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Short Stories

Jess hadn’t expected snow. Wasn’t that the point of the south-west? Wet, yes, but no snow, not like the Highlands or the Alps or somewhere. When they’d bought their idyll, their adorable little cottage with its roses round the door and windows peeping out beneath thatched eaves, when they’d

My grandmother took the bookies to the cleaners that last Christmas we were all together. They had it coming, she reasoned. She had placed the same bet every January 2nd for the previous seventeen years and never won a penny. The stakes that had begun at five shillings – cobbled together from c

If they knew we’d gone there, our grans would’ve tanned our hides for us. As they’d say. One of our mums had a brown leather bag she called ‘tan hide.’ Our mums were too busy, and too tired with work, to do more than yell at us. And our dads would’ve taken their belts to us. If they’d

The woods are lovely in this pink winter light, the setting sun glinting off snow and the bare branches like a Japanese painting. I needed to come back, to remember, to feel the ground beneath my feet. I padded downstairs, heard cooking sounds, clicked the door behind me, pushed open the garden g

Something on which we have always prided ourselves is our broad appeal. A Certain Regard draws submissions from all regions of the country, from villages and market towns as well as cities. Back when all this happened, we only accepted physical submissions, and only one per poet per issue, but in re

The dream followed him out of bed, across the landing and into the bathroom. It waited patiently while he fumbled at the fly of his pyjama bottoms – lingering behind his reflection in the soap-spotted mirror; in the damp heat pooled in the small of his back; in the sleep-thickened ache held betwee

I look up at the clock on the wall. A quarter to nine. I wait for Miss Flood’s light knock on my door. I listen but hear nothing. I continue to wait. The world beyond my office is a muffled, soft-carpeted silence. My eyes have settled on the photograph of my mother and father. It stands by itself

It was common knowledge that Stanley Walsh lived in a zoo. Through the yellowing lace curtains of 17 Church Street, passers-by regularly caught sight of a ferret’s tail or a pheasant’s wing, though few would linger long enough to see the whole picture. Old Stan had long kept to himself, rarely s

He calls me three times before I pick up. He doesn’t know my mobile phone number, so he calls my landline. One evening I’m at work, another out with a friend. I recognise the number, but I don’t call him back. What do I have to say to this man? I hardly know him. When I was a child, I dream

I hear the call. It breaks my focus. I almost had it, I feel sure: the correct proportions were there. I consider the small models lined along the empty bookcase. When I brought this clay with me, I expected shells, and leaves, and flowers, and so they are, content and complete, and I’ve lost inte