If you are someone who likes to write, then joining a writers’ group can be an invaluable experience since it gives you the opportunity to do a number of things:

firstly, it enables you to meet with other writers and gain advice on publishing, editing and all the other technical aspects of getting your work out into the world of readers;

secondly, it’s a safe space to receive constructive criticism on your work – some groups have the facility for writers to submit their work anonymously for feedback, which can be a lot less scary than everyone knowing it’s your story in the first place;

thirdly, it gives you an opportunity to see your work in print as most writers’ groups these days also publish members’ work – either on a website or in the form of a printed anthology. For people who may be struggling to complete the first novel they’ve been working on for years, this is a good way to introduce your writing to the general public in short story form.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had six short stories accepted by various anthologies over the past few months. (I’ve also had several rejected, but we won’t dwell on those.) The first one to be published is ‘City of Hope’, the second anthology from the Birmingham Writers’ Group, available from Amazon. (I’d add the link, but for some reason, I can only find the French and Spanish Amazon links and not the UK one.)

I’ve already bought my copy and it’s just as exciting and inspiring to see the stories of the people I’ve known since I joined the group in March this year as it is to see my own. A number of the writers have also published, or are set to publish, full length novels, so I would recommend buying this anthology and deciding which authors you’d like to read more of. If you’re having trouble locating the book, type in ‘City of Hope’ and David Croser (one of the editors) and you should be fine.

To summarise: if you’re someone who enjoys writing or would like to start writing, join a local writers’ group; and check out the Birmingham Writers’ Group anthologies (last year’s offering was called ‘City of Night’) on Amazon.

Happy reading!

I have just had my official email to confirm that I have completed the challenge: 30 stories in 30 days. Some I like better than others; some topics appealed more than others; and some were definitely more difficult to write than others – BUT I did it.

A big thank you to all the people who have read one or more of the stories and given me feedback. I am immensely grateful for your support.

Surf’s Up

The waves swell, carrying the surfers towards the shore.

*

Daryl has always been searching for the perfect wave. Growing up in Orange County, California, the beach was never far away. His parents or grandparents had taken him there nearly every day from the time he was a baby. Now a young man of nineteen, he stands in the sun – tall, toned and tanned: the typical surfer – gazing out at the horizon. Surfers and boards dot the skyline, coloured shorts and costumes standing out in stark relief against the endless blue of sky and sea. The smell of ozone invades his nostrils, but he welcomes the sensation: the ocean is his first love; he feels wedded to his board.

Beside him, his girlfriend of the past six months studies the surf with equal intensity. He’d never imagined falling for a beach bunny, but Jessica handles the waves almost as well as he does. They both love the exhilaration they feel when they are riding their boards to shore, at one with nature, in perfect harmony with the world around them.

Jess squeezes his hand now. “Surf’s up, dude. Let’s do this thing.”

They paddle their boards out as far as they can, then climb to their feet, swaying a little in the undulations of the water. There’s a massive breaker rolling towards them now. Daryl catches Jess’s eye and grins. “See you on the other side.”

The rushing water carries them back towards the beach, where they tumble off, laughing. “Do you feel as stoked as I do?” Jessica asks her boyfriend. Her eyes are shining; her hair hangs in damp rats’ tails over her shoulders.

Daryl reaches out a hand, strokes her salt-stained face. “It was radical, Babe.”

At this moment, he feels totally fulfilled. Life has never been better.

*

A few weeks later, Jess has a cold. She’s not up to surfing, but she accompanies him to the beach anyway. Early morning sun sheds shafts of light on the almost deserted sand; tiny crabs scuttle blissfully, enjoying the silence. Despite the season, there’s an unexpected wind whipping the waves. Jess feels a twinge of uncertainty as she notices the potentially hazardous conditions. She thinks of begging Daryl not to go, to wait until the wind’s died down, but surfing is his life; so instead, she kisses him for good luck, not realising that this will be the last time.

At first, Daryl is convinced that he has mastered this wave: ever the perfectionist, his pose is exactly what it should be and he’s calculated with mathematical precision where he needs to be. It’s only as the clamshell chomps down upon him, eating him in one ruthless bite, that he realises his mistake. Jess watches him disappear under the water, waits for him to resurface. He doesn’t. Panic overwhelms her as she scans the sea, but there is no sign of him at all. A sick feeling of dread paralyses her, rendering her unable to move until the waves gently wash his lifeless body to the shore.

Galvanised into action, she drags her dead boyfriend out of the water. Heart hammering wildly, she administers CPR, even though she knows it’s already too late. Tears stream down her face as she presses her warm lips to his cold ones. Eventually, she gives up and lies down next to him, holding him until the beach starts to fill with surfers and kindly strangers call the emergency services for her.

In weeks to come, she will read up on surfing accidents and discover how, on average, only ten people per year actually die – out of the twenty-three million or so around the world who partake in the sport. She’ll discover that the most likely cause of death is being hit by your board and knocked unconscious, so that you have no way of fighting the waves, no chance of survival. But even when she knows this, she will not lose her unshakable conviction that Daryl died doing what he loved best, that his last conscious thought must have been the thrill of feeling at one with nature. When people commiserate with her and express sorrow that “He was only nineteen”, she will remind herself that at least he had nineteen years – that’s longer than a rodent or a bullfrog, a badger or an antelope. She will think all this but say nothing.

*

A month later, the beach is packed for Daryl’s memorial service. His funeral was a sombre affair: his parents sobbed, surrounded by grieving relatives, as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Jess knows this second-hand: she was invited to go and pay her last respects, but she declined. Everyone thought it was because she was too traumatised after what had happened; but Jess knows that Daryl isn’t in the shell they buried: his spirit is still out on the waves, moving in peaceful harmony with the water.

The sun is setting as the surfing community paddle out to the location they’ve chosen, some wearing garlands, others with flowers held between their teeth. Jess thinks there is a certain symmetry in this: Daryl died in the morning, but they will remember him in the evening. It’s symbolic too: the sunset is a reminder that death is not the end: the glowing orange ball that now sinks behind the horizon will rise again, fresh and golden, with the dawn.

Together they tread water as they release their flowers; then, joining hands, they remember their friend. Someone prays out loud, thanking God for Daryl’s life, for his warm, open personality, for his appreciation of nature. Tears form in Jess’s eyes once more: she’s overcome with emotion, but it’s not sadness for Daryl or herself but gratitude that her boyfriend was so well-loved. “Daryl was always searching for the perfect wave,” she says, her voice steadier than she would have thought possible – “and then the perfect wave found him and took him home.”

*

The waves swell once more, carrying her memories of Daryl towards the distant horizon.

Back on Day 10, I wrote an anecdotal piece called ‘Snail Trail’ that recalled an incident from my student days. This piece tells the same story, but from the snail’s perspective. Welcome to

The Other Side of the Trail

It’s a simple life being a snail.

Not having much of a brain, I tend to live in a state of blissful ignorance. If I were a scientist and not a snail, I’d bamboozle you with facts and tell you that my brain is what is called “primitive” but nevertheless capable of associative learning. In layman’s terms – snail terms, that is – it means if I know that I followed another snail yesterday and he/she (we’re all hermaphrodites) led me to something tasty, then there’ll probably be something tasty again if I follow him/her today. Since I have an expected life span of anything between five and twenty-five years, that gives me plenty of time to perfect my knowledge of the best trails to follow to find food.

Anyway, a strange thing happened to me yesterday: there’s a big grey object close to the grass where we hang out and sleep, and there seems to be a lot of activity going on around this grey thing during the course of a day. Once it gets light in the morning, a large creature arrives in a noisy shell and then approaches the grey thing and leaves some sort of large white droppings on it. Simon (my snail pal) and I investigated the droppings some weeks ago – they’re very cold.

We noticed that a large mouth would open near the grey thing and more huge creatures would come out and carry the large white droppings away. The creatures would spend most of the day going in and out of the cavernous mouth – possibly, they were making expeditions to find food, the way we do, although they mostly returned without anything. Simon suggested at one point that they might eat snails, but I think he was trying to frighten me.

Where was I? Oh, yes, back to the story. Well, as you know, we snails don’t move particularly quickly – I think we have an average speed of about a centimetre a minute – so when I realised that Simon had started moving off to explore something, I was too far behind when the disaster happened to be able to do anything else but stare in shock. The worst of it was, he/she wasn’t even heading for food. Maybe he/she’d had a bad night, or perhaps he/she wasn’t fully awake, but he/she’d somehow retraced his/her slime trail back to the white droppings we’d investigated a few days earlier and was busy scaling the giant structure – I say ‘scaling’ but at the rate he/she was moving, he/she’d just about managed to hoist him/herself off the ground and onto the bottom of … whatever it was when the giant creature appeared at the mouth of the cave and picked up Simon on the side of the large, white dropping.  

Naturally, I was beside myself with grief. I was pretty sure that we’d never see him/her again. I spent a very unhappy couple of hours wondering who I would follow now to get to the best food supplies.

You can imagine my surprise when, some time later, there was an almighty woosh and Simon shot out of nowhere in a cascade of water, almost as if he/she was being spat out of something’s mouth. He/she looked slightly stunned, but soon recovered enough to tell the rest of us about his/her adventures.

“Well,” he/she began in a self-important voice – he/she always loved the limelight – “I’ve had such a time! First there was my unprecedented trip through the air – those droppings are very cold and hard, by the way, and then I suddenly found whatever it was I was clinging onto being tilted suddenly so that I quite lost my grip and found myself plunging headfirst into a peculiar orange pool. It was very cold and tasted terribly sweet.” He/she closed his/her eyes reflectively. I felt mildly jealous.

“What happened then?” Brian broke in eagerly. (He/she was another member of our group.)

Simon shuddered. “A huge creature picked me up in my pool,” he/she declaimed dramatically, “and lowered its enormous mouth until it was close enough to swallow me whole!”

We all gasped with horror. Every snail’s taught from an early age that the big, feathery creatures Out Here will eat us, given the chance, but now it seemed there were other predators to watch out for too.

“How did you escape?” I breathed, secretly thinking this was one of the most exciting stories I had ever heard.

Simon wrinkled his/her antennae, looking thoughtful. “I don’t really know,” he/she confessed at last. “The mouth was about to swallow me and then it started making loud, scary sounds. I think the monster carried my pool somewhere else, but I’m a bit hazy on that score – the loud noise stunned me for a while. When I finally opened my eye stalks, I was still in my pool, and then I felt myself being lifted up again and carried along – until, all of a sudden, I was flying through the air in a pond of water.”

I edged forward and sniffed him/her cautiously. “Why is your face sticky?” I wanted to know. We snails shoot mucus covered love-darts at each other as part of our mating rituals, but we don’t normally shoot them at each other’s faces!

“I think it’s the funny orange water I was swimming in,” Simon said slowly.

We made a bit of a fuss of him/her for the rest of the day, but I was already formulating a plan in my tiny mind.

This morning, I was up early. I knew I’d need to set off early if I was going to copy Simon’s antics and hitch a ride on the white droppings into the magical world he/she’d described.

At first, all went according to plan. I reached the big grey thing before the droppings appeared. When they did, I hurried to attach myself to the side of one. It wasn’t long before the cave opened as before and a large creature came out and picked up my dropping and another one.

Quivering with excitement, I could hardly wait for the descent into the orange pool – the sticky stuff on Simon’s face had smelt addictively sweet and I was longing to taste it properly. Imagine my horror, then, when I saw that I was plummeting into a large white lake with strange yellow-orange rocks in it.

The rocks were surprisingly soft and squishy. Cautiously, I nibbled away at a corner of one. It was quite pleasant.

I didn’t have long to enjoy my feast, though – my lake was being carried through the air by one of the monstrous creatures. Would I be eaten after all?

Large, fleshy things plucked me from the bowl. The next thing I knew, I was being held under some kind of waterfall. It was freezing.

Startled by the sudden drop in temperature, I wriggled and twisted, and found myself falling onto a hard, wet and shiny surface. Numerous holes opened up before me. The force of the water pushed me into one of the holes and … I fell.

I fell for what seemed like days, water carrying me along a dark, narrow structure. Was I in the belly of some beast?

Eventually, with a whoosh! I found myself tumbling down, down until I landed with a plop in a puddle of water, in a place that looked suspiciously like Out Here. I lay on my side for a while, dazed from my shenanigans and still feeling cheated that I hadn’t seen or experienced the orange pool. Then, as the sun began to warm my body, I recovered enough to look around me. Wasn’t that the green stuff I’d seen the other day when I followed Simon?

I slowly rolled over and began my creeping journey towards the tufty goodness. I’d missed out on the orange lake, but I had a whole array of greens to compensate for that.

Like I said before, it’s a simple life being a snail.

I’m not going to say much about this, but can you work out what is missing in this puzzling conundrum?

Omission

Daylight. My mind stalls, my sanity in stagnation. Misinformation assaults my soul, but this unknown thing is still missing. From day to day, its loss haunts my hours continuously – with no sign of it at all, I cannot function.

Without pausing to think, I roll from my divan, start my day. Shaving follows washing; food follows ablutions: a rota of actions I am making not gradually but quickly, to avoid thinking, to avoid hurting. But it is still missing. Why?

Fantastical thoughts assault and assail my mind. My discomfort grows. Raw aching loss is all around, hanging in mid-air, as if to cry out for aid. Its harsh call drowns out any sound but that of total panic. It will not stop haunting my soul. Am I crazy? Or is my insanity just a shadowy phantom?

An air of … what? Was it only an illusion? A fantasy? My confusion grows. Whilst cogitating, I fix on facts: it is missing, but loss is only transitory: it is not truly hurt nor pain. A hint of longing; an aura of unavailability – that is what I know. Rubbish! Who am I fooling? I gawk at my own stupidity in thinking it would not still do harm although it is missing.

I climb a mountain in my mind, still pursuing my missing companion. How difficult this is! My hunt is continuing but my avidity is waning. Ignoring my soul’s call, struggling to drown it out again, I try to focus on work; but my passion for data and my ardour for statistics vanish quickly, rapidly, as hours turn into days turn into months – and it is still missing.

What can I say? What should I do? How is a loss so small – so insignificant – paradoxically so important? How will I hold fast against such odds? My soul faints from lack of clarity, but my body is thriving still. How ironic that a missing part can limit in such a way.

Its loss is also starting to worry my family and a nasty aura surrounds all our companionship, mars all our communication. Our lack of affinity grows. All of us want a solution: not knowing is paralysing. Unity of loss binds us with cords of horror.

My social status is nothing now. Class, rank, standing, position – all contain no worth. My mind whirls, spins, turns in dizzying arcs. My brain is aching, my body forcing it to go through its daily motions, hiding its pain as if too proud, too haughty to admit my own disability, my inability to find this missing thing.

What is it, this missing thing? It is not hand, nor arm, nor foot – nor any part common to man or animal or bird or fish. It is not food nor drink; sun nor rain; light nor shadow – but it is vital to all.

My train of thought slows, but my hunt is continuing. Will I find it? Who knows its location? Can philosophy in any way start solving a fraction of all my mind’s probing musings and phantasmagoria as I study a missing thing that avoids my finding it? Twisting and tangling, my thoughts turn to turmoil. My mission to find it is null and void.

Night falls. It is missing still.

Quite an important topic, this one.

Shiny Happy People

Laura had always heard the voices, even when no one else thought they were real.

It must have started as early as two or three, because she had a vague memory of getting into trouble when Harry whispered to her to take the chocolate bar from the cupboard. She didn’t want to do anything naughty, but Harry had been so angry when she’d refused that in the end she gave in.

Mum had shouted and Laura had tried to explain that she’d taken the chocolate for Henry, not for herself, but it hadn’t made any difference – not even when Henry had stood up for her by shouting back at Mum and calling her a selfish cow. That was when she realised that no one else could see or hear Henry; and, over the years, she discovered that most of her friends simply weren’t visible or audible to anyone else but her.

She tried explaining to Mum countless times, but Mum either thought she was making up excuses for doing something wrong, or else she just laughed and told her what a wonderful imagination she had. It was very frustrating.

Once Laura started school, her friends became even more important to her. Belfield Primary was an old-fashioned school in a run-down building that boasted genuine Victorian gargoyles on the roof and huge, draughty classrooms inside. Waiting in the playground every day for school to start was a nightmare for Laura: the gargoyles used to pull faces at her, winking suggestively or licking their lips in a lascivious manner. Henry offered to knock them down for her, but Laura felt safer when they were high up, out of the way. If she closed her eyes and put her fingers in her ears, she could pretend they weren’t there.

“But if you do that, you won’t see us,” said Sabrina, sounding offended.

Sabrina was a unicorn with a glittery horn that sprinkled rainbow dust everywhere. Laura was getting fed up with finding her schoolbag permanently full of Sabrina’s glitter, and Mrs Jackson, the Reception teacher, wasn’t impressed either.

Glitter wasn’t the only thing that got Laura into trouble during that first year in school. Henry had a brother – a huge, eight feet tall gorilla-like creature with shaggy red fur and mean yellow eyes. He had a tendency to swipe other children’s lunchboxes when they weren’t looking, and Laura always got the blame.

*

As time went by, Laura’s strange assortment of friends grew. By the time she started secondary school, there was a mouse called Marvin who used to pull people’s shoelaces undone on the bus, a duck with orange feathers and a penchant for singing loudly in Maths lessons, and a rather nervous gnome named Nigel who had a problem with personal hygiene – it was really quite embarrassing when he broke wind loudly in public places and people assumed it was Laura.

Luckily, when she left school, her friends were very supportive when it came to job interviews: Henry used to stand behind her, whispering encouraging words in her ear every time she was asked a question; and Sabrina and Marvin used to take a sneaky look at the other candidates in the waiting room and try to make sure that their flies were undone or their skirts tucked into their knickers when it was their turn to be interviewed. It was a pity that Nigel often tagged along too and added his own noisome contribution just as she was making a good impression, but that couldn’t be helped.

Once she had managed to land the job working as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery, Laura was able to rent a tiny flat within walking distance of her place of work. It was lovely to begin with: newly decorated, it had a recently refitted kitchen with gleaming white tiles and a smart wet-room. She was confident that she would be able to keep everything in order.

She’d reckoned without the monsters though. It began quite surreptitiously with strange noises when she was there alone at night. She would lie in bed, the duvet pulled over her head, heart beating wildly, waiting for the terror to pass. There was never any sign of them in the morning – but monsters are sneaky. For a moment, she would be reminded of the school gargoyles and wonder whether they had a hand in all of this.

Henry helpfully told her an important secret: “They come in by the portal in the kitchen floor,” he said, his eyes wide and truthful.

Laura had no reason not to believe him.

Avoiding the kitchen was problematic at first, but once she’d realised she could exist on takeaway pizzas and curries, or sandwiches from the local supermarket – which also had a Costa coffee machine – Laura found it was quite easy to keep the door closed. She wasn’t sure what to do with all the rubbish – the half-empty foil containers were beginning to smell in the heat of summer – because the wheelie bin was just outside the back door that opened off the kitchen; but then Sabrina scornfully shook her horn over a pile of black bin liners and Laura understood that she could just collect the rubbish and pile the bags neatly by the forbidden door to hell. She had to stand on a chair once the pile passed five feet high, but she was resourceful and methodical, stacking them neatly into a black polythene wall.

“Extra reinforcements to keep the monsters out!” Marvin whispered comfortingly.

*

Laura’s mother hadn’t realised that there was anything wrong with her daughter until she popped round unexpectedly and found the living room full of flies. Once she’d dismantled the makeshift wall, she nearly gagged when she entered the kitchen. The fridge was full of decidedly green yoghurt that had once been milk, and the shelves were decorated with mould. Rotting fruit had oozed into fetid puddles on the worktops and there was a whole new species of something growing on months old meat.

Laura had been almost hysterical when her mother had insisted on opening the kitchen door. That, coupled with the nest she’d made herself on the living room floor and the broken mirror in the bathroom – “Henry did it,” Laura said simply. “He didn’t want my refection to come out and steal my body while I slept.” –  convinced her mother that Laura needed help. She was sectioned immediately.

*

The hospital was the loneliest place Laura had ever stayed in. Her friends weren’t allowed to visit: the ‘happy pills’ saw to that. Cocooned in a warm, medicated fog, she was no longer aware of the monsters – but that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding somewhere else, lying in wait until she was released. She wished the others were there. Even Nigel’s flatulence would have made her feel at home.

*

A month later, Laura left the hospital, her handbag rattling with the medication she would be taking for the rest of her life. After the first few days, before the tablets kicked in and when she’d told her startled mother that yellow and orange were devious colours who were out to get her, she’d settled down and seemed to have forgotten all her previous psychotic episodes. Her mother had spent days cleaning the flat for her; and the doctor’s surgery was willing to give her another chance now that she was displaying drug-induced ‘normal’ behaviour.

For the first week or so, Laura dutifully took her tablets – she had to: her mother doled them out every morning when she came round to check up on her. Satisfied that her daughter had turned a corner, her mother then handed over the tablets, confident that Laura was now in the routine of taking them.

The following morning, Laura popped the pills in the waste bin. It took a couple of days before her friends were convinced that she really wasn’t going to take any more of the little capsules, but they soon came creeping out of their hiding places and gave her a hug.

“What about the monsters?” Laura asked, troubled by the fact that there was now nothing to keep them at bay.

Henry shrugged. “Your mum had the exterminators in. You should be safe now.”

Laura relaxed instantly. Henry never lied.

She lay in bed that evening, basking in the comforting voices she had heard since childhood.

Back in August 1993, I was lucky enough to visit the Art Institute of Chicago and see Seurat’s famous painting close up. When I realised I had to write about a painting for my next challenge, I began to imagine what the artist might have been thinking as he worked on his masterpiece.

L’Après-Midi sur la Grande Jatte

The painter regarded the scene before him carefully, wanting to capture modern Paris in all its infinite variations.

Paris in the summer of 1885 was suffocating under a stifling heat and the island in the middle of the Seine was a perfect place to escape the sultriness of the city and take refuge under the shade of the trees, enjoying the cool breeze that came from the river. Fashionable couples strolled along, taking their Sunday constitutional. This was the place to be seen and admired: Paris had never worked harder at appearing relaxed. Shafts of sunlight dappled the grass with interesting shades – could he recreate this with his new technique? he wondered. He had decided to layer his painting this time, beginning with sombre tones of ochre and sepia, to represent the murky undertones that hid beneath the respectability of city life, but he would add spots of  bright yellow zinc and emerald green to achieve a suggestion of light on grass. He couldn’t possibly know at the time that the brilliant yellow would fade over the years to a muddy brown; but, had he been aware of it, he would have interpreted it as a foreshadowing of the capital’s fading gaiety.

As the summer continued to melt away, the flowers in the public gardens only a short distance from the riverbank were a blaze of riotous colour – scarlet peonies, fiery orange lilies and sunshine yellow marigolds jostled for attention in their ordered rows – but he chose more muted shades for the grey top hat, the pastel pink skirt, the burnt umber umbrella. Mixing his palette carefully, he dotted the paint with almost mathematical precision, letting the light blue of the river darken into the cobalt shadows of sailboats here and there on the water. He had a whole collection of sketches by now – he’d faithfully recorded every angle of the park, each possible permutation of light and shade – and would refer to these constantly, ensuring that the vivid emerald green of the grass closest to the river was thrown into contrast by the darker tones representing its colour beneath the trees. Adding blobs of chartreuse here and there served to break up the emerald in a way reminiscent of sunlight falling on the verdant greenery.

He supposed he should let some of the others see his work at some point, but he was reluctant to expose himself to any further criticism after the Grand Salon’s rejection of Une Baignade, Asnières the previous year. Even now, his contemporaries claimed to be, at best, puzzled by his work and, at worst, dismissive. Not that he cared: Impressionism might be all the rage in Paris at the moment but, personally, he’d always found Renoir too sentimental – the way the older man had used his current lover, Aline, as a model for his Le déjeuner des canotiers, for example, centring the painting on her as if to draw attention to the fact that he had a beautiful mistress. Even his Les parapluies, despite being set in the rain, failed to capture the misery of the wet Parisian streets and instead gave a romanticised view of fresh-faced women and rosy-cheeked children, as if the city were actually full of such delectable creatures!

People were still milling around: he needed to capture them all before the light began to fade. When he had painted the swimmers on the opposite bank of the Seine, the year before, he had concentrated on light, trying to create an almost ethereal effect, as if the bathers were beckoning to the observer to join them in their strange, modern world. Now, however, he focussed on shadow, attempting to hint at the less salubrious activities that were whispered to take place along the Right Bank. The woman with a fishing rod, for example, was an allusion to the rumoured trade of prostitutes, advertising their availability through their handling of the symbolic pole. The small man beside her, with a black hat and thin cane, was a potential customer. Elsewhere, a much more respectable lady sat with her knitting, her needles flashing in and out as she fashioned wool into some kind of garment for an absent child. Two soldiers stood to attention as a third man played a horn – how would he capture the sounds of a Sunday afternoon? he mused. Was it possible to evoke an impression of music and conversation simply with the strokes of his brush?

Gazing about him, he realised that the whole microcosm of Parisian life was spread before him. The man with a pipe represented old age and wisdom; the couple admiring their infant child were a symbol of new life, new beginnings. On the river, a woman with a parasol lounged in a boat, surrounded by rowers: were they would-be suitors?  brothers? complete strangers? He deftly added the curious sight of a woman with a pet monkey, its wizened face not unlike that of the pipe-smoking man. Turning his gaze to ascertain whether he had missed anyone, his eye fell on a young girl in a white dress: a perfect allegory of light and innocence. He would place her in the centre of his painting; that way, he would suggest that there was still hope, despite the rest of the figures in the shadows, cloaked by a suspicion of sin.

The hum of distant conversation flowed past him like the river as he focussed once again on the elusive light, working almost mechanically to replicate the shifting colours by means of his multitudinous dots. In years to come, he would be known as a neo-Impressionist; but for now, he was just a young artist, struggling to make a name for himself amidst the snobbish coterie of established names. Squeezing a little vermilion onto his palette and mixing it carefully with enough lead white to achieve a decent flesh tone, he carefully painted the blobs that would represent faces. They would remain featureless to represent the timelessness of Paris and of art.

He regarded his painting once more, satisfied that he had recorded ‘L’Après-Midi sur la Grande Jatte’ for posterity.

YA fiction today – as a writer of YA fiction (amongst other things) I should be feeling pretty confident, but being snowed under with important things I have to write for work means that today’s piece feels rather rushed. Maybe someday I’ll rework it into something I’m happier with …

Caught Out

It all started with a stupid picture on Instagram.

Not many people know this, but I’ve got really curly hair. I spend ages straightening it every morning before school. I mean, when you’re in Year Eleven, you want to look your best, right? So I’m sometimes late for registration because my hair just wasn’t being co-operative.

Anyway, last weekend, I was messing around with Tania – we’ve been best friends forever, ever since primary school when another girl nicked my skipping rope and Tania just waltzed up to her in the playground and thumped her – and she took a photo of me with my ‘normal’ curly hair and posted it on her Insta page. She stuck it on WhatsApp too – we’ve got a page for all the kids in our year – which was really annoying. I didn’t let her know, though – just reposted it with a picture of the straight-haired version and a comment that said, “What do you think? Straight or curly?” I reckoned it was better to get all the bitchy comments out of the way so I could forget the whole thing.

A message pinged up instantly from Steve. “You look adorable no matter what. Love you, Babe.”

Steve’s my boyfriend – has been for the last three or four months. You know how it is when you’re really good friends with someone and then suddenly find you’ve sort of drifted into being more than friends? Well, that’s how it was with Steve and me. We’ve known each other since Year Seven – same tutor group for five years but different teaching sets until we started our GCSEs and found we were both doing Geography together. I ended up sitting with him when Miss Blake redid her seating plan, and things sort of progressed from there. He’s a lovely guy, although he can be a bit nerdy at times; but he always knows the right thing to say, like his comment now, for example.

It must have been half an hour later when another message appeared on my phone. “Definitely the curls. Very sexy.” Winky face.

I was intrigued – and also a little sceptical. Someone thought my curls were sexy?

I looked at the name next to the number at the top of the comment: Mark. I only knew one Mark, Mark Jones in my year group, and for a moment I couldn’t understand why he’d be commenting on my photo; then another comment flashed up: “We curly-haired people have to stick together.” Another winky face.

I know I shouldn’t have, but I messaged him back – not on the group chat, but privately. He was the coolest kid in our year, you see – every boy wanted to be him; every girl wanted to be with him. He was always getting suspended – for smoking; for drugs; for basically just not bothering – but no one cared. He was the hottest boy in school and he thought my curls were sexy.

By the time I got to school on Monday, Mark and I had exchanged about ten flirty messages, starting with “Maybe our curls should get together sometime then?” (me) and then progressing rapidly to some decidedly dodgy suggestions about what other parts of our anatomies should get together as well. I knew Steve would be devastated if he found out, but I found it hard to care. This was just flirting, for heaven’s sake – it’s not as if we were actually going to do anything about it.

Only, it seemed Mark had other ideas. My phone vibrated in registration, alerting me to a message. “Back of the Sports Hall, period one.” It would mean skiving off English, but I was pretty confident I could do that – after all, I wasn’t the sort of girl who normally missed lessons. If I made up a good enough reason, I was sure I could get away with it.

It was easy to tell Tania I had to go to see the French teacher for a Speaking and Listening practice. Easier still to reach the back of the sports Hall without anyone seeing me. Mark was there, casually smoking a cigarette. I wondered if his teachers ever smelled it on his clothes when he went back into lessons.

“So, Curly Girl …” he said lazily, eying me up and down, “what’s happened to your hair today?”

I’d straightened it as usual. I could have kicked myself.

Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “Let’s see if you’re all talk.”

His kiss took me by surprise. He tasted of cigarettes and of danger – and I was instantly addicted.

It was only when his hands started wandering that I came to my senses and pulled back. “Not here – what if we get caught?”

He winked at me. “That’s part of the thrill.”

I shook my head. It was all too risky. Besides, I wasn’t sure exactly how far I wanted this to go. I liked being Steve’s girlfriend; but this was Mark Jones – Tania would be so jealous if I told her.

He was losing interest.

“We could always meet up somewhere after school,” I said slowly.

His eyes lit up at the suggestion. “Where do you wanna go?”

In the end, we decided to meet in the park at half four – he was in detention until then. “Plenty of bushes …” Mark said suggestively. I let that comment pass.

I walked back to my English lesson, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and confidence. I’d just kissed Mark Jones behind Steve’s back. I’d just kissed Mark Jones!

Tania looked at me curiously as I slid into my seat. “What have you been doing?” she whispered. “You look all hot and bothered.”

I wanted to tell her, I really did, but I couldn’t run the risk of her saying something to Steve. Instead, I just smiled and asked if I could copy some of her notes on Macbeth.

I felt really mean when Steve walked me home after school. Usually, I’d ask him in and we’d hang out together until my mum came home from work and chucked him out. Tonight, though, I turned him away at the doorstep. “Sorry, Steve. I’ve got loads of homework.”

His face fell momentarily. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeh,” I agreed, trying to ignore the niggling feeling in my conscience, “see you tomorrow.”

It only took me a few minutes to get changed and another ten to put on some makeup, ready to meet Mark. By now, my hair had almost regained its pre-straightened kink, so I shook my head and trusted that the wind would do the rest on my way to the park.

I set off, trying to work out why I was doing this. Maybe it was because I was tired of being a ‘good girl’ and I just needed to experiment; maybe it was because no one had ever called me sexy before and I liked the feeling now; or perhaps it was simply because it was Mark Jones: tall, with dark, curly hair, chiselled features and an air of laidback defiance, he somehow managed to look good even in  school uniform – although he always wore it without the tie, with his shirt left casually open in a Byronic way. (Our English teacher was really into Byron, and that quote she’d told us about him – “mad, bad and dangerous to know” – summed up Mark perfectly.)

When I reached the park, I began wondering whether this was really a good idea. It had all seemed a bit surreal up until now, me having this secret thing going on with Mark when I was supposed to be Steve’s girlfriend. Whatever happened, it would have to be a one-off – I liked Steve too much to keep on seeing someone else behind his back. I suppose I was feeling guilty: I’d never cheated on anyone before today.

As I sat and waited, I thought again about Steve and me. Three months is a long time when you’re sixteen – surely that meant something, if we’d stayed together that long? What was I doing, risking throwing it all away for a quick fumble with Mark Jones?

And then I thought about Tania and how she’d seemed funny with me all day, ever since I’d got back into the English lesson. It was as if she suspected something. Had she read Mark’s comments on WhatsApp – the public ones: there’s no way she could have seen our private messages – and put two and two together?

I sighed as I tried to work out what to do next. I liked Steve, I really did, but I liked feeling wanted by Mark. If it came down to looks and pure ‘phwoar’ factor, Mark would always win; but I knew he wouldn’t be the sort of guy to walk me home every night, the way Steve did, or to send me links to things he thought I might like on YouTube, or to sit and help me revise for a test.

I was still trying to decide what to do when I saw them both: Tania and Steve, coming out of the bushes, adjusting their clothing. They were both still in school uniform – he must have messaged her straightaway when I told him I had homework. As I watched in frozen horror, he turned and kissed her – the sort of kiss that suggested this wasn’t the first time they’d got together.

Behind me, on the path, the sound of footsteps. I turned slightly to see Mark, but it was too late now. Walking past my ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend, I headed for home, still in a state of shock.

It was definitely over.