Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester It’s raining. I’m in the back of the car, Beth is in the front with Dad. When there were four of us, Beth used to sit next to me and we’d watch raindrops slither down the windows, try to guess which one would get to the bottom […]
An Adultery

Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester “Sex with my wife hasn’t been the same,” my lover says, “since her breast cancer.” Where bedsheets retract, the shoreline of his body emerges. Lumps of burnt pink, freckled all over. Behind him, glass slats combine to windows, and then the Mediterranean, its green light stretching all […]
Daisy’s Place

Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester A scramble of hairpins, then a wedge of smooth sea. Down the coast, the Costa del something. High-rise hotels, Dan said, and street fights. But out here, he said, it was a different world. No bars, not on this trip, eating in and he’d cook, and anyway, […]
The Scent of Magnolia

Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Something was wrong as soon as we drove into our street. We heard the shriek of a siren as we passed through town. Now there was a police car outside our house, an ambulance with its blue light turning. Two paramedics loading a stretcher into the back. […]
The Headman

Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester July can be unforgivingly cold. Walking outside, the chillness feels like multiple blades cutting the skin. He’s sitting in his bedroom hut, thinking of Mucha. In his mind he’s walking towards her. His heart is pounding. “Ndeipi” he says. “Where were you yesterday?” Mucha says. “I got […]
Cocoa l’Orange

Cocoa l’Orange Like a crouching battalion, the thirty houses in Heatherbell Way nestle along the incline of the mountain. The McEntee’s long landing window is positioned directly opposite the window of the Kearney’s master bedroom, slightly to the left of its en-suite bathroom. Since the first lockdown, Jake Kearney has spent more time […]
Fallen Stock

Fallen stock Tony’s out of the door and jogging across the yard before the trailer’s through the gate, a sheepdog worrying his ankles. A moment later his face is at Ed’s window, a tired moon in the dawn light. They’re up on the top fields. Do you need a hand getting out of the […]
My Husband’s Doing Soup

My Husband’s Doing Soup A cyclist shot by, passing so close to Elizabeth that she felt his Lycra-covered arm brush against hers. She stumbled to the side, almost tripping over her own feet. He didn’t even glance her way. He disappeared into the fog, the steady rattle of his wheels on the metal […]
An Unravelling

An Unravelling Julie turned the corner into her street with a touch of grumpiness about her. It was raining steadily, though it hadn’t been when she left her house half an hour before, which was why she had decided against a coat. Now she was wet, the rain having made short shrift of her […]
Editorial

August hauls deep green dreaming into the woods. Even the bracken is so high and thick I am up to my neck. I feel its lure – who doesn’t desire to trust in what’s sprung, the emerald caves, to lean in and be lost. So writes Carola Luther in one of the new poems we […]
Gold Diggers Come Cheap

In my second year of training to qualify as a plastic surgeon, I signed up for a research secondment in Amsterdam. Jon insisted on picking me up from the airport. My flight arrived early, and I walked around feeling irrationally annoyed. The arrival area with its high ceilings was dry and chilly, chiller than Google […]
In Praise of Fire

When you stand in front of fire, your clothes absorb the heat and there is a whisper of time, shred thin as a wafer of ham, when the heat is pure pleasure, like the anticipation of an orgasm, before skin cells send a message to brain cells shrieking “Hot, hot!” The neurons fire back a […]
Madrid

Given I’ve been allowed this very special very personal access I can say that on my travels over you on top of and under and around you I have moved more or less continuously without following the least compass direction or straight line rather I’ve been on barely plottable curves natural curves on momentary […]
Object

For a woman of her age, Sally maintains a spirited social life. She has, since her return to Dublin, been part of a group of five that she met at work. Though she is the eldest in the group by twenty years, Sally thinks she does a good job of keeping up with the […]
Blooms Galore

Anne is implicated, folded into his black mood like dry ingredients into wet. Together they make a pudding. A black pudding. Not the delicious kind. Not figgy pie. David claims that Anne has an anger problem. He mopes on the couch. Innocent, and manipulative. Anne waters the garden. She likes to watch things grow. David’s […]