Mrs. Valerie Peters, youre looking after the boys, arent you? Can we count on you? Olivia stared pleadingly at her motherinlaw. Valerie smiled at the two...
17March Im sitting on the edge of the old terraced flat in Manchester, the flickering glow of the TV still washing the cracked plaster in a...
It was said that he was brighter than any lantern. Miss, do you agree? a man’s voice, pleading, sounded through the receiver. Very well, let us...
Happy birthday, Dad! John Whitaker was about to turn seventy, having raised three children on his own. His wife, Margaret, had died three decades earlier, and...
Dear Diary, I own a chain of jewellery shops right here in London. My father helped get the business off the ground, and now, at forty,...
Mom, can you imagine if I got into Oxford? Their linguistics department is topnotch; Ive read on forums that graduates end up at the UN, even...
Emily burst through the front door, eager to surprise her husband. But as she stepped inside She scurried from room to room, stuffing the most essential...
The flat was stifling, and Ethel drifted to the window. The heat had already settled, though a faint breeze brushed the curtains. It must be me...
15June Today I found myself on a night shift when a colleagues voice drifted over the open office door. He was snapping at the phone, Take...
Miss, are you sure about this? I heard a mans trembling voice over the telephone. All right, lets give it a go, I replied, a little...
Ill never forget the night I brought my wife, Eleanor, home from St.Marys Hospital in Devon. Shed given birth to...
The Hawthorne manor sits quiet almost every dayspotless, chilled, and costly. Jonathan Hawthorne, a millionaire always in a sharp suit...
Ellie had always lived, as the saying goes, by the book, trudging along a dull, overused lane with her head...
Enough! Im done carrying the whole lot of you on my back! No more penniesgo feed yourselves however you wish!...
The street was bustling today, as it always is in spring when the city finally feels the warm sun after...
Her boss Sally was hurrying to the office, dreadfully lateshe imagined the nightmare of standing before the editorinchief without having...
Youre a burden, not a wife, my motherinlaw announced, her voice cutting through the chatter as I was refilling the...
The old matriarch, Margaret Whitcombe, tended to her potted ferns on the sill, each leaf glistening like tiny lanterns. Suddenly...
Go on and trash your mum all you like, but if you utter another word about my mother that I...
Im Thomas Miller, a farmhand from the little village of Somerby in North Yorkshire, and Ill tell you how Valerie...