Daily stories

It made him a laughing stock, that book. It would be one thing if nobody had read it, but you see it all over. In charity shops, in remainder bins, next to gurning faces on YouTube. And there I am, trapped in the dedication. Without whom this book couldn't have never been written. The only gift he ever gave me.

Clara and Tom had a wishing-well in their back garden, only there was no hole. It hadn't been filled in, either. It was never there. They got their handyman to come and build a wall and a roof and a crank, and they hung an old bucket from it with a new rope. Turn the handle, and you can hear the bucket go donk on the clay. How can it be a wishing well, I asked them, when it's not even a well? But I suppose they know better than me. They get everything they wish for.

All my life I have been frightened of the stars going out. I suppose I must have seen it on the television when I was small. But now there are a thousand more stars in the sky, and the night is more beautiful than ever. When I stand underneath it I think this ought to frighten me even more. But I can never feel it.

In the dream I am in an exam I haven't prepared for. The usual thing, old anxieties standing in for new. I'm wise to it now, even asleep. At some point, I remember that my schooldays are over, and I fold the paper into an aeroplane, or pull the fire alarm, or just wake up. This time I take the third option. I wake in a cheap plastic chair at a square little table. I have dribbled on the exam paper a little. There are ten minutes left.

By the time her postcard arrived, my house had already burned down. The postie left it on the ash pile where the front door used to be, along with the bills, and a note saying "We tried to deliver your parcel but you were out". A pint of milk sat nearby on the cracked doorstep. When I stopped by to collect it all, a man came up to me. He said he was sorry to interrupt, but how much did I know about Battersea Dogs & Cats Home? I told him it wasn't a good time. He said that was fine, and asked if he could use my toilet.

When they chained the sea-thing we all knew it wouldn't hold. A flick of its great winding limbs would break the chains, or else the foulness it exuded would slip it free or eat the links away. It would roar and drive men mad until they loosed it and offered themselves as the first to be devoured. But we were wrong. It sank to the seafloor with the weight of all that iron, and there it lay, whimpering. We watched it there, until it was gone. And that was the end of us.

It was just a snatch, overheard as he passed: "That guy Jamie really butters my crumpets." That had to be good, didn't it? It's the butter that makes the crumpet. But it hadn't sounded good. It had sounded like "that guy Jamie really grinds my gears", or "that guy Jamie really gets up my nose". And didn't those seem more likely? You couldn't trust words. People didn't think about what they were saying. Still, Jamie thought, it's nice to be noticed.

The first day back at the factory was like any other, stamping out thousands of blank brass scoppets. But now I was wondering where all the brass came from, and where all those scoppets went, and how they were cut and what they were used for. I had never used a scoppet myself, nor seen one used: not one of ours, nor one from any other manufacturer. When the bell went, I followed a cart of scoppets out through the back doors. The men pushed it across a rough yard to other workshed. Coming the other way was a load of fresh brass sheets. I set the worn face of my hammer in the palm of my hand. I had earned enough to buy a salve for my aching shoulder.

Carstone said that they could never try him, for he had not twelve peers in all of England. He was right, of course. They held him on remand while twenty-four boys (doubled up in case of accidents) could be raised up to his degree of privilege and sunk down to his level of wickedness. When they were men, they sent Carstone to the rope with laughter on their lips. The nation laughed too, at how we had outwitted him. But on the scaffold, he smiled to see two dozen fresh Carstones loosed upon the world.

Gracie bought me a hot air balloon ride, three hours in a little basket in the sky. I thought there would be other people there, but it was just me and the pilot, and he jumped out a few metres up. I saw him scamper away, getting smaller and smaller. By morning, I was in a new world, with colours I had never seen before. I sent Gracie a postcard, so she could see them too.