Twelve Stories Read online

  Silence dropped on the ruinous interior of the house in Maida Vale. Champagne soaked into the white woolen carpets. A half-finished drawing of Orton by Patrick Proctor caught light from the tip of Susan Foreman’s abandoned fag. And in the North East of England, in a hospital cot, I rolled my eyes in my sleep for the very first time. Having the first of many amused responses to a dream.

  Acknowledgments

  Stories from this collection were originally published as follows:

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  BBC Radio 4’s Afternoon Reading (‘Waiting On’, ‘Sunseeker’, ‘Longsight Branch’, ‘The Great Big Book Exchange’, ‘Never the Bride’); Doctor Who: Short Trips—Companions (‘Safe and Sound’); Phobic (The Foster Parents’); In the Red Magazine (‘Another Go’); The Sunday Express Magazine (‘Collecting Ada Jones’, ‘Victim Support’, ‘The Eyes Have It’); Blithe House Quarterly (‘Sunseeker’); Magnetic North, anthology from New Writing North (‘The Great Big Book Exchange’); Walking in Eternity (‘In the Sixties’).