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“A fresh start” you said. I didn’t believe you, but for some reason I followed you anyway, halfway across the country. Why? We weren’t happy in the city, why would a cottage miles from anything make me like you any better? Nevertheless I followed you there.

It was freezing when we arrived. None of our things had reached us yet and all we had were the sleeping bags, some clothes and the few bits we could fit into the car. Luckily we had a lighter, because you smoke, for the fire. The heating was stubborn and we spent that night huddled on the floor by the fire in the sleeping bags as the ice crept insidiously over the window panes.

I slept badly. I couldn’t wash or brush my teeth because the pipes had frozen and anyway you had forgotten to pack my toothbrush. I was awake, or half awake, so I saw it before you woke up.

The room was dark and without my glasses I could make out the blurry shapes and shadows of the unfamiliar room, gently lit by the firelight. Then one of them moved. It detached itself and stood apart, watching, as if it had a face.

I nudged you then and you woke up quickly. You didn’t believe me until you heard the creak of the floorboards upstairs. That made you stop. Strange how much less scared I felt when you showed me your fear. You pressed the button on your phone and it was blindingly bright. When we could see we looked around the room, but there was nothing strange and we began to relax. You even put your arm around me.

The creaking began again. Slow, steady pacing. Deliberate. Wanting to be heard. I looked at you and I suppose you felt you had to go. Shivering you got up and flipped the light switch. Of course it didn’t work. Slowly, barefoot, you climbed the stairs. I watched the pale flesh of your legs disappear up and up until they were all gone, eaten up by the darkness. I heard you open the door to the room above my head and I heard the pacing stop. Silence. You didn’t come back down.

I’ve been in the cottage for nearly a year now. The heating works and the electricity is more or less fine. I’ve gotten to know the neighbours, if you can call them that when they’re so far away, and surprisingly life really is better in the country. There’s just that one room that I’ve never opened up. It never really seemed like a good idea after that night. In fact, the next morning I slipped up and quickly turned the key in the lock without looking inside. I threw it into the lake.

If I ever hear the sound of pacing, I just close the door to my bedroom tight, tight and squeeze my eyelids together. You were right; we should have done this years ago.

Different this time

Martin was gone. When Katie woke up, eyes crusted with sleep, breath sticky with last night’s pina colada, the first thing she noticed was that Martin was gone. Fuck.

Katie pushed her face into the pillow as she pieced together the evening. Tequila. Taxi. A stumble, but not enough to wake the kids. Martin was there, definitely; she remembered holding him a while. Then haziness - had he been in the bed with her? Katie wasn’t sure.

She’d have to tell the kids. The thought dropped into the pit of her stomach, like a rock into a river. She’d promised them that this time it would be different. Christ, she’d done everything she could to make it different. She hadn’t brought him home until she was certain that they were all ready for this, that he wouldn’t run off, like the others. She’d thought he’d been happy with them.

And now, just like that, he was gone. Katie felt the crushing sense of failure again. She heard voices in the next room. She had two minutes max to wriggle out of last night’s dress and into her pyjamas. Act normal, she told herself.

And then they were there. Annabel, seven, carrying her library book to read in bed and Thomas, four, dragging Blanky behind him. They jumped into bed with Katie, who gathered them up in her arms.

Then she felt Annabel stiffen.

“Mum? Where’s Martin?”

“Annabelle, love…”

“You said this time was different. You said he’d stay.”

Katie felt their eyes on her, Annabelle accusing, Thomas sad, confused.

“Kids, I’m sorry…”

Katie’s eyes filled with tears. Great, she was going to cry in front of the kids. Again.

Annabel left in disgust. Thomas, however, stayed. He put his arms around her and snuggled close. That helped. She kissed his head and pulled herself together.

“Right, who wants eggs and soldiers?”

Hand in hand they went downstairs. While the kids ate Katie decided that activity would best cure her hangover. A fresh start. A clean house. She pulled the hoover from the cupboard and plugged it in. The noise filled the room and her aching head, but it was a cleansing pain - she was starting to feel better. Then she looked up and saw that Thomas was pointing at something on the floor. It was small and furry and scurrying, but Katie was looking at her son and she missed it.

“Mummy? I just saw Martin - he ran out from under the sofa! Look! He’s there, on the carpet! He’s ok after all!”

Katie couldn’t hear over the hoover, so she smiled and nodded, to please him. But Thomas’ face was distressed now, his hands waving, so Katie moved to turn off the hoover.

And then the hoover made a thick, choking sound, like when it inhaled socks. Only this felt like an exceptionally heavy sock. Thick. Maybe one of the furry ones that had lost its way between washing machine and clothes drier...

The hoover thudded, spluttered wetly, and stopped.

Nearest the stage sit the Bellini Boys, sipping pink cocktails and fluttering dark lashes.

Each of them male but to look at them is to lust for female beauty seldom seen since the rise of the Citadel. In a world without women the price of a woman’s touch is whatever a Bellini Boy whispers.

Too rich for your blood, then instead find a heifer in their drag sat behind a tall Pina Colada. We’re just as shaved and plucked and primped as any Bellini Boy only there’s no escaping the line of the jaw, or the line of the dress.

Does it matter in the dark?

Doing my best to hide in the shadow but yet another hopeful face presents itself.

Tells me he can get me a new Library book. Whatever subject I want.

He means he can steal a book. A stolen book means no fines to pay the Citadael, least for them does the stealing. It means knowledge, an escape from this life of Pina Coladas and a pillow in the grass every night.

He says I have nice eyes. Girl’s eyes.

His own twinkle inside a tanned face from a life outdoor but not burnt red to farmer’s glow.

But he’s not the Brewhead I’m looking for.

The one I want spits on Ladyboys even as he craves them. The Brewhead I seek drinks in the shadows, and he follows me as I cross the rubble strip and reach the grass with its pockets of sand home to squirming couples. I let him close, then take a turn for the worse, into this place of alleys and tunnels choked with the wild grass to almost above my head. Into this place of no exits.

He is a silhouette that creeps closer.

I tell him, wait, and slowly turn, gathering up the coarse strands of horse hair wig from the back of my neck. It’s a single catch holds the dress. Nothing underneath but real curves.

He doesn’t know what to do when I take his knife hand and press it to my belly, this strip of ice against naked skin.

I ask him, want to be a real man?

His knife finds the grass as he scrabbles at the catch of his belt.

I had this plan, my own knife to his neck, ask him did he slit the throat of a Bellini boy when he was done?

Was it you killed my brother?

What rises instead is my rage, and the rapier. Does he see the point of his devil as it pricks for his right eye?

I am a girl, and escape to the Citadel is mine for a smile, the bride price of my freedom a new home for my father, one without holes in the roof or Brewheads kicking the door.

But not today. Not till I find the man gave my brother his own escape. Not till I give it back to him.

Nat looked at the small white pill in her hand, ‘just think of it like this’ said Tori, ‘If you had a headache you’d take a paracetamol so you didn’t have to deal with the pain, this is the same, just let yourself escape it for a few hours’ she grinned. Nat clamped it into her mouth before she could change her mind. Tori squeezed her shoulder, ‘right I’ll go get us some drinks!’

Nat hadn’t wanted to go out, but Tori was sick of her wallowing. She’d broken up with Jono and even though she knew it was right, that she was only answering the alarm bells, she was still left with a feeling of hopelessness that had burrowed down to her bones and seemed to cloud every thought with a bleakness she couldn’t shake. Nat had met Jono in the library, she was searching along the shelves for a book she needed and as she turned the corner there he was sat with his head in it. He was so confident and sure of himself, that’s what had excited her about him at first, but she came to realise that he was also prone to depression and paranoia that left him locked into his own pains, licking his wounds and completely unreachable. During their last argument Jono had taken her bag and stormed off. He had her phone, house keys and wallet. She had sat in the park opposite his office all day, too scared to confront him, but with nowhere else to go.

Tori returned with 4 bottles of beer. ‘How are you feeling’ she asked excitedly. ‘I don’t feel anything’ Nat sighed. ‘Aw come on, let’s have a drink’ Tori laughed. Nat stood drinking the beer and started to feel a tingling in her fingertips and shins and the top of her head. Then a wave of warmth flooded up from her knees almost making her wretch. It was followed by another and another, wave upon wave that made her head spin. She gripped the bar with one hand and turned to Tori, her heart racing. Tori was wide-eyed beaming at her. A barman passed carrying a huge pina colada with 4 sparklers sticking out of it. Nat and Tori both turned and gasped, awestruck, ‘wow’ Nat mouthed, ‘it’s like an explosion of glitter’. She looked at Tori and they cracked up laughing.

Nat and Tori danced until they were kicked out of the bar then wandered back to the flat, stopping to stare up at the light from a lamppost or to stand under a particularly beautiful tree. Cars and people seemed to pass by in fast forward, everyone else was in a rush. They made it home and fell onto Nat’s bed, heads on the same pillow. ‘That was fun wasn’t it’ Tori said. ‘It was’ Nat said, ‘thanks Tori’ she said and she meant it, but she’d already started to feel the sadness slowly creeping its way back in.

The trouble with cocktails is that they always hit you hard and with little warning. One minute you're chatting to your old school mate and the next thing you know you're burying your head under the pillow wishing that who or whatever was hammering its way out would get on with it, rip your skull open and end it all. But what the hell had happened in between? How had the battered and slightly grubby looking hardback copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep with a Putney public library sticker ended up in bed with me, and where the hell was my phone?

I rolled over, groaning, hoping that facing away from the window might help, but the late morning sun reflected off the mirror opposite, and was almost worse than looking at it directly. Why hadn't I shut the fucking curtains when I stumbled in after god knows how many pina coladas last night? Well, I sure as hell want going to get out of bed and do it myself, not now. I dragged the duvet over my head and wished, silently and almost sincerely, that I were dead. It was hot and smelt stale and sour, but it was dark, and I allowed unconsciousness to envelop me.

I woke up several hours later, and the library book was gone. The curtains were closed and a tall glass of water waited for me on the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. What wonderful benefactor had visited while I slept? I peered into the darkness and saw a shape curled up on the papasan chair in the corner, Phillip K Dick on the floor next to it. I got out of bed and quietly approached the chair, who the hell was it? As I neared the shape I recognised the spiky black hair. Shit. Nick. He had been in the bar last night trying to chat me up again. How many times did I have to tell him I wasn’t interested?

I tiptoed away, hoping that I could extricate myself from the unwanted encounter before it began. As I neared the door, my clumsy, bare, hungover foot snagged in my bra strap and I fell. Grabbing for the chest of drawers for support, time slowed down as the pint of water flew, slow motion, through the air, narrowly missing my unwanted guest and emptying its contents instead all over the library book as the glass thudded quietly on the floor beside it. Nick muttered, nuzzled the side of his face deeper into the chair, but did not wake up. Maybe he’d had as much to drink as I had and what I feared might have occurred last night had not. I retrieved my bra and sidled out of the door, thinking only of escape at this point. Avoiding the conflict and more importantly, avoiding having to think about it. Until I saw it. Glistening and gooey, stuck with my own bodily fluids to my glass coffee table and filled with his. Shit.

Linda could never sleep the night before a holiday. A combination of excitement and nerves invariably led to a night of tossing and turning, constantly tugging at the duvet and readjusting her pillow. Normally Sam got up and moved to the spare room for some peace and quiet.

This time was the worst ever. Linda lay staring at the ceiling, willing the hours and minutes to pass until morning. On top of the normal concerns about delayed flights and misplaced passports, fretting over whether she’d cancelled the milk or returned her library books, her mind was still reeling from the visit from Mrs Agent that afternoon. ‘For the love of God, let me get some sleep.’ she muttered to herself, but her eyes remained stubbornly open and her mind raced.

A lot was resting on this holiday. After seven years of marriage, the sparkle had definitely dulled between her and Sam, but it was something she was sure could be resurrected by a little escape to the sun. Two weeks in Majorca had worked wonders in the past, and this year would be no exception.

As a last minute surprise Linda had upgraded their hotel. No more one star Sol De Mallorca for them. Now they would be all inclusive at the Park Hyatt, TripAdvisor's most recommended hotel and spa. Linda could almost taste the Pina Colada, which she was assured by the Thomas Cook website was the best on the island.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew the alarm was blaring. She showered and dressed before dragging the bulging suitcase down the stairs behind her. Sam was sat at the table, still in his pyjamas and staring zombie like at a mug of coffee. She kissed his cheek ‘Come on lazy bones, we’re out of here in half an hour.’ He continued gazing into nothingness, and a weight dropped in Linda’s stomach. Did he know already? ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ the words caught in her throat ‘It’s holiday time, remember?’ she forced a smile.

Finally he looked up at her. ‘Sit down, Linda.’ he said, ‘I need to tell you something.’

She dropped onto the seat opposite him, impatient at his morose state. ‘What? We really need to get a move on, the flight -’

‘ - I’m not coming’ he interrupted. Linda was sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. Not coming? But it was their holiday. It was the Park Hyatt. Had he found out somehow that she’d upgraded? It was a lot of money, but things were different now …

‘I’m leaving you. I’ve met someone else. I want a divorce.’

---

The Pina Colada was even better than she’d hoped, and the view from the suite of the Park Hyatt combined with the fourth cocktail in an hour lent Linda a serene mood, all things considered. Holidaying alone wasn’t so bad after all. And who knew, she might stay longer. Weigh up her options. As Mrs Agent had said only the day before, life changing events had to be well considered, not rushed. Which was why she hadn’t told her soon to be ex-husband about Mrs Agent's visit. She’d never even realised that when you won the Premium Bonds £1 million jackpot they came to tell you in person. And they help you invest it in an anonymous bank account. Lucky escape really.

At least I think it was Donna. If it was you, please let us know...