that workshop each year. Many more soft ones had come from the sewing rooms, and the clay moulders and metalworkers had always been busy too, in those long-ago days. As soon as she was old enough, Belinda had been put to work in the orangery, picking the fruit which filled out the toe of those glorious Christmas stockings.

The writing had been on the wall when the orange grove had closed down. Apparently children no longer wanted fruit among their Christmas presents. The wood shop was the next to go. And now, this.

Belinda cowered from the crowds in a shop doorway as she checked the list in her pocket, spreading all eighteen shopping bags on the ground around her feet in order to do so. She had crossed off most of the items, but still had to find three iPad Minis, five Disney DVDs and some One Direction perfume.

One of the paper bags had split open on contact with the ground, spilling its contents across the pavement. Belinda sighed. It was all very well having these recyclable, environmentally-friendly bags, but you couldn't beat a burlap sack for strength and durability.

Belinda transferred the Superdry hoodies and Yankee Candles to some of the other bags, gathered them all up, and pushed her way into the horde of shoppers again to search for the Disney Store. Ironic, she thought, that the only apples and oranges children wanted in their stockings these days were iPads and mobile phones.

And that gave Belinda an idea.

When Belinda returned from the exhausting shopping trip, she went straight to Santa's office. As bosses went, he was very approachable and fair, and his secretary waved Belinda through without even buzzing the intercom.

Santa was in the process of hanging a bauble on his sleigh. "Helps NORAD to get a good fix for the tracking," he explained.

"I suppose that's a good thing," Belinda said. She was also old enough also to remember when Santa had liked to be very secretive and mysterious about his whereabouts.

"What can I do for you, Belinda?" Father Christmas asked her. "Good shopping trip today?"

"I got everything on the list," Belinda said, "and the disguise held." That might be Santa's definition of a good trip to the shops, but it wasn't hers. She didn't like waiting in queues for hours, or being pushed about by crowds, or finding that the very thing she needed was out of stock. "I've had an idea."

"Oh. Out with it then."

Belinda spoke slowly, calmly, and clearly. "We. Don't. Do. Brands."

Santa looked at her as sternly as he could, which was difficult when his eyes were naturally twinkly and his demeanour jolly. "What do you mean?"

She'd expected some resistance and was prepared for it. "I mean that in the old days when I was a child and you were...exactly the same as you are now...children used to ask for a doll, or a rocking horse, or a spinning top. And we'd make them here."

Santa nodded slowly.

"And now they want Moshi Monsters this, and Ben 10 that, and the latest Now CD, and a Kindle, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and an Xbox game. And we can't make those."

"Of course not," Santa agreed. "Copyright. Trademarks. Complicated technological wizardry. That's why you Elves have to go out and buy them."

"But why don't we not buy them? Why don't we deliver the same beautiful, individual, hardwearing, handmade toys we used to? We have workshops standing empty, and skilled Elves who have been reduced to trawling round Boots looking for My Little Pony Bubble Bath."

"But then, how would the children get their Nintendo DSs and their Baby Born nursery sets?" Santa asked.

"Their parents could buy them, and they could add them to what we give. After all, they can track you online now. They know when to expect a filled stocking. They could add these branded technological monstrosities to the beautiful toys we make before the children wake up again."

Santa pondered this. He twiddled the big silver bauble on his sleigh. He took off his red hat and scratched his bald head. He twisted his fingers in his beard thoughtfully. And finally he frowned down his bulbous red nose at Belinda. "It would help with the bottom line," he admitted.

#  The Poems

##  The Soul's Room

This poem is my attempt to put into words my conversion to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

The air was stale

With smoke and ale

And the dust of all that's old.

A threadbare chair

Lay broken there

By the hearth so icy cold.

Trembling, I took

A golden book

And settled in the dust to read.

The warm words flowed,

New strength bestowed,

The spirit knew my bitter need.

The Saviour came,

He spoke my name

Cast heavenly light into the gloom.

Cleansed every part,

Restored my heart.

A Temple pure he made my room.

##  The Holy Temple

The final line in each stanza is taken from a promise given in my patriarchal blessing regarding the temple.

I cast my troubles to the floor

As I pass through the golden door,

Forgetting every trial and fear

For there is only comfort here.

Wearing white, and within clean,

My spirit soaring, my heart serene,

I here rejoice in all I do.

"And this shall be a joy to you."

Silence sweet around me falls.

My quiet feet the saviour calls

And to his side I hasty tread.

Arms open wide, he offers bread

Of life, and hungry I partake,

One among those blessed who make

Covenants and promises true.

"And this shall be a joy to you."

Humbly in this sacred place

Where heaven and earth in joy embrace

I serve dear ones that we may be

United in eternity.

My father's house, this Temple pure

Is where I find His blessings sure

And where I feel His love anew.

"And this shall be a joy to you."

##  Hen Ficerdy

Follow the muddy, bumpy lane,

Turn left at the end and left again,

Through the meadow, across the stile,

Then continue on for half a mile.

Cross the road at the 'Dog and Grouse'

And soon you'll see a creepy house.

That house is the largest around here

And instills in many a sense of fear

With its dark grey walls of weathered stone,

Hidden where the ivy's grown,

Under a roof of sharp black slate

Which bows beneath the chimney's weight.

No flowers or plants adorn its grounds,

Just weathered gravestones on grassy mounds,

Nettles and brambles tied in tangles

With glittering webs in all the angles,

And beyond the bare-boughed silver birch

An ornate and ancient Gothic church.

Push open the heavy gates of iron

Guarded by a fierce stone lion.

Follow the path of weeds and stones

Through the yard of buried bones.

See the windows, dark and deep.

Wonder what secrets they keep?

Up the steps - you're getting near

To seeing why I sent you here.

Summon all your courage before

You grasp the knocker on the door.

For as the handle begins to turn

A special lesson you will learn.

See, inside that house of stone and slate

A warm fire burns within the grate

And a family laughs and plays and sings

And speaks of love and joyful things.

The mother kind, the father strong,

The children happy all day long.

Though big and black and bleak it seems

This is a home of happy dreams

Where you will be welcome if you say

That I have sent you on your way.

So cast away your fear and pride,

And don't judge on what you see outside.

Hen Ficerdy is Welsh for Old Vicarage. I wrote this poem in recognition of the many large, ancient vicarages, often next to graveyards. I lived in two of them.

##  What Makes Christmas Special?

Could it be the lovely tree

All trimmed with lights so prettily?

Or baby's giggle as she spies

Presents of assorted size

All wrapped in shiny paper bright –

It truly is a glorious sight!

Could it be the falling snow,

Or Santa's jolly "Ho ho ho"?

The Christmas specials on TV,

The smiles of people dear to me,

Delicious food piled on my plate,

All surely do make Christmas great!

Maybe it's that glorious night

Of carols sung by candlelight,

Or having precious family time

And laughing at the pantomime,

Or cards from those both far and near

Who send their love this time of year.

It's not the tree, the gifts, the snow

Which serve to warm my spirit so.

But thinking of the wondrous birth

Of Christ our Saviour, come to Earth

A precious babe that glorious day

Who came to take our sins away.

##  Clothed in Covenants

Devout Mormons wear a special white garment underneath their clothing as a reminder of covenants they have made in the Temple. Many people are confused about this sacred apparel and its purpose. This poem is based on "The Cross in my Pocket" by Mrs Verna Mae Thomas.

I wear special clothes on my body

A simple reminder to me

Of the fact that I will keep covenants

No matter where I may be.

These garments are not magic,

Nor are they a good luck charm

They are not meant to protect me

From every physical harm.

They're not for identification

For all the world to see

But simply an understanding

Between my Saviour and me.

When I dress each bright new morning

In garments fresh and white

They serve that day to remind me

To remain clean in His sight.

They remind me, too, to be modest

In my words, my deeds, my dress

And to strive to serve Him better

That others I may bless.

When I'm feeling sad or despairing,

Or in a scary place,

These garments remind me that always

I'm encircled about by His grace.

And when my path seems rocky

And I feel all hope is gone

I remember promises given

The day I first put them on.

I wear this symbol of purity,

Hidden away from sight,

Because in the blood of the Lamb of God

My garments and sins are washed white.

So I wear special clothes on my body

Reminding no one but me

That Jesus Christ is Lord of my life

And He has set me free.

##  Tribute to Freddie Mercury

This was written in 1992, shortly after the death of Freddie Mercury, my favourite musician. Several Queen songs are referenced in it.

Little soldier struggles on, White Queen yawns

She waits to take the black knight, she has no time for pawns.

The struggle is the constant on the ever-changing board,

Light and darkness, black and white, little pawn and Lord.

The warrior, his head held high, has reached the farthest side

And faced her, white and waiting like a wedding-weary bride.

And she is gone! A new Black Queen holds sway over the

board.

His march is one of triumph! The little pawn is Lord!

Far beyond and long away

They speak of his courageous play

'But without meaning to deride

He's still a little pawn inside.'

The board is tucked away at last, the great Black Queen has

lost.

When "checkmate" came he heard it from inside the pieces'

box.

The strong one has been humbled, but glories in this claim:

The winner is the little pawn whose soul is in the game.

#  The Excerpts from Novels

##  First Date

This is a section from my forthcoming book, Finders Keepers

The restaurant, though reached via an unpromising alleyway from a street on which the bookies and pawn shop were the only flourishing businesses, was pretentious and modern in that way which meant it had the ambience of a foundry canteen. The floor was of shiny white tile, which Amelia slipped on in her new heels, falling into the bucket shaped brown faux-leather chair which grated as it was pulled out for her. The table was glass and aluminium, which was disconcerting because Amelia could see her knees under her place setting. She put her napkin over them self-consciously. There was a forlorn and slightly wilted white rose in the centre of the table, which became more and more pitiful as the scented candle burning close to it singed its petals. The walls were an expanse of black with huge narrow mirrors. There were no pictures hung anywhere. A baby grand piano stood on a pedestal in the corner near the door to the kitchen, but although dramatic piano music was discernible there appeared to be no one seated at it.

Amelia smiled winsomely at Patrick as the menus arrived, and peered nervously into hers. Just as she feared – French, or possibly Greek. Anyway, the dishes were foreign and although they were described in English, she knew she would find it impossible to pronounce their names. Were they having a starter? Should she assume they were, or was it wrong to think that Patrick wouldn't mind her committing him to this extra expense? She closed the leather-bound menu again.

"Why don't you order for me? I bet you know what's good."

"I've never been here before," he replied. "Order anything you like, really. I'm told the steaks are excellent."

Steak. She could say steak, and steaks were filling so she could pretend she didn't want a starter so that she could manage all of her main course. All the same, as she ordered from the attentive and apparently authentic waiter, she flashed her eyes toward Patrick to be quite sure he didn't mind as she ordered the smallest and thus cheapest steak on the menu. He didn't seem to object either that it was too meagre or that she was holding back.

"How would you like that cooked?" the waiter asked, looking directly at her. She blushed under his gaze and stuttered, "Medium, please."

"And what sauce would you like with it?"

"Oh, um, whatever you recommend." She returned his smile.

Patrick ordered the Filet Mignon, and at Amelia's insistence also chose the wine., although she was a little surprised that he ordered the house white. She had always thought it was red wine which most complemented red meat, and felt a burgundy would be particularly welcome, but perhaps she was mistaken. Still, she thought she saw the waiter raise an eyebrow and cast a glance at Amelia as he scribbled the request on his pad. She frowned and nodded, almost imperceptibly, annoyed that their server should question Patrick's judgement.

The wine was good, the steak lived up to its promise, and Patrick was excellent company, regaling her with stories of his job. Amelia had little to offer in the way of conversation, not having a job of her own, and fearing that too many reminders of her children, the primary focus of her thoughts, would scare him. It was a brave man who would date a woman with three failed marriages and two children in the first place – reminding him of that fact was probably unwise.

So she simply laughed at Patrick's jokes, complimented him on his shirt (pale lemon) and put her head on one side to indicate interest in anything he said that wasn't intended to be funny, but her only significant contribution to the conversation was when they found themselves talking about their fears and phobias. Patrick revealed that he was superstitious to the point of terror about Friday the Thirteenth and never left his house on that date. Probably needing to assuage his embarrassment he asked Amelia what she was scared of.

That was easy. "Spiders, mice, dogs, snakes, clowns, flying, boats, needles, closed spaces and the dark."

"So you don't travel much."

She admitted that she didn't, just as the waiter came back to clear their plates and ask whether they would like to see a dessert menu.

"I don't think I could manage another thing just now," Patrick declared, clapping a hand to his stomach.

"Maybe for your wife?" the waiter asked, and Amelia spluttered into her horrible wine.

"Oh, she's not my wife," Patrick smiled.

"It's actually our first date," Amelia blurted out, as though to emphasise the point.

"Coffee, then?"

Amelia agreed, the instant after Patrick did, that coffee would be nice.

"Um, do you mind if I just... find the Ladies? I think I have some sauce on my hands..." She rubbed her fingertips together as thought to illustrate the point.

"By all means," he agreed with a wide smile that she returned. It was all going very well, she thought as she weaved across the restaurant to the appropriate door. Patrick was nice, and they seemed to be getting along well. She tried to think back over all that had happened, who had ordered what, what they had chatted about, what they were each wearing, fixing in her head in case he turned out of be her Keeper, and they would discuss this First Date in sentimental tones in years to come.

For a restaurant that tried to be more upmarket than it actually was, more effort could have been put into the toilets. Not only were the walls in the same black marble, but there were only two cubicles, one stained sink and one rusty hand dryer although in fairness the space was probably too cramped to allow for any more. There were no windows, and Amelia listened in vain for the humming which would tell her the extractor fan had detected her presence and was sucking out the stale air.

Amelia washed her hands thoroughly as though trying to wash away the grime the bathroom itself had sullied her with, but just as she turned off the tap it disappeared. So did her hands, the sink, her feet, everything. A power cut. She heard gasping and chattering from outside the door as the diners too were startled by the sudden darkness. It's all right for them, she thought, they have candles on the tables. She started groping around for the hand dryer, hoping it worked well so that she could get out as quickly as possible. Then she remember that the dryer wouldn't work either. She stood with dripping wet hands trying to remember where the door was.

The door she was so anxious about opened and she turned in alarm to warn whoever it was that she was there, and there was precious little space for more than one person. Outlined in the flickering candlelight from the doorway she saw the unexpected figure of a man, a tall man in a pale coloured shirt. Her heart leapt in joy. She had told Patrick about her fear of enclosed spaces and the dark and he had come to rescue her! She hadn't realised that she'd been holding her breath until she let it out in a gasp of gratitude as she faced her knight in shining armour.

Tenderly, without a word, impossibly romantically, he bent down to kiss her, gently at first, then with more purpose, more ardour and more hunger. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she put her hands on his shoulders, pulling him closer to her as she yielded and responded to him. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he stepped back, turned and left, leaving Amelia smiling and sighing after him and drying her hands on her skirt.

She waited a moment to compose herself, then found the door, pulled it open and stepped back into the dimly lit restaurant. Was it just the fact that it was illuminated only by candles that made it suddenly seem so much more quixotic, or could it be because of the lifting and bobbing of her heart? Trying to stifle the beaming smile on her face she slipped back into her seat and gazed into Patrick's lovely brown eyes.

"Thank you," she declared, her voice dripping with warmth. She wished she could see him better, remember the expression on his face as he acknowledged her gratitude for his chivalry and tenderness. But before he could do so vocally, the waiter arrived at the table with a second, much larger, candle, and two miraculous tiny cups of coffee.

Amelia dragged her eyes away from Patrick to thank the man and noticed his striking face, his knowing smile, the gleam in his black eyes, and the two damp patches on his shirt over his shoulders.

## Blackwood

This is the opening section of my gothic horror novel for children.

In a higgledy-piggledy village called Tippett's Bottom, four sisters with long and lustrous black hair lived in a big Victorian mansion. The house, built of burgundy brick under a sharp-tile roof, was called The Old Curacy, although hardly anyone in the village remembered what a curacy was, or when the village had last had a curate. The sisters' parents were probably dead (probably in a car crash) so the eldest sister, Prudence Blackwood, played mother even though she was barely seventeen. Her job was to cook all their meals, from the fried potatoes and eggs they liked for breakfast, to the stews they enjoyed for their tea.

Temperance Blackwood was fifteen, and it was her job to see that all the bills were paid on time, and that there was plenty of food in the pantry (even if that meant growing it herself in the garden) and that they all had clothes to wear, which basically meant making clothes for Prudence and repairing them as they were handed down.

Patience Blackwood cleaned the house, as best a thirteen year old could when there was no way she could reach those clumps of grey cobwebs that festooned the high ceilings, not even with chairs atop ladders atop tables.

The baby of the family, Chastity Blackwood, did the laundry. She was barely ten, but she was still big enough to carry the big wicker hamper to the old green machine and turn the handle until the water that came out was clean.

The sisters rarely spoke, not even to each other, because their wise parents had taught them that words were precious and could not be recalled once issued. Because of this, many people in the village thought them strange, and avoided them wherever possible. Unlike most sisters they didn't fight or argue. In fact, they were the very best of friends, but that might have been because no one else wanted to be friends with any of them. Well, almost no one, as we shall see.

You might imagine that with such long names that they would call each other Pru, Tempy, Pat and Chas, but they always used their full names. No one else used their first names at all. Everyone in the village, from shopkeepers to school teachers, called them the Misses Blackwood.

Prudence, Temperance and Patience went to the same school, and after taking Chastity to her school, would walk through the park together each morning, straight-backed and returning the growls of the dogs that passed them, in their perfectly pressed pale lemon blouses under their black school blazers with the yellow motto, Pathemata Mathemata. Where other girls at their school rolled up their skirts just to make sure that everyone knew they had thighs as well as knees, the Misses Blackwood sewed extra fabric onto theirs so that they swished about their ankles as they kicked through the leaves.

When the school day was over, Prudence, Temperance and Patience walked to Chastity's school.All together once more, they returned to the Old Curacy and settled down around the thick oak table to do their homework while Prudence stirred the big cooking pot and delicious smells wafted around them. Frequently they found their own homework too boring (who wants to spend yet another hour on something you only just did for interminable hours at school?) so they would each pass their assignments one space to the left.

The shop was in the stable block of the Old Curacy, in the coach house to be exact, across the courtyard from the house and therefore a safe enough distance for customers to browse and enjoy the trinkets and treasures without having to disturb the girls. If there was something they wanted to buy—or sell—they could ring the big copper bell which hung from the wall and which had once summoned the groom, footman or coachman to the stable block.

The sisters lived this lonely, strange existence without concern or complaint, and without any desire for the slightest change to their established routine. So it's understandable that they were rather perplexed one day when something very, very different happened to upset their insular little world.

A nine-year-old girl, to be precise, with a mass of blonde curls which framed her pretty face like a halo and a toothy smile which lit up twinkling blue eyes. She had accessorised her grey school uniform with frilly socks, bows in her hair, sparkles on her shoes and a little flower necklace.

"Can I go and play with Chastity at her house today, Mummy?" She asked brightly.

Her mother, a slim, elegant woman who smelled of vanilla and money, looked Chastity up and down. "I'll have to ask her mother."

"She doesn't have a mother," the girl said breathlessly, as though this were something terribly exciting.

"Dead," Chastity explained in monotone.

"Oh, that's so sad! What about your father, dear. Is he here to collect you? Can I speak to him?"

"Dead too," Chastity said.

The woman was disconcerted by this doubly tragic news. "Then... who should I speak to?"

"My sisters," Chastity suggested, looking towards where they stood in a line, silently waiting for her on the crest of the hill behind the school.

The mother shuddered ever so slightly and pulled her smaller daughter closer to her side. Nevertheless, she gamely took Hope's hand and walked towards the Blackwood sisters. She and her daughters were new in the village, so probably hadn't heard the rumours and gossip about the mysterious incumbents of the Old Curacy, but she somehow still had the strange feeling of foreboding they engendered. She identified Prudence as the eldest, and asked her question.

"Hope would like to know whether she might come and play with Chastity today. May she?"

Prudence looked at the mother very carefully, and then at the bouncing and eager little girls, and then, with disapproval, at Chastity.

"Play?" She said.

"Yes, well, or hang out or whatever the word is." Maybe, the woman thought, poor little orphaned Chastity Blackwood didn't play.

"Which is Hope?"

The two girls were very similar, the mother allowed, with their radiant smiles and frothy curls, and yet even she wondered why Prudence Blackwood hadn't immediately discounted six-year-old Felicity as her sister's preferred playmate.

"The elder," she stammered, and Prudence, Patience and Temperance all directed their gaze to that child.

"No," Prudence said.

Chastity and the little girl groaned in disappointed unison.

"Well, then," the mother said, bravely trying again, "Perhaps Chastity would like to come to tea with us tonight?"

Prudence took a little longer to consider this option. But then again she said "No."

"Why not?" Chastity asked boldly.

"Because then we should feel obliged to invite her to visit us in return."

"But your house looks so fascinating!" Hope enthused. "I would love to see all the old things!"

"Please," Chastity asked.

Prudence, flattered by the little girl's interest, and seeing the strange look of hopefulness on her sister's countenance, reconsidered. "Very well. Hope may come home with us today. But you--" she addressed the mother with severity, "Must collect her from the Old Curacy by seven p.m."

The mother trembled slightly, imperceptibly, and might have wondered what terrible fate would befall her daughter in the mysterious mansion at one minute past seven. She faithfully promised that she would be at the gates to rescue the child long before that deadline.

And so it was that the four silent Blackwood sisters, with their tall, wispy figures and their long jet-black hair and deep coal eyes, were joined by a blonde, blue-eyed, lively, happy little girl called Hope.

Hope loved everything about the Old Curacy, from the bramble-infested overgrown garden ("Booby–trapped!" she declared he as a particularly vicious prickle tore at her skirt) to the creaky gate and the stout, weatherworn, splintered front door. Inside she exclaimed joyfully over the dusty oil-painting which adorned the gallery corridor, and the web-wrapped stag-head with the severe expression which glared at her from above the fireplace in the Butler's Pantry.

"Homework first," Prudence decreed when Chastity asked whether she might take Hope on a tour of the upstairs rooms. An extra chair was found for Hope, and the girls sat around the kitchen table as usual, where there was silence except for the scratching of pencils and rustling of paper.

Silence, that is, until the jarring jangling of the Coach House bell flew across the courtyard and through the open window. Temperance, who was particularly tired of Chastity's homework, answered it.

Mrs Headingley was an elegant and self-possessed woman who, in earlier ages, might have paraded proudly around the village in a fur coat and silk stockings, but in these enlightened times wore perfectly normal clothes which cost as much as a fur coat and silk stockings because they had a little piece of material sewn into the neck with the name of a famous dress designer on it.

Mrs Headingley, like Hope's family, was new to Tippett's Bottom, but whereas Hope's parents had bought one of the exclusive luxury 3 and 4 bedroom executive homes on the brand new development the signs called "Hazelwood Wold" (but which the inhabitants of Tippett's Bottom still called "The Old Fertiliser Factory"), Mr and Mrs Headingley had bought a house even older than the Old Curacy. Thanet Grange had once been the nearest thing the humble village of Tippett's Bottom had to a manor house, and the grandest family with the most servants had lived there for many generations until the last of their number, awash with debt and unable to maintain the place despite selling off most of the land, had sold up and slunk away to the anonymity of the city.

According to village gossip, which found its way to the sisters mostly in the form of overheard rather than directly imparted information, Mr and Mrs Headingley were "doing up" Thanet Grange as their weekend residence. Judging from the number of rubble-filled skips outside the mansion, "doing it up" was only one step away from "pulling it down" but apparently they seemed to think that the old manor house needing to be brought into the twenty-first century. Prudence had commented that she wished they would do it by bringing all the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth-century parts to the Old Curacy rather than throwing them in skips.

Maybe Mrs Headingley had finally decided to do that.

"Good morning, Mrs Headingly," Temperance greeted her.

"Good morning, Miss Blackwood," Mrs Headingley replied, a little suspiciously.

"How may I help you?" Temperance said. Her sisters would probably come across the courtyard to see what was going on soon, and too many Miss Blackwoods could confuse matters, especially in a room so crowded with antique clocks, cameras, cabinets and curios.

"We're putting in a new kitchen at Thanet Grange and the contractor found something interesting when he knocked down one of the walls. It's a book."

"A new kitchen?" Prudence said, having come silently through the service door behind Temperance. Mrs Headingley was startled at the abruptness of her appearance. Temperance wasn't. Prudence was good at suddenly being somewhere, or indeed nowhere, when the situation called for it. It was a trait all the sisters shared.

"Does it have ... chrome?"

"Brushed steel," Mrs Headingley said, "And high gloss units."

"Red?" Temperance knew what was most fashionable in kitchens.

"Charcoal."

"Granite worktops?"

"Yes. And a slate tiled floor with underfloor heating."

"A breakfast island?"

"Naturally, and sunken spotlights."

Prudence inhaled the deliciousness of this kitchen. Not only was it new and fully equipped, but it was almost entirely black. How wonderful she would look, with her glossy dark tresses swinging behind her, stirring a rabbit stew on the halogen hob in such a kitchen.

"Why don't we have units and a breakfast island?" Chastity asked quietly, having appeared just as suddenly as Prudence.

"Because we have shelves, a dresser and a pantry," Patience replied. The little room was now full with four Miss Blackwoods, and a rather less stealthy Miss Hope Brightwell, and Mrs Headingley was looking more nervous still to find herself so outnumbered.

"Book?" Temperance prompted.

Mrs Headingley fished into her large shiny handbag with the metal plaque on the side, and brought out a big leather book. She passed it to Temperance, having apparently decided that, although not the oldest, she was the preferred sister.

Temperance turned it over in her hands, weighing it carefully. She felt along the spine, sniffed it, and leafed through the pages.

"Octavo. Original dark green cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind. Written during the interwar period—the eye of the storm—which probably gives rise to its typically idealised subject matter. Autographed first edition of a small initial run; five more followed. We would very much like to have this in our shop, Mrs Headingley." She named a sum as payment to Mrs Headingley for the book, and Mrs Headingley, with the air of one who really doesn't need the money, accepted without any attempt to negotiate a higher price.

Temperance opened the wooden compartmentalised drawer where they kept the money. She found several buttons, some bits of paper which might have been IOUs from customers, a cotton reel, an anxiously scurrying spider and a few very sticky coins which didn't come close to the amount she had offered Mrs Headingley.

"I cashed up and banked everything last night," Prudence lied helpfully.

"Would you bring back the book tomo- another day?" Temperance asked.

"Unless you would like to select something else of the same value," Patience suggested.

Mrs Headingley's pained face suggested that she found everything in the shop extremely distasteful and unpleasant and not only couldn't wait to get out of it but would most certainly not like to take any part of it with her into her shiny new home. "Never mind the money," she said munificently, "Keep the book."

"We will repay your generosity." said Patience, who had some idea what the book was actually worth. Somewhere among all these things which Mrs Headingley could barely bring herself to look at was a painting of Thanet Grange as it had been when it was first built two hundred years ago. Mrs Headingley would like that, she was sure, but it could take several weeks of selling things stacked higher before the painting was uncovered.

As Mrs Headingley left, as briskly as decorum allowed, Temperance speculated that she probably hadn't had what might be termed a "good consumer experience" at the Old Curacy and, as retail establishments everywhere knew, that could be very bad for business. For the Blackwoods it meant that Mrs Headingley would think twice about bringing them anything else of value she might find, especially with the lures of the antique fairs and specialist valuers of Battlebarn only five miles away.

An encounter with all four Blackwood sisters, especially on their home turf where they were surrounded with musty antiques and obscure oddities, could be unsettling. She knew this because one of their more frank customers had told them so. Something to do with their dour expressions, piercing eyes and bizarre clothes. No offence, he had added, needlessly, for Temperance had been quite flattered by his description.

"How exciting!" Hope said. "A customer!"

The Blackwood sisters would like to have told her that it was not exciting at all, because customers at the Coach House of the Old Curacy were a commonplace and even everyday occurrence, but in fact this was not true, as the empty cash drawer testified.

Chastity seemed particularly interested in the book, and insisted that they put it on the kitchen table, put away their homework and instead examine their new acquisition. Prudence demanded that they eat first, her parsnip and pumpkin stew being perfectly ready to serve, and so Chastity's excitement about the book had to be locked away as the five girls ate and then washed up their bowls and spoons.

The ornate first page, with its elegant script declaring the title (The Fables of Garden Fauna), author (Mary Montague) and illustrator (John Long), long-defunct publisher (Lloyd Scrivener, London) and the date of publication (1928) was defaced by two separate hands. The first was the faded but neatly scratched signature, all swirling loops and long tails, of the author. The second was written in hard pencil and altogether more haphazard handwriting and said "My book. Alice Cotley." Underlined twice.

"What does 'fauna' mean?" Hope asked, slowly turning the pages and marvelling at how dull children's books had once been, with line upon line of tiny text, and just a few line drawings to illustrate it.

"It usually means animals," Patience said. "So this is probably about hedgehogs and dormice."

"No," Prudence said, looking more closely at the yellowed pages. "These pictures are not of animals. The subject matter is fairies, imps, pixies, brownies and all the other mysterious creatures which live on the edge of human reality."

Hope trembled with excitement, and her fingers tingled where they touched the astonishing pages. What fascinating wonders this book held, and how much might she learn about the strange creatures which so privately occupied the grounds of the Old Curacy. If there were fairies, imps, pixies, brownies and other mysterious creatures anyway, they would surely be in the Old Curacy. She thought of her neat little semi-detached home with its perfectly flat lawn and flower borders and knew that no self-respecting fairy would want to live there.

"There are plenty of collectors who would pay a lot of money for this book," Chastity said. "Lots of people love old books because they smell so nice."

In the very centre pages was something strange. Two thick, bumpy, rough-edged sheets of paper, firmly pressed together as though the weight of the book, or perhaps those beside it on a shelf, had firmly affixed them to each other. "A pressed flower!" Temperance predicted in delight. "Open it very carefully, Chastity, it must be extremely old."

Chastity used her long thumbnail to separate the sheets of paper, and then gently peeled them apart. Her gasp at what she found there was followed by four near-identical echoes. Perfectly preserved, from the wispy white hair to the translucent veined wings, was a fairy.

The creature lay on its side, long limbs stretched out as though it had vainly assumed the recovery position before dying. Its colours were faded, and it wore a delicate tunic with just a tinge of purple remaining. On its tiny feet little yellow shoes were clearly rolled from flower petals. Its wings, which were splayed out on either side, were raggedy lace-edged and barely visible. The tiny face seemed to have decomposed a little, for features were only just discernable, but the whole creature was no bigger than Chastity's outstretched hand, so maybe they were just too tiny to make out.

"Well!" Prudence exclaimed, the first to find her voice. "We've never had one of those in the shop before."

"She's very beautiful," Hope said in wonder and awe.

"Is it real?" Patience said.

"Can we keep her?" Chastity asked.

Prudence was the oldest, and the others recognised that the decision about what to do with the fairy had to be hers. It seemed to be a simple matter of selling or keeping it. The possibility that they might announce its existence to any form of media never entered any of the girls' heads.

"I would like to find out a little more about this fairy before we decide," Prudence said. "Someone has found her, and used this book and blotting paper to preserve her as one might preserve a special flower."

"What's blotting paper?" Hope asked, carefully touching the thick paper again.

"In old days, people used pens which had to be filled with ink from an ink well," Temperance explained. "These pens were not always very efficient at dispensing the correct amount of ink, and the ink stayed wet for some time and could easily be smudged. So, after each sentence was written, the writer could use absorbent blotting paper to soak up the excess ink and prevent splotches and smears. And because it could soak away wetness, it was also very useful for drying out things like flowers – and fairy corpses – in order to preserve them."

"How do we find out who put the fairy in the blotting paper?" Chastity asked.

"Oh, yes!" Hope clapped her hands together. "We could find out where the fairy came from, and maybe then we could find some alive ones!" She had been at the wondrous Old Curacy for less than an hour, and already she had made a marvellous discovery and was on a quest to solve a fascinating mystery. She had known, from the first moment she saw it, that the Old Curacy was a magical place.

"We must follow the only two leads we have," Prudence suggested. "We must ask Mrs Headingley exactly where she found the book, and who owned Thanet Grange before she did. And we must also try to find Alice Cotley, because this was her book."

The matter of the fairy concluded, Chastity reluctantly replaced the paper and closed the book, but it was left in the middle of the kitchen table. None of them wanted to run the risk of damaging the fairy by moving the book more than necessary, even if that meant eating each meal from now on with The Fables of Garden Fauna where the pepper and mustard used to stand. Temperance remembered how Mrs Headingley had lifted the book by its spine from her deep leather bag, and shivered at what might have happened to the fairy's delicate little body.

Hope's mother drove a very large, very high, square dark green vehicle which was ideally suited to farm tracks and country lanes, and yet was polished to such a shine and so carefully balanced and serviced that she was often reluctant to go anywhere less rink-like than the main road which bypassed Tippett's Bottom. It did make a very satisfying and conclusive crunch as it pulled up on the large gravel forecourt of the Old Curacy, however.

Hope was filled with dismay to see her. She had been at the Old Curacy for barely an hour, and already she had helped in a shop, eaten a delicious meal cooked in what she really thought might be a cauldron, and seen a fairy, even if it was a dead one.

"May I come again?" She begged Chastity once it became clear that her mother, who was reluctant even to cross the threshold, was getting increasing annoyed at the fuss Hope was making about leaving, and wasn't going to put up with it for much longer before dragging her out unceremoniously by her fluffy pink scarf.

"Yes," Chastity declared without reference or thought to her sisters, and Hope smiled a sincere but gappy smile, and was bundled into the big square car.

The Blackwoods did not own a television because the television, electricity and licence all cost money, and Temperance said that they did not have enough. So each evening they listened as Patience, who had been the only sister prepared to practice for two hours a day, played the harpsichord in the withdrawing room. Then they would feed their goldfish, and each would hug her sisters, kiss the photograph of their parents, and retire to bed, Chastity first, followed at half-hour intervals by Patience, Temperance and finally Prudence.

That evening's entertainment was preceded by each of the other three sisters berating Chastity for bringing a stranger into their home. Mostly they did this by pointedly disapproving stares, but Temperance said, "Really, Chastity, a friend?"

"I like her," Chastity protested.

"We don't need friends." Patience reminded her.

"I do," Chastity said with pride, and after that none of her sisters could retort for fear that their censure might look like jealousy, or maybe a lack of due sisterly concern for the social wellbeing of the youngest among them. And Chastity, naturally because she wanted to, took their silence to mean that Hope might visit again.

Prudence, on whom fell the heavy burden of responsibility, allowed the last half-hour of each day to be hers alone once her younger siblings had retired to their rooms. Most days she would read, or repair some object which had come into the shop, or just wonder at what the future might hold. There was no profit in that, she soon realised. No one could guess at the future. The past was where their gifts lay, and where there was most to be discovered.

Sometimes she would use this half-hour to weep as she remembered their parents, and how they had driven away one day in their big black Bentley, and never returned. She would remember how her mother's last words to them had been, "You are such strong, clever girls, you will be fine. Take care of each other." It had seemed such a curious thing to say at the time. So final, as though they had known that they would not be coming back.

She tried, really tried, to live up to the pride her parents had shown in her and in all their daughters, but on the days when she chose to weep, she feared that their mother had been wrong.

Each night, as she retired to bed close to midnight, Prudence vowed to her sleeping sisters that somehow, someday, they would find their parents.

## Oil

This is a section from my forthcoming novel, Finders Keepers

Jen and George met at a roadside lay-by in neutral territory and parked self-consciously at opposite ends. Jen waited at her car in the misty twilight rain and watched her soon-to-be-ex-husband walk cautiously towards her. After a desultory greeting she handed over the last of his shoes and trinkets and explained why he didn't get the wall clock.

"It's not much to show for almost twenty years of marriage," George said with a deep, thoughtful sigh.

Jen hoped desperately he wasn't going to start a profound monologue about how happy they'd been, or what hopes and dreams they had once shared, or how sorry he was that it had to end this way. She was having trouble holding back the tears as it was and knew that if she let them fall he'd assume that they were tears of sadness, not boiling anger. He had left her so he had no right to make her feel worse. She wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of thinking that she cared in the slightest or wanted him back.

"I have an appointment," she fumbled, looking at the watch he had given her for their anniversary. The one that complemented the eternity ring he had bought her for her birthday.

Another deep sigh, and he was looking into her eyes with a strange expression of regret and longing. "But this could be the last time we see each other."

"Can't be helped," she blurted. "I really do have to go now."

She heard his breath catch in his throat as he nodded. "Well, 'bye then Jennifer. Good luck. You know, with everything."

"Goodbye George."

She watched him for only a moment as he shuffled off into the grey drizzle with the two laden carrier bags, then she turned back to slam the boot shut, push her damp hair out of her eyes, straighten her shirt, scratch her neck.

She couldn't resist. She turned for one last glance at the man who had shared her life, been her life, for so long. And at the same moment, he turned to look back at her. He stopped and held her gaze. He put down the bags without taking his eyes off her face.

The rain grew harder. He made a strange choking sound, and then again. It was her name, she realised. He was calling to her as best he could over the noise of the cars speeding past and the rain lashing the pavement. "Jennifer! Jennifer!" And then he was running, not caring that he was splashing through puddles, seeming not to notice the traffic passing so closely. He was running back to her, a look of urgency on his face. "Jennifer!"

She was transfixed and watched him come, not even daring to wonder whether he was sorry, whether he had realised that he needed her, wanted her, loved her, couldn't be without her.

And then he was beside her, panting, his chest heaving. She fought the urge to reach out and embrace him. She had to be sure.

"George?"

"I left my oil can in your car. That oil can under the felt by the spare tyre? That's mine. Only I didn't want you to drive off with it. It's good stuff."

She opened the boot again, lifted the felt, and fished out the little shiny can of three-in-one. "This one?"

"Yes," he gasped in relief at seeing it. She seethed.

She popped off the little plastic cap, stood on tiptoe and inverted it over his head, squeezing the can as hard as she could to release a small but steady flow of grease over his wet hair.

"I prefer WD40," she said as she did so, and before he could get over the shock she jumped into her car and drove off into the rain and out of his life forever.

##  Nonimprimusmorbus

This is a section from my latest novel, Emon and the Emperor. Beset with unusual symptoms since birth, Emon learns from the eccentric Dr. Schlesser that he has, in fact, been genetically engineered for a specific purpose. Having imparted this news Dr. Schlesser returns to Canada leaving Emon to continue with his everyday life.

For all I knew than I could be a superhero in embryo, but after a couple of months of hanging around with my mates as usual, attending my eldest sister Sascha's wedding, mourning the family dog and watching the microwave explode again, it was as though everything was as it always had been.

I took my GCSEs and did as badly as expected given my almost complete inability to read. I did a couple of college terms on what they called a "vocational" course, but was really intended for people too stupid to do a real job. I didn't like that, and thus found myself at the local Mickey B's Barbecue Bar trying to interpret the interview questions I was being asked by a man only four years older than me with ketchup down his tie.

The question, when repeated after the articulated truck had passed, turned out to be "What can you bring to Mickey B's Barbecue Bar?"

I hadn't planned on bringing anything much. "Manpower," I replied. Apparently that was all that was required. That single question and some form filling comprised the entire interview. Once I was quite certain that I had the job I asked, with what I hoped was a friendly smile, why the charade of a formal interview had been necessary given that the sign saying "Crew members wanted" had been up outside the restaurant since it had opened five years ago.

The manager shrugged. "Company policy," he said. "We just have to make sure you haven't got two heads or something."

No, that was one physical peculiarity I didn't have.

I was under no illusion that working at Mickey B's would be fun, and I wasn't disappointed. But it did have the advantage of placing me in the path of attractive young women who, mesmerised by my glowing eyes, would happily give me their phone numbers. Lucy was the one whose number I chose to call.

Lucy had the type of brown hair only seen on shampoo adverts – long, smooth, glossy and always bouncy and perfect. She had a little puckered mouth that seemed to be constantly asking to be kissed and, once the first date formalities were over, frequently got its way. Before any sort of satisfying and life affirming relationship could develop, however, my eighteenth birthday came along and Dr. Shlesser turned up on our doorstep right on schedule a few days later.

I was in my pink and lavender polo shirt with the Mickey's logo, getting ready for my shift at work. It wasn't a good time, but Mum treated him with entirely unwarranted deference and respect by inviting him in and offering him lunch.

He wanted to speak to me alone, of course. So Mum shut us in the lounge and wandered off to the kitchen, humming to herself in fake indifference.

"I have to go to work," I told him, pulling on the cerise polyester baseball cap with the purple stripes.

"Work?" he said, in the incredulous tone I had used when Mum had first told me that since I had dropped out of college I needed to get a job.

"I have a career." Stretching the truth a little, admittedly.

"Don't go to your job," he said, as though it were that simple.

"Trust me - that will be taken as my resignation."

"How convenient!"

"But I don't want to resign."

"You have to. You are coming to Montreal with me. Six months in the Preparation Unit for training."

"What if I don't want to come?"

"Don't be silly, you don't have any choice. Anyway, of course you want to come. What do you have here?"

"My parents, my family, my friends, my job, my girlfriend. And I'm late for both of the last two, so if you don't mind, I'll be going."

"You go then," he said with a magnanimous smile. "One last time. Say goodbye to your friends, your job and your girlfriend. I'll wait." He folded himself onto the centre of the couch and looked around the room for something to do while he waited for me to pack away my life.

"But I don't want to say goodbye. I don't want to leave my job, or my girlfriend."

"If you don't come with me" Dr. Shlesser said, raising his fluffy eyebrows over his glasses as he fixed me with a glassy stare, "You will drop down dead of nonimprimusmorbus." The newspaper seemed not to interest him, so he picked up the remote control and flicked through the channels on the television until he found something which looked like teleshopping in Hindi, whereupon he parked the remote control on his bulging stomach, cleaned his glasses on his lab coat, and stared in pleasure at the kitchen appliance (it might have been a chapatti maker, I didn't pay it as much attention as he did) being demonstrated. It might have been the least threatening death threat ever issued.

Mum was in the kitchen swearing at the toaster. She looked at me expectantly as I came into the room, but her eyes were a little red and I wondered whether she had been crying, or whether the smoke billowing out of the toaster was to blame.

"He's in the lounge," I told her. "He won't leave until I agree to go to Montreal with him. But I have to go to work and I don't have time to argue."

She swore again. "Now I'll have to make him some lunch after all, and I was halfway through doing baked beans on charcoal for myself."

"Don't bother," I said, hugging her nervously with one floppy arm. "I'll send Lucy over with a couple of Mickey's Summer Specials. Ribs, chicken, corn and wedges OK?"

"Why do you have to go to Montreal?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

"I think he wants to study me."

"Canada's supposed to be very nice," she said wistfully.

Lucy's lunch break started the same time as my shift; I was late and she wasn't. She was, as I had expected, in the restaurant already, sitting at her favourite table and looking very displeased. She was sipping a Mickey's cola which she had actually had to pay for, and she was extremely annoyed about that. I slipped a muffin into her Mickey's MegaMeal box as an apology for being late.

I let her talk while I got on with serving customers, occasionally inclining my head to suggest I was listening, flashing her a smile when I could. By the time she had finished her meal I theoretically knew all about the office feud, her friend Chardonnay's birthday party and the relative merits and faults of all the contestants on the latest season of "America's Next Top Model". But most importantly, by dint of my having "listened" to her for twenty minutes, I also knew that she was in a better mood and would not only agree to take lunch to Mum and Dr. Shlesser, but might not throw a tantrum when she learned I was going to Montreal for six months.

During a lull I joined her at her table with two Summer Specials in a brown takeaway bag. I called her "Sweetheart," which always softened her up.

"Is your dad not at work today?" she asked.

"No. The other one is for... a doctor."

"A doctor? What is a doctor doing at your house? Are you ill?"

"He's the doctor who diagnosed my condition, and now he wants to me to go to Montreal with him to run some tests, that kind of thing."

She looked petulant rather than sorrowful. "How long for?" she asked.

"Six months."

"Where is Montreal anyway? Can I visit you?"

"It's in Canada, so I'm guessing you can't."

She mustered a tear. "When do you leave?"

"Pretty soon, I think. It could be, er, detrimental to my health if I don't go with Dr. Shlesser right away."

She looked at me through narrowed eyes. "You know, I Googled this mystery illness of yours."

I had misjudged her. As nonchalantly as I could, I raised one eyebrow, feigning mild interest. "And?"

"Nothing," she replied. "It's not mentioned once, anywhere."

"It's very rare," I offered. And then came up with something even better. "You probably spelt it wrong."

She wasn't buying it.

"Those are going cold," I nodded towards the meals in their brown bag.

She pouted, and I took that opportunity to kiss her discretely, given that I was in uniform, she was a customer, and she was a little dubious of me at that precise moment. And then she left, and I knew that was that, relationship over. We hadn't been together long enough to survive six months apart.

I stayed later at work than I should have done, making up for being late and sorting out the rotas as far as possible to provide cover for my shifts several weeks ahead. I even wrote a little note apologising that due to health issues I had to give my notice immediately and wouldn't be coming back. And then I took some time saying goodbye to some of the staff members I actually liked. By the time I trudged home I was ready to pack, and feeling a little lightheaded at the combination of sudden, temporary freedom, and the realisation of how easy it had been to give up everything I had thought mattered to me.

##  One Cat Short

This is the opening to an LDS mystery-romance-comedy.

"Where you're ready, come and find me here. I'll be waiting. But you should know that when you do, it'll be forever." To seal the deal I kissed him. And then I walked into the building and away from Ryan Loveland.

As dramatic exits go, I think it played out exactly as I pictured it. I just probably should have thought it through better. For one thing, the building he was to come and find me in was the town public library where I worked, so I had effectively barred Ryan from ever visiting the library again unless he wanted to get back together with his geeky ex-girlfriend.

For another thing, I wasn't sure I could stick to my resolve. After all, I knew where to find him anytime I wanted, and I wanted right now. He was only a few feet away, outside, probably looking forlornly though the glass doors. I could just run to him and apologise, declare that it was okay, I understood, and I was prepared to take him as he was. I bounced on my toes a little as though warming up for that run of shame into his arms.

Except that he wasn't staring forlornly towards my desk in the library. My dramatic exit clearly hadn't had the desired effect, because he had walked away. Maybe, I speculated, he had even shrugged, dusted his hands and stuck them in his pockets, then walked cheerily into his future with his head held high reflecting that there were plenty more fish in the sea.

Ugh!

"Plenty more fish in the sea," Patrice cooed soothingly. "He wasn't good enough for you."

How many times had I heard that? "Yes, he was," I said. "He was perfect. He's an RM in a town full of single Mormon women. He's a marathon runner, a private detective and a part-time male model."

Rather than admit that Ryan Loveland was, in fact, the epitome of perfect, Patrice snorted. "Yeah, doesn't he know it. Why's he still single then, you tell me that girl?"

I chose not to. I didn't want to admit that the reason was probably to do with Ryan being determined to find a girl just as perfect as he was. And until she came along he was going to date every single woman in Humming Meadow, Utah.

"Um hmm, that's what I thought," Patrice declared. "So what did you say to him?"

I told her. "Unfortunately that means he can't come to the library again without me thinking he wants to get back together."

"Never did come here anyways," Patrice pointed out. "That boy doesn't even have a library card. Not convinced he can read."

"Could you deal with these?" I pushed a cart loaded with books towards Patrice. She recognised a distraction technique when one was presented to her, and rolled her eyes, a simple gesture which nevertheless said everything she was about to lecture me about. But then she trundled off with the books, and I was left with the peace I craved.

I was still thinking about Ryan and our brief, ill fated romance when I arrived home. We had been on four dates, which was something of a record, and had bonded over a shared love of old eighties music and water parks. We'd shared our ambitions for the future and embarrassing anecdotes from the past, and it had all been going so well.

Jasmine and Mothball met me at the door, both miaowing plaintively as though I was late with their dinner. I told them I wasn't falling for it: they'd both been well fed that morning before I left for work, and Mothball in particular could stand to lose a couple of pounds. Which is a lot, for a cat.

Hector was asleep in my favourite armchair, drooling as usual, so I sat on one end of the sofa as I went through the mail, Mollie strolling nonchalantly on my lap as I did so. She nuzzled lovingly against my chin, insisting I pay more attention to her. She was much cuter than the utility bill or the belated birthday card from my uncle and aunt in Wyoming, so I obliged.

Cats are much more loving and reliable than humans, I mused as I petted Mollie and tried to fend off Parker, who was the jealous type. No making polite smalltalk, trying to laugh in the right places, or worrying about poppy seeds in my teeth when I was hanging out with my feline friends, and neither did I have to work hard not to say anything stupidly geeky in their company.

I mentally counted my current coterie of cats as I headed to the utility area. Three had been rehomed last week, but I had added four more at the weekend when old Mrs Gordon had died leaving her precious Burmese companions all alone. That made ... nineteen.

One cat short of being a crazy cat lady. The archetypal pathetic recluse, destined to be alone forever but for the felines that were her only family. At 26, were my hopes of marriage and a family really drifting away into the ether?

As though to answer my question, my cellphone rang. I pushed Mew off it and groaned. Clark Curtis, owner of Humming Meadows' only dog sanctuary. It could only mean more incomers.

"Hey, Clark," I said, doing my best to feign cheerfulness as Sarah gently clambered onto my shoulder, purring noisily down the phone as though trying to drown out my greeting.

"Callie," Clark said, and I listened to the incessant barking in the background with some pleasure. At least cats were quieter. "We've got an interesting situation. How are you fixed tonight?"

Nice of him to ask, really. Almost as though there were the remotest possibility that I might have a date. "I'm not doing anything. Feeding the cats..."

"We've got an interesting situation. Do you know the Bensons? Nice white adobe house over by Larkspur and Fifth?"

I told him I didn't.

"They've disappeared. The whole family. Mom, Dad, four kids. The car is gone too. No one had heard from them or knows where they've got to."

I sighed. "I think that's usually called a vacation, Clark." Honestly, dog people.

"That's what the police are saying. That's what Loveland is saying—"

"Loveland?" What had any of this got to do with Ryan?

"Mrs Benson's mother hired him to find them when the cops refused to get involved."

"Well, he's right, they're obviously on vacation." I swapped the phone to my other ear, dislodging Peggy as I did so.

"But they can't be. They left their pets behind. That's why Loveland called me. They've left behind a Schnauzer and a curly-coated Retriever. That's them you can hear now, they're quite distraught. And a cat."

Just one! Thank you, God!

"They've obviously got a neighbour coming in to feed the animals while they're gone."

"The cat maybe, but you can't leave dogs alone for any length of time."

"Then they're not very nice people." I yawned. Clark's earnestness was trying at the best of times, and it was late and I was heartbroken and tired.

"But they are. They're a great family. They would never leave behind their animals, and I've asked all the neighbours and checked with all the boarding kennels and they made no arrangements at all. I'm taking the dogs, but I need your help."

I shuffled my feet, kicking off my slippers, and wondered where I left my boots. "Sure, I'll come over and get the cat."

"Not just with that," Clark said.

"What, then?"

"We have to find out what happened to the Bensons. Don't you understand? You and I are the only people who know that they're missing."

#  The Fan Fiction

##  Norilsk

It's ten years since the closing events of Breaking Dawn. The Cullens have left Forks for an isolated little Russian town, leaving behind Jacob, who has now come to see Renesmee for the first time. This is told from Renesemee's perspective.

I remembered him. I remembered him in the same way that I remembered my mother looking horribly damaged but elated, or the explosion of relief when the fearful red-eyes had slunk away into the forest. Memories that were as brief and hazy as the last ethereal wisps of summer cloud that dissipated into the bright sunshine, but brought with them the same soul-stirring warmth. Memories of him stirred in me feelings of elation and anticipation. I was overwhelmingly happy to see him.

He was tall, far taller than me, and his burnished skin, so incongruous in this place, stretched and rippled across his taut muscles, glowing almost as much as mine in the weak winter light. His brown eyes matched my own and regarded me with a curious mixture of overwhelming devotion and uncertain suspicion. I felt a moment of alarm. Had it been too long? Did he not recognise me? Had I been wrong to go away?

"No," my father said gently, hearing my thoughts. "We had to go. Jacob agreed."

I felt bitterness and blame fighting in my chest. The truth was I had to go. They might have stayed in Forks but for me. The beautiful, devoted newlyweds who didn't age, with the child who aged enough for both of them. Without me they would have enjoyed maybe three or four more years in the home they loved, surrounded by the family who were devoted to them. With me they had had to keep moving. Always cold, dark, dreary places. Alaska first, then north Wales, and finally here to Norilsk.

Forks, I remembered, had soaring forests that added a green haze to the enveloping mists. Wales had stunning mountains and ancient castles. Norilsk was bleak; the temperature rarely rose above freezing, the population suffered from heavy metal poisoning from the nickel mines, and during winter the sun rarely made an appearance at all. That suited my parents just fine; I craved warmth and light.

Jacob had understood that I had to be kept moving, kept hidden, kept safe. I remembered that he had told my father he could not come with us because he needed to stay with his pack. I remembered that I didn't need my father's mind reading ability to know that this was not true, that he was making an excuse to step aside so that my parents and I could be a family, just us, for as long as my childhood might last. I remembered also that I didn't need Uncle Jasper's ability either to feel the waves of sorrow and despair coming from Jacob. Those memories too seemed far away and as difficult to grasp as flowing water.

But now I was fully-grown, and Jacob, the warmth and light I craved, had come to me. He stood on the open porch of our isolated home, the barren snowy landscape laid out behind him as far as the distant Yenisey river. He was bare-chested and bare-footed, from which I surmised with delight that he had travelled from the station in wolf form.

I could not help but be aware of every part of him, every restless movement, from the bobbing of his adam's apple as he swallowed nervously to the shifting of his weight from one bare foot to the other and the long, strong arms which hung pendulously at his sides, their fists clenching and unclenching as he tried to ease his anxiety. He was extremely striking, of course, but that was almost incidental to my feelings, as though I would have felt the same irresistible pull toward him even if he had been in wolf form. I should probably feel nervous too, I suspected, given that I had been brought back to Jacob to marry him, but I remembered him well enough that I could never be afraid of being with him. I wanted to be with him. I loved him already, and suspected I had since the day of my birth.

I heard my mother's tender voice reassuring me. "Nessie, go ahead."

Without a backward glance I did as she suggested. I took a step forward, through the front door of our comfortable home, towards this man who seemed to draw me like a magnet, seemed to mean so much to me. My betrothed. How was it that he had imprinted on me and yet I found myself so captivated, so fixated, that I had dreamed of him every night over the last ten years? This day had long been the focal point of my existence and I knew that in the same way the short centuries were delineated with BC and AD, for me my life would forever be divided into Before and After Jacob.

"Rensemee?" Jacob breathed, in a voice I could worship.

Close enough at last, I laid a hand on his hot chest and showed him, as quickly as possible, the last ten years of my life and my own joy at being with him again. I wanted to get the formalities over.

"I'll have to tell you the long way," he apologised, his big hand covering mine.

"We have time."

His eyes hadn't left my face since I had opened the door. "You are so beautiful!" he exclaimed quietly, as though to himself. Perhaps that explained why he hadn't even looked at my parents yet. Maybe he didn't need to. I was very like them.

This close to him I could smell the musky earthiness of his blood and hear it pulsing though his veins, but it didn't make me thirsty; it made me... something else. I wanted him, but not for nourishment of that appetite. I just wanted him. My father sensed what I was going to do the instant before I did it and I heard his nervous gasp at the same time as I stood on tiptoe and pulled Jacob's perfect head down to mine, pressing my lips against his full ones and feeling them yield, exult, respond. As his strong arms slowly wrapped around me, lifted me off my feet and pressed me to him I rejoiced in the completeness and perfection of our love.

I had been a small child last time we had been together, and this new dimension to our relationship might have been awkward. But it wasn't. It was right, and good, and forever. He was vital and living and beautiful; he was my Jacob and always would be.

##  Caring for Mrs Evenson

In Eclipse, Rosalie tells Bella that she has never tasted human blood, and in this that she is "better even than Esme." I was intrigued by the hint that sweet, motherly Esme has indeed killed at least one human, and the following story attempts to fill in the background to that event based largely on some of the information given in The Twilight Guide.

I am Vera Shorley, and I was, at the material time, Assistant Matron of Ward 7 at Ashland Hospital. This is my own account of something curious which occurred many years ago during the course of my employment there.

On the date in question, Dr. Cullen asked me to come with him in his motor car to a small farm cabin several miles outside Ashland. He told me that he was treating a patient there, but that she was too ill to be moved. He spoke to Matron to get me leave from the ward and had me pack a bag for a stay of two days.

I thought it a little odd, yet I was very happy to spend this time with Dr. Cullen. He was much admired among the nurses and I was flattered that he had selected me to provide care for this woman.

The cabin was sparsely furnished yet comfortable. The woman lay on a low pallet and I was shocked to see that she was restrained with thick leather straps, and was screaming and thrashing in a most distressing way as though in the greatest pain imaginable. Her blood-curdling screeches were unlike anything I had heard before, and I turned to Dr. Cullen in consternation.

"Is there nothing you can do to lessen her suffering? Chloroform?"

"I have already treated her all I can and there is nothing else I can do to help." Dr. Cullen had always been most professional, but there was no disguising the distress in his voice. He cared very much for this woman, I deduced.

"You know her?"

"I treated her for a broken leg once. Her name is Esme Evenson. Please treat her with the greatest care and respect, speak reassuringly to her even when it seems she hears nothing. I would remain myself but I cannot get away from my duties at the hospital. Many others will die if I stay with her."

"Is there anything else you wish me to do? Mop her brow or clean her?"

"No. Do nothing of that. Keep your distance, and if anyone should happen along, assure them that Mrs Evenson is receiving treatment and urge them to keep far away to lessen the chance of infection. I need you only to watch her, to ensure that she is safe. She must not be left alone. I will return as often as I can."

It was fortunate that I had had the presence of mind to pack several books for, aside from listening to Mrs Evenson's shrieks of despair and agony, and murmuring occasional platitudes, there was little to do. No farm labourers wandered by, and whilst I appreciated the break from my duties at the hospital, it was very dull sitting in the corner of that musty little shack.

Dr. Cullen returned each evening when his shift ended but could not leave her to drive me home, so I slept on a bunk while he sat at Mrs Evenson's side. But on the third day when he came he seemed agitated and alarmed to find that Mrs Evenson was no longer exhibiting any signs of pain. Instead she lay quite still, and looked radiant with renewed health. I saw for the first time that she was an immensely beautiful woman, and knew, not without jealousy, why Dr. Cullen felt so much for her.

"I am too late!" He cried as he looked at her and reverently touched her face. She flinched, but did not open her eyes.

"On the contrary," I reassured him cheerfully. "I believe you are just in time to see her awaken."

He was suddenly close beside me. "Take my car and drive as fast as you can back to the hospital."

I laughed, not knowing why. "But Dr. Cullen, I cannot drive!"

His eyes flashed with urgency and I saw that they were the most hypnotic golden colour. "Then run."

"But it's many miles! Why must I leave when the patient is about to wake up?"

"She will be full of rage," Dr. Cullen said. "She had a cruel husband, and recently lost her baby. She is unstable and very strong. She may hurt you. You need to run."

But there was no time to run, for at that moment Mrs Evenson spoke, and not only was there was no dryness or hoarseness in her voice, but it was as even and strong and beautiful as a peal of bells.

"Is this heaven?"

Dr. Cullen was instantly at her side, his hands on her shoulders.

"Quiet. Rest a little longer."

"I have been through purgatory–or maybe hell–and here you are, my angel of light, the man I have dreamed of for so long. I died, and yet now I feel strong and vibrant, so what else am I to think but that this is heaven?"

"I'm sorry, Mrs Evenson. Because of what I have done heaven will never be yours."

She was suddenly standing. If she had heard him she made no sign of it, for now she was looking at me, and I saw for the first time what Dr. Cullen had meant about the madness within her. Although her face was exceedingly beautiful, her eyes were a deep and unholy red and flashed murderous desire in my direction. Dr. Cullen grasped her and wrestled her to the ground as I turned and ran, faster and further than I had ever run before.

* * * * *

I saw Dr. Cullen in the hospital the next day and he was once more perfectly composed; indeed, he seemed happier than at any time before, but when I speculated to one of the sisters that it was because he had found love, Matron scolded me for gossiping and I was made to wash out all the bedpans. I secretly wondered how he could love an insane woman when the hospital was so full of beautiful and sane nurses, but I had seen how beautiful she was and guessed that they had been childhood sweethearts.

It was some time before I was able to speak to Dr. Cullen. "How is Mrs Evenson?" I asked as we stood together at the bed of a patient who could no longer hear us.

"You will never mention the events you witnessed to anyone, will you Sister Shorley?" He replied.

"No, of course not."

"Well, then. She is fully recovered and will very soon be in full command of her senses. And when that time comes, I think there will be an announcement of a romantic nature." He smiled conspiratorially at me and it was all I could do not to swoon.

"But – surely she is married to Mr Evenson?"

"Indeed. But Mrs Evenson has returned to Columbus, where she and Mr Evenson lived together."

"I thought you said he was a cruel man? Why would she travel so far? Is it to–" I couldn't bring myself to say the word divorce.

Dr. Cullen looked deeply regretful, as well he might in the circumstances. "Sadly, Sister Shorley, Mr Evenson does not have long to live."

##  The Return

What might have happened if Bella hadn't jumped off the cliff in New Moon?

"Marry me, Bella."

I twisted my fingers out of his and, needing an excuse not to be holding his hand, pulled my hair up into a ponytail, combing my fingers through it as I tried to think of an answer. He knew me well enough to recognise the deflection technique. He waited, patiently.

"No. I like things just as they are."

He grinned his big, beaming smile, the one that could warm my soul from twenty yards away. "I like them too. A lot. But let's make it official."

"Jacob--" How could I tell him? I bit my lip, wondering whether I should use Renee and Charlie as an excuse again. I knew what he'd say. We weren't kids anymore. I was twenty-one, he was nineteen, we'd been together a while now, and Renee would understand. Charlie would more than understand. He'd be thrilled. "I'm worried," I said, playing for time.

We had reached the tiny white adobe shack we called our home. Privately I thought it was barely big enough to qualify as a house at all; it had a family room with a little kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom in the back. But it was next door to Billy's place and Jacob was prodigiously proud of it. Not because he had built it himself or anything, but because it was ours and anything that reminded him that we were a couple made him happy. I was just glad it was too small even for the two of us, or Jacob would have been insisting on starting a family rather than just pestering me about marriage.

Jacob switched off the engine and vaulted quickly to the back of the car to grab the sacks of groceries. I lagged behind, knowing he would try to continue our conversation, wanting to be out of earshot.

"Worried about what?" he asked when I was unloading vegetables into the fridge and unable to escape.

"I keep thinking about Sam and Emily, and about... well, all the rest of the pack, to be honest. About imprinting."

He sighed in frustration. "That old chestnut."

Old chestnut? I'd never even mentioned it before. I was actually feeling rather pleased with myself for coming up with such a fantastic new excuse for not wanting to marry Jacob. If I hadn't commented on it before, who had? It must have been the pack. They must have all been thinking how strange it was that Jacob was the only one of their number who hadn't imprinted, and yet was in a relationship. Knowing Leah, she had directly pointed out to Jacob that when the woman he did imprint on came along, I was going to get hurt.

Laughable, really, the idea that I could be hurt by Jacob falling in love with someone else. I had already taken all the hurt possible and there were no more nerve endings to destroy, no more pain receptors to trigger. Any pain I might feel at watching Jacob imprint on some stranger would be nothing more than a mild diversion, barely even a reminder of that festering wound I had kept tightly bound for the last four years. In fact, I'd probably be happy for him. He deserved better than the strange half-person I was.

I loved Jacob – what's not to love? – but the truth I had avoided telling him for the years we had been together, the real reason I could never marry him, was that my love for him paled into insignificance beside the fierceness of my love for the man whose name I couldn't even bring myself to think. If that man ever came back, I needed to not be married to someone else. I still had the tiniest, most pathetic, glimmer of hope.

Sometimes I lost myself in memories of those glorious, dazzling months with–him–which were at the apex of my life. Other times I closed down in fear and anguish because, despite all my efforts, I could no longer remember what his face looked like, or the sound of his voice.

I found myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, a package of meat in my hand. Jacob probably thought I was dithering about whether to put it in the freezer or cook it for dinner. I'd let him think that. It would hurt him too much to know I still thought about...

"Look, it's true I haven't imprinted on you, but I seriously don't think there's anyone out there I am going to imprint on now. Why haven't I met her yet? And just because I haven't imprinted, doesn't mean I love you any less. So come on Bella, just agree to marry me already."

I might finally have given up right then. It had been years, and he had asked and asked, and waved away my excuses time after time. I was almost ready to accept my fate and comfort myself with the fact that Jacob was a good man who would look after me. But something happened to stop me telling Jacob I would marry him.

I saw Jacob suddenly stiffen, his shoulders square up, a furious look cross his brow.

"What is it?"

"Vampire," he said, casting a frantic look towards me.

"On the reservation?" I was scared, and yet excited at the same time. The very word made my heart pound and I wasn't sure why. The vampire I loved, and his family, respected the treaty line, but it had meant nothing to Victoria and her army. They had come onto the reservation looking for me. The pack had dealt with them, but those who were left blamed me for the losses.

"No," Jacob said, at the same time as the door opened and Seth stepped in, closely followed by his older girlfriend Liliah, who was never far away from him. He looked directly at me. He was smiling. Jacob was wrinkling his nose in disgust. Evidently the vampire smell came from Seth.

"I ran into an old friend of yours," Seth laughed. I could have hugged him for not bothering to waste time with formal greetings. "He said he just came to check on Bella." I grabbed at the counter to steady myself, unable to quite believe that I was awake.

Jacob was trembling, and gritting his teeth to remain in control. "You told him she was fine, and he left?"

Seth wasn't afraid of Jacob. He glanced at me, then back at him. "You call that fine? Come on Jacob, you know she hasn't been fine since Sam found her in the woods."

"She was getting better."

"After nearly four years?"

I had to say something. "Where is he now, Sam?"

"At the treaty line. He said he just wants to see you. He wants to know you're happy. Then he'll leave again to join his family. He's a nice guy." I wondered whether that last part was for Jacob.

I mustered my strength and walked to the door. "I'm going to see him, Jacob."

I don't know whether I expected him to try to stop me, or to argue with me, but I didn't expect him to give in, step meekly aside, and accept the end of our three-year relationship with resignation and a gracious to the victor the spoils attitude. He nodded, unsmiling, unhappy. I frowned in confusion.

"I tried," he explained, with a shrug. "But I'm not stupid."

I thanked him with a farewell kiss, and left that house for the last time, feeling as though I was walking on air.

##  Morning Mist

The penultimate chapter of Midnight Sun – Twilight from Edward's point of view.

She looked so fragile, so delicate, lying in the high bed in the white room with bright fluorescent lights highlighting every bruise and scratch, and casting shadows of the many tubes and monitor wires across her precious face. Her broken body perfectly matched my broken spirit, because whichever way I tried to frame it, she was lying there, damaged and all but destroyed, because of me.

I wasn't naïve enough to think she would never have come to any harm if she hadn't met me–I had seen her stumble over her own feet often enough–but she would certainly not have almost died in her childhood ballet studio at the hands of a cold predator who thirsted for her blood. Someone not unlike me. I shuddered, remembering the sweet, luscious taste of her blood. Even laced with James's foul poison it had been more delectable than I had imagined anything ever could be.

I shook my head to try to force the memory away, remembering instead that I loved Bella even more than I loved her blood. At first I had wondered whether I was drawn to her because of that alluring and mesmerizing scent. Or maybe it was because she was the one person whose thoughts were closed to me, a mystery I longed to solve. Or it might have been all the good qualities I had seen in her as I grew to know her over the weeks. Her self-sacrificing generosity, her unaffected humility, her simple artistic intelligence, her natural beauty, or even her endearing clumsiness or her unexpected and unpredictable reactions.

It was all of those things. I loved the whole package. She was the focal point, the very purpose, of this endless half-life of mine. But now, because of me, she lay in a hospital bed.

I had tried to stop my mind thinking about the taste of her blood, but now it continued, unbidden, along a path that was even worse. It provided for me the obvious remedy to the danger I had exposed the innocent and perfect Isabella Swan to.

I had long ago discounted the selfish answer to my dilemma; the one where I almost killed her, put her through tortuous pain for three days and stole her soul. But the other answer caused my stomach to twist in pain and the overriding horror to flare. I didn't frame the words. I couldn't bear to acknowledge even to myself that it would take little more to tip the balance, to bring me to a point where I did have to think about leaving. To face that impossible pain, for her sake.

To my relief the dark turn of my mind was interrupted by a whirling maelstrom of intersecting thoughts, the most strident of which was the repeated shriek, "Bella, Bella, Bella!" The door to the room burst open and a blonde woman in a fringed hippy skirt and lemon yellow t-shirt flew to Bella's bedside and exclaimed over her as she stroked her hair and kissed her head. "Bella, my baby!My poor Bella!"

Renee's mind was as unique, in its way, as Charlie's slightly obscured and muted thoughts, or Bella's mysterious silence. It might have been just her fear for Bella, but her mind rushed over a thousand things at once, taking in and analysing every little detail. I was glad I didn't spend a lot of time in her company; it would probably be exhausting.

"She's going to be fine," I said, standing up, stretching a little, just as a human would do after sitting at a hospital bedside for five hours.

She whirled round, noticing me for the first time. I saw that she already knew that Bella was going to be fine. She had talked to a doctor. But she was still desperately upset to see her little girl (she used the words in her mind, but didn't picture Bella as anything close to a child) in that condition.

As she looked at me, I saw myself reflected in Renee's mind, and heard her crazily random analysis. This must be the boy. I can see why she likes him. He's dishy, but so pale! Is that what living without sun does to you? Will Bella end up looking like that? His sister looked like that too. Sickeningly stunning, admittedly, but so pale.

"You must be Edward," she said. I kept my hands in my pockets, hoping that she was too busy stroking her daughter's brow to want to shake my hand.

"I'm pleased to meet you Mrs Dwyer." I nodded politely. "I only wish it were in better circumstances."

"Thank you for staying with her," she said, but her thoughts were elsewhere. There's something funny about his eyes. I bet he's been crying. That's so cute. And he's not really looking at me, he's looking past me to Bella, but he's not just looking at her, he's drinking her with his eyes as though he just can't get enough. He's in love with her. Am I OK with this? Some guy in love with my Bella. Yes. I like him.

In her mind my face was suddenly smiling and friendly. In reality I wasn't smiling. Not yet.

"Your sister told me what happened, Edward." And yet, whatever Alice had told her, I couldn't pick it out of her mind. She wasn't thinking about it. Her thoughts were still racing, but our fabricated explanation of Bella's injuries wasn't among them. I picked through surreal images of baseball, kittens and organic vegetable boxes, but couldn't find anything relating to Bella falling through a window.

"She did?" I said, prompting.

"I think I'm to blame." She really did. Crushing remorse mixed with thoughts about her shoes being too tight. I saw that she slipped them off and kicked them under Bella's bed. Her toenails were painted different colours. I wondered whether she would kick off the guilt as quickly.

"How so?"

Renee sighed. "I can see how you feel about Bella. And reading between the lines of her emails I think it's clear how she feels about you. But you know, I lectured her so much when she was a child about the horrors of getting stuck in a small godforsaken town–Forks, in fact–by falling for some guy you hardly know when you're just a teenager. I told her again and again not to make the same mistakes I made. And I think on that date you had, she must have realised that she was getting too attached to you, and so she ran. Charlie phoned me, he told me how she'd behaved and what she said, and it was so clear that she was terrified that she was just repeating the mistake I'd warned her about."

I nodded slowly. I liked that explanation.

"When she wakes up," Renee said, her mind slowing its whirlwind path for just a moment as she focussed at last, "I'll tell her it wasn't such a mistake."

"Thank you," I said. I really liked Bella's mother, quite apart from the gratitude I owed her for giving birth to and raising the star around which my planet revolved.

"You want something to eat?"

"I don't think I could eat anything," I smiled.

She returned my smile. "Well, I rushed straight here from Sky Harbor and I'm starving. I'm going down to the cafeteria. I don't need to ask you to stay with Bella for me, do I."

"I'm not going anywhere," I assured her.

"I'll come right back as soon as I've eaten, assuming I don't get lost again. I suppose I could always get Rosalie to help me again. I like her."

I was surprised and it must have shown when I said "Rosalie?"

"Yes. I met your family in the lobby, and Alice was explaining about the hotel and the window, but what I wanted to know is why Bella came to Phoenix in the first place. So Rosalie offered to show me to Bella's room and on the way she told me all about Bella running out on your date and wanting to be in her own home to sort things out in her head."

I listened and heard Rosalie's smug, "You're welcome". She was just outside the door, listening, but doubtless would be back in the waiting room two seconds from now. Renee already had her hand on the door handle.

"Back soon," Renee said as she left, blowing a kiss to her sleeping daughter.

I was pleased she was gone, partly because the surreal whirlwind of her thoughts was most disconcerting, but also because I wanted to be alone with Bella, to touch her and stroke her again, as her mother had done. I wished–not for anything like the first time–that I could hear her thoughts. I needed to know whether she was in pain, whether she was dreaming, how conscious she was. I leaned my head closer, resting my chin on her pillow, as though proximity to her hidden mind could help.

Moments later her eyelids flickered, then opened. Her beautiful brown eyes looked up in consternation and I saw her hand twitch towards the oxygen tube under her nose. I reached out and took that warm and wonderful hand. "No you don't."

Her head rolled to one side as her eyes sought my face. "Edward?" Her eyes met mine. "Oh Edward, I'm so sorry!"

It was one of those unexpected reactions I loved. What did she have to be sorry for? "Shhhh. Everything's alright now." And it really was. For now.

##  Jack and Sam (Stargate SG-1 fan fiction)

General Jack O'Neill and Colonel Samantha Carter formed half of SG-1 for almost eight years. Viewers knew, through alternate universes, mind-reading devices, time loops and trips back to ancient Egypt, that they were deeply in love with each other. However, their military status meant that a relationship was forbidden.

Towards the end of season 8, Sam called off her engagement to Pete Shanahan because she recognised that she was truly in love with Jack, and not just fixating on him as a safe and unattainable figure. Jack, likewise, accepted the advice of a girlfriend who recognised that his heart was elsewhere, and decided to retire partly in order to give himself a chance to be with Sam.

When the viewers last saw General Jack O'Neill and Colonel Samantha Carter together they were fishing on the pond behind Jack's house, and Daniel Jackson and Teal'C, the other two members of SG-1, had just arrived to join them. This is particularly funny because throughout all eight seasons Jack had been inviting the members of his team to come fishing with him and for various reasons they never had. So it was a wonderfully fitting conclusion to an era, but viewers were left wondering whether they ever did actually get together.

The writers have said that they did, and left clues in the following two seasons and in Stargate Atlantis to this effect, but viewers were denied the satisfaction of seeing it on the screen. So here's the next best thing. I've written the scene at the lake from a point a couple of hours after the closing credits of Stargate SG-1 have run.

After Teal'C and Daniel had left, Sam reeled in her line, and carefully unhooked the bait.

"Stay a while," O'Neill invited her, his gaze still focussed on the lake in front of them.

"Sure." They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"Why are there no fish in your pond?" Sam asked him.

He frowned. "I like fishing," he said. "But I'm more of a meat kind of guy."

"You could throw them back."

"Nah."

He was his own person, Sam thought, with his own logic. Shrewd, and far more intelligent than he let on, but unique.

"Sir, you know there's something I want to tell you. I've wanted to tell you this for quite some time."

"I know."

"You know? What, you know I want to tell you something, or you know what it is?"

"Both."

She hesitated for a moment, then decided she'd waited long enough and it couldn't wait a second longer. "The thing is, Sir--"

"Carter, I retired. Sorta. I'm no longer your commanding officer. You don't have to call me Sir."

"Well Sir, technically you're still my superior officer, and—"

"Carter, if we're going to have any kind of relationship you're going to have to learn to call me Jack."

Relationship? She felt her heartbeat speed up more than it ever had when she was a prisoner on a Goa'uld ship.

"And you're going to have to call me Sam," she responded when she had assimilated this exciting new development.

"Hmm. Sam." He tested the word thoughtfully. "Samantha."

"Jack," She tried carefully. "What I've been trying to tell you, for a long time, is--"

He held up a finger for silence, put down his fishing pole, and turned to look at her in that inscrutable way she loved so very much. "You don't need to tell me."

"I think I do."

"No, you don't. Because I know. Because I know you, and I know me, and you've risked your life to save mine more times than I can count. And before you tell me I've done the same, you're right, I have, and for the same reason."

Carter decided to forget that they had both risked their lives to save other people too. It would spoil the moment.

"I don't want you to tell me," Jack said slowly, "Because I would like it a whole lot better if you would show me."

She understood. In the same moment that he reached for her, she pulled him into her arms and met his kiss entirely, gratefully, finally.

"Stay a while," he said again when they reluctantly parted slightly.

"I ship out to Area 51 in three weeks," she said.

"Three weeks would be good," he replied. "Stay for three weeks. Or forever."

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