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Larissa, you are looking good. A fine specimen. Half the size, you have been told. Half the weight of your previous self, and you believe them, more or less. You feel able to obey orders and to love yourself a little bit more. And nobody knows. Your duty is well and truly done. The little ones â€

'News flash, Nick − we’re getting a new boss.’ Nick Ikaros looked up from his computer. Randi Lake leaned against the doorframe of his office, twisting a lock of dark hair around her delicate fingers. Tall and pale, she favoured the sixties look: oversized glasses and long, dark sweaters ov

There was giraffe snot on my hand and I must have been smiling because Mum was smiling back at me with my shaped grin. Not hers. Two years before that, I handed Mum a picture of a reindeer that I'd drawn and stood back to await approval. She said it was an excellent giraffe. I pretended that it w

It's March and still the snow is falling, thick sooty flakes of it. It settles on heaps of slush, growing out of the ground like mould. Treacherous grey puddles line the road and a passing lorry leaves Vasilisa drenched. The driver speeds away and Vasilisa gives him the finger. She knows that in his

They’ll be painting the park fence soon.  It could do with a new coat. They do it every now and then. There must be a list of fences they have to paint pinned up on a wall somewhere. They probably do nothing else day in day out but paint fences. Not exactly an interesting life, painting park fenc

'Mum! David’s kicked the ball into the tulips!’ Spring 1965. I am seven. And a bit of a snitch. Upstairs, a curtain is scraped back and Mum appears, wagging finger completely at odds with the twinkle in her eyes. David gets away with murder now. Which is very annoying to my seven-year-old

The couple ahead of Stevie and Peter slipped on facemasks and boarded the cable-car. He wore a suit, and she wore layers of linen. Under the couple’s weight, the car rocked, and the woman grabbed the man’s arm. He guided her onto the bench facing the mountainside, and a lapdog emerged from her l

She lay on a sun lounger in the garden, the morning sun wrapping her in its rays and whispering her to sleep. Clear thoughts were transforming into the figures and shadows of dreams. She was about to succumb to the final pull of slumber when a cool darkness blotted out the patterns that had been dan

I sit inside and wait for summer to be over. Sometimes I sit upright in bed and read a book. Fully dressed though, as if I were about to go out. It’s all too easy to fall the long, hard way into bad habits. Sometimes I sit in the bath, the water cool on my skin. I light a candle and pretend it is

I finally explain it to her as we walk by the lake. It’s a warm day. The sun glimmers off the soft waves and throws rippling stripes of colour over the boughs of the trees. Sparrows and moorhens call out over the rhythm of the rocking light. She says she’s heard of it before, but doesn’t qu