Whatever happened to the Strictly Writing Award Winner? Carys Bray returns to tell us all!

I wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl, but I married young, had several children in quick succession and the dream got buried somewhere - probably under a big pile of dirty nappies. I started writing again as soon as my children were at school. I did a writing module during my Literature degree with the Open University and then I decided to do a Creative Writing MA.

I entered one of my early MA stories in the Strictly Writing Award competition and I was tremendously excited when I won. I was just beginning to think that perhaps, one day, when I’d had a lot more practice, I might actually be able to call myself a writer.  

I kept writing stories after I’d finished my MA and I soon had enough to make a collection. I heard about Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize, the only international prize for debut collections of short stories written in English, and I decided to enter. I was delighted to be shortlisted and over the moon to win.

My collection, Sweet Home, is full of stories about family and the things that go right, and wrong, when people live together. Some of the stories are sad, some are funny and some are best described as fairy tales. 

Lancashire Writing Hub guest editor Sarah Schofield reviewed Carys Bray’s Salt Scott Prize winning short story collection Sweet Home here: she says "...The collection is titled after the third story in the book. This decision is well measured. ‘Sweet Home’ is an updated twist on Hansel and Gretel. Playing on the original narrative, it highlights discrimination, racism and small community gossip. Refering to the foreign woman’s gingerbread home, one zenophobic character states: “She should have used an English recipe… Victoria sponge… You can’t get more English than that.” It seems more than appropriate that the Hansel and Gretel narrative, so ingrained in family life and read to generations of children, should have a re-evaluation and hold an important place in this collection. Challenging established expectations of what ‘family’ looks like...."

I get inspiration from everyday things. A couple of the stories are set in shops; one in a surreal store where people can buy children, and another in a midnight supermarket during the rescue of a group of Chilean miners. I read a lot of parenting books when my children were small and, over time, I developed a hatred of them. The opening story in the collection deals with that hatred - it is interrupted by ‘helpful’ quotes from fictional parenting books. I really like fairy tales and I think they have fuelled my love for short stories where impossible things happen. In one of my stories an old lady builds a gingerbread house and in another a carpenter sculpts a baby out of ice.

I like to read stories that are funny and sad, probably because real life is often both of those things. I like beautiful language and I also like to be surprised. Some stories I have really enjoyed recently are ‘Sports Leader’ from Jane Rogers’ new collection Hitting Trees With Sticks, ‘Sometimes Gulls Kill Other Gulls’ from A.J. Ashworth’s debut collection Somewhere Else, Or Even Here and ‘Tamagotchi’ from Adam Marek’s new collection The Stone Thrower.

I’m still writing short stories, although at the moment I’m mostly concentrating on a PhD and novel. I’m nearly at the end of my first draft of the novel. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s about the sudden death of a small child and it’s full of fairy tales and misplaced faith in the miraculous. It’s sad, but I hope it’s funny too, just like real life. 

To find out more about Carys, you can find her blog here:  http://carysbray.co.uk

To win a signed copy of 'Sweet Home', simply tell us which traditional fairy story YOU'D like to give a modern twist and why.  Leave your idea in our comments box  and we'll announce the winner next week on Strictly Writing.

Many thanks to Carys for coming back and telling us all about her rise to publication fame - we're so proud that we were able to play such a meaningful role in her success story.

The Last Shortlisted Winner of The Strictly Writing Award: TOO MANY KITTENS by Uta Coutts

"I can't think about this right now," Carl says, and he's irritated; I can tell by the way he clips his t's, tight as a miser's arse.

"While we still share responsibility for this house, you have to. It's not an option."

"You have no idea of the pressure I'm under. It's relentless."

"Most of that pressure is of your own making," I can't help reminding him. I try very hard to be civil but sometimes my composure slips out of gear. "And that doesn't make the problems go away. You need to pull your weight here."

"It'll have to wait."

"It can't wait."

"That's just the way these things go, kitten..." He stops, and I hear him inhale sharply. I imagine his face at the other end of the phone, appalled, defensive; I know him so well.

"God," he says. "I'm sorry."

The word hangs in the ether between us, furry and fluffy and emphatic in its crassness.

"Kitten" is what he calls her. It just slipped out, born of the thoughtless familiarity he has fallen into so readily and without any sign of conscience over the past two months, an endearment that's unlike him and so contrary to his serious-scientist nature; his new screensaver on his mobile phone is a fuzzy, wide-eyed fluffball of a kitten with a big red ribbon, and he's forty, for Christ's sake.

I have the ridiculous and self-defeating urge to laugh, but knowing how quickly my laughter erodes into tears these days, I suppress it. I almost have it in me to feel sorry for him, for his ghastly gaffe, this casual frond of a word, this hacksaw ripping out bits of my soul. But only almost.

"Leigh?" he says.

"Decisions, Carl. Unless you want my solicitor to make them for both of us."

"There's no need to be..." The rest is lost because I've hung up. My voice is falling off its vocal hinges and I don't want him to hear it.

Carl and I have been married for fifteen years. Fifteen good years, or so I believed and I wasn't the only one, friends often told us we were their "pedestal couple" and I thought I knew what that meant, but what it really means is that you fall to earth from a higher point, and all the harder for it. We used to laugh a lot and argue little. Now we rarely ever laugh and every one of our conversations, by phone or otherwise, ends in accusation. There is no such thing as an amicable divorce.

Two months ago my husband fell suddenly and - for me - catastrophically in love with a woman fourteen years his junior. Since then he's lost a stone in weight because he's been to the gym every day, he's replaced his nerdish specs, which I rather liked, with daily disposable contact lenses, he wears trendy shirts (one of them's orange. Orange!) which he leaves trailing out of his low-slung trousers as though he's twenty-two, he's traded in his Volvo for a snazzy convertible to impress Vicky, who has the intelligence and emotional maturity of a mayfly, and they've set up house together in the next village in a new-build semi, not with a white picket fence but nearly as bad: a neatly trimmed hedge. He said he wants to get back to basics, whatever that means.

I was too unconventional, he says. I didn't understand him, he says. It wouldn't have happened if he'd been happy, he says. He would have left me anyway, regardless of Vicky. He feels like all this time he's been like a hamster in a wheel and the faster he runs, the faster the wheel turns. He's getting nowhere. He wants out.

Is there a script writer who turns out these stock phrases for men starting their mid-life crises? Last year I mopped up my friend Emma's tears when her husband left her, and now I hear echo after tired echo bouncing off my eardrums and making my head hurt.

He's found his soul-mate, he says with a painful lack of tact.

And yes, he calls her kitten. I wouldn't be surprised to hear her call him tiger. Reach for the bucket.

I'm the one left knocking about on my own in our dream house which we now urgently need to sell, a hauntingly gothic cavern of a house which we spent years doing up - well, his dream house, to be strictly accurate. He was the one who fell in love with the decrepit shell and its eerie walled garden while I had my reservations about the size and immensity of the project, but as we spent our weekends working on it together - always together - we both grew to love it.

Or so I thought, until two months ago. It's hard to revise opinions held for years. Now every brick, every paintstroke is suffused with retrospective sadness, grief and betrayal. My eyes are perma-swollen, my face raw meat pickled in tears.

Alarm bells should have started ringing when the text alert on his mobile turned from a basic two tone bing-bong to a cute meow. I thought he was having a playful or ironic phase. More alarm bells should have gone off when a virtual feline started prancing across the screen of the laptop we shared, but perhaps I am exceptionally dense when it comes to trust: I thought trusting is what you do, when you're married. It took a few more unsubtle hints before I got the message. A postcard saying Sweet Dreams, showing a tabby kitten asleep on a pillow, which I found when I took his jacket to the dry cleaners'. Then, a soft-toy kitten keyring: blatant, because he wanted me to notice - he wanted me to confront him, coward that he is - and in the end I did. He admitted everything in relief and in far too painful detail, and two days later he was gone.

The abundance of kittens dumped, unwanted, in my life is what upsets me most, because it is demeaning to keep crying over something so banale. The image of him and her screwing in our bed is not a happy one either. I'm surprised I'm not dehydrated, I had no idea the human body has such limitless capacity for tears.

Carlandvicky (how quickly he has fallen into this new unit!) have moved on, and they want me to snap out of it and move on too, considering it's been over two months and there are - small mercies - no children to muddy the issue. To this end, they've invited me over to their house next week to discuss the sale of the house.

That's what our ill-fated phone conversation was about. We need to get estimates from the estate agents; the cost of the mortgage was crippling when we were together and is even more so now he's moved out. Carl accuses me of being bloody-minded because I asked him to do his share: tidy away some of his things and help with the gardening, so the place looks in good nick for prospective buyers. I don't think this is unreasonable. After all, he wants half the proceeds. But he's too busy, he doesn't have time and that's just the way these things go. Kitten.

I admit that on some self-torturing level I want to see their love nest, to see them diminished for buying so enthusiastically into the suburban bliss scenario. I'm tempted to watch from behind a bush and see Carl wash the his-and-hers cars on a Saturday morning, and equally tempted to find a rent-a-bird to crap on them afterwards.

---

Carl phones to apologise for his ill-judged remark. It wasn't just the remark that hurt me and he knows it, but it helps him to pretend he has a vestige of decency left.

After prevaricating for the best part of a week, I give in against my better judgment and agree to visit them. If morbid curiosity doesn't kill this cat, remaining entombed in the mausoleum of a house any longer than necessary surely will, and besides, I have an urge - more - an aching need to understand what turned my familiar, reliable, wonderful husband into a stranger overnight. Insensitivity and oafishness never used to be part of his make-up, but perhaps one can acquire them cheaply as part of the adultery package.

Vicky plays the gracious hostess and tries hard to be pleasant, but I think it's a strain because it's against her nature. I sense that beneath the fluffy exterior - blonde, melon-breasted, wasp-waisted, everything I'm not - lurks a hard-nosed bitch. I may be biased. At any rate, she can't be as faultless as Carl claims. In my Book of Judgment she has at least one major flaw: she got involved with a married man.

"Come and meet Fudge and Truffle," she says, and I nearly trip over the two diminutive furballs that have been brought in to make their family happiness complete. It makes me want to throw up on the cream carpet but I restrain myself. We sit down together, and with a gargantuan effort - mostly on my part - we manage to draw up what will be the blueprint for our divorce settlement, while the furballs take turns climbing up my jeans with their sharp little claws.

Post-agreement small talk is stilted, and I'm glad I can make my excuses because Carl is coming down with a cold. Good. Now it's your turn to have the puffy eyes and the red nose for a couple of days, I think nastily. Just so you know what it feels like.

---

"How are Fudge and Truffle?" I ask a few days later when Carl phones to confirm some details we hacked out. Call me old-fashioned, I still can't bring myself to enquire after Vicky.

"Well, er, they're no longer with us." He sounds sheepish. "Turns out I'm allergic to cats."

"Really? What a shame. They were so cute. Who took them?"

"What with the holidays coming up, no one wants to be, er, saddled with kittens. So we took them to Wood Green."

"Ah. And how did Vicky feel about that?"

"She was a bit upset, actually." I still know him well enough to hear the magnitude of the understatement.

"Oh dear," I say.

---

Jasper and Paloma - I renamed them because I couldn't stand the syrupy sweetness of their names - are now three years old. I retrieved them from the Animal Shelter because I couldn't bear the thought that Carl's new-found callousness should have additional victims, and in time the two furballs and I got used to each other. Once Carl and I sold our house, signed the divorce papers and disbanded our joint history, I moved to a small Victorian cottage, and the cats settled in as though it was made for them.

They sleep on my bed every night; they crush their warm little bodies against mine and purr out their unqualified affection for me like miniature engines in overdrive. I never used to be a cat person but these days I couldn't imagine my life without them.

---

Carl and Vicky lasted barely six months. He's on his third relationship since our divorce came through, he has dark rings under his eyes and he's started smoking again; the slight beer gut testifies that he doesn't see the inside of a gym very often these days. He's gone back to stripy shirts which he tucks in at the waistband, not a trace of orange in sight.

We talk on the phone every now and then. He's intimated more than once that he knows he made a mistake, and would I consider giving him another chance? But even if I wanted to, I could never have him back, because he's allergic to my cats.

Well, that's just the way these things go.

The Strictly Writing Award Short-listed Story for January - "The Possibilities of Scalding Geysers" by Yvonne Jackson

It was worth waiting a year for the thrill. We always planned well ahead, so that we could enjoy the anticipation, but the excitement was in not knowing the detail. Each year a different place. Each year a different person. Each year a different accident.

Our house was always littered with travel brochures. We preferred unusual destinations. What can compare with the biological thrill of the Galapagos Islands, or the haunted wilderness of Easter Island? Who has lived, if they have not seen glaciers birthing mighty icebergs, or peered over the lip of a restless volcano?

Ron always said that a pool-and-beach holiday in a cheap and popular destination would not suit us, maintaining that we would only meet shallow binge-drinkers, or money-starved parents with loud, sticky children. We preferred the company we found on the more expensive, exotic holidays. A better kind of person, you understand. A more intelligent, thinking kind of fellow traveller. It was often during our deep discussions with these interesting individuals that we made our annual selection.

Besides, higher-class holidays offer more scope for memorable incidents. There was the time we watched from a tree to see a member of our party being attacked and eaten by a grizzly. Nothing we could do about it, of course. Once the bear smelt the melting chocolate in the young man’s backpack, it was all over for him really. And after all those warnings we were given about not carrying food with us! Nobody could think how he could have been so stupid. It was like walking around with a big sign written in grizzly, saying, “Eat Me”.

Yes, that was a gory one, better even than the occasion we witnessed a young Egyptian girl being eaten by a Nile crocodile. She was trying to sell the passengers of our Nile cruise some worthless trinkets, and she slipped and fell in the river just as she was reaching out to show her wares to Ron. Unfortunately the water hid much of the horror, and she died more quickly than the grizzly bear’s lunch, being smaller and tastier. Our stomachs swirled like the reddening waters, and we watched avidly until the last morsel had been consumed. The Egyptian police said my photographs were extremely useful in helping the parents to identify their unfortunate child.

We often looked back over the photographs - kept them in a special album. In the same album were the photos of the woman who was bitten by a deadly snake in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest. By the time the poison had done its work, her face was all puffed up and purple and contorted in agony. But there you are: if people choose to camp under a forest canopy that’s chittering and chattering with poisonous creatures, and then put on their boots in the morning without first checking inside them, what can be done?

But the memory we returned to most frequently over the years was that of the elderly gentleman who carelessly tumbled overboard during an Alaskan cruise. Of course, I shouted, “Man overboard!” but by then he was already in the grip of the deadly chill. The water resembled one of those slushy drinks that children like to buy – bits of ice all mashed up in coloured liquid.

Naturally, I couldn’t jump in and attempt to rescue him – as I told the captain later, I am quite unable to swim – and it was a pity that the life belt I threw him fell so far short of its target. I never was good at games where you had to throw things, you see. Coincidentally, it was the same old man who had argued with Ron the previous evening.

Ron gave me a hard time over throwing the old man a life belt: it was some minutes after I had done so before we could be certain if the old codger would slip under the water before he succeeded in reaching it. A lady, who arrived on the scene a few moments after he fell, said that he was shaking his fist at me and shouting, but why would a drowning man waste his precious energy doing that? No, as Ron told the captain, he was not waving, but drowning.

Two years ago, Ron’s newly-divorced sister came travelling with us. I told Ron it would be a disaster, and it was. Glynis made our lives a misery, from the moment she stepped on the cruise liner until the moment she slipped off a cliff in Venezuela.

For one thing, she would keep going on about her children. Ron and I have never been into brats, of which our teenaged nephews and nieces seem to be the worst examples. Then again, Glynis would take her knitting everywhere, which is so middle-class. Really, I was embarrassed to be seen with her. No style, no class.

But the worst thing was that she wouldn’t leave Ron and me alone for a moment. For the first time since we had begun our hobby, it was impossible to make a proper selection, and I could see Ron becoming even more frustrated than me. In the end it was he who suggested we pick Glynis – and I was only too glad to acquiesce.

It was a terrible tragedy, and of course the rescue services in these out-of-the-way places are so unreliable that it was hours before the body was recovered. Hours and hours in which to ask ourselves questions. If Ron had not stepped forward to reach for her, would the cliff still have crumbled? If I had not startled her with my cry of, “Careful!”, would she still have stumbled forwards? And most importantly: when they brought her up, would she be dead, or merely injured?

Ah yes, as I look back over the years, I feel a shaft of delight in remembering some of the experiences we’ve enjoyed. It is as acute as the pleasure experienced by a collector of fine art when he looks over his paintings. But Ron and I never cared for art, you see. Our pleasures lay elsewhere, and we selected with care the person on whom we bestowed the honour of delivering them. Sometimes we would spend the first two weeks of a three-week trip wrapped up in this delectable task.

It made us feel like God: as we decided, so it happened. We would fix on some obscure, unimportant individual, and that person would be transformed from insignificance into a lasting adornment in our lives, one that we would revisit in our memories again and again. We, the omnipotent, bestowed immortality on the nondescript.

Last year we were torn. Ron favoured a trek through the Gobi Desert. It was the allure of scorpions, of course, but I wasn’t so keen and argued fiercely for Iceland. It wasn’t the first time we’d argued about destination. Ron was becoming increasingly domineering and tended to favour hot places, while I prefer the temperate or even the arctic. Don’t like to sweat, don’t like to be among sweaty people, you understand? But hot climates did something to Ron. Perked him up so to speak. And in the end, he got his way again.

All our fellow travellers had their eccentricities, naturally: it’s an extraordinary type of person who chooses to camel-trek across a burning wasteland for pleasure. In the end Ron selected a young Norwegian. He was fascinated by her pale eyelashes, her transparent skin, and her halting accent. Rather too fascinated in fact. He insisted I take her photo with their arms around each other, for the album. Of course, I wasn’t jealous, at least, not until I realised that it was more than his eyelashes that she liked. Privacy is difficult to achieve in the desert, and it was a bad mistake on his part to humiliate me by being so publicly perked up.

It was the next day, as I bumped through never-ending glare aboard a lumpy and morose camel that I had the idea. It was perfect. I made my selection, and this time I made it alone.

This time I had no photographic souvenirs to bring home, except the picture of Ron entwined with his Norwegian, which the newspapers ended up using. I kept all the newspaper cuttings for the album. The media made much of the fatal passion that had apparently caused the adulterous couple to wander off into the desert in search of privacy.  “Just Deserts”, proclaimed one paper, self-righteously.

Our guide was keen to corroborate this story. It was not in his interest to get a reputation for losing his customers. Only I knew the truth.

Next year I am going to Iceland.

I think scalding geysers have distinct possibilities.

January's Strictly Writing Winner Is....

...postponed until Monday actually.

At the risk of sounding like a British Rail Apologies Announcement due to the wrong kind of snow or the weight of the leaves on the track, the delay is due to the level of entries this month which far exceeded our expectations - both in terms of quality and quantity.

This doesn't mean that the deadline has been extended, though, only the announcement of the winner.

Anyway, piggy-backing the unprecedented-ness of this month, we have also decided to have an additional winner at the end of February, although NO FURTHER ENTRIES ARE BEING ACCEPTED as of midnight last night.

AND, after the OVERALL WINNER has been announced,  the prize awarded and we've all shimmied  out of our sequinned outfits, we'll also be highlighting some of the stories that  we felt were Highly Commended.  These will become posts throughout the year.

So bear with us everybody and remember the great British Rail motto*:
"It's bound to be great if you have to wait."

* No, I know it isn't really, but it should be, don't you think?

The Strictly Writing Award Shortlisted Story for December - A Little Bit of Soul by Gavin Wilson

Congratulations to Gavin Wilson, whose story is now on the shortlist for the Strictly Writing Award. 

There is only one more month left of the competition, so if you haven't entered yet, give it a go! Details of how to submit your story are available here.

A LITTLE BIT OF SOUL

by

GAVIN WILSON

It is a winter month but I don’t feel the cold that whistles through the house sending dust spiralling in darting, dancing gusts as I stand looking down at the woman lying in her bed. Her eyes are closed now, the faint traces of a lingering smile on her face. Whether this is due to a last happy dream or the beginnings of rigor mortis I wouldn’t know: I would love to say the former.

Cause of death hypothermia. The poor old girl had lived on her own since her husband passed, with no kids to come and visit. Her guilty pleasure had been the odd game of bingo but after her hip had gone the random weekly draw had drawn to a close when she couldn’t get around as much. Only the weekly visits from her friends at the church had carried on to give her something to look forward to.

As I turn to leave I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: the raven black I think looks good on me, stylish perhaps in a Presbyterian way, but the collar is always too tight, a reminder perhaps of my servitude. I glance back at the old lady. She at least has gone to a better place now. The prayer for the dead has been said, her immortal soul has left its mortal body. Case closed.

Next job, so soon; ah well, no rest for the wicked. A young driver has stolen a car and I give chase. He’s driving like a maniac swerving in and out of the traffic; at any point he could lose control. I always wonder why some people do this, what thrills they get from driving this quickly.

It happens fast; the front tire blows and the car slides sideways briefly before it flips. A cacophony of tormented metal and glass spins and rolls in balletic carnage before it ends on its roof, golden sparks shooting out across the road like a firework as the steel grinds across the asphalt leaving a bloody smear behind it.

Mercifully quick…. one easy job; death by driving!

I’ve been watching this one for a while now, but I have time. The man in the smart suit has spent some time looking out over the city, clinging to the tall chimney, tears streaming down his cheeks; for what reason I don’t know.

He’s stepped closer to the edge, looking down. From this height the fall would certainly kill him.

I understand the desire to end, but why this way?

I approach him and he turns around still crying. I have no words for him, nothing that will take away his pain or make him feel better.

He jumps. Maybe he will land in a friendly place.

It’s morning now for some people, but what does it matter? I enter a grocery store: the shop keeper is being held up by a masked man holding him at gun point. I stop and watch but no one notices me, intent on their own predicaments and petty crimes.

“Where is the safe?” The masked man yells.

The shop keeper stays quiet.

“I will blow your head off old man.”

The shop keeper goes for the bat under the counter.

Bang!

The masked man dashes past me and I walk around to the other side of the counter.

A pool of blood is flowing in viscous finality across the floor, the old shop keeper left staring blankly up at the ceiling with his one remaining eye.

There is little I can do other than watch and wait as he takes his final breath.

Murder: it happens and always will.

    

I need a break but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to get one anytime soon. I sit in the chair looking at the old woman lying in the hospital bed. Her husband sits beside her holding her hand.

Bashed over the head because she wouldn’t hand over her purse; it only had a picture of her dead son and a small amount of money. Was it really worth holding on to it? To her, it was.

The heart monitor flat-lines and her husband looks up in disbelief. She can’t be dying; it was just a bash on the head. Medical staff rush into the room and they try their hardest to resuscitate her but to no avail.

In the quiet and lonely aftermath I walk to the side of her bed. Her soul eyes open and she smiles at me. It's not often that happens: I place my hand on her hers and smile back.

“I always wondered,” she says, the ghosts of her words whispering into my ears. “You look a little different to how I thought you would.”

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

As she nods, I sever her soul from its mortal cage and stopping only to brush a kiss across the cheek of her grief exhausted husband, she rises to the glow above her.

Another day: another death. The prayer for the dead has been said, the soul has left the body. Rest in peace.

When will it be my turn to rest?

I am different now, so different from the being I used to be. I have been known by so many different names. Gone is the scythe and flowing cloak, the gloom and skeletal form.

The mirror never lies. A man to those of you who see: dressed in raven black. Tie, suit, shoes, shirt: although the collar of the shirt is always too tight for some reason. Tall, distinguished and calm, the silver scissors that sever secreted in a jacket pocket. No scythe to terrorise with apocalyptic dread.

Not yet.

Only when the fires fall from the sky and the dead rise will I truly know an end. That will not happen yet, so I continue endlessly. While you believe, I endure. I long for the sanctity of death; an end, but that cannot happen while you are all still here believing and dreaming of your sad little ends. Your sad demises mean little to me.

One day I will know rest, but until then I will be there at every cessation of life. If you see me, you will know me.

For I am Death.

It will be my pleasure to meet you. 

November's Strictly Writing Competiton Winner: "You Can See France From Here" by Kay Seeley

YOU CAN SEE FRANCE FROM HERE

"I’ve lost the use of my legs, not my effing brain," my father yelled, his bony fingers snatching the keys from the desk. Propelling himself towards the corridor in the direction of our rooms, he yelled at me, "Come on Betty, move your fat arse." 

My heart sank even as the colour rose to my cheeks. Mouthing a silent "Sorry" to the Receptionist, I picked up our suitcases and staggered after him. Jeez, I thought, what on earth sort of holiday is this going to be? Although I already knew the answer.

"I’ll bang on the wall when I want you," he said, swinging his chair round as I put his case on the bed.

"I’ll pop back in half-an-hour," I said, not wanting him to call the shots on our first day.

"What a shit-hole," he said. "I’ve seen more comfortable doss-houses."

I shook my head and retreated. I had lived all my life in fear of my father. Meanness shrouded him like a cloak and spitefulness came more naturally to him than breathing. The phone call from the nursing home, where he had lived since my mother died, well, more accurately, gave up living, had not come as any surprise to me.

"You’ll have to make other arrangements," the Matron told me. "We’ve given him plenty of warnings and second-chances, but as you know many of our staff are young girls. We take verbal abuse very seriously. I’m afraid he’ll have to go."

Despair rose inside me. "He’s an old man," I said. "Surely you can make some suitable arrangements for him."

"I’m sorry. He’s upset the other residents too. We can’t have him here any longer. Perhaps he could come and stay with you…"
I shuddered at the thought. Of course she was right. If anyone, seeing the wheelchair, thought him frail they were in for a rude awakening. Arthritis may have crippled him but it had not lessened his power to put the fear of God into anyone who displeased him.

"It may take some time," I said, meekly.

"End of the week," she said, and put the phone down. Hence the holiday on the Isle of Wight. I thought it would at least give me time to make other arrangements for him.

"It will be an adventure," I told him. "A chance to re-visit the places where you spent your childhood."

"An adventure? Well, anything’s got to better than stagnating in this smelly rat-hole."

So I booked us into The Lobster Pot. A small hotel on the front at Sandown.
My heart lifted when I saw the hotel. It looked warm and welcoming. Colourful hanging baskets, overflowing with pink and red geraniums adorned the white-washed walls. Half-barrel planters on the terraces brimmed with ballerina fuchsias and pelagoniums and on the blue-painted window sills, boxes of bright pink begonias beamed at us. The overall effect was a symphony of red, white and blue.

The smell of roasting meat greeted us as we entered, bringing a rush of saliva to my mouth. If the cooking smells were anything to go by, at least we’d be well fed.
Dinner on the first night went without incident and I began to think that perhaps he’d mellowed over the years. Perhaps, if it came to it, I could have him at home with me. I lived alone, Mum had managed him, why shouldn’t I? My cheerful optimism didn’t last long.

Every morning, as the pale sunlight crept over the windowsill in the small dining room, he’d manoeuvre his chair to block the gangway. Then he’d make a big fuss as people tried to squeeze past. I could see the flash of satisfaction in his eyes as people offered their apologies. I cringed as he loudly criticised whatever was put in front of him, pushing the plate away, like a petulant child. I’m not sure which was most embarrassing, watching him eat or listening to him whining that it was inedible.

Once we got outside things improved. I pushed him along the promenade, overlooking the bay.

"We used to come here every year, when I was a child," he said, with that smile that was so rare I didn’t recognise it. "Did I tell you how I won the raft race every year, youngest competitor too. And I could outswim boys much older than me. Outrun them too."

I had heard all his stories and grown up with his exploits even as they had grown over the years, expanding with every telling. Now, I thought, he had little left but the memories.

"'Course it’s all different now," he said. "Milk-sops and mummy’s boys, computer games and television. No spirit of adventure, young lads today. Not like in our day. My Dad used to beat me with a strap. Wouldn’t do these kids any harm to feel a bit of leather across their backsides."

The first three days the weather disappointed, with pearl grey skies threatening rain. Still, every day I drove out to one of the resort towns, parked and settled him in his chair for long bracing walks along the sea-front promenades. My hands numbed, turning blue as I pushed the chair against the bitter blast and my eyes watered, but he was impervious to my discomfort. I’d gaze enviously at the holidaymakers huddled in the warmth of their cars parked on the front. He’d take a warming swig from his silver hip flask. Things generally improved after that.

On the fourth day the weather improved and our walks became more enjoyable. He talked about his holidays as a child, running down to the beach everyday, chasing butterflies and calling to seagulls as they swooped and dived for the bread he threw for them a long time ago under a summer sky. Sailing, rafting and canoeing, he re-lived them all; the toughest and bravest adventurer on the sea. But after a while the reminiscences only served to remind him of his deteriorating condition and the meanness returned.

"Changed beyond recognition," he moaned. "Trashy commercialism and opportunistic rubbish," he’d say as we walked along past amusement arcades, with their flashing neon lights and the constant crash of money dropping through the slot machines. The smell of hot-dogs and onions mingled with doughnuts and candy floss and I wished we could stop just for a while to breathe in the lively vibrant atmosphere. I thrilled to the hurdy-gurdy music of the rides and the calls of the stall-holders and bingo-callers. If only things were different, I thought, what a lovely holiday we could have.

"Shit-holes. Everywhere’s turned into a shit-hole," he’d announce and my stomach would curl in turmoil lest I incur his further displeasure by tarrying too long. He wasn’t above using his cane to hurry me along.

We stopped in a small café on the pier at Ryde for a cup of tea. I wheeled him to a window where he could look out and watch the sailboats. At the counter, waiting to be served, I recognised the man stood in front of me from the hotel. A bear of a man with silver grey hair and a matching beard, he turned and smiled as I joined the queue behind him. Early fifties but fit, he was. I bet he works out, I thought.

"Hi, You're staying at the Lobster Pot too, aren’t you? How are you enjoying your holiday?"

"Better now the weather’s improved," I said, mortified at the memory of his daily embarrassment, trying to squeeze past Father’s wheelchair.

"My name's Jim. Jim Baxter." He held out his hand.
His hand enveloped mine, a soft warmth that spread through me like melting butter.

My heart raced. "Betty," I said, "Betty Carraway."

"Your father is it?" he nodded towards the window where father sat glaring at us.
I nodded, unable to summon my voice from its hiding place.

"Well, have a nice day," he said, turning away with his cup of tea and strawberry scone. I couldn’t help but notice how tanned his face was and the way his blue eyes twinkled.

Father became surly after the tea incident. Nothing pleased him. Then he developed chest pains and insisted that I sit with him, reading to him to calm his shattered nerves. "Not that you give a damn," he sneered accusingly. "Things will be different when I come to live with you," he said. "There’ll have to be changes."

On our last day we went to St. Catherine’s point. The sun shone and the day was warm.

"You can see France from here," Father said, as we drove into the car park at the bottom of a steep hill. I manhandled him into his chair, making sure he wore his cap against the sun. I pushed him up to the front where we stopped to look out across the English Channel. At the foot of the cliffs the sea eddied and flowed into rock pools filled with seaweed where children netted crabs. Families played on the beach in the bright sunshine, laughing and splashing in the rolling waves, jumping over the white foam as it broke against the shore. It looked so happy and normal that I felt a pang of regret, my chest heaving for what might have been.

"Can’t see France from here, stupid. Get us up to the top of the hill."
I turned the chair and pushed it across the car park. Just as I was taking a breath, ready to begin the long slog up the hill, I felt a presence at my side. It was Jim, materialised from nowhere, carrying a rucksack.

"Can I help?" he said

"No you can piss off," father replied. "She can manage."

Jim laughed, his gaze travelling appreciatively over my ample frame. His lips parted in a grin exposing perfect white teeth. I felt a tingle down my spine.

"It’s no trouble," he said and pushed the chair quickly up the hill as if it was nothing at all. He was wearing khaki shorts and light brown walking boots and I stared wistfully at the hairs on his muscular, tanned legs, turned golden by the sun.

At the top of the hill he swung the chair onto a concrete plinth marking the viewpoint. "Glorious view," he said looking straight into my eyes.
The breeze tousled his hair. He held my gaze far longer than was prudent and I could feel my skin reddening.

"Can’t see a bloody thing," Father said.

Reluctantly, I turned to look out across the sea. "Over there, isn’t that it?" I pointed at a slight darkening on the horizon.

"Don’t be so bloody daft woman, there’s nothing there."

I could feel the irritation rising at the sound of Father’s voice. If it hadn’t been for the pounding in my ears I’d have sworn that my heart had stopped beating.
Jim shook his head. "Well, I’ll love and leave you," he said. "Have a nice day. Might see you later?" his eyebrows rose and I nodded, holding my breath in case father saw but he was fiddling in his blanket, searching for his binoculars.

Jim squeezed my arm before turning away and striding out along the black tarmac that snaked its way across the fields.

"Bloody waste of time," Father said, scanning the horizon with his binoculars. "Can’t see sod all."

The sun broke out from behind a cloud as I swung the chair onto the road, facing back the way we had come. It warmed my face. At the top of the incline the chair slipped from my grasp. I stood, rooted to the spot as it started its descent, rapidly gathering speed. It was half-way down before he realised his solitary state, but any protest he made was lost in the breeze that rustled through the long grass, until he met the lorry coming around the bend at the bottom of the hill.

Thus he started on his greatest adventure and I started on mine.

The Strictly Writing Award Shortlisted Story for September - 'My Burglar' by Carys Bray

Congratulations to Carys Bray, whose story is now on the shortlist for the Strictly Writing Award. For more information about the award and how to enter, click here.

My Burglar

by

Carys Bray

The best time to think of hiding places is before you need them. It’s no use hiding things under beds or in mattresses; they’re the first places people look. Unexpected places are best. Sometimes I surprise myself with my ingenuity. Once I discovered my wedding ring in the bread bin. What a marvellous hiding place. Who would think to check there? Certainly not my burglar.

He always comes at night. In the thick of dark. In the solid, black stillness. In the quiet. In the smothering, pitch silence that stifles the house. I hear the pattern of his feet in the wide hush that packs each room. I hear the snap and creak of the floorboards. The whisper of his hands on the banister. The tide of his breath. I smell the stale tang of urine, of sweat, of wide, yawning pores.

I don’t scream. There’s no point. I’m alone. I sit up in bed and push my back to the headboard. I keep still. Sometimes I hold my breath and then let it hiss out of the corner of my mouth in a slither. I strain my eyes as I try to separate the swirling spirals of yellow-black, red-black and blue-black into something static and penetrable. The streetlamp outside has not worked for some time. I must call the council and mention it.  I peer into the squid-ink darkness, searching for a partition of shadow and form.

So far he has left me alone, been content with trifles: my Accurist watch, an emerald necklace, a pen, my address book. But I watch television. I know about burglars. A man from Birmingham said he was burgled twenty three times last year. He claimed for twenty three televisions and the insurance company was very angry about it. I saw it on the BBC. Burglars keep coming back.

I am beginning to suspect that my burglar is looking for something. I don’t believe he is creeping about my house on the off chance. I think he is after my locket.

‘Don’t be silly Mum,’ says my daughter Charlotte, on the telephone: very bossy and officious. ‘How on earth would anybody know about your locket?’

But I wear it don’t I? How easy it would be for someone to catch a glimpse of it around my neck in the grocers’. Or see it sparkle in the large print section of the library. How straightforward it would be to wait with me at the bus stop, board with me, alight with me. How simple it would be to follow me down Topsham Road and watch me enter number forty. And how effortless to return later, in the dark, to search for the locket.

‘You are being ridiculous Mum,’ says my daughter, Charlotte, on the telephone: unsympathetic and sceptical. ‘You lost that set of keys, they’ve not been stolen. You keep saying you’ll get the locks changed and you haven’t. I’m going to have to look on the internet; send someone round to do it. There is no burglar.’

Charlotte lives in Ireland. She’s been very rude recently.

Night doesn’t fall in the late autumn, it plunges. It catches me unawares. It crashes around me, throwing itself through the house like an unstoppable, black breaker and I chase after, switching on lights in its wake until the whole house is shining like a warning flare. For all my burglar knows, I have guests, a party, family visiting. I feel like Cinderella, safe until the clock strikes twelve. No-one of my age would be entertaining after twelve. I always turn the lights off and hurry to bed before midnight strikes. The only thing worse than hiding from him in the darkness would be confronting him in the full glare of light.

My television breaks the broad silence of evening. So many channels. Just enough time to make a cup of tea during the adverts, so long as you remember to switch on the kettle after filling it. I like programmes about Americans with obesity. They do these operations on them to stop them from eating. Sometimes they suck the fat out of them with a tube like a vacuum cleaner. Afterwards they all cry and hug each other. It’s very entertaining.

Tonight I am not watching television. Tonight I am looking for a hiding place for my locket.

My locket is silver. It is Victorian, oval-shaped. It belonged to my mother. It is such a long time since I took it off that it was extremely difficult to undo the clasp. But it’s done. Here it hangs, in knotty fingers that I can hardly believe are my own. The locket is worth a lot of money.

‘For God’s sake don’t lose it Mum,’ said my daughter, Charlotte, on the telephone: impatient and brusque. ‘You seem to be losing all sorts at the moment.’ I dare say Charlotte is looking forward to inheriting it.

The kitchen is a good place to hide things. The locket dangles as I examine the worktop: breadbin, biscuit tin, kettle. I plop the locket into the kettle. He will never look there.

Midnight.

The chimes of the dining room clock carry up the stairs. If there had been time I would have changed the bed. There is nothing like sliding into sheets that have been dried on the washing line, soaked in the season, fragrant and fresh. Perhaps tomorrow. The darkness presses me flat to the sheet. I breathe softly. I listen.

Morning.

Morning perforates the darkness, prickles across the daybreak sky. Morning and the shadows would be relieved if the streetlamp were working. I must call the council about it today.

He has been. He has been and the stench of him fills the space where the darkness was. Fetid urine. The sheet is moist. Perhaps it was still damp when I changed the bed last night.

I clean the teeth that are mine, insert the teeth that aren’t. Stare into the bathroom mirror at the bloodshot eyes and furrowed face reflected there.

My locket!

I check the bed. Pull off the sheet. Perhaps it came off in the night. But no, the clasp was far too tight. Oh, the smell. He has been here, in my room while I slept. He has fumbled sweaty fingers around my neck, removed my locket and stolen it.

In the kitchen the water tinkles into the kettle. I watch it boil. I make tea and dial my daughter’s number. Her name is Charlotte. She lives in Ireland. 

Writing Short Stories – There’s No Need To Be Scared! – Guest Post by Nik Perring

To celebrate the halfway-mark of the Strictly Writing Award (see over there on the right for full Rules and Regs), we asked successful short story writer, Nik Perring what his advice would be to any aspiring writers out there who were thinking of turning one in to us, and here's what he had to say:

 
I’ve been writing short stories for a few years now, with reasonable success. I’ve also, over those few years, talked to a lot of people about short stories and it seems to me that a lot of those people are, somehow, scared of them. A bit like poetry. It’s as though there’s a secret you need to get them and an even bigger, magical, one you need to be able to write them. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s not true. Anybody can write and read short stories, and if they want to, they should. Or at least give them a try.

There’s no magic formula I can share with you that’ll make you write great short stories. I wish there was. If there was one it’d save me an awful lot of time. What I can tell you, though, are a few things that work for me.

Writing short stories, really, is no different to writing novels – the same principles apply. The only difference is that short stories are, well, simply shorter. And I think that can be daunting to some people – it really needn’t be.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions that, I hope, will help.

So. Where to begin? If you’d have asked the wonderful Kurt Vonnegut (whose short stories are brilliant), he’d have said ‘As close to the end as possible’. And I’d agree with that because it means we’ll be starting the story at a point where things are getting interesting.

Most importantly, you need to find something or someone interesting to write about. I often find that asking myself ‘What if?’ questions help: What if someone suffered from an illness that meant they couldn’t actually stop moving?; What if someone chose to decorate their walls with Post-it notes? What if the only way a woman could shut up her husband was by taking off her clothes? That kind of thing works for me and allows me to write the story to find out the answer. It could work for you too...

One of the most common worries I’ve found people have when they’re thinking about writing short stories (or not writing them!) is that of word count. ‘But how long is a short story?’ they’ll say. ‘How long should one be?’

And my answer to them. One: Stop Worrying! And two: It’ll be as long as it is.

I honestly never worry about word count. The important thing with any story (and I’d include novels here as they’re stories too) is that, as writers, we should allow them to become what they should be. We tell the story as best we can without giving a second thought to length. The moment we start to pad things out, or cut things, for the sake of the length is the moment when the story will stop working, where it’ll get bent out of shape. And that’s the last thing we want to happen. Don’t forget that once you’ve written a first draft, the parts that need more explanation or that need to go will become apparent and can be fixed – but that should only be for the story’s sake and not so it fits in with any imposed word count.

But, if you want some guide as to what sort of shape (or length) a short story should be, I’d point you in the direction of a collection of fairy tales.

What I also find really useful, and this probably a very obvious one, is reading good contemporary shorts to see what people are doing are how they’re doing it. (I’d recommend reading people like Aimee Bender (I interviewed her about this sort of thing here (http://nikperring.blogspot.com/2010/07/aimee-bender-interview.html) ), Etgar Keret, Sarah Salway, Michael Czyzniejewski, Mary Miller, and Amy Hempel.)

Likewise, read the greats: Carver, Hemingway, Checkhov, Kafka, Vonnegut, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, and so on. See why they’re greats.

And ENJOY it! Writing’s supposed to be fun. We’re supposed to enjoy it! Sure, edits and making something interesting into something great can be an awful lot of hard work – but that hard work’s much more enjoyable if it’s being done on something we enjoy and find interesting.

Which kinda leads me to my next point, and that’s one about content. A lot of people think that short stories are super-literary and/or overly worthy. Sure, some are. Some are boring. No different to novels. So it’s important that, as with novels, you write the story you want to write. A story doesn’t have to be anything other than good.

So, go on. Try writing one. Enjoy yourselves. You might find you actually quite like it!

Nik Perring is a writer, and occasional teacher of writing, from the north west. His short stories have been published widely in places including SmokeLong Quarterly, 3 :AM and Word Riot. They’ve also been read at events and on radio, printed on fliers and used as part of a high school distance learning course in the US.

Nik’s debut collection of short stories, NOT SO PERFECT is published by Roast Books and is out now. Nik blogs here (http://nikperring.blogspot.com) and his website’s here (www.nperring.com). He also offers short story help here (http://thestorycorrective.com/).

In the Attic by M Wilkinson ( July's shortlisted story )

In the Attic

We’ve been here a long time now, my daughter, Madison, and me. I’ve lost count of the days. Madison writes in her diary. Her long blonde hair hangs over the page and she licks the end of her pencil before she writes, forming the childish letters with care.

The attic door is re-enforced with steel bars, and six padlocks hang like heavy fruit, grey circles against dark oak. Shutters keep out the night. That’s when they come, slithering, sliding, long arms hugging the brickwork as they make their way up. Distended bellies scrape the walls and leave a silver trail to mark their passing.


Before we came up here I showed Madison the trail. She didn’t believe me at first.

‘That looks like an old snail trail,’ Madison said, and touched it with her fingertip.

‘That’s what they want you to think.’

Her blue-green eyes opened wide. ‘Who are they?’

‘Things that suck at you until you disappear.’

‘Mummy disappeared. Is that what happened to - why she didn’t take her things when she left?’ She looked down at her nails, her lips drawn in tight as if to hold back a sob.

‘I don’t know what happened to Mummy, darling, but we have to be careful - prepare things.’

‘Prepare what?’

‘The attic.’



***

I close my eyes. Strange shapes flicker behind my closed lids. Fountains throw red water high in the air. Hammers flash silver in a macabre dance. I see them too, long grey maggots feasting on a blonde head, one brown eye staring from below a crushed cheekbone. I try to shut them out and picture my wife, but the 'Mummy' Madison talks about has faded from my recollection.

The bottled water is almost gone, perhaps enough to last us a few more days. Madison wants something to eat. I can’t go downstairs because they’re in the house now. I hear them move about. Whispers and clicks. Clicks and whispers.

Madison is ten and too young to understand danger. She's going to open the door. I know this because I read her diary.

There is something wrong with Dad. He has locked us in the attic. He says there is something on the other side of the door, talking in whispers. I can’t hear anything. There was no breakfast today. The cornflake boxes are empty. My stomach is rumbling. When he is asleep, I will get his keys, go downstairs, and make a cheese sandwich.

I’ve thrown away the keys to the padlocks. I watched them flash through the air and land in the shrubbery. There’s a knothole in the shutters. It’s a perfect round. That’s good, because my eye is a perfect round, and a perfect, perfect fit. I can only see straight ahead and it’s dark. I’m waiting for the moon to cross by – that’s a perfect round too, like cheese, pale with blue-green tinge. Madison likes cheese and crisps – She wrote in her diary.

I’m so hungry I wish I had some cheese sandwiches and crisps - or cake - Mum used to make cherry cake. I wish she hadn’t run away. I wish she would come back and let us out.

I flip back the pages. It’s filled with words, but I can’t take in the meaning.

Since Mummy left he keeps washing his hands, over and over.
He empties the rubbish every day but the house still smells bad.

Who is the 'he' she was writing about? The inside of my head feels as if it's filled with cotton wool and I search in among the empty folds for answers.

Madison doesn’t write much now. She sleeps all the time. She talks about food in her sleep.

They’re inside under the floorboards now. They’ve seeped in, greasy, grey bodies twisting through electrical wiring and water pipes.

They came while we slept and sucked at our flesh. They did it slowly, savouring a little of us every day. They think I don’t notice Madison dissolving. Her bony wrists lie on the coverlet and she hasn’t moved today. They’re feasting on me too. My clothes are too big. I rub my face and skin falls like grey snow onto my lap. I sit on the floor facing the door, waiting, waiting.

I saw one of them last night, in a circle of moonlight and my heart contracted. On a crushed cheekbone, a brown eye swung from a thread. Somewhere a memory stirred, I grasped at it, but it slipped away.

I draw my knees to my chest and rock. Rocking is such a comfort. I’m back in my mother’s arms. She wouldn’t let them hurt me.

My heart pounds and I look around the empty attic. ‘Big boys don’t cry.’ That’s my dead mother’s voice. My cheeks are wet, so I must be crying.

I hear voices in the garden, the distant clamour of an ambulance, the wail of a police car.

Madison opens her eyes and smiles. ‘They’re coming to rescue us, Daddy,’ she whispers.

‘I don’t think they’re coming here, Madison.’

‘They are, I pushed a note through the hole in the shutter when you were asleep. They’ll break down the door and rescue us.’

My heart jack-hammers and I don’t know why.

Hex Love by Phil Latham (June's Strictly Writing Award competition shortlisted story)

Sixteen women, 16 lovers. One life.

My first sexual experience terrified me, but then I was alone.

Melanie ravished me when I was 17. She taught me female anatomy and foreplay. I taught her how teenage boys are selfish specimens ruled by their testicles. Melanie was the first woman I loved yet we were together for just one week. My next relationship lasted even longer.

Each of my lovers gave me emotional or physical fulfilment. One gave me volcanic love I had never before experienced. Two gave me chlamydia.

Three of the 16 were black and proud. A further two were black and should have been.
One woman wore her school uniform to bed and demanded impish detention. A second whispered how she was an imaginative Piscean who wished to float away to a world of dreamy consciousness. I suggested chloroform. A third restrained me and shouted she was a sex-strong Scorpio determined to use my ‘pathetic flesh’ until I begged her to stop. And she did. And I did. Then I passed out.

Five fancied themselves as models. Two fancied themselves. One fancied Florida the last time I suggested we made love.

Four women announced their bisexuality, yet I’m not sure why. Did they seek a scorecard or expect me to help them double their chances on a Saturday night? I never asked. They never told.

One lover clucked like a pair of mad chickens whenever an orgasm flooded her twitching body. I suspect several others faked them (the orgasms, not the mad chickens).

None was married. None was disabled.

One was ginger. Three boasted natural blonde hair and five were bottle-fed. None was bald (on top).

Nine blinked their blue eyes at me in the bedroom. Two wept hidden eyes into my pillow after sunset. Four of the 16 timeshared the same green-eyed monster as a pet, so I tried not to feed it anything other than oversized portions of love and trust.

Six of the women vowed they were church-going Christians. Two defined themselves as ‘orthodox Jewish’. Four claimed to be lapsed Catholics. One was a fellow atheist who described God as a ‘sadistic little bastard’. I don’t think she’s still alive.

Three of the 16 were left-handed. I didn’t notice the difference.

Each woman carried emotional baggage. Some stored it in their TARDIS purse, others in matching six-piece luggage. Some felt so burdensome I left it behind. And them. I sometimes still feel like that selfish teenage boy.

On our wedding day the sunshine drips across the sky, the speeches sound entertaining and no other woman wears the same dress as Louise.

It’s five past three on a September afternoon. I’m late. I march through the graveyard and try not to visualise hundreds of sunbathing skeletons. Inside, the church breathes damp expectation.

Louise is the one who wants a church wedding so I acquiesce. I’ve polished my shoes so much they reflect everything, including hypocrisy and temptation.

My shoes clatter down the stone aisle and people turn around and smile. One man sticks out his sleeve and taps his watch. I install myself in the front pew in a top hat, tails and bottle-green waistcoat.

Best man Dave lurks next to me, but with his beard, shoulder-length hair and silver ring etched with a skull, he looks less like a best man and more like a roadie. In a top hat, tails and bottle-green waistcoat.

I ask to see the ring.

He shrugs.

My body re-routes moisture from my tongue to my armpits.

Old women with false teeth and wet rot materialise at the back of the church as if they’ve forged a day-pass to our galaxy. Others blink beneath hats shaped like pylons.

I pull up my socks. My shoes still function as mirrors.

Dave digs out a scrap of paper containing a grid of nine squares. He draws a circle in one of the squares and hands me the paper. I am seconds away from being married on the most important day of my life and all Dave can contemplate is a game of noughts and crosses. I snatch his pencil and strike through the grid to show my anger. He nods. Then below my cross draws a nought.

I adjust my collar. I straighten my waistcoat for the seventh time. I breathe on my palm.
An organ in one corner floods the church with the ‘Wedding March’.

People turn and stare.

My bride stands in the entrance.

I smile. I ask Dave for the ring.

Dave fishes out a POLO. Is he joking or does he really expect me to play noughts and crosses with confectionery?

I gulp and my tongue turns to gravel. I ask Dave for the ring again. If he doesn’t show me the ring I will punch his beard off his chin.

Dave shows me the ring.

I don’t punch his beard off his chin.

Mirror shoes, check. Waistcoat straightened for the eighth time, check. Collar readjusted, check. Paranoia there’s one item I haven’t checked pulses through my body.

My bride strolls up the aisle with her father.

I clamber out from the pew. Louise is veiled in white as a snow queen in the fog.
Dave stands beside me, my ring in standby mode.

A vicar older than dust reads the vows and ‘till death us do part’ swirls across the altar.

I say, ‘I will.’

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

We sign the register and face the congregation as husband and wife. I beam at everyone until the onset of lockjaw. The congregation beams back elation and hope and false teeth. We navigate down the aisle through shaking hands. Small children point. Women kiss me with the fervour of my dreams. A hat pylon almost prises out my eyeball.

The man who tapped his watch jabs a finger at my flies. Open. Curse that one item.
I zip myself up at the end of the aisle, before leaving the church. Even God must have a sense of humour.

I meander past gravestones crooked with moss and memories. The church bells ring. Our guests wave as camera flashes explode the horizon. I stand with Louise and our photographer coordinates the poses pre- and post-confetti until my ability to smile matches the skeleton’s.

We scamper into the back of our chauffeur-driven car.

We kiss.

I am so tall I tickle the clouds.

At the reception, the evening slot passes without major incident, excluding the accidental swallowing of two mysteriously cake-shaped disposable cameras. Louise’s choice of a 1980s retro theme satisfies: the DJ’s speakers shudder beside rows of pulsating rainbow lights while ‘Agadoo’, ‘YMCA’ and ‘The Birdie Song’ never sound so fresh (for the intoxicated). Little children slide across the wooden disco floor on their knees. Big in-laws drink too much and become outlaws for the night. The man who tapped his watch is one of Louise’s cousins and he ends the night with his face buried in the toilet bowl.
I begin to doubt my atheism.

My wife and I fly to America for our honeymoon. We land in Las Vegas on a 9/11 anniversary and security frisks my bride. Louise isn’t a terrorist, she just enjoys it. We spend one night sauntering along the Strip where giant domino hotels pierce the sky. People wander past in shorts and shirts as an electronic billboard reveals 11.45pm and 85ºF. Vegas by night offers a carnival of neon yet a drab mediocrity cloaks the city by day.

We hire the obligatory gas blazing V8 and scratch west through the grit of Death Valley: yee - and indeed - haw. Yosemite National Park presents a wilderness of granite and waterfalls. San Francisco wafts an ambience of European relaxation. I enjoy the tourist clichés of Chinatown and the cable cars, though the rusting prison on Alcatraz Island stinks like a can of sardines. We lasso Monterey, Hollywood, Lake Havasu and the Hoover Dam. I love the Grand Canyon the most. So does Louise. My bride says it is huge and almost too vast to take in, which I think is a terrific compliment on a honeymoon night.

Five of my lovers acted like rabid Conservatives. Nine declared themselves as conservatives with a small ‘C’. Several behaved as the rude word beginning with ‘C’. One drowned at sea. She wasn’t the atheist.

All 16 women suffered the twenty-first-century disease of insisting they were overweight. None was physically. At least three were obese from their intake of scarred memories, yet who isn’t?

Six women loved cooking. One detested my gastronomic attempts and hovered in the kitchen to criticise. I once asked where I could be of most use and she said Pluto.
Eleven adored milk chocolate. Five preferred their chocolate dark. Like their men, I later discovered from Facebook.

Only one never dieted. The others despised her whenever I mentioned her name (Sienna).
Three lovers were lawyers. Two were doctors. One was a nurse. Several more nursed nothing but grievances. Each day I hope they are healing.

Five of the women told me they loved me. One evening it hurt so much I wanted to cry, so instead I suggested the much less painful missionary position.
Ten of my 16 adored wearing lingerie in the bedroom. I wore nothing other than a smile and my birthday suit. And handcuffs, thanks to the sex-strong Scorpio.

One of our marathon love-making sessions lasted a whole nine minutes, though that included the time it took to butter the toast.

Two lovers scored me eight point five out of 10 for my bedroom antics. I often contemplate if the half point was personal. One lover even awarded me a minus score for my sexual prowess. A couple demanded their money back. One woman’s camcorder failed under warranty and she submitted an insurance claim of ‘mechanical failure owing to the ingress of chocolate sauce’.

Only one lover asked me to reveal my favourite sex games. At midnight - after a bottle of Chilean red - she insisted she’d try anything to please me and kept asking me what games I liked. I said Scrabble.

No one suggested using sheep in our love-making. Was I the animal in the bedroom?
Five lovers wanted children with me. One lover wanted five children with me. I wanted the exit.

All 16 insisted they were honest and conviction-free. I believed them. As far as I know none were psychopaths or mentally deranged.

One was Welsh. One woman was Swedish. I did notice the difference. Two of my lovers were Italian, two were French. One boasted she was from Brazil. Another boasted how she had a Brazilian. She showed me and I was so shocked I fell over my tripod. One lover was born in San Francisco, though she insisted she wasn’t conceived in Nob Hill.
Six drank tea. Eight drank coffee. The other two just drank.

Three adored watching waves bubble along a deserted beach. Two adored watching hailstones jitter against tarmac. The sex-strong Scorpio adored watching me do naked press-ups over a candle.

Only one lover was a twin, which was surprising.

I hungered to marry four of them, though not all at once. One cracked soul did agree to my proposal, yet kept the engagement ring. And vanished. She wasn’t the atheist.
How many wished I’d never been born?

Amy, Carrie (not a Stephen King fan), Claire, Davina, Emmanuelle, Florence (I preferred the city), Giovanna, Luxana, Melanie, Michelle (two of them), Penny, Roberta, Samantha, Sienna (the non-dieter) and Sophia (the multiple chicken clucker).

Each lover taught me about life, about the magnificence of women. I now realise how to make a woman laugh. And cry. I now understand the female erogenous zones are nowhere near Gibraltar.
We shared memories and sweat and toothbrushes. Should I have grappled with my conscience or just the handcuffs?

How we love is not important. It matters only that we do.

Sixteen women, 16 lovers. One ex-wife.