June 2025

First Prize

Watching by Lorraine Cooke, Eastleigh, UK

Second Prize

A War with Nature by Yvonne Birch, Thornhaugh, UK

Shortlist

A War with Nature by Yvonne Birch, Thornhaugh, UK

Blowing and Blowing... In the Wind by Terry Hopper, Cambridgeshire, UK

Pram by Rebecca Klassen, Gloucester, UK

Senbazuru by Kate Anderson, Glasgow, Scotland

Watching by Lorraine Cooke, Eastleigh, UK

Woodhaven by Rachel Davison, Edinburgh, Scotland

 

Longlist

A War with Nature by Yvonne Birch, Thornhaugh, UK

Almost Extinct by Jaime Gill, Cambodia, and Charlie Rogers, USA

Amelia by Jaime Gill, Cambodia

Blowing and Blowing... In the Wind by Terry Hopper, Cambridgeshire, UK

Boo Who by Taria Karillon, UK

Fit for Purpose by Judy Gordon, London, UK

Pram by Rebecca Klassen, Gloucester, UK

Senbazuru by Kate Anderson, Glasgow, Scotland

Watching by Lorraine Cooke, Eastleigh, UK

What Happens in Vegas by Howard Johnson, Dorset, UK

Woodhaven by Rachel Davison, Edinburgh, Scotland

Watching, by Lorraine Cooke

Closing one eye, Tom inches forward until he feels the kiss of plastic on his cheek. The eyepiece is a well-worn glove. The merest adjustment of eye and dial brings everything into sharp focus: the far-off sails of yachts and cabins of dinghies appear as close as if they are right there in front of him. Nothing much is moving, not even the ferry to the island which looms out of the water, green and black, brooding.

 

They used to hop across to the island almost every weekend, especially in the summer. Em would sit on deck, in her little life jacket, safety clipped to the rail, while Lyn clattered about in the cabin below, brewing tea or making sandwiches for a picnic. Tom can’t remember the last time he made the trip, the years slip by so fast, the boat is long gone.

 

Through the telescopic lens though, he can still watch others out on the Solent. Creaming through the waves, coming or going or bobbing at anchor waiting for the tide or the weather to change.

 

All the houses along Tom’s road have big first floor windows like his, with telescopes visible in front rooms for others who like to see what’s happening at sea. It’s unlikely anyone spends as much time watching as Tom. They have more going on in their lives, real people to interact with. He misses Lyn nagging him and since the telly packed up a few weeks ago, he doesn’t even have that chattering away in the background anymore.

 

Things are changing out on the water. A breeze is pulling at the nearest yacht’s sail, the dinghies seem softer, smudged at the edges. A foghorn moans, rain spits at the window, and the streetlight outside, fooled by the sudden dark, flicks on.

 

The light, and a sound, draw Tom’s focus and he swings the telescope down towards the pavement on the other side of the street. A man is holding a young woman’s arm. She’s trying to pull away. Turning towards him, her face screwed up, she’s shouting something. He’s stronger, tugging her closer, using his free hand to grab her bottom. He does something else Tom can’t quite see. His back shields his movements, but then he lets go of the woman and hurries away, along a side street, out of Tom’s line of vision. But the woman’s still there, slithering down the lamppost, crumpling like a bag of old clothes left out for charity against the base Tom knows has been marked by the cocked leg of every local dog.

 

Tom doesn’t move, just watches. A passer-by will be along soon, probably with a dog growling to find its favourite peeing spot occupied. Someone will stop and help. Or the young woman will use her phone to call someone. He doesn’t need to get involved.

 

Through the lens she looks so close. Tom can see the top of her flimsy dress heaving with each breath, individual strands of hair across her face, tracks of tears coursing down her cheeks. Her hair is like Em’s, blonde and straggly. Is this how Em would look now? Tom pulls back from the telescope and shakes his head. Em would be older than this young woman. If she were still here.

The fog has wrapped the sea and the seafront like a winter coat. Tom can’t see the boats anymore. Everyone’s indoors, keeping warm. The young woman lifts a hand to push the hair out of her eyes and he can see a bruise purpling on her pale forehead. There are scratches, red dotted lines on the back of the hand that flops down to her lap. She’s going nowhere.

 

Tom’s seen violence from the window before, heard ugly words, once even witnessed a car strike a cyclist. There was blood and screaming, but there was no need for Tom to move from this room. Plenty of others, keen to do good, had fussed around and by the time the ambulance arrived the cyclist had been sitting up and sharing a joke with a small crowd.

 

Tonight though there’s only Tom, watching a girl who reminds him of Em, in trouble. She’s not Em but something in the way her chin tilts is like a punch to the gut of Tom’s memory. Before he has time to think, he’s pushing away from the telescope, on his feet, stumbling towards the door. The smell in the hall is like a slap. He doesn’t normally notice it. He picks his way down the stairs and tugs the front door open. The fog is a wet flannel on his face as he crosses the road and squats down beside the woman.

 

‘Hello?’ Tom reaches out a hand but can’t quite bring himself to touch her. It’s been so long since he felt another’s flesh. She might not want it anyway after what just happened. ‘Hello? Are you alright?’

 

What a stupid question. She looks up at Tom, mute. Maybe she doesn’t understand English. But Tom understands hurt, shouting from her eyes. He fumbles in his pocket for his phone. Stabs at the buttons.

 

‘Ambulance Service, is the patient breathing?’

 

Tom explains where they are, what he saw, that someone needs medical attention.

 

‘We’re extremely busy at the moment,’ the call handler says ‘but we’ll get there as quickly as we can. Are you alright to stay with the patient till the crew arrive?’

 

He wants to say no, that he doesn’t know her, she’s not his problem, but the truth is he’s got nothing better to do right now. He’s never got anything better to do. He can’t even watch the boats because of the fog.

 

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait with her.’

 

The immediate problem dealt with, Tom realises he now has an unspecified amount of time to spend with a strange woman who is in pain. It’s cold and he thinks about fetching a blanket but he can’t go back inside the house. If he does, he’s afraid he’ll never come out again. And he promised he would stay. Instead, he takes off his cardigan and folds it round the woman’s trembling shoulders.

 

‘What’s your name?’ Tom asks.

 

‘Nadia.’ It’s little more than a whisper but in just that one word, he can tell English isn’t her first language.

 

‘Do you live here? In the town?’ He clarifies quickly in case she thinks he’s asking where she’s from like he doesn’t think she belongs here.

 

She nods. ‘In a flat. Above the hairdresser. I work there sometimes.’

 

‘That’s nice.’ He understands her to mean she works at the hairdressers, not that she works in the flat, which conjures up a different picture.

 

He doesn’t ask for more detail though, just in case. When he asked Em if she’d have enough money to survive on her gap year, she’d laughed. ‘There’s always ways to earn money in bars, Dad.’ Tom had hoped she’d meant serving rather than sex, but he’d not dared ask then either.

 

Through the fog a fuzzy blue light winks, drawing nearer, two pale yellow headlights peering short-sightedly through the gloom. The ambulance - quicker than Tom expected. But then he makes out the outline of a police car as it pulls into the kerb.

 

‘We got a report of an assault,’ says an officer, getting out of the car and putting his hat on.

 

‘Yes.’ Tom didn’t ask for the police, isn’t comfortable with them being here. Nor, he can tell from just a slight movement of her head, is Nadia.

 

‘Oh,’ says the officer, squatting down and trying to make eye contact with Nadia. ‘It’s you.’ He straightens up, dismissive.

 

‘You know her?’ Tom asks. ‘Is there someone you can contact? Someone who cares about her?’

 

The officer laughs. ‘No one cares about her. Except her pimp I suppose. Don’t expect he’ll be too pleased if she’s off the game for a bit.’

 

‘She’s a sex worker?’ So maybe Tom did get it wrong about her place of work.

‘I suppose that’s the correct term, mate.’ The officer is already walking back towards the car.

 

‘But she’s been assaulted. Aren’t you going to do something? Look for the man who did it?’

 

‘Expect it was a punter who didn’t reckon he got what he paid for.’

 

‘You don’t know that!’ Tom isn’t used to using his voice and he can tell the fog is muffling and softening his anger. ‘Doesn’t she deserve the same service from the police as anyone else?’

 

The officer shrugs. ‘You’re probably right. But being a ‘sex worker’ she won’t get it. That’s the reality.’ He doesn’t add ‘she was asking for it,’ but his whole attitude screams it.

 

Tom wants to argue and rage on Nadia’s behalf but now there’s another blue light approaching and this time it really is the ambulance.

 

Back in the car, the police officer winds up the window and drives away as two paramedics climb out of their vehicle and come across to kneel beside Nadia on the pavement. She’s even paler than before and is dipping in and out of consciousness.

 

‘What’s happened here, then?’ asks the first paramedic.

 

Tom explains what he saw, what he did. ‘Her name’s Nadia,’ he says.

He doesn’t tell the paramedic she’s a sex worker. She doesn’t need more judgement. He steps back as they work magic with blankets and oxygen, remove Tom’s cardigan and wrap Nadia in a shiny foil sheet. Then they lift her onto a trolley and load her into the ambulance.

 

‘You coming?’ asks the second paramedic. For a moment Tom’s confused, almost looks around for someone else, before he realises the paramedic’s addressing him.

 

‘No. I don’t know her. I just watched what happened.’ Tom waves towards the upstairs window of his house. The fog is clearing and the telescope, pointing out to sea, is visible.

 

The paramedic shrugs. ‘Fair enough. You’ve done your Good Samaritan bit for the day.’

 

Tom watches the ambulance drive Nadia away. He should have asked if she’s going to be alright.

 

There hadn’t been time for an ambulance for Em, although someone had tried to get help, according to the man from the Embassy. He’d delivered the news via a long-distance phone call, with echoes and delays on the line. He hadn’t had to look Tom in the face and watch as his heart broke.

 

Light continues to grow around Tom as the fog retreats. Seeing two dog walkers heading towards him, he picks up his cardigan and crosses the road.

 

Inside the house he notices things as if for the first time. The rotting smell from piles of black sacks – months’ worth of rubbish he couldn’t bring himself to take outside to the bin. Teetering piles of junk mail and pizza boxes, stacks of old and broken stuff. He’s not thrown anything away since Em died.

 

To begin with Lyn had humoured him. She’d been grieving too. But she got angry when, months later, he couldn’t snap out of it.

 

‘You spend all day with your eye glued to that bloody telescope!’ She’d yelled at him. ‘Watching other people’s lives, instead of living yourself, won’t bring Em back.’

 

Tom can’t even remember when Lyn left. She’d complained he didn’t notice her anymore and it was true.

 

He steps between the piles of junk to the top of the stairs. There’s still a clear path across the front room and he sits down at the telescope to watch what’s happening on the water. But even as he notes the fog has cleared enough for him to recognize lights on the shoreline of the island, he knows that the world through the lens is no longer enough.

 

Tomorrow, he tells himself, he’ll go outside again, take the rubbish to the bin, fill a few sacks for charity. He might even go into town, buy a Get Well card and pop it through the letterbox of the flat above the hairdresser.

 

 

A War of Nature, by Yvonne Birch

It appears to be just as she left it. Monique’s cottage has been sleeping in the dip at the end of the village for over two hundred years. During the last week, however, it has had to withstand an unpredictable force of nature. And there it is. Her mother, Kit, hands on hips, in the middle of the lane. She is channelling a beam of sunlight through her white trouser suit and bleached teeth: the ghost of summers past and present, and, more alarmingly, a spirit of things yet to come. Monique pulls her fingers through her tangled pony tail and lifts the waistband of her leggings over her stomach to slim it down.

 

‘Hello Mon,’ Kit calls, arms outstretched. ‘Oh my! I see the French cuisine went down well.’ Monique submits to the air hug. Go home mother, she thinks.

 

‘Hello Kit,’ she says.

 

Monique sidesteps off the garden path brushing through scented lavender to pick a geranium leaf and bruise it with gentle fingers. The sharp scent of citronella relaxes the tightness around her shoulders.

 

‘The flowers have survived without me,’ she says. Kit shrugs, she has no interest in organic matter that isn’t pre-washed and house-trained.

 

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Kit says. It is her single domestic talent. Monique strolls into the back garden, casually dead-heading the alliums, snipping off the suckers of the tomato plants and thwarting the efforts of the strawberry runners. She can hear the glorious silence of her cottage being pounded by pop music as she heads back towards the kitchen door.

 

‘Your tea is getting cold,’ Kit calls. Monique trudges in.

 

Get out of my house, she thinks.

 

‘Coming,’ she says.

 

Monique loves the smell of her home. It is earth: solid and enduring. It is organic: shifting and breathing with the seasons. Today, it smells of Kit.

 

Monique unlatches all the windows and wills the summer breeze inside.  

‘We need to talk about Lona,’ Kit announces. She hands Monique a mug she doesn’t recognise.

 

Lona has not survived the occupation. When she left her in Kit’s care he was only seven years old with a more-than-mortal tortoise life ahead of her.

 

Monique did not love her, she had been an ill-conceived gift from a thoughtless person, but she had come to admire Lona’s careless trampling, her determined solitude, her indomitable resilience.

 

‘Where is she?’ Monique asks, but suspects from her mother’s dismissive gesture that Lona’s final journey was from box to bin to refuse lorry. She does not pursue the question.

 

‘Susan, Old Forge, large Whippet, stopped by to ask about moving the flagpole’, Kit says. Monique is briefly amused that her mother has been assimilated into the village custom of identifying everyone by the historic role of their dwelling and their dogs. She swings gently on her Grandmother’s rocking chair.

 

‘It’s not my flagpole,’ she says. ‘You said we needed to talk about Lona.’

‘We are talking about Lona,’ Kit says. Monique stops rocking.

 

‘I told Susan that she could relocate the flagpole to the village green,’ Kit says, flouncing towards Monique with an outstretched plate of upmarket biscuits.

 

‘It’s not my flagpole’, Monique repeats. She walks through to the front window. The flagpole has survived in situ but her sofa cushions have not. Two hand-crocheted covers have been usurped by six coordinating shades of blue linen and corduroy.

 

‘Mother, where are my cushions?’ It was rhetorical: Monique knows, without doubt, that they are resting in peace, pulverized along with Lona.

 

‘They were so old Mon, old-fashioned, grubby. Let me tell you the story.’  Monique walks back to the kitchen window and fixes on a male pheasant strutting its chestnut feathers, dark green head bobbing and picking amongst the grasses. Above, a Red Kite glides across the treetops, the markings of its angled wings giving fair warning of its unpredictable power. Kit has been talking for several minutes before Monique tunes back in, ‘… so, they were just about to lift the flagpole when the farmer, dreadful man, turned up shouting and blazing that it’s on his land, demanding that they put it back.’

 

‘It is on his land,’ Monique says, idly brushing garibaldi crumbs from the table into her hand and tipping them out of the window.

 

‘Poor Ann,’ Kit says. Ann, the farmer’s wife, is an exception to the rule. She lives in a newish farmhouse and has two children who appear to be a higher priority than her dogs so is referred to simply as ‘Poor Ann.’

 

‘Are we getting to Lona?’ Monique asks.

 

‘That awful man sent her round to say she couldn’t come by to look after your garden,’ Kit says.

 

‘Because of the flagpole?’ Monique asks. Kit shrugs. ‘So, we’ve made an enemy of the man who owns every hectare of land as far as the eye can see,’ Monique says.

 

‘He is a very unpleasant man, Monique. Angela at the Old Bakery, you know the one with the golden retriever and matching pair of dachshunds, told me about the way he treats Poor Ann.’ Kit taps the sequinned nail of her forefinger on the side of her nose. ‘I asked her outright and she told me everything. He’s a brute.’ Monique wonders, again, why virtual strangers feel compelled to sell their soul to her mother. Her grandmother had the same power but wielded it to sooth and becalm. Kit’s superpower is whipping up chaos and walking away unscathed.

 

‘I’ve had to keep your plants alive myself,’ Kit says.

 

Monique pulls her pony tail out of its scrunchie then ties it back up again. Liar, she thinks, ‘Thank you,’ she says.

 

Monique pours more tea from the pot, takes up her mug and a couple of biscuits and wanders back out into the garden. Kit follows, complaining about how long it takes to water everything, how the tomatoes have grown too high, how the cucumbers are unnecessarily prolific and should be acquired in sensible amounts from the greengrocer. Monique smiles at the little plum tree which is bearing fruit for the first time since she brought it home in a new terracotta pot that has no associations with anything past. She slides onto the mosaic garden chair, forgetting that one of the tesserae has lifted. It cuts into the back of her leg. Kit sits beside her, brushing imaginary bugs from her dry-clean-only blouse.

 

Monique lifts her face to the sun. She can now report back to all well-meaning dispensers of unsolicited wisdom that she has taken their advice: got away from it all, started a new chapter, turned a new page, drawn a line in the sand; literally, on a beach raked level for the convenience of its visitors. Seven new days dawned predictably and peacefully and seven suns set where sea and sky merge together to block out infinity. It was not unpleasant. But this is where she will heal, in this garden with its controlled borders and wild mounds; its meandering pebble paths; its temporary blooms and evergreen leaves.

 

A pair of honeybees buzz in and out of a purple agapanthus flower perilously close to Kit’s shoulder. Monique checks the table for anything Kit might use as a weapon to destroy them but is satisfied that the bees are out of immediate danger. Kit is still talking.

 

‘Anyway, the next morning, after the flagpole incident, poor Lona was no more.’ She emphasises every syllable of the phrase ‘flagpole incident’ and raises conspiratorial eyebrows.  ‘I went for my walk and met Charlotte, Old Dairy, some sort of hunting dog, coming out of the old telephone box by the green.’

 

‘They’re going to install a defibrillator in it,’ Monique says. She feels, all things considered, that its current incarnation as a second-hand book exchange is more likely to keep aging villagers alive.

 

‘Good, far more useful,’ Kit remarks. Her catalogue of disapproval is headed by paperback fiction followed by indoor plants, body fat and wildlife. ‘So, I told Charlotte about the flagpole and the sudden death of Lona.’  Monique closes her eyes. When she strolls through her village she meets startled muntjac jumping across the lane; an old badger snuffling though the leaves; sparrowhawks gliding over the towers of the ancient church. The neighbours generally smile, nod and keep walking.

 

‘Next thing we all knew; the farmer had been shot! What a place to live! Honestly Monique. You should have left the village when your demonic husband left,’ Kit says. Monique drops her head into her hands. Get out of my house, she thinks with such a loud crash of anger she wonders if it might have been heard.

 

‘This is my home,’ she says quietly, strolling back into it with Kit trotting after.

‘Where are my thimbles?’ Monique asks pointing at the kitchen window sill where her collection of antique thimbles should be.

 

‘In there,’ Kit says abruptly, pointing at the bottom drawer of the over-sized dresser rooted down one wall. ‘Monique, I tell you that the farmer was shot and you ask me about thimbles?’ Kit says.

 

‘Mother,’ Monique says evenly. ‘Did you shoot the farmer?’

 

‘Don’t be silly Monique. Where would I get a gun? Anyway, he wasn’t killed, just very shaken. Do you need me to stay a bit longer?’

 

Get out of my cottage, Monique screams silently.

 

‘No thank you’, she says, opening the dresser drawer, checking for thimbles and closing it again.

 

‘After the flagpole incident they held a meeting,’ Kit says, ‘stirred up a whole bag of worms.’

 

‘Where was the meeting?’ Monique asks, suspecting already that half the village had, by invitation, crammed themselves and their floral tins of home-made cake round her kitchen table.

 

‘It was supposed to be about Poor Ann but they seemed to get more upset about the fact that he doesn’t keep the public footpaths clear and about their washing getting dusty at harvest-time and about his planning application for… oh I don’t know what, I wasn’t listening after a while. I’m not surprised someone shot him.’

 

‘Where was he shot?’ Monique asks.

 

‘In the field.’ Kit says, irritably. It was not an interesting question.

 

‘Where on his body?’ Monique asks with a sigh.

 

‘Unfortunately, they missed,’ Kit’s voice lowers to a slanderous purr, ‘Whoever ‘they’ might be. That woman with the hunting dog carries a gun up and down the lane; and if it wasn’t her, I wouldn’t put it past Susan’s husband, looks like a drinker to me.’

 

‘Was there a dead pheasant at his feet by any chance?’ Monique asks, ‘Perhaps he was accidentally shot at rather than shot?’ she suggests rhetorically.

 

‘Don’t be pedantic,’ Kit says, ‘and please give some thought to moving back to town, closer to me. You’re living in a war zone out here.’ 

 

Monique opens the cabinet door of her Grandmother clock and draws down each of the three chains, cradling the cold, brass weights in her palm as she raises them. As she sets the pendulum in motion her thoughts turn towards Lona. Kit had one job. She can throw away the cushions and mugs; she can stash the thimbles out of sight; she can incite civil war and attempted murder in the village; she can stamp her smell and blast her noise but how hard can it be to keep one undemanding reptile alive for one week.

 

‘Your flowers did rather well whilst you were away dear, didn’t they? Except the little orange ones amongst the tomatoes. They went overnight. Snails or slugs Poor Ann said. Savage little beasts. She gave me some pellets; I scattered them everywhere to be on the safe side.’ Kit picks up her suitcase and heads for the open stable door. ‘The taxi is here. I’m off now. Don’t forget your walks, sort that holiday tummy out…’ Kit keeps talking as she heads down the path. Monique does not follow.

 

Metaldehyde pellets kill snails and poison reptiles, Monique thinks.

 

‘You murdered my tortoise,’ she says.

 

 

Senbazuru, by Kate Anderson

The family moved in across the road at around the same time as the paper cranes started to appear. I’m not saying the two things were connected; it was just bad timing for me, that was all.

 

I’d been having coffee in a local place when I spotted the first one - so tiny that I could easily have missed it. It was tucked into the sugar bowl amongst the paper packets, small and perfectly folded, no more than a centimetre across from tip to tip. Even the crease for the beak was good and very straight and that’s not an easy thing to get right - I mean, I should know. I slipped it carefully into my wallet between the cards and finished my coffee and wondered about who had made it, and why.

 

***

 

The flat was on the ground floor and much smaller than what I was used to. My sister had seen it listed and suggested I take a look, ‘It’s time to get the ball rolling Robert.’ She’d said it gently but with that firmness that reminded me of mum. Janet was habitually on Rightmove of an evening, poring over the listings and mentally dressing million-pound-properties to suit her tastes - ‘House-porn’ she called it. Since I’d lost our old place, she’d switched her focus to rentals and considerably downgraded her budget, notching the slider ever closer to the bottom of the scale to filter out anything beyond my reach.

 

The agent described it as ‘bijoux’, which just meant it was more shabby than chic with wallpaper peeling at the seams and the carpets stained or threadbare in tired patches. It was a lot more expensive than it was worth too; but I knew that I couldn’t keep on with the nomadic business of crashing on couches. What had started off as make yourself at home Rob and help yourself to anything had slowly and inevitably descended into thinly veiled resentment - which I guess will happen if you keep on leaving the milk out or taking too long in the shower when everyone else is trying to get on with their day. I figured I could just about stretch to cover the rent on this place if I was careful. It wasn’t so bad really, and part furnished too which would save me some cash. The best thing about it was the light in the living room. An unadorned bay window looked out onto the street beyond letting in a brightness that was, not the harsh glare of direct sunlight, but rather, reflected back from the glass in the block of flats opposite. I stood straighter than I had for months in that soft glow and decided there and then that I would try to make the best of it.

 

A few weeks later, I was unpacked and beginning to feel a bit settled, when the moving van appeared. A family had taken the apartment across the road, opposite me, but one up. They were a young couple and had a toddler in tow. He was in dungarees and took the steps up to the main entrance one at a time, planting both feet firmly on each level before attempting the next. His mother wore a fringed suede jacket and an easy smile as she held his little hand to steady him.

 

One evening, not long after they had moved in, but long before they took down the many cards I imagined must be of the ‘happy new home’ variety, I was returning from a trip out for milk and other essentials. As I was coming down the hill, I saw that I’d forgotten to turn off the lamps in my living room. In the dark of the street and from that elevation, I realised that, as if viewing a stage under spotlight from a seat in the gods, I could make out practically the entire contents of the room; the well-worn sofa, the half empty book case with two missing shelves and, worst of all, the clothes drying rack with its row of plain grey socks and a single black t-shirt on display for all the world to see. I made my way down the slope to my front door, my sense of discomfort growing as those grey socks loomed larger, becoming more obscene with every step.

 

The next crane appeared in a neighbourhood dive of a bar about a week or so later. This one was even smaller than the first and was perched on the rim of an ashtray. It had been fashioned out of the silver paper from the inside of a cigarette packet. That made me smile for a second, but then my heart began to race, and I could feel the old tightness creeping back into my chest. I rushed outside into the cold and leant on the wall, trying to focus on pulling the air into my lungs – in for a slow count to four, hold for seven, out through the teeth for eight just like I’d learned at the group. By the time I got back to my seat, the ashtray was gone and with it, the tiny paper crane. I didn’t know if the bartender had thrown it out or whatever, but I wished I’d put it in my wallet beside the other one.

 

 

***

 

‘That’s pretty impressive? Are you going for a senbazuru?’

 

I could hear the laughter in his voice before I’d even looked up to see him standing there, tall, broad and disheveled in checked shirt and jeans. He gestured towards the pile of paper cranes in front of me and I realised that the table was littered with the things in various colours and sizes, spilling off the edges and onto the grimy, checkered floor below. 

 

‘Oh? Hah! Right…I’m trying to give up smoking… So yeah… Any time I want a cigarette, I get some paper and…’ My fingers leapt involuntarily into a pantomime of folding in midair. I could feel the heat radiating up from underneath my collar. 'Anyway… I want a smoke all the time right now. It’s fucking torture,’ I cleared my throat, ‘What’s a senburu anyway?’

 

Tall, broad and disheveled, he slid into the seat opposite me, propped his chin in his hands and fixed his eyes, dancing alive with mirth or mischief, on mine. My stomach flipped.

 

‘It’s sen-ba-zu-ru. A thousand paper cranes.’ He picked one up carefully between finger and thumb. It was my smallest yet and was made from the inner foil of a cigarette packet. It appeared almost comically miniature in his huge hands. I stared at the curve of his fingers, blue spreading veins pulsed across the tautness of flesh.

 

‘You make a thousand, and when you finish, you hang them up…and you get to make a wish.’ He smiled, gap-toothed.

 

‘What do I get if I make,’ I scanned the table and the floor ‘Around thirty-five?’

 

He cocked his head to one side, the smile reaching his eyes.

 

‘I’m Luke,’ he said, ‘That’s what you get for your thirty-five.’

 

***

 

‘I keep finding paper cranes everywhere,’ I told my sister on the phone. Across the street and one up, my new neighbours’ window had been strung with fairy lights and a banner that read ‘Happy 3rd Birthday!’ in shiny foil lettering.

 

‘Hang on a sec… Sorry Rob – what do you mean everywhere?'

 

I told her what I had found in the cafe and at the bar.

 

'‘That’s what? Twice? What about it? Robert?’

 

I could hear the concern in her voice.

 

‘Are you sleeping alright?’

 

‘I’m fine! Honestly Janet. It’s just… Adjustments you know?’

 

‘Hmmm…Listen, I’ve got to go, the kids are kicking off here; but Rob,’ she paused, then seemed to rethink whatever it was she’d been about to say. She let out a long sigh instead.

 

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?’

 

I sat down on the floor with my back against the sofa and stared out across the street. Just at that moment, as if they’d been waiting for my full attention, the couple danced into view with their child cradled in between them. She was wearing what looked like a plastic tiara and the little one was laughing with his head thrown back. It was getting dark, and I hadn’t turned on any of the lights. I stayed there for a while, just watching as they disappeared and reappeared behind the glass in their waltzing trio, marveling with a sort of detached wonder at the fact that, even after so many months, this display of happiness could make me feel so utterly desparate.

 

In the weeks that followed I tried to find a solution to the windows. I’d taken to avoiding going into my living room, spending most of my time in the kitchen or the bedroom - both of which were small and dingy and doing nothing for my mood.

 

I bought several pairs of curtains in various weights and colours, invariably deciding that I hated them all. I returned each pair badly stuffed and sellotaped back into too tight plastic wrappings.

 

I spent hours sticking and smoothing frosted film to the lower glass panes and then tore it all off in the middle of the night after just two days lived behind suffocating, opaque mist.

 

A guy came round to measure for blinds. He scribbled the dimensions on a piece of paper and punched some numbers into his calculator before showing me a figure on the screen. ‘There’s five percent off if you put down a deposit today,’ he said.

 

I looked at the figure on the screen and back at him. ‘Ok…I’ll need to have a think about it.’ I scratched my chin and arranged my face into what I hoped was an expression of careful consideration.

 

‘That’s today’s price only mate!’ He shouted as he was getting into his van. ‘Better think fast!'

 

That afternoon, I began to make some calculations of my own. The windows were approximately eight metres squared. I reckoned I’d be able to work in sections and cover most of the space by the morning if I focused and kept breaks to a minimum. I wouldn’t need much by way of supplies and, even if it took longer, well, I supposed, I had all the time in the world now.

 

After procuring the necessary items, I arranged myself at the kitchen table and set about my task.

 

A paper crane is composed of approximately twenty-four folds in total. Less if you don’t count the reverse folds; but I do.

 

 

 With each fold, I thought about Luke.

 And into each bird, I folded a different memory.

 

I worked constantly over the course of the next few days, taking breaks only to sleep. When my fingers cramped up, I shook them out and popped a few pills, working through as the pain dulled to a throb. Again and again, I folded and smoothed, again and again I climbed to the top of the step ladder to carefully hang and arrange my creations - strand upon strand in neat rows until the very last bird. It was blue and white, the paper almost translucent. I ran my fingers over the edge of each crease, remembering our last moments together as I’d held Luke’s hand in mine, and his breathing slowed, and slowed, until it finally stopped.

 

By the time the mid-morning sun was beginning to appear reflected in the windows across the street, I was done. I stepped back to take in the effect. It was perfect. The light that filtered through was of a dappling quality and cast a kaleidoscope of shapes across the floor. There were four hundred and five in total. Four hundred and five paper cranes strung from ceiling to sill. One for each day without him. I lay down on the floor and stretched my arms wide, bathing in the undulating flutter of those birds.

 

Shadow and light.

 

Light and shadow.