Nell stared at the book on the table on Tom’s side of the double bed and, for the first time, understood the phrase ‘winded in the solar plexus’. The object that had triggered this response was, on the surface, perfectly innocuous. It was a volume of the selected poems of Thomas Hardy. Poetry? In twenty…

‘Charlie and I want a small wedding,’ I announced to my parents. ‘No fuss. Just you and Charlie’s parents.’ I had chosen to inform them of these plans when we were washing up in the kitchen after one of my mother’s staggering Sunday lunches. My mother put down a saucepan she was drying. ‘Small?’ She…

Of what do you think when you hear the word 'compost'? Perhaps you shudder, and mutter 'muck'. Perhaps you shrug and say that it is not a subject worthy of discussion. But I think of a dark chocolate pudding steamed to perfection. Yes, brown- black, damply sodden and textured like a sponge. It is not…

Kitty regarded Jack with a pair of enormous, luminous eyes which threatened to spill over. 'You're right,' she said. 'We must not renege on our philosophies …' These being those which, separately and together as philosophy students and lovers, they had thrashed out in public and private. Yet, as they searched for the way to…