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The half-moon beach is manmade – I found out. The house used to be a boathouse belonging to a hotel, perched on top of a cliff, overlooking the majestic lake encircled by lush foliage. It started with a vision of a rich man. A railway was laid, the beach was made. The hotel was eager to meet th

She had trouble recognising her son when he visited. This wasn’t entirely accurate, he acknowledged; Bernie was either known or new. When he arrived at the nursing home, a carer would greet him and indicate if it was a sunny or cloudy day; it referred to his mother’s powers of recall, but those

As in life, the dead also showcase their inequalities. When I say the dead, I mean the dead bodies, the cadavers. I became aware of these inequities in a strange way when I joined medical school. It was on the stone tables of the anatomy dissection hall that I first noticed these differences. In

From the table I had chosen in the coffee shop I could see the entrance of the train station. Already I had seen three trains arrive and the crowds emerge and disperse. Absolutely everyone that walked out of the station looked like they could have been the lead in a charming romantic comedy. I had b

No matter how much he loosened his tie, Joe could not seem to get enough air into his throat – as if some unseen force was gripping his trachea as hard as he was now gripping the leather of his steering wheel. White lilies. They had ordered pink azaleas and the florist sent them white lilies

I remember how I was coming out of university: lofty, strong ideals, but incredibly lazy. I read a lot, got into long-winded discussions with no definite conclusion and generally loafed about. At university you could do all this with impunity but now that I’d left it was frowned upon, and being kn

She came from a wealthy family, she said. Her father owned a string of cinemas and a newspaper. But somehow things went wrong after her husband died, and now all she'd got left was this house she wanted to sell. 'Won't you come along and look at it? I'm not asking much. I just want to be rid of it,

'Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.’ Albert Camus   September ‘Gail, dear, you can’t hide cards up your sleeve.’ The nurse points out my mother sitting at the far side of the room in the games corner, but I had already heard her voice, high and shrill. The

I woke up that morning, knowing she had gone. Left in the middle of the night. She didn’t sleep well, so it never bothered me when she awoke. She would usually just get herself up, grab a book and go into the living room and curl up on the sofa. I never sensed it was anything to do with me. It

Jacob knew that logic didn’t always rule the world; at least it didn’t use to. A decade before, as an undergraduate student on a year abroad in Taiwan, Jacob had encountered inexplicable, irrational magic. Now, as an analyst for a private equity firm immersed in a world of numbers and profit, th