Garrett learned early that straightness was a lie. In the seventies, before the tobacco stains on his fingers had become permanent, before the old skin smell, he sat in a student flat where the curtains were never fully open and argued about the shape of the world with a fellow student. “Nothing’s truly straight,” Simon said, voice flattened by smoke. “You draw, you zoom in, and there are burrs. A laser? Dust and air make it dance.” He traced an imaginary line in the air and bumped it gently with his knuckle. Garrett watched the gesture as if a priest had lifted a wafer. He had laughed because that is what you do in a conversation like that, but something in him took hold. The…
Percy had been waking to vomit every night at 2:30 a.m. for six long weeks, the bucket on his bedside table as much a fixture in the bedroom as the snoring colossus he called “dear”, sleeping next to him. Despite Margaret’s attempts to find him a solution, even with all the back-patting and gentle nursing, Percy suspected her of foul play. Evidence did not align with his suspicions; he had never caught her in the act of imperilment, and through various hospital and specialist appointments, he had long since established that he was not on the receiving end of any insidious contriving; a slow-acting poison had been assumed to be Margaret’s modus operandi. She was kind, always - maddeningly so. Preparing meals she knew he…
Karen flipped through the smudged pages of the Farneholme Gazette with the grace of someone rifling through garbage. The paper, much like the village itself, offered nothing but petty crime, damp politics, and obituary columns. She’d once cared - once fought - but the creeping disillusionment that had infected Farneholme’s older folk had finally reached her too. Whatever fire she’d held for saving this place had gone out. Yobs, druggies, council rot . . . they could all have it. She raised her chipped mug for a last swig of lukewarm black coffee, but something on the page caught her eye. Her name. Obituaries. Karen Louise Miles. Died 16th August 2009. Aged 43. Loved. Missed. The idea of a prank flashed through her brain, only…
