Daily stories

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.

I went back to the old church most days. You could find me on my knees, head bowed. I had dropped something very precious there, and in the dim light it was hard to search for. Of course, I knew I would never find it. It had probably been sucked up the nose of their worn-out Henry Hoover the day I lost it. But it was a place of hope.

We didn't have all the pieces, so we had to invent our own rules. Two scrappy little armies, one of them mostly pawns, but the pawns were so battered you could tell each one apart. We gave them names, skills, stories. From time to time they would switch sides. One day we found a pristine set, all boxed up. It smelled of pine and paint. We turned out the pieces and lined them up. It didn't look right. Not like a real fight.

Glyn did amateur dramatics in his old school hall, under the direction of his old school drama teacher. It felt like a nightmare, sometimes, standing around before rehearsal under those same fluorescent lights but talking about jobs and backaches. But then the run came round, the audience filed in, the lights went down, and the joy of being someone else hit all the harder.

A new way of living. That's what we were promised. That's what we had longed for, all the long days. A way that would connect us. We gave up everything, and did it gladly, because there wasn't anything we wanted to keep. But it's not a new way of living, after all. It's the same old way, with a different man in the big chair.

Flat on my back, spilled beer seeping into my shirt, I was thinking: they can all tell. Everyone can see this is the first punch I've ever taken. They are looking at me on the ground and thinking: what else hasn't he done? My jaw didn't hurt too badly. There was enough blood in my mouth to spit out in a casual, tough-looking way. I could still turn this around.