– L.A. Craig In a bed and breakfast on the Isle of Arran. I think it’s early morning, but can’t check my watch. My back’s gone. It woke me hours ago, at least it feels like it, been lying like a stiff ever since. I probably yanked it on the ferry, up the vertical stairs…
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– Grace Phelan A string of blue flashing lights in the centre of the road alerted Josephine to the checkpoint ahead. A squad car and an army jeep blocked both lanes of the road. She dipped her headlights as she braked heavily. Once she safely came to a halt, she turned off the radio and…
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– Amber Koski retrospect |ˈretrəˌspekt| noun She wasn’t aware she was broken—so she saw no reason for repair. When she walked over and sat next to me, on the edge of the bench, her body angled enough to touch my knee with hers, I knew she was half in and half out of something—something I…
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– Niecy O’Keeffe The part of funerals I’d always hated the most was the lull between entering the house after the burial and the brewing of the first cup of tea. The banal normality of the act of boiling the kettle, the hushed whispers between the suited and booted about how the weather had held…
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– Fayroze Lutta To you, Your surname means youthful, tender, smooth and in French pronounced souplé and all for me crémeuse. As you talk to a crowd you have an awkward stammer and stutter, slightly punctuating your speech. The way in which you eject the words and bring them forth, like you are tripping over…
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– Nikita Gill 1. 
It was because her parents had named her for the grandmother who had broken her mother’s heart. The grandmother whose heart was supposed to have melted from her birth and hadn’t.
 That was why her mother barely looked at her. That was why she called her ‘girl’.
 That was why she…
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– Laura Cleary It’s still under the bed, I think The note. Under my side of the bed. He wrote it in that ink he likes. The kind they use for comics, he says. The paper’s not ripped so he must have cut it out of his sketchbook. I don’t think I’d have seen it…
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– Deirdre McClay Steve carried Lily from the bedroom to the living room, lowering her into the best chair for the TV. It was his mum’s chair, but this was a special occasion. He fixed at her skirt where it had ridden up, made her all nice and comfortable, and went out to the kitchen…
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