TOM! What are you doing here?” I stopped gazing at the empty space in the centre of the table, to throw myself into my fiancé’s arms. “You’re not supposed to be here until tonight,” I told him. “I dec

DAD’S THE WORD Joe Swash (left) spoke to ...

ISOBEL had known that living in her old childhood home would bring back memories. However, she never expected so many, or for them to be so vivid. Sometimes, in the last minutes before waking, she ima

TWO choc ices and an orange Kia-Ora, please.” He didn’t need to tell me what he wanted. As soon as the house lights went up, and he appeared in the aisle, I was already reaching into the illuminated t

IN the rear of her stationary motor-taxi, a young milliner reached up a careful gloved hand to pat her black-felt cloche, snug on her smart, fair curls. Constance Smart had been sitting patiently for

ONE OF THE MOST GRIMLY FUNNY POEMS OF the past century is Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” with its opening salvo about how our parents invariably mess us up. Larkin used a saltier word for “mess,