December 2025

First Prize

Blood Apples by Kelly Jackson, Sheffield, UK

 

Second Prize

Man of the House by Simon Ewing, Edinburgh, Scotland

 

Third Prize

When the Only Shade of Time is Grey by Laura Besley, Leciester, UK

 

Shortlist

Beans on Toast by Matt Roberts, Nottingham, UK

 

Longlist

A Coat of Many Colours by Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, France

A Worse Evening by Susan Martin, Port Talbot, Wales

Beans on Toast by Matt Roberts, Nottingham, UK

Blood Apples by Kelly Jackson, Sheffield, UK

Man of the House by Simon Ewing, Edinburgh, Scotland

Taking the Biscuit by Imogen van der Bijl, Great Broughton, Cumbria, UK

The Biscuit Tin by Graham McDonald, Denmark, Australia

The Dilemma of a Reluctant PI by Philip Rushbrook, Wantage, UK

When the Only Shade of Time is Grey by Laura Besley, Leciester, UK

Wildflowers by Patricia Hartop, Solihull, UK

Wood by Julia Griffiths, Monmouth

Blood Apples by Kelly Jackson

 

Maddie stared at the blue cross on the white stick. Fear and joy collided in her stomach, and for the second time that morning, she vomited into the toilet. The shrill beep of the smoke alarm lifted her head from the bowl. She charged downstairs.

 

In the kitchen, smoke rose from the oven in soft curls and drifted across the ceiling in a tide of grey. Armed with oven gloves, she removed the coal-black oval of pastry and opened the back door. She grabbed the mop from the hall and jabbed at the flashing white disc on the ceiling. A glance at her watch made her stab harder, quicker, until it died. Maddie sighed into the silence.

Clunk.

 

The key turned in the front door of number fifty-two. She gasped, ducked into the kitchen, and shut the door. Maddie gripped the smooth steel of the sink behind her. The thud of boots along the hallway – a slow countdown against the frantic hammering of her heart. She stared at the dents in the kitchen door as it swung open.

 

Tom’s eyes met hers, then flicked to the smouldering pie on the counter. Lips pressed tight, a muscle jumped on his stubbled jaw. Arms rigid at his sides, his fingers curled into fists.

 

Maddie swallowed.

“I was sick, and the pie…” Her voice wavered. “I’ll make another. It won't take long.” He moved. She caught a whiff of beer, sweat, and cheap perfume as he collected the pie and thrust it towards her. She flinched. His chestnut eyes stayed fixed on her as he let it drop. The Pyrex dish exploded across the kitchen floor, splattering the white tiles. Maddie’s eyes lingered on the mess, every muscle clenched. She opened her mouth to utter desperate apologies, but the strike of his hand stopped her. He grabbed her hair and pulled her to the floor. Hot gravy coated her cheek as splinters of glass bit into her skin. She forced her body to go limp, to play dead. Then, in her mind, she saw the bean-sized life growing inside her, defenceless, innocent, unaware of the world it would be born into.

 

A surge jolted through her. She reached for a large shard of Pyrex. Searing pain radiated through her scalp as he dragged her to her feet.

 

Maddie whimpered as Tom held her at arm’s length. She lowered her voice to a faint whisper.

“I’m sorry.” Tom’s eyes glinted with satisfaction as he leaned in, turning his head and cupping his ear. Her voice rose, calm and deliberate. “Sorry… I didn’t do this sooner.”

 

With a quick swing of her arm, she plunged the shard of glass into the side of Tom's neck. He gurgled, gripping the wound, blood bubbling through his fingers.

“You bitch.” He dropped to his knees.

 

Maddie took a breath. “You will never get to hurt our child. Never,” she said, wiping the blood splatter from her face. Tom groaned, grasping for her leg. A deep claret circle spread around his head, like the Devil’s halo. Maddie stepped back, listening to the clock ticking and the gurgles of Tom’s final breaths. She gazed through the kitchen window at the baby apple tree by the fence, patiently waiting to be planted. Hands cradling her belly, she walked down the garden path to the shed and grabbed the shovel.

 

***

 

Six years later

 

Maddie turned the key in the door of number fifty-two. The smell of the ward clung to her scrubs: disinfectant, sweat, and suffering.

 “I’m home,” she called, dropping her bag in the hall as she walked into the kitchen.

 

Sasha, the childminder, looked up from her magazine at the table. Maddie’s eyes flicked to Jacob, sitting opposite, building Lego towers and grinning through a mouthful of something.

 “What’re you scoffing, piglet?” Maddie asked, smiling at her son.

 

Jacob pointed through the kitchen window.

 

“Apple from our garden.”

 

Maddie’s heart stalled as she saw the apple core on his plate.

 “I told you not to let him eat those apples.” Maddie snapped at Sasha. Her pale face bloomed red.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see the harm, it’s just an apple—”

 

Maddie shot her a look. “See you Monday,” she said as Sasha left with a solemn nod.

 

Maddie slid the apple core into the bin. She blinked as the flesh darkened, maggots wriggling to the surface. Her stomach dropped. She let the lid slam shut. It’s fine, everything is fine. She told herself.

 

“Sorry, Mummy,” Jacob said, eyes glossy with tears.

 

Maddie pulled him close.

 

“It’s OK, it’s not your fault,”  Her arms tightened around him, and she fought to steady her trembling hands.

 

***

 

Maddie pulled open the curtains in Jacob’s room. The sunlight shone on his empty bed. Her search from room to room grew more frantic. She reached the kitchen and looked out at the garden. Thank God, she thought and sprinted to the apple tree.

 “Jacob, what are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”

 

Jacob sat cross-legged, his back to her, facing the tree in motionless silence.
 “Jacob?”

 

She knelt and turned him towards her. His skin felt like ice; his cheeks drained of colour, lips tinged with blue. He stared back, his eyes empty.

 “We need to get you warm,” she said, scooping him up and hurrying inside.

 

Maddie warmed his body and put him to bed. He burned with fever through the night. She stayed with him, watching him toss and turn, checking his temperature and dribbling medicine between his lips, until finally the fever broke.

 

***

 

Clutching her morning coffee, Maddie watched the for sale sign being hammered into the front garden. She had waited long enough for suspicion to fade, for roots to grow. Long enough for the police to stop calling. Lucky for her, Tom had a record and owed money to dangerous people.

 

A small, tight smile tugged at her lips as she carried a tray of food upstairs. She paused as the deep murmur of a familiar voice drifted through Jacob's door. She flung the door open, her eyes scanning the room.

 

Only Jacob. Staring through the window. She shook the thought from her head and stepped closer. Jacob’s head lifted slowly, turning towards her.

 

“I’m hungry.”

“Good,” she said with a sigh. “I brought your favourite – banana sandwich.”

Jacob’s chestnut eyes locked on hers as he took the plate… and let it fall to the floor.

 “I want pie,” he said, with a smile that made Maddie shiver. “Be careful not to burn it.”

 

***

 

Maddie stumbled to the kitchen, head spinning, hands trembling as she braced herself against the sink. Through the blur of tears, she saw the tree through the window. Its branches stirred in an absent breeze, heavy with a sudden crop of blood-red apples. The trunk twisted, knotting into two hollow eyes and a sneering mouth. 

 

“You can’t have him.” Her voice cracked, half sob, half snarl. “I won’t let you.”

 

***

 

Mr Roberts peered over the fence as Maddie swung the axe at the apple tree. It bounced off, the bark untouched.

 

Ten minutes later, he was in her garden, tugging on gloves. A good deed was its own reward, he told himself, firing up his chainsaw. He lowered the visor on his helmet and grinned.

 “Safety first!” he shouted above the roar of the engine. The chainsaw bit once, then kicked back. A heartbeat later, his left arm produced a rainbow of blood before thudding to the ground.

 

***

 

Maddie returned from the hospital, her clothes soaked in Mr Roberts’s blood. She drenched the tree in lighter fluid, struck a match, and wept as every flame died on contact.

 

That night, while tidying Jacob’s room, she found a pile of rotting apple cores beneath his bed. The smell turned her stomach, not the pungent smell of overripe fruit, but the putrid stench of rotting flesh. She bolted the back door and locked every window. Lying in the darkness, she forced her mind to quiet. The sound of Jacob, singing softly, drifted through the wall.

 “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)…”

 

Maddie’s breath caught; she covered her mouth to silence her sobs.

 

***

 

The next morning, she opened her eyes to find Jacob standing motionless by her bed. He stared down at her, his toy car in one hand, the carving knife glinting in the other.

 “Jacob?” Her voice trembled as she sat up, heart pounding. She grabbed his hand and peeled his tiny fingers from the handle. Jacob blinked, as if waking from a dream, tears welling in his eyes.

 “He wants to hurt you, Mummy,” he whispered.

 

That was the day Maddie fitted a bolt to her six-year-old’s bedroom door, the only way she could sleep. He wasn’t a prisoner in his own home. She was.

The agent called. The house had been sold for less than its worth, the price you pay for a quick sale. Maddie couldn’t get packed and into the removal van fast enough.

 

She turned her back on the kitchen floor she had scrubbed with bleach, on the apple tree’s outstretched arms creaking in the wind. As long as that tree stood, her secret was safe, black roots twisting around bones. One last time, she caught the whiff of smoke in the hall and heard the thud of his boots. As she locked the front door, a glimmer of hope warmed her chest.

 

***

 

One hundred and sixty miles later, the removal van pulled into their new driveway. The air felt lighter here. Maddie smiled, took a deep breath, and began unpacking. She gazed out at the garden, a green carpet of lawn framed by flower beds. Not a single tree. She smiled as she watched Jacob play. This was it, she thought, a fresh start.

 

Jacob crouched at the edge of the lawn with his toy spade. He dug a small hole, dropped something in – a half-eaten apple – and covered it with soil. He turned to join his mother in their new home.

 

A sudden wind stirred through the garden, the soil trembled, and a green shoot appeared from the darkness.

 

 

Man of the House by Simon Ewing

I cannot think of my mother without recalling the Friday dinnertime she poured a pot of warm stew over my father’s head. She had spent the afternoon preparing it, and with errands to run in town, she had asked him to turn off the hob once it had cooked. But he forgot, and by the time she got home, the air of the house stood bitter with the rust-like stench of the spoiled meal.

She served the stew with the hope it was still enjoyable, but after one bite, she set down her fork. She lifted the pot from the middle of the table, and I assumed she was going to take it into the kitchen and return with a backup dish, something cobbled together but delicious. Instead, she carried the stew around the table and emptied it over my father like it was the gunge at the end of a game show. Then she left the house.

 

Dad didn’t move. I watched my plate and listened to the stew dripping from his lap to the floor, the spit-spit of gravy, the slap and shunk of carrot and meat chunk.

 

Mum came home with a large bag of crisps and a family bottle of Pepsi. She lay on the settee and turned on The Osbournes. I watched as the clock crept towards my bedtime. During an advert break, Dad came through, his hair damp from the shower, and said, ‘Somebody is going to have to clean up this mess.’

 

Mum piled crisps into her mouth. I sat on my hands. Soon, we heard Dad cursing at the mop and bucket in the next room. When I caught her eye, she winked at me.

 

I took myself to bed, climbing in without brushing my teeth or undressing.

Mum usually rose just as early on Saturdays as the rest of the week. I’d totter downstairs, and she would be polishing the windows or refreshing a vase of flowers. That day, when she finally emerged at noon, she went straight to the settee and turned on Doctors. Dad had been in the garage and was washing motor oil from his hands at the kitchen sink.

 

‘Make me a tea, will you?’ she called through.

 

In that silence, I realised queasily that he didn’t know how she took her tea.

I hurried through. He watched me drop a teabag and half a spoon of sugar into the mug. He patted my shoulder and said, ‘Man of the house, eh?’ and retreated to the garage.

 

‘Are we going to do anything today?’ I asked Mum, who had switched to one of the music video channels.

 

‘This,’ she said around a custard cream, ‘is doing something.’

 

Dad brought in a Chinese takeaway for dinner. After, he took the empty cartons to the outside bin, and when he stepped back inside, I heard him sigh in the hallway and say, not particularly quietly, ‘Okay.’

 

As Sunday dwindled away, I started feeling fidgety. I knew certain tasks were necessary before the new week started, but Mum hadn’t shifted from the settee all day, and Dad seemed to have moved into the garage. So I took it on myself to scavenge my school shirts from the laundry basket and set up the ironing board in my room. I assumed a shirt was an easy assortment of rectangles designed to fit neatly on an ironing board, but when I tried to smooth out any part of one, strange sections overlapped, so that ironing one part meant creasing another.

 

When I put on my uniform in the morning, the shirt looked like a paper aeroplane that had been unfolded for illustrative purposes. In the kitchen, I filled my pockets with Frosted Shreddies. Mum was in bed, Dad in the garage, carefully folding cables and securing them with wire. He looked up when I opened the door and blinked at the daylight behind me in a way that made me wonder if he had even been to bed at all.

 

He drove me to school; collected me, too. He didn’t know about the spot beyond the sports field where Mum usually parked, so I found him holding up a blaring queue of traffic at the front gate. He was waving his newspaper at me, his face dazzling with panic. When we arrived home, he said, ‘It might be up to us to hold the fort for a little while.’

 

He tore off a rough rectangle above the newspaper’s puzzles section, where he had scribbled a list. I frowned at the mess of words – Tuesday Thursday bin days / Skweejee shower pane / Dust granny’s urn.

 

I made dinner that night for the first time. Granny had once shown me how to make an omelette. Granny – Mum’s mum, whose ashes were in an urn on top of the hallway dresser – had known all things: how to draw a tomato sauce stain from a sweater, how to sponge dirt from a cut without it hurting.

 

I cracked eggs into a bowl and thrashed them with a potato masher. The mixture sat in the pan like a dying pond. I turned up the heat, but my attention drifted, and when I tried to ease the egg from the sides, I found it had burned itself tight to the metal. I drove the masher into the weeping mixture, scraping up the charred crust and blending it with the rest.

At the table, Dad nibbled a paler section and said, ‘Peppery.’

 

Mum sighed and pushed her chair back. Before she shuffled upstairs, leaving us alone for the long evening, she tousled my hair and said, ‘God loves a trier.’

On Tuesday, some girls in my Social Studies class began pointing at me. I was wearing the same unwashed shirt as the day before, and my mildewy air was conquering the room. Miss Henderson crossed the room and tried discreetly to unlatch the window, but she had enough trouble with the handle that by the time she got it open, the entire class had turned on me, calling me first ‘Mould boy,’ then ‘Shit boy,’ and finally ‘Mouldy shit boy.’

 

Back home, I loaded all my shirts into the washing machine with the handkerchiefs and pyjamas and tea towels that were already in there. When the cycle finished, I pulled it all out with leaden dismay. The colours from the other items had bled wildly, staining the shirts pale green down the front and lipstick pink at the elbows. I forced them through two more cycles, but I couldn’t get them white again, and 11pm found me glumly targeting the hair dryer at the least psychedelic of the lot, desperate to get it wearable before the morning.

 

Although the washing and ironing had defeated me, I learned that it wasn’t such a trial to put my clothes away as soon as I had taken them off, nor to wipe the kitchen counter after I’d finished making jam toast. Even better, I discovered certain shortcuts. After using a drinks glass, it struck me that I could simply run it under the tap and return it to the cupboard without drying it – after all, wasn’t being wet a glass’s purpose?

 

I made a similar breakthrough after becoming aware that Dad was in the habit of passing particularly messy stools without brushing the bowl afterwards. I gathered that Mum must have been cleaning after him all this time, scrubbing the lumps with the toilet brush. I gagged at the thought, so I was relieved to realise that, while I was urinating, I could hose Dad’s specks away with my stream. If my bladder was particularly full, I could engage certain muscles to strengthen my flow and jet-wash away even the stickiest stains.

 

I was apprehensive about the weekend. While I was at school, I was always able to imagine Mum was at any given moment finally pulling herself to her feet and clearing away all her empty yoghurt pots and satsuma peelings before tackling the house at large. But I didn’t know how I’d manage the whole weekend with her inactivity playing out right in front of me.

 

She rose even later that Saturday than she had the previous one. She’d been up until 4am playing Civilization III on Dad’s PC, she told me while unshelling a BabyBel. She was still searching through the channels fifteen minutes later when Dad stepped in front of the set.

 

‘This lazing about, Cate. It’s not good for you.’

 

‘Not good for you, you mean.’

 

‘We’re doing all we can. But we don’t know how to deal with this place like you do.’

 

‘At the moment, all I’m interested in dealing with is finding something to watch.’

 

She made a noise of excitement when she found that Shakespeare in Love had just started, and Dad plumped down next to her. Throughout the film, he kept glancing uncertainly at her, and when he caught me watching, he looked at me with a look of such confusion, I wondered if he even recognised me.

 

On Sunday evening, I made a peanut butter sandwich and put it in my lunch box. Rinsing the plate, I sprayed water on the kitchen floor. I patted the puddle away with a handful of kitchen roll and pedalled open the bin to deposit the soggy wad. I immediately recoiled. The bag hadn’t been changed all week, and it stank. I held my breath as I tied it tight and hauled it outside. When I stepped back in, I found a scrap of newspaper that had fallen out of the bag: Dad’s to-do list, which he must have discarded soon after showing it to me.

In that moment, I was convinced that the only way we could get through the next week was if I completed everything on the list there and then. I wiped the microwave plate and swabbed the toothpaste marks from the bathroom sink and felt sadly proud when Mum smiled at me after I asked her to lift her feet so I could hoover around the sofa.

 

By midnight, the only task left was to dust Granny’s urn on top of the dresser. I stood on a chair and tried to hold the urn in place with the fingers of one hand while I wiped it with a cloth, but I was just too short, and reaching upward, I lost my balance. The urn came down, too, hitting my chest when I landed on my back. The lid fell away, tipping its contents onto me in a small cloud of grandmother.

 

I lay on my back and groaned and knew my filthiness to be final and unforgivable. The ashes were acrid and already forming a puree on my tongue. A shadow came between me and the ceiling. ‘Oh, poor bear,’ said Mum. I spat ash – those last parts of her own mother – from my lips and began to cry. She crouched and cradled my head and said, ‘Up you get. That’s it, now.’

 

We have never spoken about that time, Mum and I. Not of the way she carried me to the bathroom and washed me clean, like I was very young again. Not of the next morning, when she produced a fresh white shirt before driving me to school. And not of the relief that almost felled me when I came home to find the house like new: the rooms purged, the windows tipped open and channelling a glorious breeze.

 

But that is not to say that I never think of that week. In fact, it often comes to mind. Whenever her picture appears on my phone, or I have to provide her maiden name on a form, or I visit my parents for lunch and she makes the tea and produces the coasters and serves the meal while my father just sits there, I hear stew dripping onto a wooden floor. The meat and the vegetables and the juices they have been cooked in.

 

When the Only Shade of Time is Grey by Laura Besley

By Christmas Eve, Melodie was sick enough to have claimed the entire sofa, stretched out in the once-black Star Wars dressing gown all us three boys wore before her. She coughed and coughed and coughed – low gruff barks like a sea lion. ‘Shut up!’ we would yell at her, especially if there was something good on the telly, but we had to be careful not to do it too often or she’d tell Ma and then there’d be trouble. Melody always had been a little snitch.

 

There were times I wondered if she enjoyed it – lying there, bossing us about. We never would’ve let her normally, and she knew it. She would point at what she wanted – more juice or some grapes (only the purple ones!) or the channel changing – and we would play rock/paper/scissors to decide whose turn it was to get up and give her what she needed. Call it luck, or whatever, but I almost always won, so I got to stay on my spot, leaning against the sometimes-warm radiator, sketching superheroes in bright bold colours.         

It sounds harsh now, but back then, we could never have known. At the time, all we cared about was that the Christmas holidays were well underway and the only thing we’d done was spend every dull day indoors waiting on Melodie.

Mid-afternoon on the day before Christmas, Ma popped in on the break between her double shift at the pub. ‘Boys?’ she called out in a half-shout, half-whisper. A moment later she tiptoed into the living room with her coat and shoes still on. Even though Melodie wasn’t asleep, she directed her questions at us. ‘How is she? Has she been drinking? Has she eaten? Has she peed?’ In between each question, Ma tugged on one of the four fingers of her glove with her teeth, then put her bare hand on Melodie’s forehead. ‘She’s burning up.’ She pulled her other glove off. ‘Should I phone the doctor?’

 

We stared at each other, a triangle of confusion. Was she asking us? By the time we looked at Ma again, she’d gone, and a couple of moments later, we heard her rummaging in the kitchen. It sounded like there was stuff falling onto the counter and we half-smiled because Ma insisted on keeping the medicine in the top cupboard, even though at five foot three, she was shorter than all of us, even Melodie. Then, the distinct smash of glass on tiles. Our mother screamed. Back in the living room, she said, ‘That was the last bottle of Calpol. I’ll have to hope I can get some on my way to work.’  

 

Before she set off for her evening shift, Ma warmed up a tin of tomato soup for Melodie, which she only ate three spoonfuls of, and made us boys toasted cheese and ham sandwiches. ‘There’s two each,’ she said, ‘so don’t be eating any of the Christmas food from the fridge or we won’t have enough for tomorrow.’ As it turned out, Melodie didn’t eat anything on Christmas day, so there was plenty. And Ma held out until Boxing Day before she rang the emergency doctor who, over the phone, prescribed fluids and paracetamol and said it didn’t sound serious.   

 

In the week between Christmas and New Year, Melodie would lie huddled under all the household’s duvets, or sweat-stripped to her underwear. Throughout the hours of New Year’s Eve, Ma paced and fretted, then eventually dialled 999 and the paramedics arrived a few minutes before midnight. As they drove away, the flare of the blue lights and the screech of the sirens got jumbled with the fireworks exploding on the TV screen. Ma stayed with her twenty-four seven. The neighbours dropped food off for us boys, made sure we went to school. The rest of the time we could do what we wanted, but the novelty soon wore off. When I couldn’t sleep, I would whisper to the superheroes on our bedroom wallpaper. I would ask them to spare Melodie some of their super healing powers.

 

But she never came home.  

 

Six days later, Ma set up the ironing board, then pulled a summer dress from the wardrobe in their room. It was yellow with large daisies on it, the white petals perfect semicircles.

 

‘She can’t wear that,’ I said, the iron hissing and spitting steam. ‘She’ll be cold.’  

‘Not where she’s going she won’t.’

 

‘How about a cardigan?’

 

‘No,’ Ma said, ‘it’ll ruin the look. What’s more: it’s my decision and my decision’s final.’ 

 

It was stupid to continue. When Ma talks about final decisions, she means it, but I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the thought of Melodie being so cold. ‘But, Ma, it’s cruel–’

 

I heard the slap before I felt it. It echoed around the squashed room, mean and defiant. A second or two later, my brain remembered to send signals back to my cheek, to register the searing pain. By the time I’d placed my smaller hand inside the print of her larger one, Ma was laughing. Laughing, laughing; tears slipping down her scrunched up face, collecting at the bottom of her neck like a rock pool. 

 

On the morning of Melodie’s funeral, there was a littering of week-old grey snow on the ground in front of the church, like someone had already scattered her ashes. We wore our school uniform – black trousers, white shirts, grey jumpers – as if it were just another day. Since she was the only girl, Ma had promised Melodie she would buy hers new. Now she’ll never need it. Never go to high school.

 

Somehow time passed. Easter was late that year, then the stretch of summer, the start of school again and the run-up to Christmas. I’ve never understood why people say that. The days and weeks until December twenty-fifth have always dragged and that first year without Melodie was worse than ever. Ma didn’t buy enough food, but we didn’t care. Us boys sat around shading time, playing rock/paper/scissors to see whose turn it was to try comforting Ma. I hardly ever lost, but that was no consolation. For hours, I leant against the seldom-warm radiator, sketchpad balanced on my knee, pencil gripped tightly. I could no longer draw those fake men in their fake costumes with their fake super powers. Those heroes I once believed in. Now, the only face I was able to draw was Melodie’s, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite strike a true likeness.