Daily stories

I was at the bus shelter with the missing roof, waiting, and I had just sat in gum. I knew that I had sat in gum because a minute before I had looked at the foul grey blob of it clinging to the seat and thought, make sure you don't sit there. But the world span the thought out of me as quickly as it had come, and I sat. The bus came, late, and I waved the driver on. The gum would only become a problem when I stood up, so I stayed, stuck in place, until I could think my way out of it ever having happened.

The cats stared at each other and I stared at the cats. Slowly, like a leaf towards the sun, one of them turned away. I couldn't say if it was an entente or a surrender. They stayed near each other a while, enemies or friends or some third cat thing that I couldn't understand, until the bang of a bin lid sent them running in opposite directions. I hoped, if there was a winner, that mine had won.

The city receded. Cities, like mountains, don't look smaller as you move away. Instead you see the unbearable scale of them, and they look bigger than ever. As we passed out of sight of it, it seemed to grow and grow, a little larger each time we looked back. It only shrank again when I went back.

I found him shivering on the balcony. "I had to get out," he explained, "but I should have gone for the front door." Twenty minutes later and I would have found him climbing down the building. I got him a blanket and a cup of tea, then I moved a few things around, changed a painting over, put a pan of soup on. By the time he could smell it, he was ready to come back in.

I saw the first hints of blossom, like the branch-tips had been dipped in violet ink. Too soon. I need a few more weeks to hide in the dark, to numb my toes. I am not ready for brighter days just yet. But I saw two daffodils, too, and a sunbeam fell warm on my neck. I cannot stop things getting better.

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.