Around her right wrist the girl on the train has a bracelet made of human hair. The narrow braid gleams with shades of brown and gold, auburn and grey, black and ginger. I can’t take my eyes off it.
She sees me watching and holds out her wrist across the aisle for me to stroke the silky plait. Then she holds the hand up to her throat so that the bracelet is between her breasts and caresses it with her left hand, encircling the hair, teasing it, sliding it over her knuckles and pulling it through her fingertips, all the while watching me through half-closed eyelids. Continue reading .... |
Vivienne is pregnant. She shares her news with the office before she's even taken off her coat. People crowd round her. There are hugs and kisses and even some tears.
Sarah calls congratulations across the room but doesn't move from her desk. At lunchtime, everyone goes to the pub to toast the miraculous conception. Sarah goes to the park and sits under the leafless trees, eating her sandwich and watching the children play on the swings. Vivienne organises a gender-reveal party. The cake has pink icing. Sarah contributes her share towards the present, and eats more than her share of the cake. |
My husband gave me this electric Spiralizer for my birthday. I had been hinting at gold hoop earrings, but anyway. He had been suggesting for some time that we ought to eat more healthily so I can lose the baby weight and things can go back to the way they used to be before I fell pregnant. There are occasions when I too would like to turn back time – to five years BC (before children) when we hadn’t even met.
I didn’t want to disappoint him – he had remembered my birthday, after all – so I set about preparing the spaghetti substitute made from courgettes from a recipe I found on the internet. I watched the shiny, green vegetable rotate as the machine magically whittled it down to a mound of pale wet strands, and idly wondered whether anyone had invented a similar device for human beings to trim away their lumpy bits, leaving them smooth and streamlined. I would so buy one of those. |
Exposition
She was conceived as Beethoven's “Appassionata” played softly in the background. Her father was a viola player and her mother a cellist, and it was hard to tell where making music together ended and making love began. The pregnancy was as calm and harmonious as Brahms' “Wiegenlied”. They sang Schubert Lieder to her in the womb, and when she kicked and stretched, they soothed her with “Air on a G String”. After a labour as long and complex and demanding as Mahler's third symphony, she finally pushed her way into the world to the triumphant strains of Beethoven's 9th. Continue reading .... |
I am deeply asleep when the phone rings, and it takes me a few seconds to shake off the disorientation and calm the pounding of my heart before I can answer it and it is Mrs Williams who lives across the hall you and she thinks you might have been burgled but she doesn't want to go in in case the intruders are still there but she doesn't want to call the police unnecessarily so could I possibly go round and check, and she hangs up before I can tell her that we broke up two weeks ago, but because I walked out on you without giving your key back I pull my coat on over my pyjamas and force my bare feet into cold trainers, arm myself with a can of deodorant, grab the car keys and drive over,
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Me.
You. We two. Together as one. Till death us do part. Or until one of us has had enough. Or perhaps we will be the lucky ones who grow together, not apart. But only if we can learn to tolerate each other’s faults and accept that neither of us is anything like perfect. So I will not complain when you leave your dirty shirts and socks on the bedroom floor, or put empty bottles back in the fridge, or pick drink-fueled fights over absolutely nothing at all. Continue reading .... |
I have a new friend! I open my eyes and he is there on the pillow, near my nose, staring at me. He’s very shy. As soon as I move, he’s gone. I shall call him Archie.
The noise he makes is really annoying, but it is his way of talking to me. It takes me a little while to understand him, but we have some long chats now. I tell him my name is Skinny Runt and ask him if he likes the name Archie. He says he’s never been called anything before, so it’s all the same to him. I don’t think he really understands what a name is. Continue reading .... |
You press the flush but instead of swirling away the water rises steadily up the sides of the porcelain bowl and in your head the fear begins to swell because none of the magazines tell you what to do in this situation and even though you think he may be ‘the one’ and you want this to be your first night together and you've planned the seduction down to the last red satin-and-lace detail, a blocked toilet didn’t figure anywhere in your scheme so now you are fighting down the panic and searching frantically for some way to rescue the situation
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