Waiting for the bus there’s just me and two girls who I recognise but whose names I don’t know. The fat one had definitely been in the year above me at school; the other one works at the in-store bakery, I think.
They eye me, fatty pulling greedily on her fag. I think about cadging one, but reckon they’d tell me to fuck off. Best not get on their wrong side. They’ll be with a crowd on the bus when it gets here.
Bill regulated his breathing by focusing on the steady rise and fall of his son’s chest. The synchronized up-and-down, in-and-out pattern steadied him. Sean had flecks of grey at his temples, stubble on his chin, but hell, they never stopped being your kid. The steady beep from the monitor ping-pinged in the background. Bill took a pillow and plumped it between his hands. He imagined the soft foam covering Sean’s nose and mouth, pictured his legs and arms jerking as oxygen leaked out of his muscles. How much pressure did it take? When he looked at Sean’s greying hair, at the unshaven chin, he tightened his hold on the pillow. Sean’s hand rested on top of the blanket, his fingers rhythmically tapping against the coarse fibres. Bill closed his eyes.
First, there was Kate. We got married in the playground. Mrs Fletcher married us. She was friends with Martyn Eliot. Every day I flicked Martyn Eliot’s left earlobe, until there was a scar. But one day Kate stuck up for Martyn and I said that I hated her and that was the end of that. When I next saw her, twelve years later, she had breasts and was kissing a boy. The boy was Martyn Eliot. I felt a brief pang of jealousy but looked at her laddered tights and the legs they contained, which were over-muscular and curved like the brackets in an algebra question, and soon got over it.
It would’ve been okay if people had just kept off his mopped floors. He didn’t enjoy mopping, didn’t look forward to getting up every weekday for a hard day's floor cleaning, but he had to do it and he was determined to do it right.
There are cobbled corridors in the city you don’t know about. A race of people avoiding people. Discarded, pre-modern arteries of London. Men in ragged herringbone, demi-lune specs; with fobs and brollies. Queer phillumenists and amateur classicist slipping unseen through public spaces like tatty particles in other, older dimensions. But if you put your ears to the city walls, if you hold your breath, you can hear their nervous coughing and tramping leather soles through the knapped flint. One of these men, for they are always men, is Tuff.
Longtime contributors Niall Boyce, Jonathan Pinnock & Richard Smyth all have books out which you'd be well advised to buy, then read, then buy for others. All genres are catered for, from novels (Niall's Veronica Britton) and short stories (Jonathan's Dot Dash) to nonfiction (Richard's Bumfodder)
KATY LIAR'S DEBUT NOVEL
Liar Katy Darby's debut novel, a Victorian drama called The Unpierced Heart (previously titled The Whores' Asylum) is now out in Penguin paperback. It's had nice reviews in The Independent on Sunday, Sunday Times & Metro (4*).
OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANNEXE MAG!
They came, they saw, they asked us a bunch of interesting questions. Interview by Nick of Annexe Magazine with Katy of LL: here
