When they turned onto the narrow track leading to the cottage, Mary felt an odd lurching sensation within her chest, as if her heart had shuddered, or perhaps stuttered on a single beat. “There it is,” said Tom. “Just up ahead.” She peered through the windscreen, squinting her eyes against the oncoming twilight, and just […]

The broker knew it was going to be that kind of Lunday morning when the duchess was chattering away before she’d even gotten her wide skirts through the shop doorway. There was an upcoming event at the castle, the duchess declared while shaking dust from her hem, so very rare and so very important that […]

Two figures are on screen. The first is an older man, thick-set in a linen jacket and chinos, prominent chin beneath a sardonically angled mouth and thick grey hair combed horizontal across his scalp. He sits in a cavernous armchair on the left of the camera shot. The other, facing him, is a woman, at […]

 It’s Saint Hook’s Eve, but this year nobody from my village has brought gifts. I am the only one on the beach. The only one watching the light-house where the Sisters once hived, the broken pale rock of it. I told Papa I’d be back in an hour, pretending to myself and him that I’m […]