IT was a clear early spring day, the breeze light and the sands empty. Sea and land seemed to go on forever, their divisions blurred by light and distance. Brigitte Wetherby breathed in the salty air

EACH year, before the holiday brochures landed, John’s seed catalogue arrived in the post. Ellen waited, knowing its arrival would bring a flood of memories she wasn’t strong enough to deal with. She

AS I hang my clothes in the wardrobe of the hotel room we’re sharing, I feel my sister Clare’s eyes on me. Through a mirror, I catch the thoughtful look on her face. It’s a look that’s often there, bu

IT was one of those overheard snatches of conversations that immediately makes you keen to hear the rest of it. “You know, I really wasn’t in the mood to go,” the woman on the seat in front of me was

NATALIE had done it again: spoken without thinking. Honestly, she sometimes thought she consisted of two people. There was the sensible Natalie who recycled her cardboard, and an inner, loose-lipped N

When writer Sheila M Averbuch and her husband moved into their Pencaitland home in East Lothian over 20 years ago, the garden was little more than a flat upper lawn with a steep slope down to the bung