Each time she passes through the station, the same flow of thoughts: that film, the character saying that it was three stops from Charing Cross to Greenwich, Mike letting it bother him, Mike showing her the map in the back of his diary, her not caring, them arguing anyway. But today she isn’t passing through. Today Charing Cross is her… Read it
Madness, perhaps, to rent a flat sight unseen, though it couldn’t be all that uncommon. Aberdeenshire was too far for her to have come down flat-hunting at weekends. Madness for sure to rent one she couldn’t afford on her salary. More than a lifetime of beans on toast, it would demand a second job. A view of the freshwater lake in the… Read it
Captain Matthew Flinders crouches on one knee, resting his buttock on the heel of his foot. His beautifully turned calves hold him in perpetual concentration. He looks past the paper coffee cups abandoned at his feet, to the chart he is making of the New World. Commuters look above him to the train departures board, their routes clearly mapped out.… Read it
She knew it was not a ring. The box was the wrong shape, longer, oblong. And it would all have been too soon, Leave or no Leave. But the curving band of gold, the detailed glitter, the way it lay against the satin; “it makes my heart spin”, she said. “Like the rings of Saturn” he was smiling, “except they’re… Read it
