Daily stories

When I got back home the windows were boarded over. Not a repossession: the notice on the door showed my life was no longer a going concern. I worried about where I would sleep and what I would eat, but as the night passed I found it didn't seem to matter. A little later, a new notice went up: under new management. Some investor had come in to turn the sinking ship of my existence around. I hoped they had a little more nous than the last guy.

The writing was smaller than usual, and neater too. It sat right in the middle of an empty page, like a signpost. “I know you read my diary.” He thought: she can't know. He thought: it’s a joke, it’s just in case. But he knew that he could never speak to her again. His voice would give him away.

At night I looked up at the moon, where my daughter was. On the clearest nights I imagined I could see the strange buildings she lived and worked in, the threads of her days pulled out across the surface. I sang to her and wondered if she heard. But as the moon came and went I began to feel I was smothering her, looking up every night. I began to wish for clouds.

I lived up in that tree when I was a kid. I carved my initials and felt guilty every time I looked at them. I thought I'd cry when I saw it cut down. I thought I'd ask for a little chunk of it, the branch where I used to sit. But the creak and the crash seemed to blow all that out of me. When they were finished I went and stretched my fingers up to the place where my feet used to dangle. A place that would always be there.

I bent to pick a snowdrop, but the stem didn't snap. It drew up out of the soil, impossibly long, and as I pulled I felt the earth begin to tremble with the movement. Up came stones and worms and the roots of other plants, up came the winter's snow and last summer's sunshine, up came all that lay buried until the whole world was there, suspended from a snowdrop, with me stood upon it. I wondered whether spring would ever come.

He kept the shavings from his woodcuts in an amber glass jar: all the negative space, the places the ink didn't touch. When he shook it he fancied he could see all the choices he hadn't made, all the pictures he hadn't printed. But when he turned it out, it was just dust and mess and things he didn't need, and a jar that could be put to better use.

Mr Manscombe told us that the visitors were important. Well, if they so important as all that, why did they all drive such boring cars? Black, black, and black. If I was important I'd get a car in an interesting colour. They asked us all the most stupid questions you can imagine, and they all looked very thoughtful when they were listening to each other ask, but I'm not sure they heard one word of an answer. Get used to it, Mr Manscombe said when we were grousing afterwards. You'll be seeing a lot more of them. Of course, we never saw them or their boring cars again.

The crew had been carefully selected: no illnesses, no unstable personalities, no physical deficiencies. Caitlin was the one exception, her expertise being irreplaceable: if her glasses broke in the new universe, one of these perfect uniformed men would have to lead her by the arm. They stepped through on a cold February day, into a strange summer, and waited for their eyes to adjust. But the light was different here: it flowed and bent all wrong, through the air, through their eyes. They blinked and rubbed, but it was like seeing underwater. Caitlin took off her glasses, let her old eyes focus, and saw.

After ten weeks' journey we came to Skull Island, where we had important business. We found the man we were looking for in a cabin on the hill, the only dwelling in evidence. Our captain took up the matter, pushing through the door without knocking. "You, sir," he said to the startled cartographer, "will answer for this map." The chart which bore his mark showed friendly harbours where there were none, and quiet seas where there were monsters, and nobody but the man who drew it had ever heard of "Skull Island", which our brief survey had revealed was not so skull-shaped as it was shown. "But it would be a tedious occupation," the cartographer protested, "to draw the world as it really is."

She had all her broken things arranged on the kitchen table: phones, friendships, hopes, hoover. Clothes and cares all gone into holes. She set to work with needle and thread and screwdriver and solder, one by one, the only way to do anything. By the time the sun went down it was all working, more or less, but some of it rattled when she shook it, and she had a little box of parts left over. She put them in the drawer, to mend the next things.