Claire Ladds

Crime and suspense author

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What a writer needs (according to Agatha Christie – and me!)

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I gave my new Agatha Christie bag a bit of an outing yesterday. As it was its first trip out, officially (I don’t really count the trip home from Waterstones Piccadilly on the train because it was stuffed in a suitcase), I wanted to make it a bit special. So the bag and I went to Lidl to do my weekly shopping. In case you didn’t know, the author life is exceedingly glamorous. Mine is especially so, as I don’t own a car and therefore the bag and I had the glorious task of lugging all the shopping home on foot. My feet, not the bag’s feet, unfortunately. I did discover that my new friend, ‘Christie bag’, was particularly good as a conveyor of rice cakes and crisps, though.

When I first saw said bag, hanging there near the till in Waterstones Piccadilly, I was struck by two things: one, that it’s got exactly the same design on it as the mug my kids bought me for Christmas, and two, that Agatha Christie had the needs of writers the world over written there in a nutshell. The quote on the bag reads, ‘All you need is a chair and a table and a typewriter and a bit of peace’.

For me, that’s a quote which requires some serious thinking about, because it’s that easy and that hard. Some decent story ideas certainly don’t go amiss, neither does a brain that absorbs people and bits of the world like a sponge, puts them through the literary meat grinder and spits them out as hero(in)es and villains, and little gems of history or conversation and the like. In essence, however, the Queen of Crime has it in the bag (so to speak – or on the bag, anyway). All those things are true. I think that, if you then want to go on and publish your work, there are a whole other set of necessities that the world of writing entails, but without the important part – the writing – those things become completely unnecessary. You can’t publish something that’s not written. You can’t even read it as a bedtime story to your kids, grandkids, snoring partner or to yourself. You can’t even leave it festering on your hard drive for a decade or more. Which I’ve done. Several times.

Writing the actual words is something that has thrilled me from the day I was first able to string a sentence together on paper with a stubby pencil. It continues to enthral me, and I hope it does so until I take my last breath. But the actual practicalities of writing have not always been so easy for me. Since I began taking my writing seriously in 2007, I truly can’t say it’s been because I had to try and carve out time in between going to work and getting my ‘workplace’ job done, and only writing in my spare time, because that hasn’t been the case. I have been (and still am) a stay-at-home mum, in as much as everything I have done, job-wise and family-wise, has involved me working from home. I have, in my time, sold children’s books, made and sold handmade cards, been an editor, written online teaching resources, been a reviews editor, freelance writer, and pestered magazines until they probably just got so sick of me submitting stories that they gave in and published them, to name but a few. (Note: this is not advice to novice short story writers on story submission! In truth, I had a better plan!).

But being someone who works at home and has also taken the predominant role in cooking, cleaning, washing, looking after and fetching and carrying kids (or making them walk to their various clubs and school and the like, having not driven a car since the late 1990s – long story), and so on, this has often meant my writing needs have been pushed aside, squeezed in between other domestic jobs, or abandoned. Finding that sweet spot between knowing the hidey-hole of every once missing but now sparklingly clean sock and not knowing whether anyone in the home has eaten for a week hasn’t always been easy. There have been many times I would have loved a train commute to work, or even a bus ride, so I could get out my laptop, phone, notepad – anything – and write, but walking the kids to school didn’t quite have the same writerly effect! I tried writing in the playground while waiting for the end of school, but I got some very strange looks and I felt too guilty at ignoring the other parents that I gave that up as a bad job.

In my time, I’ve written in all sorts of places – sitting in front of the telly, kneeling at the side of the bed, in the garden, in the bathroom, in the garage. I’ve taken trips to the park and written in the passenger seat of the car. I have a pretty big desk because I thought a number of years ago that it wold be amazing to have such a luxury, but I more often than not have found myself writing at the kitchen worktop because I’ve really struggled to enjoy said desk, and because, more often than not, it has been in a different room (and even on a different floor level) to the one I have needed to be in. I have developed some kind of uneasy mastery over cooking dinner and writing at the same time! In my current home, my desk is only about ten feet from the cooker, and the washing machine – and thankfully, the kettle and the chocolate biscuits – so I am forcing myself more and more to actually sit at the gigantic thing and type there, because it means I can then use the big monitor. But I do change it up a bit. I doubt I’ll ever be truly comfortable with a ‘designated’ place to write.

That ‘bit of peace’, too, has spent the best part of two decades eluding this writer. I wrote really well during the snatched hours I had when my kids were very small and went to playgroup a couple of times a week. In fact, that was the time I was most productive with short stories, and managed to write and get certain unsuspecting magazines to publish quite a decent number of them, both in the UK and much further afield. But, as things do with families, that all changed as they got older. I had longer on my own, so you’d think my productivity would have gone through the roof. Well… no. I did lots of work, yes, but none of it was the crime, mystery and suspense writing I am currently doing, and which I’ve always wanted to do. (I’m a wannabe Agatha Christie!)

So, all I needed, of course (I told myself), was to change things up and find a better way of working. After all, any surface would do as a table, and anywhere I could park my bum would do as a seat. I had my laptop. I was just seeking that elusive last part. Several years ago, I tried a routine of going to the library and sitting at the table in there for a few hours, but my library is like Piccadilly Circus and I longed for a librarian to say ‘sh’ – and that was just to the other librarians! I had another brilliant idea of going to a cafe. I chose an amazing one. It was run by a woman who baked the most incredible scones and, when I arrived, they were always just coming out of the oven. This lovely lady became curious about what I was doing there two or three times a week, and she asked me outright – ‘Are you a writer?’ She was thrilled when I told her I was, and I sensed her watching me as I worked, which quite amused me. It was a great arrangement, except for two things: one, that she closed down, and two, that I’m surprised I didn’t roll out of the door, considering the number of jam and cream scones I ate in my time there.

I still love working in cafes. I would very much like to live near a cafe that has writer subscriptions – a favourite table booked in advance, as much tea/coffee as I can drink for one set ‘just for writers’ price, and every piece of their advertising promo stating, ‘Claire Ladds – you know, the world famous writer – writes her books here’. Okay, that last one is pushing it a bit (as is the rest, probably), but I’d love it! I get loads of work done when I’m sitting in the vicinity of people whose conversation I only hear in murmurs and who actually don’t want me to talk to them while I’m writing! That makes me sound like a really miserable so-and-so, but I’m not. I doubt there are many writers who can actually get words down while being talked to (or at!), and being expected to answer.

So, I do think Agatha Christie absolutely nailed it. A ‘bit of peace’ can come in many shapes and sizes. It might be sitting in a room in silence (even if that room turns out to be in the bathroom), or in a cafe, on a train or at a park bench surrounded by ambient noise, or whatever works. It doesn’t really matter, just as long as it does the job (preferably without turning you into a jam and cream scone). For me, my latest – and as of right now, my ‘bit of peace’ that gets the words down – is to write at my desk (or the kitchen worktop if I’m sick of sitting there) and writing to the sound of rain for 35 minutes, then having ten minutes off. It’s working better than anything I’ve ever tried before, so I’ll be sticking to it until it stops working. I love rain (which is a good job, living in England!) and so I’m hoping that all I need is my version of ‘a table and a chair and a typewriter and a bit of peace’. And that will do very nicely to get my books written. 😊

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Backstory: plotting and planning vengeance

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Somewhere, hiding among the pages of every book, there is a backstory, a story that happened to the characters before the book you read actually begins on the page. It’s the characters’ personal histories, if you like: things that happened to them, memories they have, people they’ve met, events that shaped them into the person you see on the page.

I want to share with you a small piece of the backstory for The Secrets That Haunt Us. It occurs right at the beginning of the book, and takes the shape of five letters, sent to two different members of the same family – mother, Emmeline, and daughter, Julia. These letters, sent months before the book ‘proper’ begins, gives the reader an inkling that all is not only not well at home as the book gets started, but that clearly there have been events in the past which have led to the letter-writing of Alex, a man who is a most unpleasant man indeed. Vengeance has been plotted with malice and a great deal of forethought, and he intends to execute his plans for betrayals and secrets long since past.

But is he the only villain of the piece? The Secrets That Haunt Us blurs the lines between what we would automatically consider ‘good’ and ‘bad, or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. When I wrote it, I often wondered what courses of action I would have taken, had I been in the various characters’ shoes. And the question will probably haunt me for a very long time.

I hope these five letters intrigue you into wanting to know what could have prompted Alex to plot and plan his own very particular type of vengeance – and what happens once his plans have been set in motion!

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Finding a writing process: how I write my books

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When you read (or listen to) novels, novellas, short story collections and any other fiction or non-fiction, I wonder if you can possibly guess the processes the writer might have used to write the book you hold in your hand, or read, or listen to on your device?

I have been thinking a lot about my writing process, recently. I think this has been sparked by the realisation of just how many books I have on my computer that are in partial states of completion and that I’ve been saying I’m going to finish ‘this year’ or ‘next year’. For some of them, I’ve been saying it since 2014! I also have an absolute stack of story ideas and partial plots.

Some people have said to me that I should just write a non-fiction book for writers and put all these ideas in a ‘story prompts’ book, and actually, I would really like to write a series of books on this topic. I’m one of those people who find it extremely easy to begin projects, and I have fantastic starting energy. I also have extremely strong finishing energy. The issue comes once the first excitement of a new idea has passed and the ending is nowhere in sight. In talking to other writers, I know I’m not the only one who, left to my own devices, would have nothing but a string of story starters!

But I’m now a full-time author. ‘Oooh, I’ve got a great idea for a story,’ followed by eating a Twirl and making three cups of tea, and forgetting the book I’m meant to be working on because I want to play around with new places someone could find a corpse, or a whole new setting, or (and I’ve been known to do this numerous times) think that I can write a whole load of books in a completely different genre and play around with that for a while – none of this is going to get novels in any reader’s hands.

I heard someone say recently that if you have all the time in the world to write a book, then that book will take all the time in the world. For me, this couldn’t be more true. It took me ten years to put together The Reason for Everything, even though many of the stories in it had been written several years before I finally published it in 2019. Likewise, it took a similar length of time to write and publish the book that finally became The Secrets That Haunt Us. I put this down to all sorts of factors. I said that it was because I was nervous of the publishing process and I had to figure it out. Publishing is, in fact, very straightforward, so I had to rule this out as an excuse.

I also had to rule out the other ‘reason’ that I had been using to tell myself that any book I write is going to take me a decade. I write out of order, so that must mean that I have no idea what is happening in the book and it takes forever to try and piece the scenes and ideas together. Okay, this is true to a certain extent, but the main conclusion I came to was that I was just plain scared to get the books finished. Because being finished means it can be published, which means it can be judged. And this can be a very scary thing when you’ve poured your heart and soul into your book.

Being a full-time author doesn’t mean I’m not scared anymore. It doesn’t mean that the fear of judgement has miraculously gone away. I’m still the same person I was before, but I’ve experimented with lots and lots of different ways of working and I’ve finally found some processes that work for me. Some work for longer writing projects, some for short ones. But for me, they all start in the same place(s): character, and the ending.

Characters develop in my head long before I write about them. Eventually they have enough ‘life’ about them for me to start thinking about what might happen to them in a story. Whatever that turns out to be, I always know how I want the story to end. So I get paper and I scribble. A lot. I put the story title (a working one will do) in a circle in the centre, then I spider out from there. I put the ending in an adjoining circle and join them together. Then I look for the main plot points: the inciting incident that sets the story in motion, the high points, the twists and turns, the point of no return, and any others that I can see are important. This mind mapping is great if I’m writing a short story, but it gets pretty confusing on one sheet of paper when I want to add in all the extras that you get in a novel. So I use two things: Scrivener, which is a fabulous piece of writing software and allows you to move chapters about easily, and a pen, strips of paper and blu tac.

I love the tactile nature of pen and paper, so with a novel, I write each of my plot points on a strip of paper, and then I stick them on a board (or in my case, currently, my fridge door) and move them around until I’m happy with the order they are in. I also have markers to ensure I have the inciting incident, the point of no return, the highs, the lows, and the other points that make up a crime or suspense novel – discovery of clues, the aha moments, the showdown. That’s the point I turn them into chapters in my writing software.

So far, so good. But then what? I’ve got a story idea, yes, but no book. And I’ve got enough story ideas already, without another one falling by the wayside! Well, because I now know what each of my sections are about, I can start filling in with details. Some people will write a complete story outline, like a summary of the entire book, covering one or two sheets of paper. For some reason this doesn’t work very well for me, so I now do a ‘skinny draft’ to start off. This involves writing each section of the book if I can at this stage, and if not, then I write notes about what will happen.

Once I’ve got a complete skinny draft, I can begin the process I love best: the rewriting. This is where I can throw everything at the book that I want to include, and make it as detailed as I want. I have fun with the book, which keeps the middle part of the process alive for me – an important motivation trick for this author! I can still do this in any order I like, which suits my mentality, and because I edit the book into shape after this step anyway, filling in any plot holes and anachronisms – and hopefully eradicating plainly stupid mistakes.

So finally, this gets me to the point at which the book can have its final edit, picking up on word choices and grammatical errors, and then it gets a proofread, before I format it for e-book or paperback, or other formats. For me, too, the most important thing is that this whole process gets the book written in weeks, for the first full draft, and a few months from start to finish. That’s definitely better (for me) than a decade.

It’s taken me since 2007 to discover that this process works for me, every time. That’s a long time, and has involved a lot of trial and error, and a lot of giving up on one way or doing something and trying a new one. It may or may not work for you. Everyone has to find their own writing processes. There is an awful lot of help and advice for new writers and experienced ones alike, and some of the advice may be useful to you. And some may not. The thing is, you have no way of knowing what kind of processes work for you until you try them out. It may even be that the process you discover works for one kind of story or book but doesn’t work for another, especially if the story is in a different genre to the previous one, or it’s a novel instead of a short story, or a play instead of a novella.

All a writer can really do is take note of all the good advice out there and sift through it, trying out different ways of working until one, or a few, work for you. From personal experience, too, I would have to say listen to your instincts. If you know you’re the kind of writer who likes mind maps instead of lists, then use them. If you know you like being clear on the end of the story and then figuring out how the characters get to that point, do so. Everyone works differently, everyone has different demands on their time. Writing is a creative process; if you’re a writer, let yourself be creative in ways that you discover work best for you.

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Free on Kobo for one week only!

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Do you read your e-books on a Kobo device? Have you got the Kobo app on your mobile or tablet? And do you love historical psychological crime and suspense books? If so, you’re in luck!

I’m delighted to say that The Secrets That Haunt Us is included in a Kobo deal for crime, mystery and suspense books. For one week only, The Secrets That Haunt Us is available to download from Kobo, worldwide, for FREE from Monday 16th to Sunday 22nd August.

If you’ve not encountered the book before, let me enlighten you:

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Dark and haunting secrets, lies, betrayal and vengeance.

A diary that holds an unbearable secret. Misplaced jealousy with devastating consequences. Threatening letters which unearth traumatic memories and have the power to destroy lives. One man, back from the dead, who has only one thing on his mind – vengeance.

Set in 1970s England on the day of the Women’s Liberation March, this is a novel of four people’s haunting memories, shadows of the past and truths that threaten to destroy them.

When the lines between memory and reality are blurred, and honesty is more devastating than the secrets that haunt us, what do you do? Do you ignore it? Do you try to protect those you love? Or do you seek revenge?

Some secrets can’t be forgiven.

PLEASE NOTE: This book was previously published as Baby up the Chimney.

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You can find The Secrets That Haunt Us on Kobo here. If you’re searching for your free copy on Monday 16th, please allow time for Kobo to filter the price through to your country – time zones may skew this a bit!

Please do take this chance to download your freebie copy, and don’t be shy – tell your friends! I’d love the book to be read by as many readers as possible who enjoy historical psychological crime and suspense books. 😊

If you read on any other device and buy your e-books from a different store, you can still buy your copy (with grateful thanks from this author!). You can buy it on your preferred store here.

The Secrets That Haunt Us by Claire Ladds ebook

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Spell the Month in Books: August

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It’s August and here in the UK it’s the height of summer (as I write this it’s pouring with rain!). When I was a kid, I was often encouraged to go outside and play in the lovely weather. Truth be told, all I really wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and read a book, hoping that the summer holidays would pass quickly and I could go back to school. I absolutely loved school, and I couldn’t stand the hot weather, so six weeks off was like torture. Luckily, I loved being at home, too, and I created reading areas in the shade. One year, my neighbourhood friends and I used my dad’s trailer shelter as a den. It was pretty good reading in there, too, if somewhat dark! (This same den is fictionalised in my Hearts & Crimes novel, The Secrets That Haunt Us).

Suffice to say that summertime became a reading frenzy for me. If you’d like a bit of mystery-oriented summer reading, then just maybe I can help you out with my August Spell the Month in Books list.

Anthem for Doomed Youth – Carola Dunn

This is the 19th Daisy Dalrymple book, and I am hooked on them! I have really enjoyed following Daisy’s exploits and the developments in her life. Daisy herself is perfectly feisty and astute, while maintaining a great wit and managing her relationships with her “interesting” family members, and her romance with DCI Alec Fletcher.

Anthem for Doomed Youth sees Daisy visiting their daughter at school – to the relief of Alec’s boss who warns Alec to keep Daisy from meddling in their newest case. Three unidentified bodies have turned up in Epping Forest, shot through the heart and Scotland Yard wants it cleared up ASAP. But just because Daisy isn’t there, doesn’t mean she’s not entangled in murder. And she can’t really help herself because a teacher at their daughter’s school ends up dead…

If you like 1920s murder mysteries with a light-handed touch, then the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple might just be your cup of aristocratic tea.

Unexpected Guest (The) – Agatha Christie (play novelised by Charles Osborne)

I became a real fan of Agatha Christie’s plays a number of years ago, some of which I have as an original stage play, and some which have been novelised. My version of The Unexpected Guest is a novelisation of Agatha Christie’s play, written by Charles Osborne, but I’ve linked above to the original stage play.

A man manages to send his car into a ditch in South Wales on a dreadful foggy night. Having escaped the car, he seeks out shelter and finds an isolated house. When he enters through the patio doors, he discovers a woman standing over her exceedingly dead, wheelchair-bound husband, complete with a gun in her hand. The man says he will help her create a cover story. But it’s clear that the woman is not guilty of murder – so who is she protecting? There are a whole house-full of suspects, and it must be one of them. But who?

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this book. Christie’s original play is fantastic and this novelisation has been exceedingly well written by Charles Osborne. The mystery runs hand-in-hand with suspense. What I particularly love about this is that the narrator is not completely clean cut and innocent – after all, he does offer to concoct an alibi for someone who appears to be a murderer! I’m really glad I chose this book for my August list as the play itself had its debut performance on 12th August, 1958 and it’s been performed many, many times since!

Guilty Consciences – Ed. Martin Edwards

This is a crime collection I have had on my shelf for a while and am ashamed to say that I haven’t yet read from cover to cover. Of course, books of short stories have the advantage that you can read them (usually) in any order.

This anthology brings together seventeen stories by members of the Crime Writers Association, and includes stories by esteemed authors such as Ann Cleeves, Peter James and HRF Keating, among others. The stories I have read so far have all the hallmarks of great mysteries and I am absolutely sure that I’m going to love reading the entire collection.

I would have loved to have linked to this book for you, but I haven’t been able to find it at the time of writing. If I do come across a copy, I’ll add it in here as an update.

Unnatural Habits – Kerry Greenwood

I first came across Kerry Greenwood’s mystery novels set in 1920s Australia and which give us the exploits of the high society Phryne Fisher as a series on the TV. I enjoyed the Phryne Fisher Mysteries series so much that I began buying the novels, and I haven’t been disappointed.

Phryne and her maid-sidekick, Dot, get to investigate when young, pretty, blonde girls begin to go missing from the Magdalene laundry. All of them are pregnant and there’s a big cover-up afoot. But Phryne has no intention of allowing these girls to vanish into oblivion.

What I really enjoy about Phryne is her feistiness and her refusal to give up on anyone, regardless of race or class. She treats everyone equally and, despite social tensions, she has the ability to cross those invisible borders and isn’t above investigating the most heinous and lowlife of crimes. Her sense of justice is profound. She is one of my favourite high society female sleuths.

Something Wicked – David Roberts

Originally, I think I bought this book for two reasons: firstly, I had just completed my Masters dissertation which I wrote on Agatha Christie, and the main text that I worked with was the Tommy and Tuppence novel, By the Pricking of my Thumbs; secondly the title reminded me of the Ray Bradbury book, Something Wicked This Way Comes. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion, therefore, that I’d end up buying Something Wicked!

However, I have not actually read this book (hence no recommendation link), but I can tell you what it is about. This is book 8 of a 10 book series about Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. Verity has returned to England with suspected tuberculosis, and also now engaged to Lord Edward. She checks into a clinic where – surprise, surprise – Edward has to go and investigate a series of murders. He’s there because his dentist has died rather suspiciously, and so have two other patients. As war approaches and hangs over them all, Edward and Verity need to find out what, or who is casting a shadow of threat over them.

Two for Sorrow – Nicola Upson

This novel is part of the series of mysteries which fictionalise the author Josephine Tey as sleuth. In this novel, Josephine wants to write about the perpetrators of a thirty year old baby farming case. Her friend, Inspector Archie Penrose, is on a case involving the murder of a seamstress which at first glance seems to be part of a domestic fight. But it becomes clear that her death is linked to another murder – and someone wants the past to remain buried.

I find the Josephine Tey books to be extremely in depth and darker than a lot of “cozy” mystery fiction set in between the wars. Personally, I like this more sinister element of the cozy. To my mind, cozy crime fiction does not have to be light-hearted; its defining feature is that it does not have bloodshed “on the page”. Nicola Upson’s series delves deeply into the darker motivations and means of criminals, and it feels to me very much like historical crime fiction. Maybe it’s because my own work has a dark edge that I like the Josephine Tey series as much as I do.

Well, there you have it: my Spell the Month in Books for August. As always, for transparency, some of the books I mention contain my affiliate links for US readers. I only ever use affiliate links on books I have personally read and have enjoyed. You can search for the books without clicking through on this post, of course! 🙂

I hope that a book or two that I’ve mentioned here might encourage you to try a new author or a new crime and mystery-filled book, be it a novel or a short story collection. Have you read any of my August list, or are any of them among your favourites? Be sure to tell me in the comments.

Joy is a bubble: complete crime short story

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When a reader wants to try out a new author, or a new series by an author, I’ve often wondered what it is that makes someone want to give that book they’ve found online or in a bookstore a whirl. I know that, for me, it’s sometimes the cover that attracts me, and sometimes it’s the book title. The blurb on the back, or on the online store page, can be the factor that intrigues me, too. It’s also possible (because I’m human without an indefinite depth to my wallet, like many people) that I might well be intrigued by a price that seems reasonable to try out the book I’ve found. It may even be that I’ve managed to find a snippet of the book posted by the author and decided I really fancy giving the rest of it a go. I have to say that I’ve made a number of audiobook purchases by listening to the free sample first.

Like any author, I love people to want to read my books. I love to be able to tempt new readers to try out my series. Most of all, I love to find the right readers – those who feel that my books resonate with them. No matter what I write, whether it’s the Hearts & Crimes series, or the new crime and suspense series I have coming up soon, or the Victorian detective series that I’m planning to start releasing next year, all my books have the same qualities – something dark and unnerving lurking in the minds and hearts of the characters, suspense (sometimes strong and tense and sometimes subtle), a deep emotional connection of some kind, a twist, and a murder (or sometimes more!).

If you’ve never come across my short story collection, The Reason for Everything and other short stories, then I thought today’s blog post would be a good place to share a complete crime short story with you from this collection. So here you go…! 😊

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Joy is a bubble

There’s a man sitting on the riverbank, gnome-like, with a fishing rod in his hand. All he needs, she thinks, is a pointy red hat and he’ll look just like the ugly little statue in next-door’s garden. She hadn’t noticed him as she went down to the newsagent, muttering her list of things-to-do to herself. She stands now, holding the newspaper, the packet of cigarettes she was expected to fetch hidden in her handbag, and a mental note to ask for the money this time, watching the little fairytale action taking place right below her.

The human gnome stranger casts his line then sits in silence, with a Tupperware box of sandwiches waiting their turn on top of the wicker fishing basket, not to be confused with the second tub containing a Dolly Mixture assortment of maggots. She hadn’t realised they came in so many colours. She can see them, wriggling en-mass in the tub, their sense of desperate urgency mimicking the squirming that’s going on just below the surface algae in the deep green secret land of ‘keep net’, while the white float with the psychedelic orange tip bobs half way across the water.

Suddenly the white vanishes, and the man proves he’s better, cleverer than the fish; she watches, gripping tightly onto the newspaper as the scaly sliver whirls past her vision and into the man’s hand. She watches him remove the hook from the fish’s face then hurl the creature into the keep net to join the rest of the mystery in the green pool. Catching sight of a big stone, she has the urge to throw it and hit the man on the head – see how he likes being bashed about, having his skin damaged, cast aside to keep for later – but she knows she won’t.

Her fingers hurt and she realises how tightly she’s holding the newspaper that’s not for her, either. The sweat has seeped into the print and left grubby smears in regular oval patches on the front page. Something for him to have a go at her about over breakfast, and he won’t even need to look hard this morning. She starts to feel ever so slightly sick; it’s the empty belly, she tells herself. She needs to get some breakfast. She needs to go home. She sighs, but it’s an inaudible one because she’s used to making them that way. Her face adopts its invariable impassive ghostly expression, ready for the kitchen and the multitude of sins she’ll commit at breakfast.

But then, just briefly, she catches sight of something on the water. There, in the keep net, expanding on the river’s surface, a series of penny-sized bubbles catch the early morning shards of sunlight. They wink back up at her in a glorious rainbow of colour, and she smiles back at the sign of life under the water. As a kid she used to sit on the bank and watch the bubbles rise to the surface when the fish came up to gobble the air. Little bubbles; she’d had to concentrate to see them. Once she sat there for over an hour, waiting. She spotted one. It sat, alone on the surface, and a wet tear surprised her cheek as she smiled at it. Then he came along with his school shirt rolled up to his elbows and scudded a stone across the surface, and the bubble was gone. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t even notice she was there at first. Then he grinned, and scooted off on his bike. She didn’t see any more bubbles on the surface that afternoon.

Without warning, the fisher gnome gathers in his line, and grabs the keep net, hurling his captives back into the algae. All at once the bubbles are forced into the algae, too, and they burst on contact. And she thinks how sad it is that the bubbles must burst and that things must end.

She leaves the gnomish sadist and makes her way back along the dirt track where the grass bank stretches beyond her vision, then round the curbing pathway in front of the cul-de-sac of Council bungalows and its artificially planted beech trees, that grow haphazardly on the patches of grass in between the parking bays. The milkman is still out on his rounds, such as they are now, and she stops to listen, eyes closed momentarily, to the chink of glass against hard plastic as he lifts the bottles from the deep ocean blue crate and takes them to number 27. He catches her eye and smiles, waves, and she returns the gesture. He’ll have been to her house already and the milk will still be sitting in the doorway, already in the sun, by the time she gets home. It’s already heating up outside. Another scorcher due. She sighs. She hopes it won’t taste funny. He’ll let her know in no uncertain terms if it is. It’ll be her fault. And her job to clear up the cereal running down the wall, and the bits of broken bowl. She should have got home quicker. He’ll tell her that it’s not worth having the milkman, that they can get their milk from the supermarket. No one relies on the milkman anymore. But she does. He brings her what she needs every day. Just like the postman. Just for a moment she glances up and down the street, wondering whether he is already on his rounds, too.

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