Family secrets

Apart from the For Sale board, the house didn’t look any different from the last time I was here. Six months ago now. The day of my father’s funeral. A memory of how fragile my mother appeared that da

Trish realised that she had something that money can’t buy

YOU can’t just throw it all in a skip, Mum!” Bryony’s voice was muffled by a dust mask as she crouched in the loft space, carefully avoiding bumping her head on the beams. She examined a battered trun

WHEN Kate had decided, at the age of fifty-five, to reduce her working hours and go part-time at her job, she had imagined filling her extra days off with all kinds of exciting adventures. Instead, sh

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

I wish my parents hadn’t called me Sheila. My friends all had exotic names like Juliet or Charlotte or Justine, while I spent my childhood having to deal with a barrage of Waltzing Matilda jokes and f