Waiting for his luncheon guest, the Reverend Simon Ivery stands in the kitchen of his grace and favour apartment on the fourth floor of a Georgian house in Cathedral Yard. Suffering from severe osteoporosis, he’s a virtual prisoner in his eyrie because of the many stairs. He’s ceased to play an active role in the Anglican Church, seldom attends services and can’t use his choir stall. Through the kitchen window Simon sees a peregrine falcon launch itself from the eastern tower into its two hundred miles per hour hunting stoop. If only I could fly away, he wishes.
Continue readingMonthly Archives: February 2022
Manicured Nails
Selwyn’s been dead for eighteen months and Nancy is depressed and lonely. There’s no light at the tunnel’s end, no view of pastures new, no hope of happiness, just endless sorrow. Throughout the last six of her fifty-six years she nursed her husband, Selwyn. This wasn’t done out of a sense of duty, but from love. Nevertheless, as the years passed she was filled with a sense of futility; he would die no matter what she did and he seemed to take her care for granted. Helping Selwyn live in the moment was not enough.
Continue readingDin
It’s dusk. Oswald Sander is happy as he watches the van disappear down the cinder track beside Great Wood. The refugee camp superintendent, or commandant, as he styles himself, is counting a bundle of bank notes from his recent black market transaction. He can’t believe how easy it is to amass considerable amounts of cash from selling the food meant for the refugees he’s employed to protect. He loves his power and basks in the refugees’ fear; falling out with Sander is to go hungry. He laughs at his ability to pay women for sex with money they cannot spend. He sees himself as ‘the lord of all he surveys’, he’d be horrified if he knew the phrase had originated in India.
Continue readingHaunted
A snicket leads out of the rear of a cul-de-sac of 1930s semi-detached houses. Robert, aged seventy-five, has lived in number 17 for years. Recently an elderly man has been loitering in the snicket and each time Robert has tried to speak to him he’s vanished. Robert’s not alarmed but intrigued.
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