Joanne Harris

All the same

getting in the way

However, her real talent, like all women, was for emotion,

sun was veiled, as it was for most of that summer, but the sky was hot and pale, bleeding the air of oxygen and the countryside of colour.

Fields, trees, flowers all looked to be varying shades of grainy grey, like the screen on Maggie’s black-and-white portable.

They were safe, he told himself. Safe. Protected.

Her eyes gleamed slyly, that cat’s-eye marble green reflecting the colourless sky.

It was dark, and there was a smell of sour earth and cigarette smoke.

Assorted rubbish spilled out across the floor. Make-up, empty lemonade bottles, comics. A battered transistor radio, sweets in a glass jar. A paper bag filled with fireworks, bangers and jumping-jacks and Black Cats in their

Again normality was restored.

For a while.