Of The World

A bonus puzzle for you this week: see if you can work out from the daily stories which day I went to the tip, and which day I mistook someone's coat for a superb dog.

This week’s daily stories

Monday

Julia didn’t know anybody at the school reunion. She could make out the shape of the class: who has been the popular kids, who had kept under the radar, who had become unexpectedly hot. But that was any school reunion. Where was Adele, with the chewing gum? Where was Gareth, who she felt guilty about hating? She saw names Sharpied on stickers, Isaac and Clara and Maeve: names she had never heard called from a register. She had checked the invitation twenty times. She was in the right place, but surrounded by strangers. And they were smiling, and waving, and calling her name.

Tuesday

There are times when it is hard to tie a tie. In grief or in excitement. When the fingers are numb with cold or slick with sweat. When someone is watching. When your neck is swollen and painful. While driving. When laughing. When you have recently had a cord pulled tight around your throat until your vision clouded. With your arm in a cast. When nobody ever taught you. When an angry ex has shredded all your ties with the kitchen scissors. When you once knew how, but have forgotten.

Wednesday

Once or twice in the time it takes to wear out a pair of shoes, I might allow myself a small act of destruction. A key dragged along the side of a car, or the last page torn out of a library book. A cigarette lighter held in just the right place. It steadies something in me. But haven’t you noticed, the way shoes wear out so quickly these days?

Thursday

I set off early to the emotion recycling centre , so it would be quiet. At the barrier a man in hi-vis waved me down. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Anger, regret. A bit of old grief. Oh, and some shame.”

“We can’t take shame,” he said.

I was only really there for the shame. “Where am I supposed to take it, then?” I asked him.

He just shrugged. “It’s hazardous. You’ll need a specialist service. The rest is OK.” And he waved me through.

I dropped my feelings in the relevant containers, and then I glanced around for cameras and fluorescent tabards, before throwing my shame in the place marked “General malaise”. I know it was wrong. But I didn’t feel too bad about it.

Friday

In the new world, we made our homes in the mouths of huge carnivorous plants. They seemed not to notice us. We were like nothing else in that strange country. The plants were good hosts: they dissolved the carapaces of the local creatures and, getting all they needed from those tough parts, returned the meat to us. Back home, I found I could not sleep without the sweet scent of their lure, the gentle pulse of their motion, the prickle of their hairs at my back.

Saturday

On rainy days there was always a big wet dog in the café, so much damp fur spilling over its eyes and nose that infrequent customers generally mistook it for a coat. Nobody brought it: it whined at the door when the rain started, and walked in circles near it when the sun came out, and on dry days it was never seen. If the rain lasted past closing, it slept by the radiator. All the people of the café knew that one day it would rain and the dog would not come, and they would share an unspoken grief. But they were wrong. The big wet dog outlasted all of them.

Sunday

Right in the middle of the brambles, where neither arms nor birds could reach, was the plumpest blackberry I had ever seen. I came back with my scratched arms and my thick gloves and my secateurs. I cut and cut, but my prize only seemed to retreat deeper into the prickles. My gloves tore and my secateurs broke and my arms bled. When I gave up and turned around, the briar had closed up behind me.

I have been reading...

• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (translated by Norman Denny). Apologies that this section is getting a touch repetitive. This week's reading has brought me to chapters including "Urchin classification" and "Confusion over the letter U", neither of which is adequately represented in the musical.

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This week’s story: Of The World

He walked three miles a day in a weighted suit, specially made. Every day he crossed the bridge over the river and imagined falling in, sinking like a murder weapon. But he could wriggle free. He had seen people under water for minutes at a time, slipping out of handcuffs and straitjackets. He was at least as practised at shrugging off his weighted suit. He was at least as practised at resisting the comfort of panic.

When he did shrug it off, at the end of each three-mile walk, he felt himself stretch out taller. He had read that this happens to astronauts, relieved of the weight of the world. He had overheard people talking about him, that man in the weight suit, not recognising him out of it. But out of it was how he lived most of his life. And out of it, he floated.

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