Sob Story Once upon a time there was an old woman who lived the most boring life in the universe. That woman rarely left her bungalow, except to see the doctor, help at the charity shop, or visit the cemetery.…
ApologiesSorry. That was a bit grand and melancholy. Talking about myself in the third person. I am just setting the scene. It’s going to be fun, despite that introduction. And, like so many of life’s fun things, it will begin…
The Inability to Feel PleasureI was upside down when I decided to go to Ibiza. The surgery bed I was lying on was tilted so far back I thought I was going to slip off. There was a mirror on…
The Life Impossible – Matt Haig PineapplesThe letter had been an unusual one. It had informed me that I had been left a property in Ibiza, Spain, belonging to someone called Christina van der Berg. This Christina van der Berg…
An Ongoing Situation. ‘Sorry if this is too direct,’ I told the solicitor. ‘But how did she die?’ ‘I thought you knew,’ she said. Mrs Una Kemp. A voice like it had only just come out of the fridge and…
The Life Impossible .14159‘No two legs are ever the same …’ said the surgeon. ‘Even on the same person. Even if they look identical. The veins are always a different pattern. It’s like fingerprints.’ And there was something about what…
Conversations with the DeadOn the way to the cemetery I passed my old boss – and your old headteacher, Mr Gupta – leaving a coffee shop. After some small talk he asked me how I was doing, and I was…
The Tall Rock On the plane to Ibiza, I sat in front of a row of young people talking excitedly about nightclubs. It sounded like a new but half-familiar language. A kind of code. ‘So … Ushuaïa tomorrow, Monday DC-10…
I had a small tartan suitcase and an address and an envelope with a key inside. That was it. That was everything. A world condensed. ‘What hotel?’ the taxi driver asked me, smiling, as he placed my case in the…
The driver had seen me looking at the bicycle and thought I was interested in the shop. He seemed to be trying to make up for his earlier awkwardness at seeing the address. ‘Ibiza is an island of salt. They…
We were pulling over now. We were here. A desolate place with nothing around but traffic. The only picture I had seen had been of the exterior, reprinted onto a letter, and, like my eyes, was not of very good…
And there I was, on the asphalt in the sunshine. My swollen feet desperate to be released from their shoes. I wished I had worn my easy-fit sandals, but they had seemed a bit too outré this morning, when I…
I walked around the place. I was looking for answers, but I couldn’t find any. I saw a dried and probably dead potted plant in the bedroom on the chest of drawers, drooping and brown. A peace lily, I think.…
If you are reading this, you made the right decision. This house isn’t much, but it is everything I own. I wanted to thank you. Your kindness all those years ago saved my life. I know it sounds melodramatic, but…
It was a lovely letter. Any letter that gives you a car in the postscript has its bonuses. But I must admit it made me feel exhausted, troubled, and even more confused than I had been to begin with. I…
I needed to get out of the house. I needed to know what happened to Christina.
I felt uncertain. And this uncertainty was to intensify until I had to hear my own breath just to know I was real. A part of me wondered if I was now taking part in some elaborate prank. After all,…
I am not great at believing in the mystical. I think it is because I was raised a Catholic and have had a life full of unanswered prayers. I wouldn’t say I am totally unreligious. But even when I was…
I am telling you this for what will follow, so that you really know where I am coming from. I am not prone to far-fetched nonsense. I think the moon landings were real and that the Earth is, roughly speaking,…
Christina’s car was a reluctant old thing. I sat in it a while, breathed in the stale upholstery, looking for clues about her life. There was nothing in there except an empty bottle of diet lemonade and a half-eaten packet…
I noticed a small dark tattoo on Rosella’s arm. A circle and a horizontal line that meet on the top of the vertex of a triangle. Off the horizontal line were two short upright lines on either side. Like the…
On my return to the house, I noticed a plant growing right outside the front door. It was quite tall, nearly reaching my knees, with thin yellow petals, right in the middle of the dusty path. Though tall, the flower…
I was hungry and in need of a drink. I washed down some bread and cheese with a gin and tonic while sitting on Christina’s little sofa, half-watching a dubbed version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I have…
I went online. I had brought my laptop—my ten-year-old laptop with a Harley-Davidson sticker on it. It had been Karl’s; the Harley-Davidson sticker was meant to add a frisson of danger to his civil engineer life—so upgrading it would have…