The Edgware Branch (Extract One)

We were going all the way up to Edgware, to the flimsy hem of London's thrust-back, threadbare skirt: the familiar late night haul up north.

It was half past eleven. The carriage had thinned out steadily during the course of the ride (as it always did late at night) so by Colindale we were on our own. There were five or six people in the next carriage, visible through the windows between sections, but in the first part of the train it was just us. We were unspeaking and impassive - another part of the machine, whirring efficiently home.

Alex resented the long journey; she always did. She couldn't understand how I was happy living so far out, 'away from the action', as she liked to put it. But once or twice a week I could still entice her back, particularly in a crisis, when there were 'issues' to discuss and she needed to keep me sweet to get me to talk.

It was a trick. We'd have sex in my bed, but I'd never let us talk.

On this night, one of many identical nights, we had sat in silence most of the way from Leicester Square, unwilling to speak at all because if we spoke we would have to speak about Carla and neither of us wanted to speak about Carla. At least I didn't, and I assumed she felt the same.

If in doubt, I always like to assume people feel the same as me, that my thoughts and actions are somehow humanly inevitable, leave me blameless. I like to imagine that you, or anyone else, would think or do the same in my situation. It is not a trait that has served me well.

Alex had her big brown bag on her lap that night, as she always did, the zip leaning in towards her stomach, her arms crossed across the top, hanging loosely, inelegantly and, it seemed, uncomfortably over the edge. Her hands were flopped lethargically forward. I was watching in the window opposite of course, monitoring without letting her know I was looking, without doing anything at all which might have been construed as inviting conversation. I was barely thinking myself, just lazily aware that everything was as it always was: shit, but not quite shit enough for decisive action.

The Rat

When my bottom slides forward on the sofa and sleep opens wide and moves to swallow, one thought collapses into another and I feel the rat arrive at my waist. He clings to me, nestles in the pit of my side. His greasy warm fur brushes up against my forearm and elbow.

He comforts me.

When I drift off, he drifts off with me, breathing in and out and in and out - he in my time, I in his. I never look; even when the energy remains, I never turn to see. Although I know he's there, I might jump up, out of instinct, as I would in the day, rear back and scare him off. I don't want that. I want to lie here together, snuggled up, and float away on our sofa-raft, lullabied into dreams by the end of News at Ten.

The Furthest Point

"So this is it then, is it?" Julia asked, when the road had reached its end and only sea lay out ahead.

"Yes."

Edward coaxed the car up onto the the little verge and parked it, deliberately. The windscreen was split - sky in the top half, sea in the bottom - two slightly different shades of grey.

"Why isn't it more famous?"

"It is famous."

"Not where I'm from." She opened the passenger-side door and tried to get out, but was pinned back in her seat by the violence of the wind. She closed the door and giggled. Edward didn't join in.

"There's not much in it, but Dunnet Head is a mile or two further north."

His tone was a little defensive, Julia thought, so she leant across and kissed him reassuringly, on the cheek. He felt his chest swell.

"I'm not sure we're going to get outside," she said.

"Of course we will."

Edward zipped up his coat, pulled his scarf tight and reached for the handle of the door. He levered it open and stepped carefully out. He was almost blown over but managed to stay just about upright.

Having slammed his door, he worked his way carefully around the front of the car to hers, with two hands on the bonnet all the way. He opened her door and waited for her to disembark. She crossed her arms and laughed and shook her head.

Edward felt a creeping awkwardness, so he did what he always did when he felt a creeping awkwardness and kissed her. He bent over, leant into the car and pushed his lips keenly and clumsily against hers. She put her warm hand on the back of his neck and pulled gently at his hair. He smiled and the kiss broke off.

"You're a real man."

"I know." He unclipped the buckle of her belt and pulled her up and from the car. When she was fully out, they fell back, propelled by the wind, into the door, slamming it shut. He pinned her against the car and they kissed again, her hands wriggling blindly and blithely into his pockets and jangling his keys.

"Can we get back in now?" she whispered, her cold cheek against his.

"We haven't come all the way up here to sit in the car."

"This is silly."

"No, it isn't." He turned around and led her slowly across to the edge, the wind whipping against their faces as they walked.

"It's a shame it's not clearer," he shouted. "On a sunny day you can see Orkney from here."

"How far away is it?"

"About fifteen miles."

"Right."

They stood in silence for a minute or two, he now behind her, arms around her waist, while they both stared out into the great grey mass. Two blueish greys, but greys nonetheless. When a little time had passed, she swivelled and stared up at him.  He looked back: pink face, green eyes.

"It isn't silly," he whispered, and saw that she knew he was right.

Packing Up

Julia kept three things from her brother's flat for herself - a newly and tearfully compiled album of old photos, a pair of spectacles, which were somehow far too intimate to throw away, and a big purple thesaurus, which she could remember seeing in the bookcase in the living room (but never using) as a child. These all went into her suitcase - they were not for others' eyes.

Most things she had burnt or taken to tips and tossed into skips. She had been to a number of different dumps, afraid that someone might scavenge the whole lot in one go, rebuild his life somewhere in a street she didn't know.

She arranged for one box of belongings to be shipped for Michael and Gracie to sort through, and lined up the remaining six to be collected as planned. And that was it. It was time to go home.

She slept through the flight.

Michael and Gracie were at JFK to meet her. Gracie grabbed her leg and Michael took the luggage. She kissed her stepdaughter on the head and her husband on the cheek and walked with them though the airport to the car park. Michael reached for her hand on the way, but she kept it in her pocket.

She got Gracie onto the back seat, buckled up her belt and went to sit in the front, whilst Michael arranged and rearranged the boot. She watched him in the mirror, trying and failing to make it shut. As he at last squeezed down the lid, she sighed and rocked her head back against its rest. It was all packed in.

"Are you alright?" the little girl asked from the back. Julia reached around for her hand and squeezed it.

It took them two hours to get back. She stared out of the window all the way, trying to remember what she had been like as a child.

Why the Chaplain Chose Me

"It's hard to deny God in death," said the chaplain, as we stood around outside the service and waited for the parents to leave.

He said it quietly and only to me. I was at once both flattered and offended, pleased to be chosen for his aside, that he trusted my discretion and understanding, but upset he thought me safe, too witless to respond, to challenge the statement as another man might.

I half-smiled.

The parents appeared, went straight into the car and away.

The party began to break up. Some were leaving now, uncommitted, but their presence, I suspected, meant the most; others would remain, swollen and unable to speak. If you could talk, your grief was less. Perhaps that's why the chaplain chose me.

The Annexe

We played Ludo on the landing when we were little. There were other games - a big box full of stuff - snakes and ladders, a fancy old chess set - you had to look hard at the pieces to tell which was which - but the game that's really stuck with me was Ludo.

There were two floors in the annexe, now I think about it, with a couple of bedrooms (and maybe a bathroom) on each, which I don't think anyone ever used. Maybe a kitchen - I can't remember. But there was this big landing space where we used to play. I'm sure about that.

Mrs Holdsworth would take us back there after supper, every night from June right through to September, and we'd mess about for an hour or two before bedtime. She would sit on the box and watch us. I don't think she ever left us back there on our own.

Once she caught us running through, Molly and me chasing each other, cackling as we careered from unknown room to unknown room. She was sitting on one of the beds, looking out without expression at the door. When we burst in, she took us back to the landing and beat us.

I don't know where the door was exactly... Somewhere around here, between these beds to the left of the cupboard. There are no marks on the wall and it's so long ago that it's hard to know for sure. The memories are there, but I was young and can't trust them.

Maybe they bricked the annexe up and it's back here, intact and untouched.

But I can't help thinking that I might have made it up.

Caucus

There's been no hot water all morning. Tom shrieked when he stepped into the shower, called out like a little kid that it was cold. It wasn't very presidential.

I phoned down to reception. They told me that they knew, that they were sorry but that, even at five-thirty, I hadn't been the first person to complain and there wasn't too much they could do.

They'll be a man in this afternoon, they said. Too late for us. We'll be gone. Not to New Hampshire, but home. There's still work to do, of course: photos, handshakes, a speech to polish, I guess, though they could have had it written for weeks.

We've known since Saturday, officially, but most of the staff realised a couple of months ago I'm sure. Apart from Carlton, who maintains that 3% is "something to work with", they've all let it go. It's fine. I understand. But I feel for Tom. He won't have missed it.

I held him last night, when we got back to the room after meeting with Nat and Andy and the others. Before he could sit down and deny it, before there was any bravado, I held him in the doorway and we hugged.

He crumpled and told me he was sorry, again. He didn't have to. He said he was sorry fourteen years ago and that was enough for me, at least.

One more day then and we'll be away. One more day and I can get my husband home.

Midnight Mass

I roam, not half-awake and now away,
Brought back to stand to sing;
The fourth port in the corner eye,
Where Christ will see his mother -
See opposite of meet -
Cross on bare back, strained, weighed down.

Behind them waits a soldier,
A cobweb strung between his wooden hand and wooden eye.
It sways and quivers.
I watch it through the bleak midwinter,
Don't brush it, wrong to touch,
But let it stand between hymns,
Stirring to the rhythm of our breath.

It's not important. No-one will see it
When the church is less full.

Negotiations

My fingers rattle a rhythm on the desk. They are talking to me, requesting my attention, looking for something to do. Always keen to keep them sweet, I ship my digits across to the keyboard so they can tap out a more specific message.

"Hello, Fred."

"Hello, fingers," I say back.

"Sorry to bother you."

"That's ok."

"We're a little bord."

"Spelling..."

"Sorry - bored. :)"

"What do you want to do then? Some drawing?"

"No, thank you." My right-hand fingers stop typing. "It's a bit shit for us."

"What about a little pottery?"

"NO NO NO. TOO DIRTY. THE CLAY DRIES UNDER OUR NAILS."

"Alright. You can turn caps lock off. I get the point. Do you have any ideas?"

"We want to play the piano."

"But you've played the piano six times already today," I groan.

"Just once more. We'll put your earplugs in for you."

"What's in it for me?"

"You can use us to pick your nose as much as you like." This is the clincher.

And so, five minutes later, the eleven of us are all over by the piano, fingers bashing out a Mozart sonata whilst I try to do the Times crossword in my head.

Geneva: The Third Gate

At the third gate of seven, Jessie and Jim come to their first real problem. Two pictures from L'Etranger's past which seem unconnected but which they must somehow link if they are to get any closer to the ideas at the centre. An otter thrashing about and a rank full of taxis. This is bloody hard and they're only at gate three.

They have identified obscure family members (Catherine de Clemency, Gerard Rougerie) and recalled unwitnessed conversations from decades before (with Marion Delaunay), pieced together through the untrusted testimony of one-time acquaintances (Jonathan Allen, Martha Linehan), but there is a limit to the number of locks they can pick through homework alone.

Now they will have to intuit, to prove they knew L'Etranger by making a connection which is beyond logic. They have to "be" him, if they can, imagine the puzzles which he might himself have set, untangle his intentions, identify his bluffs.

He must be the only man who could have answered these questions. Not only are they about him; they demand him. That's the whole point of the idea-safe. That's why it's the most secure joint in Geneva.

Towards the Sky

They first appeared on Tuesday, three o'clock, when I was elbow-to-elbow in Room 28, creeping through a page of trigonometry. They'd itched beneath the surface since lunch, pushing up against the inside of the skin, bristling briefly and urging me to scratch. But no actual buds appeared 'til three.

They started on the left forearm, leant on the table to keep the book in place, pushing through white and thin and painless, three in five minutes, one on the inside of the elbow and two more up towards the wrist.

I tried to cover them, stop Norris from noticing, but when I glanced down at my writing hand and saw a creamy stem peeking eagerly up between my thumb and index finger, I couldn't help but shriek and toss my triangles to the floor.

Norris looked up from the shoulder of a struggler on the front row and, as he did so, the class all swivelled to stare. I was up out of my chair, through the door and away down the corridor, my face watered with tears, Norris' fat roar bouncing around the walls behind me.

I ran into the loos, rushed into a cubicle, swung the door shut and locked behind me. Lifting my shirt, I counted - seven, eight, nine plants sprouted from my chest and belly, white and delicate and now beautiful. I could see them emerging, slick and bloodless, with fresh buds following behind - twelve, thirteen, fourteen - creeping up and shooting through the skin. I fell back onto the seat, pushed off shoes, unpeeled socks and looked down at my foliaged feet, plants peering up between my toes and what felt like roots suddenly pulling from inside down towards the floor, yearning for turf. I was to be planted, I realised now, and suddenly it didn't feel like such a horrible thing.

But the boys' toilet would never do. I unlocked the door and walked out, caught sight in the mirror of my still unblemished face, then strolled down the corridor and stairs, barged open the big double doors and stepped into the sunlight of the yard. I knew where I should go now and headed straight there, marching through the gates, across the road and into the park.

There I stood, my feet together, in a nice south-facing flowerbed and let the roots push down at last, relieved, through my soles and into the soil. I sighed, leant back towards the sun and felt my face give in to the flowers, arrowing through my cheeks and lips and eyes, stretching up and out towards the sky.

The Star

Maxwell Dandy has a fine physique - tight, lithe, CASTABLE. Taut mocha body topped off with thick chocolate moustache. And, lurking beneath, the thin satisfied lips of a hatefully spectacular lover.

He is invariably the first to take off his shirt when the weather allows, to parade around La Cienega Park in his unfeasibly tight shorts (on anyone else ridiculous, but around his upper thighs quite the sexiest thing that any passer-by can ever have seen). He will stop and talk to THE FANS (if they're able to speak), sign photos, kiss babies, "do his thing"... and they will swoon and faint, probably, and he'll call an ambulance and sit in the back with the emasculated husband, reassuring him that his wife will be ok, that it was just the heat, when we all know that she's only cracked her head open because HE'S SO BLOODY GORGEOUS.

I'm working with Maxwell Dandy next month. We're filming the sequel to Prometheus Lives. I'm playing Fourteenth Mortal. I wish I was playing the eagle.

Picking Out the Tomatoes

I saw him out of the window this morning for the first time in months, standing by a bin, picking the tomatoes out of his supermarket sandwich and flicking them away. He was doing it one-handed, gripping the packet with his left while he fiddled at the filling with his right. Even from eighty feet above, I knew it was him and I knew exactly what he was doing.

"Matthew!" I shouted, but he had his iPod in. I tried again, louder than before and with a wave, but still he didn't hear - probably listening to Belle and Sebastian or Teenage Fanclub or something else I used to sneer at but secretly like.

I walked back in off the balcony and hurried across to the lift.

Inside, I pressed zero; the doors eased towards each other and clicked together. The capsule crept away, counting its way down from the fourteenth floor, away from the present and into my past.

I leant back against the mirrored wall and thought about Matthew, about what we'd experienced together and what had followed once we were apart. The doors opened at the thirteenth, eleventh, eighth and sixth floors; at every stop, a different memory snuck its way inside.

I thought about when I'd left him lying face down in tears on the sofa, walked out of his flat at three in the morning with no money for a taxi and made my way back home through the streets around Crouch End feeling...relieved.

I thought about the time when he'd asked me to marry him and I'd said yes, because that was what I'd been sure I would want to say, even though, when the moment arose, I'd known immediately that I really wanted to say no.

I thought about the time when he'd flown from London to Budapest to see me, on a whim; when I went down to the hotel bar and he was sitting there, waiting for me with no bags and no plan and two pints of cheap Hungarian lager, I knew that I loved him, that I loved him, that I really loved him, in all ways and with every possible emphasis.

I thought about making his ham sandwiches in the morning, cutting off the crusts and wrapping them in cling film.

The lift reached the bottom. I wandered out, through the lobby and into the street. He wasn't there. The tomatoes and the crusts and the sandwich packet were perched on top of the bin.

I still don't know if I was disappointed.

Reverse Hair Loss Today: Proven Results!!!

I'm trapped in the spam folder. I know I'm not meant to be here, but they saw my name and assumed, as you would. In retrospect, the triple exclamation mark is a little over-emphatic.

It's not as bad as I'd feared. In fact, I'm having a grand old time - online degrees to the left of me, penis enlargements to the right. There are plenty of Viagra salesmen and religious nuts to talk to, so the conversation is always pleasingly salacious.

The only problem is the time limit. Another five hundred messages and I'll be squeezed out the other side, into the recycle bin or maybe the unknown beyond. I hope that doesn't happen. I'm an important message - an advert, sure, but a damn relevant one. Not a bill or a job offer or anything absolutely essential, but seriously worth a look if he ever wants his locks back.

Unlike the charlatans who surround me, I can actually do some good. I hope he checks before the rubbish chute sucks me through; I hope he clicks me open, hauls me up into the inbox and saves me from whatever lies in wait.

Why the Books Need to Breathe

The staff keep you quiet in the library so the books can hear each other breathe. It is the only concession to the prisoners' wellbeing.

The inmates are not allowed to actually talk, but they may communicate quietly across the concourse, like lonely whales in a sea free of waves, inhaling and exhaling slowly, steadily, reassuring their friends that they are ok, that they are not in the library alone.

They stand up straight in their shelves, wedged in back to back, too tight for neighbourly exchange. So they breathe to stay hopeful, to while away the long long hours for which they sit there helplessly, ready to be taken out.

Dancing Iguanas

When I close my eyes I see dancing iguanas. They rumba in the rushes on the banks of Lake Mahoy.

They don't know I'm there. I just watch, attach my eyes to their swaying samba hips, the Brazilian rhythm marked out in ripples on the water. They're mostly paired up, boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls - libidinous lizard dancers raunching happily away.

I'd like to go and join them, free my hips down there on the bank, gyrate my way through to the loose louche satisfaction which they all seem to enjoy.

But I can't go and join them, because they don't really exist. They're just part of the picture, the moving picture which paints itself when I close my eyes. Any sensible person knows that iguanas don't dance.

The Interview

I sit in the corridor outside the office, as Jenny has instructed, and wait for Mr Marsden to emerge and beckon me in.

I have been here for eight and a half minutes. He knows where I am, for sure - I heard him on the intercom when Jenny buzzed through to tell him I had arrived. He must be very busy. I am happy to wait.

The corridor's walls are made up entirely of the windows of the offices which flank it. Some are not occupied and the blinds have been closed on those which are. I cannot see into Mr Marsden's office. I can hear him chattering away on the phone, but I still have to imagine what he looks like.

There is another voice now coming through the window. Mr Marsden wasn't on the phone at all. There must be a second person in the office, the person before me, the competition. There is a laugh. I presume it is Mr Marsden. He's cracking him up. The bastard's cracking him up. I bet he gets it.

Then suddenly silence. Genuine silence - not a single sound. A few seconds pass...but then it is broken by an enormous thump and a grunt. I can hear Mr Marsden again, but the other voice has stopped.

I look up at the clock. Eleven minutes have passed now. There must be some mistake. He is busy - I should go and check with Jenny. I stand up and start to walk along the corridor back to the reception.

But I am stopped by a voice behind me.

"Fred Gordon?"

I turn around. Mr Marsden is a very tall and very wide man with very little hair.

"Yes."

"Please, come in. Sorry to keep you waiting."

I smile and walk back along the corridor and into the office. There is no-one else in the room. It is just Mr Marsden and me.

"Sit down, please."

I sit down at the desk. Mr Marsden walks around me to his chair. He sits and rests his hands on the table. I see that his left little finger is askew, dislocated, sticking out at the side of his hand.

He sees that I have seen it. He sees that I have seen that he has seen that I have seen it. He smiles and my shoulders stiffen.

The Hypnotherapist

Jefferson Marlowe leant back on the hypnotherapist's couch, tucked his thumbs beneath his braces and prepared to regress.

"Ok, Jefferson," said Dr Mandrake, "are you ready to go under?"

Jefferson sighed.

"Yes. Yes, I am," he mumbled as the dubious doctor produced his pendulum.

This was Jefferson's fourteenth appointment with Dr Mandrake and almost certainly his last. So far he had uncovered a gamut of traumatic experiences: as an infantryman at the Battle of Fondu Dyke, as a bankrupt blacksmith in the remote mountain village of Ashling Potsville and as an exceptionally comely courtesan in the ancient kingdom of Mavlavia.

Jefferson did not believe in reincarnation, but he did believe in con men, and he was beginning to come to the conclusion that Marcel Mandrake "M.D." was making most of this stuff up. He was certainly no closer to triggering his memories of the blank patch between his altercation with Alfonso Barsquador on the road to Batahausen and his sudden arrival at the Quinto Rock Mining Collective seven months ago. What on earth had happened? Who the hell was "Marukash"? If he was ever going to find out, he needed a new and, if necessary, drastic approach.

He reached out and grabbed the swinging stone.

"Jefferson!" cried the quack.

"I'm sorry, Dr Mandrake. I don't think I'm getting anywhere here."

"But we've unearthed so much already. Please just give it one more try."

"No, Dr Mandrake. I need to tackle this head on. I'm going to go and see the Carletian Oracle."

"But she charges three hundred groats an hour! That's seven whole sessions with me!"

"I've spent six hundred on you already," Jefferson replied, as he donned his poncho. "Anyway, you'll thank me for this when I'm saving you from Marukash."

"Who's Marukash?"

"No flipping idea, mate. No flipping idea."

Jagalath, Marukash, Jefferson and Clive

Rarely can a pair of demons have been much more demonic than the fearsome twins, Jagalath and Marukash, two ancient terrors birthed by a belligerent black hole, which spat them spiralling away to wreak havoc across the embryonic stars in the very earliest days of the universe.

And what havoc they wrought, toppling gods and gobbling up galaxies: the Kray twins of Cassiopeia.

But then one day the chaos which they had caused was suddenly brought to an end, as the brothers were trapped by a canny old wraith named Clive under the surface of a planet called Earth in a patch marked out by a field of silver dandelions in the mighty shadow of the Aquamarron Mountains.

Jagalath and Marukash spent several millennia buried away in their underground jail, stewing bitterly and plotting their revenge on the race of wraiths who had devised their downfall.

Yet the two terrors were not without hope, for, when he had imprisoned the demons, Clive had cunningly left a method by which their dungeon might be opened, should any future warrior come up with an ingenious plan by which the dastardly twins might finally be banished from the universe for good.

The key to the prison door (blowing every seed off the head of a dandelion flower picked from the field) was passed down through the generations lest the demons be inadvertently set free before a plan to destroy them had been devised. Thus the dungeon remained closed for thousands and thousands of years...until one day a hapless young buffoon by the name of Jefferson Marlowe blundered in and sprung open the prison door.

With the red carpet rolled out by Jefferson, the twins might both have emerged there and then, but they opted instead to hedge their bets; Jagalath came out first, whilst Marukash lay in wait to see what would befall his brother.

Once Jefferson had atoned for his idiocy by slaying the first demon himself (an experience so traumatic that he immediately forgot all about it), Marukash chose to lurk still beneath the surface in his freshly re-bolted cell, waiting for some fresh imbecile to blow on another dandelion and let him loose to avenge his brother's miserable demise.

A Breath Through the Window

Jefferson Marlowe was settling down to some cross stitch when an unseasonably chilly breeze blew in through his kitchen window. He bristled, wearily rose and flipped the porthole shut.

He dropped back down into his armchair, took a couple of puffs from his pipe and returned to the nascent tapestry. But, just as he had rethreaded the needle, the cool draught wafted through once more, chilling his hands and tickling his patience.

He looked across. The little window was firmly closed and he could not see how the breeze was still getting in. He stood up to inspect the wall, but, as he did so, the flame of his stubby little candle was blown clean out and the bungalow was suddenly as black as can be.

The breeze came again, but now he could hear that it was not simply a breeze but a breath, ushering out a fragile but gently coercing voice.

He listened intently.

"Jefferson...", it drawled sweetly. "Jefferson..."

"Yes."

"Jefferson..."

"Yes, yes, it's me," he answered impatiently. "Who the hell is this?"

"An old friend..."

"An old friend?"

"We need you, Jefferson...We need you...Soon...We will come back for you soon...Marukash is awaking...It is not safe for you just yet but you must be ready...Soon, Jefferson, soon..."

The breeze stopped and the lights flashed back on. Jefferson felt a dull shiver of recognition. He knew not whose voice it had been, but he knew he had heard it before, a faintly familiar murmur from his past, a past which he had almost totally forgotten, but which now he knew was destined to come again.

The Most Important Amnesiac

After six months working for the Quinto Rock Mining Collective, Jefferson Marlowe had become a little restless. Chipping away at a coal face for fifteen hours a day was not wholly unsatisfying, but it was nothing compared to the thrill of rescuing Princess Yolande from the implausibly tall belltower at Stankingham Castle or hunting for diamonds hoarded by the legendary five-eyed giant Lorcando in the Jungle of Chrysling Grub.

But Jefferson knew that such adventures were a thing of the past. Which was fine, for the most part. It was a relief not to be freelance, no longer to have to hunt for work, to have a more straightforward tax return, to be settled in one location with a recently-established regular girlfriend and three flat viewings planned for next weekend.

Jefferson was sure that this current pang of restlessness would pass - it was time, he knew, to resign himself to the fact that he wasn't particularly special, that there wasn't anything extraordinary about him at all. He was just a bloke - an unusually handsome bloke, but a bloke nonetheless - with a straightforward haircut and a modest talent for chiselling.

Yet, at that very moment, less than fifty miles away, just on the other side of the Aquamarron Mountains, a statue of our humble hero was being unveiled by a grateful race of wraiths. It was a monument to the man who had rescued their community, the man whom they desperately needed to come to their aid one final time: Jefferson Marlowe - in truth, a far from ordinary bloke and the most important amnesiac the world had ever known.

A Tolerably Short Bulletin

Eddie Berwick splashed into the middle seat of the sofa and flicked on the TV. It was the news - he was early - a tolerably short bulletin before the start of the cricket.

He brought up his whisky to his mouth and sipped just a bit, then reached out to the little table and left the glass there. He thought about some crisps.

A few seconds passed. No crisps. Whisky was bad enough.

Then Eddie's attention was interrupted.

He looked at the screen. His face had been pointing towards it all along, but now, for the first time, he looked. He really looked.

A woman, a young woman, was standing in the middle of a mass of dried mud, her face exhibiting no easily defined expression. She was trying to recover her bearings, said the reporter, but failing.

The mass of dried mud was her hometown, said the woman, clumsily dubbed. It was where she had grown up, where her family had lived, her mother and her father and her brothers and her sisters, where her family had lived until yesterday. When they all died.

Eddie felt the whisky burn at the back of his throat. He had to swallow to relieve the soreness where the whisky had tickled.

Soon the woman was no longer standing in the hard mud. She had gone, maybe never to be thought of again, replaced by the weather and, in a minute, the cricket.

Eddie was no longer thinking about the woman or the weather or the cricket. There was not a thought in his head, just a futile tear falling from each of his eyes and a tight stiff swelling trapped somewhere in his chest.

Michael's Column

Michael wrapped his arms around Admiral Lord Nelson, using the great man to shield himself from the full force of the wind as it buffeted up the rubbish around Trafalgar Square.

He peered over Horatio's head and across the rooftops of Whitehall towards Big Ben. It was quarter past two in the morning. How had it got so late?

One minute he'd been curled up in front of the snooker after a slightly over-indulgent supper, watching Peter Ebdon compile yet another frame-winning break in meticulous and monotonous fashion, the next he was one hundred and sixty feet above the pavement, eyes pinched half-shut by a gale, shouting frantically and almost blindly at hopelessly inebriated passers-by.

No-one down below could hear him. The storm swirled around the square, scooped up his shouts and whipped them off away from their intended targets.

Michael grimaced, pressed his face up against Nelson's, just as Hardy had done two hundred years before, and cursed his bloody sleepwalking.

Bathtime

Maxwell Dandy peels off the facemask and blinks into the bathroom mirror. Widening his eyes, he feels the remnants of the mud crack in the grooves of his forehead. He wipes them away with a fluffy white hotel hand towel, rolls his shoulders and peels off the dressing gown.

It has been a long day's filming.

The bath is nearly full behind him - he reaches out through the steam and turns the taps to off. The salts fizz in the water below and spread out into the bathroom air, as if it is being hot-boxed with Friar's Balsam.

Maxwell dips a toe fearfully below the surface, then, with growing confidence, a foot and a calf. He reaches across, opens the window a crack and commits his other foot to the tub.

He lowers his bottom below the surface and sighs as the water crackles against his skin.

There is a telephone beside his head. He reaches across and dials nought for reception. Oysters and champagne will be delivered to his suite in twenty-five minutes time. He wonders belatedly whether Janine likes shellfish.

Better Words

There are better words around, somewhere - I know there are - more imaginative vessels which bear meaning below their decks in a manner which is both thrillingly ingenious and pleasingly succinct.

But they are not so easy to find...

There are plenty of new ones, sure, but the majority are quite unexceptional. They are all over the place, eager for exposure and the chance to be assessed.

Sometimes I look, I rummage about in the back of my brain and find a few original words and phrases scattered around, but they are largely of little use and are swiftly redundatised. They are malapplicable and hypervoluted and I cannot envisage a context in which I might come to incorporate them readily into my everyday discourse.

Yet I will continue, I will forage for fresh expressions, for, somewhere in this mess of newly minted words, a little gem will be lying, hiding away in a quiet cramped corner, waiting to be prised out and carried across into the cool light of conversation.

Sand Between My Toes

I hobble to the point where the last wave broke to rinse the sand from between my toes. Shoes and socks in my left hand, my right free to pick away the grains when the water rolls in.

The wave breaks. I fumble at my foot well enough and stretch the sock over the cold clean skin. Then straight down into its trainer, almost overbalancing as I plunge it into the hole.

I look up from the sea. Moira is lying on a hotel towel, just over fifty yards away, peaceful, probably asleep, a single still presence in the bedlam of the weekend beach.

Tonight I will ask her to marry me.

A second wave breaks.

I hadn't moved my foot. My shoe is filled; my sock is sodden.

Clues

At the very bottom of the box, beneath a jumble of Leeds United caps, was the signed photograph of Lee Chapman, which he had collected outside Elland Road in May 1992.

It had taken him a lot longer to find it than he had expected.

He had been distracted for hours by the array of school photographs which he had encountered on the way, re-familiarising himself with his sixteen year-old hair and his six year-old glasses, looking along the lines of classmates and wondering how he had lost touch with so many of them so soon, at the ones who had already died and the ones who had already married, at the ones whom he sometimes saw across the road at Holborn and at the ones whom he had not seen at all since he was eighteen.

He had been distracted by the mountains of old exercise books, by the volumes and volumes of exuberant but indecipherable drawings which he had produced between the ages of four and six, by the books full of strange stories which he had written, by the short clumpy sentences and inexplicable spelling mistakes which marked their ages, the errors like the rings of a tree trunk guiding him back to their birthdates.

He had been distracted by the fragments, by the UCAS forms and exam certificates and CD racks and cuddly toys and poems and songs, which were written on scraps of paper and stuffed underneath piles of socks and shin pads and boots, by the hats which he had bought when he was fourteen, by the posters of once beloved rock stars now long-forgotten, by programmes and fliers and badges and folders and tickets and boxes and letters and cards, all providing clues, all adding to and solving the mystery of the story of his life.

Russian Dolls

Jennifer Parker scrolled back up to the top of the page and perused her composition. It was a fair assessment of an above-average entertainment, she thought. Not too generous, but not unkind by any means. She had picked up on all the obvious points of interest - the continuous use of iambic hexameter, the elaborately constructed overhead set, the controversial casting of Maxwell Dandy as the eponymous vivisectionist...

The content of her evaluation was not in question, but her chosen style would inevitably be a matter of concern. She hoped her reviewer would look kindly on her overuse of the semi-colon and the Oxford comma, and instead enjoy the smoothly continuous flow of her prose. Of course, his or her concerns would be affected by the spectre of his or her own reviewer, although surely that individual could not be too harsh for fear of being critiqued in turn.

Jennifer read through the piece one final time, then pressed "Send". The cogs of the critical machine creaked ever onwards.

Viennese Waltz

Stanley stiffens his quiff with a last blast of spray and steps out onto the floor. Glenda is waiting for him, leaning on the banister at the foot of the spiral staircase and looking across expectantly in his direction. He glides over, stomach slightly tensed, and reaches for her hand. She very gently places hers in his.

They briefly take each other in.

She rests her other hand on his shoulder. They are now in hold and will not exchange eye contact again for the duration of the dance.

A pause, then the music kicks in and the pair sweep away, painting precise patterns on the floor, swirling in Viennese circles, looping and looping and looping their way around the perimeter of the room, slicing through the areas where an audience might be. They fleckerl and spin on the spot, wrapping themselves in a imaginary coil, ravelling and unravelling and setting off again.

Stanley smiles blankly, no sign of the familiar excitement which is whisking itself up within him. Glenda's smile is serene, unflinching, unrevealing.

They need not communicate anything more. This is their dance. This is how they will remember each other.

The Foxes' Orchestra

The foxes are tuning up on Hampstead Heath; their rehearsal is about to begin.

Reginald is the first violinist. He is extravagantly talented, not to mention very popular with the vixens.

He sits on his chair, tail poking out of the hole in the back, and bashes out a quick arpeggio.

He flexes his paws and looks around, peering back into the mass of assembled musicians. Wesley is there on the timpani and Jerome on the euphonium. Reginald waves hello. Possible post-rehearsal drinking buddies, those two - always up for a trip down to the pond after practice.

Reginald is distracted from these thoughts by the chatter of the choir assembling, choristers greeting each other warmly before going through their complex personalised warm-up routines.

The rehearsal will soon be underway so Reginald settles himself and waits for the conductor, Augustine, to appear.

Tonight, the foxes will play Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony in its entirety. It will be note-perfect and exquisitely phrased. Reginald will lead the orchestra with distinction. He always does.

The Supporting Cast

I am not the main character in this movie; I am in the background of every shot, loitering blurrily, out of focus but always in the picture.

Everywhere I go, so too does the camera, filming Maxwell Dandy's every move in crystalline close-up; every hair, every pore is meticulously explored.

In the café, as I sip my cappucino quietly, I look up and into the lens. Maxwell Dandy is at the next table, delivering a devastatingly honest and crushingly moving monologue, soliloquising like a tragic hero with his unfeasibly well-defined jawline and his Roman nose and his sensational rhetoric. He improvises most of his lines, you know.

They are filming him now, and me, as I type. He's crying. He's lighting a cigarette. He's looking around. He's looking at me. The camera is rolling still. I'm going to have to stop now. He's walking over. He's calling my name. He's shouting. Maybe my part is bigger than I'd thought.

Jasper's Eyebrows

Jasper sat down, crossed his legs and propped the mirror up against his bare calves. He picked up the tweezers, leaned in towards his reflection and started to pluck at the thick hairy streaks which rested sullenly above his eyes. He had really let himself go over the last year, let himself become fat and unhealthy and unnecessarily hirsute. It was time for some discipline, he thought, as he tweezered his first target.

The process was excruciating, each hair stubbornly refusing to budge unless and until the necessary explosive aggression was applied. The pain was shocking at first, but, once he had become accustomed to it, Jasper enjoyed the associations which it evoked. He thought back two years to the last time he had rededicated himself to personal presentation, to the familiar pain of the plucking and to the burst in self-esteem which he knew would result from the rigorous application of the regime.

He finished the first brow, put down the tweezers and looked inquisitively into the mirror. The left side of his face was jaded, worn out by months of failure, but the right glowed in cocky acknowledgement of a successful new era to come.

Jasper smiled. The right side of his face winked back. 2011 was going to be his year.

Exchange Rate

This time last week, I would have had well over twenty minutes to get from Studio A to Studio B. I might even have had time to stop into the Green Room for a cup of tea and a Hob Nob between my radio and television reports.

But not anymore. I can still just about fit in a very small carton of orange juice, but I have to drink it on the move, without breaking stride.

The exchange rate's worse than ever today - the minute's gone right down against the minuto. In Italy and Spain, they could fit in a three course meal in the time it takes for us to lay the table.

The Americans, the Australians and even the French are in the same boat as us, though, with their variously pronounced units of time. We all need to make it up somewhere. Maybe two-year degrees are the answer.

A Miscalculation

Dr Ethelberg dropped her pen and recoiled from the desk. She hadn't, had she?

She took off her glasses, peered at the page and deliberately blinked a couple of times. It was still there: 176.7864.

She must have gone wrong somewhere along the way, missed a decimal point, misread her handwriting, mistaken a dot for a dash...

She turned back to page one. Nothing wrong with any of that.

Page two? No, no problems there.

Page three? All fine.

Page four? Perfect.

The solution was at the top of page five. Dr Ethelberg could not identify any mistakes.

But surely 176.7864 was far too low. She'd been expecting it to come out somewhere around 182.51. No one had ever expected an exact figure, but the Department's plans had all been based on the estimate of 182.51.

This is extraordinary, thought Dr Ethelberg. Of course, if the real figure was indeed 176.7864, then the planet was almost certain to melt within the week. But that didn't matter to Dr Ethelberg. It might have been the end of everything, but her reputation was sure to be at an all-time high.

She sat back in her chair and poured herself a large glass of sherry. She was going to plummet into oblivion with the status her brilliance deserved.

Something Magical

I lie in your flowerbed, my body contorted through the twists of the roots of your rosebush...where I wait to be discovered.

I have travelled from garden to garden. I snuck into your place by crawling under the wall; I took a deep breath and plunged down through the stiff, saturated mess at the bottom of the barrier.

I won't wait here forever. I got tired of waiting next door. I lay in the ground for very many years, but no-one ever came. So I've moved on to you.

I never had much faith in Mrs Monkton, but you're different. You're inquisitive. I can tell. So come out into the garden and rummage around the roots of your rosebush. I'm waiting there now, and I'd really love to meet you.

Artist/Model

The Artist looked up at The Model and smiled.

"Time for lunch."

"Shall I...?" asked The Model, pointing at the pile of clothes on the chair.

"Yes. I think that might be best," said The Artist.

The Model groaned.

"Stiff neck?" asked The Artist, calling through from the kitchen.

"Just a bit," said The Model.

"Harder than it looks, isn't it?" said The Artist, walking back through with a plate of sandwiches. "This is your first time?"

"Have I been doing it wrong?

"Oh no no no no no. Not at all."

The Model groped for the neck of the pullover and eventually found it. The Artist smiled and tapped on one of the stools. The Model walked across and sat down.

"It's important to have a proper lunch. It's going to be a long afternoon."

The Artist sat, took a sandwich and bit slowly into it. The Model smiled politely and also took one.

"Tell me," said The Artist. "What else do you do?"

The Basin

Mikey Monroe grew up in Western Issenland in a city full of hills.

The nearest shops were just a mile away (as the crow flies) but it would take him at least an hour and a half to do his shopping. He would have to go uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill and uphill on the way there, and downhill, uphill, downhill, uphill and downhill on the way back.

Mikey did develop fantastically-toned calf muscles, but this was little consolation; as far as he was concerned, hills were the bane of his life.

_________________________________________________________________

On 22nd February 2011, Michael James Monroe was elected President of Western Issenland.

As was the custom, upon his election, the President would have a brand new city built for him, at the heart of which would be his Presidential Palace, surrounded by twenty square miles of newly-erected government offices and housing.

Each of the previous Presidents had commissioned a city which reflected his or her personality and pre-occupations: Jeremy Jackson's city had been entirely solar-powered, Katherine Kindle's had been designed in the shape of a tree to match her party's logo and Lawrence Llewellyn's had been decked out entirely in his favourite colour, purple.

Michael thought long and hard about what sort of city he would like to commission, but there was one idea to which he kept on returning and which he ultimately decided to carry out. He would build a city without a single hill, no slope of any kind, flat enough to play snooker on if its residents so wished. It would be extraordinarily convenient, thought Michael, a real crowd-pleaser.

_________________________________________________________________

The site which the committee had chosen for the Presidential city was, unfortunately, on the edge of the Matafor range of mountains. The committee asked Michael if he would like to choose a more convenient location, but he declined.

"No no," he said. "This will be just fine. We can flatten it out." And so the builders set to work, dismantling the mountains, tearing up the earth and the rock and pushing it all out towards the perimeter of the city.

After forty-eight days of solid endeavour, the site was ready, completely flat, rimmed by a complete circle of hills, constructed out of the earth that had been displaced.

The palace was built, and the offices and all the new houses. This is perfect, thought Michael, as he moved into his new home. There would be room for seventeen thousand residents in the city of no hills.

_________________________________________________________________

On 12th October 2012, an enormous storm devastated Monroeville. The rains came down and filled up the basin of the city.

Desmond and Doris Faraday were amongst those who tried to drive out to escape the flooding, but the roads were clogged up with traffic and it was not possible to get away. They abandoned their car and tried to climb out over the hills at the edge of the city, but the rain had made the inclines thick and muddy and impossible to climb. As hordes of people clambered desperately over each other up to the top of the hill, the rain washed many of them back down into the city, flushing them into the twenty square mile basin which the city had become.

The last time Doris saw Desmond he too was being swept away, driven back by the water to the base of the hill.

_________________________________________________________________

President Monroe's helicopter rose up out of and away from the city. As the rain continued to fall, he tried not to look out of the window.

The Last Pencil

Diana only has one pencil left. One pencil and no sharpener. She has to write as lightly as possible, pressing so gently on the paper that the words can only just be deciphered.

She ties her notes to the trees, praying that the rain won't wash them away, that the messages will be discovered intact and in time. With each new note attached, she dashes off again into the jungle, desperate to elude her pursuers.

The notes do not say where she is going. All they say is that she is alive and that she is running out of pencils. That is all she can afford to give away.

Linus Whiteley's Birthday

It's Linus Whiteley's birthday next week. He's going to be eighty-eight years old. I tell him every afternoon over our game of cribbage, but he keeps on forgetting.

"Eighty-eight?!" His face unfolds to reveal his delight. "Am I going to have a party?"

"Yes, of course you'll have a party. Everyone has a party on their birthday."

"Really? Do they?"

"Yes. We'll have cake and tea and biscuits."

"Oh, that sounds lovely. Will John and Jessie bring us breakfast in bed?"

"No, Linus."

"Will we go for a walk in the afternoon across the Heath? Will we have lunch at Kenwood House? Will we sit outside on the patio?"

"No, Linus."

"Will we go out to the club for a big fancy dinner? Will the Newtons come over before we go? Will Julia Carter be there? And Eric and Martin and Cornelius Quentin?"

"No, Linus."

He smiles at me sadly and I can see that he understands.

The smile disappears.

"You've got lovely hair," he says, listlessly. I squeeze his hand and shuffle the deck.

Geoffrey's Castle

Geoffrey returned to his castle one day to find that half a turret had disappeared.

He hadn't heard of any storms nor had he noticed any signs of structural weakness, so the sight of the stunted turret as he cycled down the driveway came as something of a shock.

He made his way inside and ran up what was left of the spiral staircase to take a look. The break was clean; the top section of the tower had been meticulously removed, brick by brick.

But by whom?

Geoffrey asked Ablett, his retired butler, to come in overnight and keep an eye out on the CCTV for anything untoward.

His lordship slept well, reassured by the presence of a guard, but awoke to the news that the portcullis had gone. (Ablett had slipped out the back for a fag around three.)

Nothing further vanished throughout the next day. As evening fell, Geoffrey joined the contrite Ablett to take the onus off the tired old man. The night ticked by, but the thieves did not return. Perhaps that marked the end of it, thought Geoffrey.

As the Sun rose over the castle, he sent the butler on his way and slowly dropped off to sleep. By the time he awoke, the moat had been drained, the oak trees uprooted and the second half of the turret taken apart.

The castle had stood for four hundred years, but was gradually being dismantled, dissected by a determined and elusive band of anti-builders. And Geoffrey had no idea how to stop them.

A Goose at the Gate

Every day at half past four a Canada goose wanders past my garden gate. I see her in my window as I'm doing the washing up.

It's a reassuringly regular routine. As the minute hand clicks into place at the six, there she goes, waddling complacently along from right to left, beak forward, belly proud.

Only once in the last six months has she not appeared, when I went down to the bottom of the garden and waited at the vegetable patch. She didn't come by that day.

Since then, I have resumed my previous position, drying the dishes with the wildfowl teatowel, and everything has returned to normal.

I've promised myself I won't disrupt the routine again. I don't want to drive my distinguished friend away.

Jefferson Marlowe, Hero

Jefferson Marlowe woke and sat up. He did not know where he was or how he'd got there, but he was sure that he was awake.

"Hello Jefferson."

He turned around. There was a very tall, very blurry figure floating a few metres away.

"Um...hello," he replied.

"Do you know where you are?"

"No."

"Do you know how you got here?"

"No."

Jefferson's eyes began to adjust to the light. The figure's features started to come into focus. He saw that it was a woman, a beautiful woman, long black hair draped over her shoulders and framing her unfathomably delicate features. He could see now that she was not floating, but appeared to be standing on an invisible box.

"I'm going to leave you now, Jefferson."

Now he could see her more clearly, he wanted her to stay. "No. Stay."

"I just want to say thank you, Jefferson. I know you don't remember, but we owe it all to you. No-one here will ever know what a hero you were, how you slew the mighty Jagalath, how you saved all our lives. But we won't forget. Good luck to you, Jefferson Marlowe. You can find your own way home from here, yeah?"

"What happened? What did I do?"

It was too late. The speaker had disappeared.

Jefferson looked around. He appeared to be in a big hole. No, now he could see that it was a quarry. There were miners chipping away at the huge chalky white wall not fifty metres away from where he was sitting. Little lads in purple uniforms. Must be the Quinto Rock Mining Collective, he thought. So that's where he was: Quinto Rock.

One of the miners put down his tools and ambled over.

"Hello! How did you get in then?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know, eh?"

"No."

"Well, come on. Make yourself useful. We've had a couple of fatalities recently. Could do with some new staff."

"Aren't I a little tall?"

The miner looked him up and down, and tried to suppress a laugh.

"Nah, mate. You're just right."

Jefferson picked up a loose chisel and wandered over towards the rock face. Typical, he thought. He'd finally done something magnificent, the huge deed that he'd been preparing to perform for his whole life... and neither he nor anyone else could remember the first thing about it.

The Perfect End

A brawl broke out as we left the party, on a small patch of grass by the newly-moored boat.

I might have joined in if I'd had a little more to drink. As it was, I simply stood back and admired the efficiency with which the evening was ruined.

No-one in the mob of enthusiastic spectators seemed to know quite what it was all about. We agreed that someone had done something to someone at some point between Putney and Hammersmith, but who had done what to whom when was not clear. Whatever the excuse, it no longer mattered: we were all taking far too much pleasure in the violence to care.

James and I vicariously enjoyed the ruckus throughout its opening exchanges: small pockets of participants slugging away, sometimes three on three, occasionally five on one; a young man with spiky blond hair crawling out of the battle, shirt bloodied, face blackened, trying hopelessly to light a cigarette; a young woman with ponytail half-undone, mud smeared harshly across her cream dress, standing on the deck of the boat and throwing a table, with a guttural howl, off onto the hordes below...

Once the adrenalin of the pugilists had begun to give way to shame, James and I sloped away for the bus, passing and briefly consoling the devastated birthday girl on the way.

At the stop we sat and we waited and we quietly reminisced, smiling in awe at the frenzy that we'd seen. The occasional shout could still be heard in the distance, and, approaching from afar, the faint sound of a siren. We had had our fill - it was time to go home.

The Course is Closed

The flags will not be needed again until the spring. The holes will be filled and the greens left to grow. I'll be breaking the news to the staff in the clubhouse: they'll have to find new work until March - there just isn't the demand.

Still, one or two folk will drop by that I know. Mr Jarvis will come in for his lunchtime pint every day, as will Derek Drake and Mrs McBride. There might be the odd game of bridge or Canasta on a weekday afternoon - Phillipa Reynolds will come in and make up a four. They'll sit in the bar and I'll serve them sandwiches and nuts and drinks. Mrs McBride will invite me to play, but I'll politely decline, say I've got to go and change a barrel, trusting them to mind the bar while I go upstairs and lie back and think.

When I come back, Derek will be looking at the photographs on the wall, asking me who this is and that is and if I remember when he went around the Old Course in 64. I'll smile and say yes, and he'll stroke his moustache proudly and return to the table.

They will sit in the bar until it closes, and then Derek and Mrs McBride and Mr Jarvis will be off to their homes, and I'll call a taxi for Phillipa Reynolds because she lives fifteen miles away. And while we're waiting for it to come, and the others have left, Phillipa and I will go and sit by the fire and hold hands and I'll wonder silently about what might have happened if we had met twenty years earlier, and I'll kiss her goodbye on the cheek, and watch from my room as she gets in the cab and goes home.

Yes, it will be just the same as ever this winter - the old routine - they'll be in every day. But they won't be going on the course. Oh no. The course isn't open in the winter. The course is closed.

To Summer

I twisted the spoon, wrenched out a dollop and put it into my mouth to melt.

The cool mint mixture lined my throat; chips of chocolate wedged themselves between my back teeth. I didn't bother to fiddle them out.

"Who finished it?" Jess looked angrily at the tub and accusingly at me. "I bought that."

"Pip did." I wiped my mouth and turned towards the door.

I stepped out onto the balcony, hearing the wheeze of a bottle being opened behind me. Jess appeared with two glasses of lemonade.

"To summer."

I put my hand in hers.

"To summer."

She turned to me and kissed me. She smiled and said I tasted of mint.

The Dandelion Field

Jefferson Marlowe took a swig of papaya juice. It had been a long trek back to Batahausen - he was hot, sticky and in need of a sit down.

The view from the top of Mount Devesham was really quite something: fields stretching back as far as he could see, out across the valley and up the other side.

But there was one in particular which really caught his eye, standing out against the green and brown. At first it looked as if it was covered with snow, but, as Jefferson scrambled down the mountain, he realised that the field was, in fact, full of dandelions, the heads of every flower blurring into one, stitched together like a thick silver sheet.

_________________________________________________________________


As Jefferson sat down, he felt the dandelions on his bare knees, flicking idly against his canvas shorts. This was the perfect place for a bit of kip, he thought, as he lay back.

He pulled out a flower and blew on it carelessly.

As he did so, a tuft of silver particles flew away, the Sun disappeared behind a cloud and the sky got suddenly darker.

Jefferson shivered.

Before he'd had the time to question himself, he'd blown away another clump.

The night got darker still. He wrapped his arms about his chest and looked up at the sky. The moons were quite visible now, Juliet and Portia, two crescents in the gloam, and the stars were piercing into sight.

He looked at the flower, a few dusty fruits still clinging to its stalk. He brushed them away and the darkness completed its descent.

Jefferson remembered everything at last. The world was coming to an end and it was all his fault. The hoot af an owl signalled that the time had come: Jagalath had awoken and was ready to emerge.

Bound Together

I first caught sight of them as my bus turned the corner, gazing through the windscreen as I clung on to the bar.

They were necking at the bus stop in the rain: an elderly couple, he stooping, she on tiptoe, heads gently tilted, eyes lightly closed.

He'd burrowed his hands into the pockets of her raincoat; her's were on his face, brushing back his wet white hair and curling it behind the ears. We all thought they were waiting for the bus, so we stopped and waited ourselves.

The doors opened, but they did not come. They did not even look, his back angled towards the road, oblivious to the bus-full of passengers who were, for that minute, their audience, tapping at the window of their world.

We waited and watched. His hands were on her bottom now, I think, grasping through the pockets of her coat and the starched linen of her skirt. Their faces were creased up, wrinkles interlocked, gathered together in a comfortable fervour.

The doors closed - the bus rolled on, but our attention did not. Through the rain-flecked windows, the elderly couple continued to embrace, bound still together as they drifted from our view.

Mitchell Craddock

Mitchell Craddock strokes his moustache with one hand and slicks back his hair with the other. He reaches into the pot of chalk, scoops out a handful and slaps it between his preposterous palms. He adjusts his handstraps - they are firmly in place. The tight lycra clings to his skin. He is ready for the clean and jerk.

Craddock looks straight ahead, like a blinkered horse, picking a spot in the middle distance on which he can focus and unfocus, focus and unfocus. The same routine for the past fourteen years: one man, one bar.

Craddock squats. The lycra is pulled harshly across his buttocks. It is strained but does not split. He feels the seams dig into his inner thighs - a slight, sharp pain that concentrates the mind. He gently rests his fingers on the bar. He drums them lightly, then settles. The same routine...

Craddock looks back up to his middle distance point and focuses, unfocuses, urges all thoughts from his mind. But, try as he might, the world slithers in.

Mitchell Craddock, Olympic Champion. He grips the bar tightly.

Mitchell Craddock, MBE. A tear dribbles down his cheek.

Mitchell Craddock, National Hero. His knees sink to the floor.

Mitchell Craddock is spent.

The Banolo Tree

I've planted a Banolo tree in my back garden. Made of iron, its branches clang against its trunk in the wind.

I want to make pipes from the branches - new guttering. Shave off the bark and make a thousand tiny magnets and whack 'em on the fridge. Maybe grate them into iron filings, sprinkle bits around the place, then attract them all together so I can spell out my name.

I'm going to carve out a chunk of the trunk and make myself a bath, hear the shimmer of the water on the bottom of the tub.

The leaves of the tree bleed molten metal - I'll put them in a salad and drizzle them with oil.

I want my life to sprout out of the Banolo tree - it'll feed everything I do. I'll be connected, at last, to nature - my life will be linked in.

More Than a Consolation

Charlotte found the note on the kitchen table, scribbled on the back of a receipt and weighed down by a 1961 Tottenham Hotspur commemorative mug.

"Dearest Charlie, " it read. "Sorry to burgle but needed the cash. Emergency. Will pay you back one day. Thanks for understanding, Clive. X."

Her eyes widened in anger - the "X" was one step too far.

Charlotte left the kitchen and wandered back into the sitting room to take another look. The TV was gone. So was the laptop. And the iPad. And the signed picture of Jermain Defoe. And the 7" of Diamond Lights. And the Official Club Calendar 2002/03. "Needed the cash" my arse, she thought.

What else had he taken?

Suddenly panicked, she ran across to the dresser and pulled open the drawer.

Thank God. The season tickets were still there.

Charlotte smiled. He could have taken those tickets, but he'd left them for her.

It meant a lot. It meant that she was going to White Hart Lane on Saturday. It meant that everything was going to be ok.