Daily Story

It was a hot day, but it was cool in my hole, with water round my ankles and shade from the walls. I had brought a few things down, book and snacks and water bottle; it was getting awkward to climb out. Hard work, but fun. I rested my head

She opened up the little box of left-behinds. There she kept eggshells and plum stones and the punched-out frames of board game tokens. A milk tooth nestled inside the lost-wax mould that cast her ring. All the little in-betweens, the punctuation of life. She tucked the letter inside, and closed

There was something in the stone. We all knew it: there was something wonderful inside, if we could only crack it open. But it's not an easy thing to break a stone in two, and it's harder still to keep hold of it long enough to

All around me are things you mended. A soldered patch on the hot water pipes. Embroidery on the worn knee of my jeans. An apostrophe added in neat black ink to each unsent invitation. There are so many things that you can do. There are so many things I can&

"Why do we go round so many churches?" Edie was whining, but she was doing it quietly. She respected the place; it was her dad she wasn't sure about. He gave the question some thought. It was one he had asked his mother many times, in

The tattoo artist refused, at first. Said the words were too cruel, that she had a duty of care. But she understood they were better on my skin that in my mind. We put them on my left flank, where it's tender. I never look. You don'

It was the fanciest place I had ever stayed, a proper country pile. When I went down to breakfast I announced myself to the lads: "Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the candlestick." There was another guest sat across the dining room, an older woman, dressed all in

It had been a sixty-year campaign, and just him for most of that. Him and his chart of constellations – new ones, ones that made sense. He knew when he began that he might get nowhere, and he thought he had accepted it, but now he felt his heart wearing out

It's not your fault, he said to the tears on her face. You know the blobfish? They call it the world's ugliest animal. But it only looks like that when you fish it up. It's the pressure change that does it. You see what

He left late, because the cake had taken so long. But the cake was a disaster, too, an eggy, unrisen mess in the tin. It didn't even taste good with his eyes closed. So he was late and cakeless, except for the smear of it unnoticed on his