My mother’s decision to send me away to the Sisters of Eden Convent School to complete my education was made, she claimed, for entirely altruistic reasons; to save my soul and to instil the ‘necessary discipline’ to enable a young woman to survive and flourish in a harsh and increasingly immoral world. However, as she began to enthusiastically strip bare my wardrobe and feed items of my clothing and other essentials into...

The Tuscan sun was quietly burning off the last wisps of grey morning mist from around the rising cypress spires in the near distance as two cars arrived at the villa, grinding the gravel under their wheels like strong waves breaking on shingle. My mother lifted the palms of her hands towards my face and allowed them to brush the outline of my veil, as though anything more than the lightest touch would cause it to dispers...

Later that evening I chased like a child through the wide-open meadows of my mind, carefully sweeping as many of my butterfly thoughts into a delicate net as I could. The beach was now empty and only the sleepy ghosts of happy days remained. A tired sun, its dwindling energy spreading like a worn, burnished cape around it, was balancing uneasily on the far horizon. The darkening sea was giving up cool hints of her salt-sc...

I arrived home utterly exhausted after my first full day at Berman Bruce. I went straight to my bedroom and closed the door. I popped open the side button of my skirt, lowered the zip, cautiously eased the tight material over my bottom and allowed it to fall to the floor. The cheeks of my bottom were still smarting fiercely; a burning reminder of my disobedience. I positioned myself in front of the full length mirror and...

When I awoke the following morning, my eyelids steadfastly resisted my initial attempts to open them. My night’s sleep had been punctuated by a patchwork of semi-lucid dreams which had left my head feeling furry. Within moments my mind turned back to my meeting with Veronica the previous evening. I spent several seconds lightly rubbing the heels of the palms of my hands against my unwilling eyes in an attempt to hurry alo...

“People can commit many sins. But the most grievous sins of all are the sins of not knowing your true self, and even worse, of fearing it.” Dr Sandor Kardos Part One: Dr Kardos The unexpected arrival, nine months previously, of an itinerant Hungarian psychologist had produced an unfamiliar mélange of suspicion and curiosity among the inhabitants of Puente de Almas, a relatively small, off-the-beaten-track town nestling di...

The easiest decision of my life had been to undertake a law degree; the most difficult had become deciding what to do with it. In spite of three years of relentless study, locked away in a law library with little on my mind beyond the obsessive desire to obtain a first class honours degree, when I eventually achieved that ambition I realized that I had no real idea what to do next. It was the summer of 1993. My mother, on...

Lydia stepped out of the shower cubicle, leaving the foaming traces of her day to drain and dissipate in the humid silence. She wound a wide, white towel tightly around herself and moved through to her living room, leaving glassy footprints behind her on the dark wood floor. The letting agency had described the apartment as ‘cosy’. Lydia would have described it as claustrophobic. She found it funny how two people could vi...

Sarah had been in Paris for some six months when, out of the blue, I received a call from her asking if she could come and stay with me at my apartment in Rome for a week or two. Of course I said yes. I had not seen Sarah since we left college in Chicago three years previously and went our separate ways. She, with the ultimate aim of becoming a writer, went to work for a small publishing company in New York. I, on the oth...

I move within the light and shade, Drawn deep within the dark displayed Within words wild, unharnessed, penned By the low bell. And we to the dream descend Like lovers, dark and formless, who ever need The sudden kiss of rod and reed. And then, the bitter, silent freeze That seals our souls. By slow degrees A silence falls, a void remains. Sweet poison flowing in our veins. Who is the fool? Who is the wise? Who plays the...

A few months after the German occupation of France in June 1940, Emilio Vargas, an émigré carpenter of Andalusian heritage who had moved to Carcassone in the early 1930s to seek work, decided to return to Spain with his French wife of two years, Elise, who was then eight months pregnant with their first child. Under cover of darkness, in late November 1940, they left their home and made their journey south in their rapidl...

It is the perfect echo of that day. Leaves on the lawn, gold and green. They lie where they fall, rich and restive, kissed by a cooling sun. Bare branches are once more braced against the snap. The world is huddling into itself. Warm breath finds cool air. An ice-blue sky with the flavour of mint. All is texture. Time is a flywheel whirring in reverse, whistling softly. Today I will take the metro, at the same time of cou...

Annalise and Daniel have been married for six years but now she is alone again, as she has been so many times before, her wine-washed thoughts tumbling like kaleidoscope colours in a long, hollow chamber. She looks across the table to the chair he deserted over three hours ago, and reflects on the marriage he deserted long before that. The clock on the wall is whispering; a gentle ticking like the sound of a lone cricket...

Sweet aromas of love, air scented, another world Wild thoughts move in the heart of the girl, And slowly awaken what lies beneath a surface tense With heart-whispered, soft-petal promises. Carried to this early morning moment On the white-winged breath of an easy dream, Heaven-given, heaven-sent. She is here. I will touch, I will sense, in angelic time, Her heart, my heart. Hers to mine. I will watch her shadow disappear,...