Filling in

THE boy was a scrawny little thing with some smudges on his face. He stood in our hall with a label tied to his small case and another pinned on his clothes, just staring around at everything as if he

THE salt air tugged at her hair, carrying the scent of seaweed. Donna had spent years building towards this, chasing figures in spreadsheets, negotiating contracts, dreaming of the day she and Ben wou

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1944, a young soldier from Newcastle married the love of his life with barely four hours to spare. My father, Corporal George Bell, a conscript with the Royal Electrical

Ben hunched over in the cab of the lorry, eyes cast down, earphones firmly in place. He tugged his hoodie further over his face and ramped up his music, trying to drown out his stepdad, along with the

I WAS a nightmare in the early days of my marriage, I admit it. I’d met Johnny on a skiing holiday in Courchevel, where we’d both gone with groups of chums. Johnny was the most daring of us and the be

MAX swept his hair out of his eyes, but the wind blew it back again. He must get to the barber but he’d been so busy lately. It was a blustery day. The long grasses around him rippled like waves, and