Creative Writing Ink Short Story Competition 2024: Winner, Runners-up, Shortlist and Longlist

We are delighted to announce this years Creative Writing Ink competition winner, two runners up and an honourable mention.

The standard of submissions was incredibly high making it difficult to choose a winner.

Our judge, Helen Moorhouse, has now named the winner, Jon Stapley with his entry ‘Slop’.

Congratulations to the winner, runners-up and shortlisted entrants of the Creative Writing Ink Short Story Competition 2024!

Winner

‘Slop’

Jon Stapley

Chair feels loose. Squeaky. Paranoid it could suddenly drop, like first week on
channel, first shaky week. Fell eight inches, shrieked like a girl. Went viral. Embarrassing.
Better, since then. Better.
Remember eye contact. Into camera. Looking away implies something to hide, and
there’s nothing to hide; slop’s good today. There’s drownings; they like drownings. There’s
Eric Croshire; they lo-o-o-ove Eric Croshire. He’s been on every other day it feels like—he’s
running again, looks like he might win, so he’s cramming airtime. Works for us. Good
business.
Not here yet though. Was meant to be here for show-start, but message came: Eric’s
delayed, go without him, he’ll be there soon. Annoying. But what can you do?
Two minutes, Theo.
Face-powder’s too thick again. Like I’m caked in clay. Thought it might improve
after make-up boy finally quit, but this new girl’s somehow worse. Alan used to despair: That
boy painted you up like a slapper again, he’d say, Honestly Theo, I don’t know why you keep
him around, I truly don’t.
Wonder if Alan’s watching tonight. Said he wouldn’t. Said a lot of things.
One minute, Theo.
Saw AI porn with my face on this morning. Head wasn’t right. Shouldn’t have
looked. It’s okay. Cost of business. Cost of being a fuckable twink in the public eye.
Thirty seconds, Theo.
‘Hey. Yes, you. Here’s an idea—see this empty glass? Why don’t you put some
fucking water in it, rather than staring at it?’
Yes, Theo. Sorry, Theo.
Mummy would kill you for talking like that. You let it go to your head.
Ten seconds.
Can feel them through the black lens aperture, waiting. Hundred-thousand hogs, eyes
glittering. They’re hungry. It’s time for the slop.
Five,
four,
silent,
silent,
silent.
‘Good evening.’
Voice scratchy.
‘Tonight—’
Mustn’t crack.
‘—as yet another—’
Mustn’t crack. Alan used to drop by with lozenges.
‘—sinks off—’
He’d tell me off for biting when supposed to suck, and I’d say something that’d make
him flustered, ha ha.
‘—we ask, what will—’
Monologue’s shit. Knew it was shit this morning, told them to punch it up, to stop
feeding me to the fucking chatbot, and they took it away and changed nothing, so what does
that tell you? What does that make you? Idiot barking dog. Well not this time. Someone’s
eating shit for this. Don’t have to take this.
‘—closer to home—’
No, come on, Theo. Freddie at Four may chew his autocue like cud, but you’re better.
Got here by being exceptional, as the long-fingered editor would say, so be exceptional.
Long-fingered editor loved the E-word. First to use it, way back when. Exceptional, Theo. Of
all the essays in the competition, yours was exceptional.
Realised, later, he probably didn’t mean exceptionally good. Probably meant only one
going against orthodoxy of peers. Literal exception. But a sixteen-year-old doesn’t think that
way. A sixteen-year-old thinks: here’s my way in.
God, it got me in. Spunking cash on Orpington-London trains, but who cares when
you’re climbing from intern to liveblogger to reporter to columnist. Columnist at twenty,
youngest in paper’s history. Fuck uni. Fuck the lucky-sperms—you did it with grit, with
muscle. Bringing first paper home to show poor Guardian-reading Mummy; she’s half-proud,
half-despairing. Says she doesn’t understand how she made me, but that’s just it—she didn’t.
Dad neither. I’m my own beast.
Could probably find Dad now. But won’t. Let him recognise his own eyes glittering
through his shithole television. Let realisation hit just at the wrong moment. Let him choke
on his doner meat.
‘—so-called peaceful occupation—’
He left the instant Mummy felt me in her belly. She told me again and again not to get
married, ‘cos they’ll only leave you, but then she cried happy-tears when I told her Alan had
proposed, in the snow on the Angel road, so what does that tell you?
We were not long together then, Alan and I. Just two years since we met—green
room, Radio 4. Shared joke about the awful coffee, then off to the races. Had been hunting
for an older man, and here, a specimen. Gallery owner. Wine-knower. Directing am-dram
production of Noises Off. Independent businessman, but couldn’t add two and two without
getting five. Sophisticated, yet helpless. Something sexy there.
‘—than these purple-haired zealots deserve—’
Ad-libbed the purple-haired thing. Hogs hate purple hair. Can feel them snuffling;
yes, we’re cooking now. Exceptional work. God, nothing like this. Nothing like knowing
you’re irreplaceable.
Us hosts, when we’re alone, we admit it. Went rooftop-hopping once with Charlotte
Dickinson from the Morning Show and she said never take it for granted, this, ‘cos we’ve
earned the right to play like this. Had never thought of this as play before, but I just said:
Exactly, exactly, so true. Then ordered more sangria.
Great night. Felt less alone when Charlotte talked about the long-fingered editor. Not
just you. Cost of business. We hit tequila and mingled smoke and when she said only
gayboys know how to kiss properly, we kissed, but no further—relief, ‘cos I was soft as a
sock. Gayboy stays gay, more as we get it, ha ha.
‘—heavens for sensible Brits, who stand up for our values. Because of you—’
Bit sycophantic, but point made. That’s the kind of note Alan would’ve given: note
without note, already taken back by the time it ends. He watched daily at first—no mean feat
for a man who could barely remember the Prime Minister’s name. After a while, every other
day. Then, sporadically. Then not at all. Didn’t mind. One less thing to worry about.
Voice in ear. Eric Croshire still delayed. Take some calls. Switchboard.
‘—your say, the number’s on the screen. Let’s go to Jerry in Wolverhampton; Jerry
you’re on with Theo Darcy, what’s—’
The National Trust, hog splutters. It’s the damn National Trust. Very heavy breathing,
this one. Wonder if he’s on oxygen; our audience is quantifiably more emphysemic than
average. Takes him a while to get it all out.
‘—excellent point, Jerry. It shows how these people undermine our institutions—’
Done. Next.
‘—Pauline, you’re on with Theo—’
Fat voice. Sock. She just wants them to integrate, that’s all. She actually doesn’t mind
them being here; she’s very tolerant like that; she just thinks they ought to integrate. Not a
new thought, but you can’t fault it. Nobody ever faulted Elton John for playing the hits.
‘—well-said, Pauline, thank you—.’
She says thank you, Theo. Giggles. Supposed to be off sound now, so that’s another
person eating shit later. Didn’t need to hear her gush like that, right in my ear. Not exactly
news that plenty of hogs, female and male, find me arousing; glance at my emails could tell
you that. Still, don’t need to hear it.
‘—going to Richard in Penge—’
Used to read them.
‘—Richard, what’s—’
Used to look and read filthiest emails I could find. Would imagine they weren’t sent
by some shithole loser buried under rotting chow mein, but by a big dumb beefcake with
arms like bundles of ropes. That’s how things escalated with make-up boy. Kept working
myself up into a lather with filthy emails, and then he was there, and just easiest thing to pull
onto lap, so obliging. Thought he appreciated it. Guess not. Yes, better he’s gone. Better.
‘—soon, I know you’re all eager for this, Eric Croshire will be joining—’
Not yet, says ear-voice, not yet. Go to texts.
Break eye contact to read iPad. Keep mouth working. No silence; that’s the rule.
Never silence.
‘—message from Declan in Hounslow, who says his local buses are stuffed with—’
Lesser person would make fun of hog’s spelling of ‘buses’. Not me. My spelling’s
crap. Alan despaired: YOU’RE, he’d message, For Pete’s sake Theo, Y-O-U
APOSTROPHE-R-E.
Wasn’t malicious. Wanted me to be better. Thought if I could get apostrophes right, I
could be trusted to behave at artsy dinner parties. But then his friends would moan about the
simply horrendous treatment of these people or those people, so I’d ask if they’d have one in
their house. Just a question. Not my fault they’re hypocrites, I’d say in the cab home, Alan
clicking his tongue, hiding a smile. He’d tell me off after those dinners, but he’d invariably
fuck me, too, so what does that tell you?
‘—in Arbroath, Katherine says that when her daughter started claiming to—’
All too much for Alan, eventually. I was caught off guard at The Botanist when he
said he wanted me to stop. I asked what ‘stop’ meant, pretending not to know. Alan said he
was troubled. That the things I was saying were escalating—
Thought you stopped watching.
I tuned in yesterday, he said, While ironing. It was horrible, Theo. You never used to
be like this—
But that’s our business. Escalation! It’s how you keep them engaged. How you win.
Eric Croshire almost here, ear-voice saying.
‘—Edith in Hampshire, who’s sick of these vile perverts—’
Alan revealed he’d started lying when people asked him who I was, what I did. Said it
just wasn’t worth it. I pressed—but you agree! We talk about this all the time. Alan took off
glasses, pressed fingers into eyes, and said, Oh, I don’t know, I just think we get taxed too
much, and there should be British homes for British people—
Well this is how you get that, I told him. This is how you win.
You keep saying that, Theo. Win against who?
Make-up definitely too thick.
Eric Croshire is here, ear-voice says. Go to ads.
‘—back shortly. Stay with us’
Tried to get Alan to stay. Cried, made snot come out of nose. Promised to cool things
down and he said no, you won’t. Promised to look for another channel, and he said we both
know nowhere else would have you. Told him he needed to understand it was all play, all of
it, just play.
Not with you, Theo. It never is.
Left me with wine cellar I’d paid for. With half-completed home cinema. Don’t even
like films. Haven’t told Mummy yet. Haven’t told anyone.
Had to laugh when email came from make-up boy, subject line: eat shit!!!! With the
threats and demands and pictures and videos (GoPro hidden in Freddie at Four’s wig on
dressing table, very clever). What, pay up or you’ll send it to my husband, will you? You’ll
send it to the newspaper, with its long-fingered editor? Dear me, I’m sure he’ll be
scandalised. Crack on, you vile little grasper, I replied, raging, See what happens.
Probably shouldn’t have replied.
Movement in chair opposite. Eric Croshire sitting down. Red-faced, tight-collared.
Ads still running, so I lean over and say:
‘Hi, Eric, how’re you doing?’
But he doesn’t respond. Just sits and fiddles fingers in space where tie should be. Eyes
unfocused. Cheeks blotchier than usual.
One minute, Theo.
Eric Croshire runs fingers through what’s left of his hair and says: Jesus, I don’t think
I can do this.
‘What?’
Feel a tremor.
‘What do you mean?’
I—I’m not in the right frame of mind, for this. I don’t feel good.
‘Are you sick? Do you want a Red Bull?’
Eric Croshire, whispering, says: I saw my father today. I—it was the first time he
didn’t recognise me. I was prepared, I mean, they tell you to expect it. He’s in one of the best
places; it’s costing me a fucking fortune. But I got there and he just looked at me, and told me
to go find the slav girl, ‘cos he’d wet his bed. His voice was… I asked if he knew who I was,
and he said, Should I? So I just left him. Left him soaking in his own piss and came here,
Jesus Christ.
Forty seconds, Theo.
Alan buttons coat and closes door behind him.
‘Well, I never knew my father, and I’m still here.’
Eric looks at me for the first time, red-rimmed eyes disbelieving.
The fuck’s that got to do with anything, he says.
Thirty seconds.
‘My husband left me, and I’m still here. I’m being threatened, blackmailed, and I’m
still here. I mean, at your age, surely it’s a miracle your father’s even alive?’
Piss off, you little faggot, Eric hisses. To hell with you.
Twenty seconds, Theo.
Director calling over shoulder, distracted by something, not paying attention.
‘Our viewers are expecting you.’
What, your shut-ins and loonies? I think they’ll get over it.
Ten seconds.
Eric moves to get up, but my hand shoots out, grabs his sleeve.
What is this? Get off me!
Eric tries to pull away. I grip harder. Fingers white. He slaps my hand like it’s a
mosquito, get off, gerroff, but I cling on. He slaps again, so with my free hand I slap back; it
just feels right to slap back. And suddenly we’re flapping and slapping at each other like
women; his voice goes high, get off, gerroff, Brendan for christ’s sake get this faggot off me,
while I’m telling him to sit down, sit down, sit down and behave, sit down and be a good boy,
sit down, come on, sit down.
Eric pulls hard. His blazer tears and he falls backwards. Thud, clatter. Knocks
something over. Leaps up immediately, combover in tatters. He brushes lapels, glares, but
can’t think what to say. So just turns and stalks off. Goes wrong way. Has to double back to
find exit. Bangs fire doors hard.
Studio silent. Director gaping—prick’s paying attention now. Red light recording.
Transmitting. Unclear how much of that was broadcast. Some. Enough.
I’m silent too. No silence on-air—that’s the rule—but silent now. Crew won’t look at
me.
It’s becoming quite clear that this is it. Tomorrow, they’ll haul me in, suggest I take
time off, and if I say no they’ll just keep suggesting it. Won’t get fired, exactly, but won’t
come back.
Under hot lights, I’m understanding now that all that stuff about me being
irreplaceable, that was horseshit. As if they can’t find another twink who can read an autocue.
As if they don’t already have four on speed-dial.
Realise these are almost certainly my last moments on television. Maybe that’s why
they haven’t cut me off. Final kindness, like a cigarette.
I stand up. Walk out from behind desk, onto studio floor. Am I still in shot? Hope so.
Wonder if Alan’s watching.
Place one hand on stomach. Hear hogs snuffling, and give them a big, sweeping bow.
Could probably bump floor with nose—always been flexible—but there’s such thing as
restraint.
‘Thank you, everyone.’
Remember, eye contact.
‘I’ve been Theo Darcy, and if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat a big bowl of shit.’

Runners-up

‘Mum, Dad and Cleo’

Charlotte Leyden

I arrived first. The key was in a lock box by the gate. In her email, the owner said
little had changed, that it would feel just the same. But the front garden had been
paved, with fake planters and multi-coloured statues snaking a line along the path. It
used to be grass, with stepping stones formed from old slabs. As a child, I sat on
them, watching ants scuttle past, letting ladybirds tickle the back of my hands.
Inside the carpets were new, the brown paisley replaced with a sharp seagrass,
which scratched the underside of my bare feet as I walked through. The living room
was a sea of blue and white, with mass-produced nautical pictures cluttering the
walls. A laminated sign adorned the door with multiple capitalised statements
managing guest expectations on the strength of the wifi. The kitchen was littered with
more signs, telling us what to do, what not to expect. I put the three containers on
the table.
‘We’re here now, no more travelling.’
My phone beeped. Paul was ten minutes away.
I had expected him to cancel. He always cancelled. He had a job in television that
none of us understood, but involved spending his time with middle-aged male
comedians, many of whom had questionable views on trans rights. He talked a lot
about how difficult it was to succeed these days as a straight white man, and didn’t
understand when I laughed.
He found me upstairs in the old single room, lying on the bottom bunk, the mattress
creaking with my every move, unfamiliar with the weight of an adult.
He grinned at the sight of me on the bed.
‘This is fucking weird, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Fancy a beer? I brought some with me?’
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
I heard him trundle back down the stairs and the hiss of a can being opened. I closed
my eyes. The building still smelled the same, the scent of childhood holidays
unwieldy to every air freshener and coat of paint. If I concentrated really hard, I could
hear their voices, I could almost touch them.
I heard a second can open and went back downstairs. He asked me about work. He
told me he still tells people his sister’s a lawyer. I rolled my eyes. People laughed
when I told them my family found it harder to accept that I was giving up law than
giving up men.
Our phones beeped in unison. Paul raised one eyebrow. Amy’s train had been
delayed, a fatality on the line.
I winced.
‘Did she have to use the word debris?’
*****
‘I think there’s a negative energy in my room.’
We were sitting at breakfast, Mum, Dad and Cleo still on the table next to us. Amy
was eating seeds, Paul drinking a black coffee and I was scoffing toast.
Paul once told her that he’d seen a ghost in that room and no matter how many
times he was forced to apologise and admit it was a joke, she couldn’t shake it.
‘You can have the bunk beds if you’d like?’
She screwed up her nose at me. Wealth had not been good for her.
An alarm went off on her phone.
‘I need to go meditate.’
She left her bowl and various seeds on the table and glided upstairs.
‘Am I clearing that up then?’
Paul smiled.
‘You can’t interfere with timed relaxation.’
I washed up and cleaned the kitchen before we left.
*****
We stopped at the chippy for lunch. Amy was peering at the menu and Paul was
immediately impatient.
‘Ames, it’s a chippy, they sell what they sell, just choose something. You used to love
the scampi.’
‘Now I love blood flowing freely through my arteries. I’ll just have a bottle of water.’
Paul and I got chips, and the three of us sat on the benches by the pier. Amy
wrinkled her nose.
‘That food stinks.’
In truth I had put more vinegar on mine than I wanted, just to annoy her. She shuffled
to the far edge of the bench.
‘Do you remember when we used to go crabbing here in the evenings?’
Paul leant forward.
‘Well, I certainly remember the year when that local boy had a crush on Amy and he
came down here every evening, reeking of Lynx, to flirt with her.’
For a second, Amy smiled.
‘He bought me candyfloss and a bracelet from the stall by the beach.’
She paused.
‘Wasn’t that the same year that you both fancied the same lifeguard?’
Paul’s face glazed over.
‘She was so gorgeous, do you remember those tanned legs?’
I did. I really did.
Amy laughed again.
‘Remember when Dad said that if was her that turned you, then fair enough,
because she was the most attractive woman he’d ever seen? And Mum slapped him
round the face?’
It was certainly the most unexpected moment in my coming out story.
We all looked out to the pier, to the teens who’d taken our place. Amy leant over and
took a handful of chips from me. I suggested we went to the arcades next.
Paul went ahead, straight to the cashpoint. We watched him changing his notes and
splitting the coins into three plastic containers.
‘£30 each, let’s see who can win a teddy.’
I offered to give him money back for it. He shook his head. I didn’t say I’d noticed
that he’d withdrawn it on a credit card.
Amy won three teddies. Paul lost all his money on the fruit machines. I’d only spent a
fiver by the time they’d finished, so they split the rest of mine and won a further two
teddies. We dropped four of them into the charity shop on the corner. I asked to keep
one for posterity. Paul laughed and asked why I’d want to remember this trip. I didn’t
have an answer.
Thick cloud had lingered all morning, just as forecasted, but the streets still hummed
with holiday makers in rain jackets with goose-pimpled legs. Sticky children finished
ice-creams and candy floss, throwing tantrums over unbought toys and treats. And in
this sea of families with children, we must have looked a little out of place.
‘Oh, remember this shop?’
They both stopped. Paul’s face lit up.
‘Fuck yes, it had a skull in a jar in it, Mum said it was real.’
I didn’t give Amy the chance to think of an objection and went straight in. The shop
smelled of incense and damp. The sound of crystal wind chimes heralded our arrival
and awoke the aged owner from a snooze. Trinket boxes made from shells, and
shiny stones set onto the end of black cords lined the shelves.
There was no sign of the skull.
The toy shelves were a mass of seaside plastics. Amy reeled back in horror when we
reached the shelf of teddies.
‘They can’t sell those anymore.’
Paul was laughing into his sleeve as he took a photo of himself with one.
Amy picked the rest up and headed to the till.
‘I’m going to say something.’
‘Ames, don’t.’
Paul always hated her making a scene. He looked to me for support.
‘I kind of agree with Amy, they really should not be selling that sort of stuff.’
‘Dad would have found it hilarious.’
I sighed.
‘That doesn’t make it right.’
By the time Paul and I had finished bickering, Amy was shouting at the man behind
the till. He told her it was just harmless fun, that they still sold well. She told him he
was a racist. She said she would destroy him on social media.
We had to leave the shop.
I was proud of Amy, but I had also wanted a little shell box. They both huffed when I
made them wait for me to buy one in the next gift shop.
I suggested we walk back along the beach but Amy didn’t want to get her shoes dirty.
I managed to stop for a second to take in the view. Only the hardiest of families sat
on the sand today, wrapped up in giant jumpers and huddled behind wind-breaks,
shivering children paddling in the dull grey water. A pair of pensioners laughed as
they tried to get out of deckchairs, heaving their creaking joints as they pulled.
Memories tumbled from my brain with an alarming speed; those insignificant
moments that stick like glue to your mind for reasons you can never fathom. I could
see us there so clearly. I could smell the sun-cream and taste the crunch of the sand
in our picnic. I could feel my mother’s hands on my skin as she wrapped me in a
towel after my swim. I could hear her voice telling me not to go out of sight on the
sand.
We walked back on the road towards the prom and found that the old play park had
been turned into luxury flats. Paul showed us both the scar on his arm from where
Amy had flung him off the roundabout. She told him he deserved it. He started
talking about straight white men again and I’m not even sure if he was taking the
piss.
*****
We went to the posh fish restaurant for dinner. We had always walked past it as
children, Dad imitating the diners asking for caviar and expensive wine. He would
have been horrified that we were there, but Amy said we had to allow her to eat one
decent meal.
She sent her main course back, twice. Paul drank until he could hardly walk and
somehow I ended up paying the bill, which prompted an immediate text from my
bank telling me what a bad, bad person I was.
When we got back, I sat outside and listened to the waves in the dark. I could hear
the sound of a cork popping inside and the hum of Amy’s meditation music from the
front bedroom. I ached with the desire to call Dad and tell him about Amy and her
seeds and meditation. And I wanted so much to tell Mum that I was worried about
Paul, that he was drinking too much and had no money. I cried silently with knowing
that life would now always be this way.
*****
Paul didn’t stir until lunchtime. He’d carried on drinking until late. I heard him leave
Rochelle a voicemail at about midnight, begging her to take him back. I took his
phone off him and put him to bed before he did anything else he’d regret.
‘I love her so much.’
Then why did you have sex with an eighteen-year-old?
Dad said at the time that men are daft when it comes to pretty young girls but it
never felt nearly good enough an excuse. He was barely home from his honeymoon.
‘You know there are people you can talk to, Paul, it’s been a lot this year, with the
accident and Rochelle. Am worried about you.’
Amy came in. She told him to keep the noise down. He screamed at her that she
didn’t understand. She told him that he deserved everything he got for putting
Rochelle through that pain, that he couldn’t imagine the hurt that a woman feels
when her husband cheats with someone younger. She slammed the door behind her.
I went into her room, to ask if she wanted to talk. She told me to fuck off. She used a
slur I’d prefer not to repeat.
I think we all cried ourselves to sleep.
‘Do you want some painkillers?’
I handed him a squashed box of paracetamol from the bottom of my handbag. He
took two and swallowed them with his coffee.
‘I can’t face it today, does it have to be today?’
‘Amy’s got to go early tomorrow morning.’
He groaned.
‘Can we make it this evening at least?’
I nodded. I’d already emailed him the plan to do it at sunset, maybe he’d been too
busy to read it. He leant over and kissed the top of my head. He smelled of stale
booze and BO.
‘Am going back to bed.’
I was left alone again, the breeze blowing through the back door, lapping at my bare
legs.
I touched each urn, just lightly, my mind momentarily overwhelmed with the thought
of what was inside, the tiny fragments of the people I loved the most.
I closed the back door and called upstairs.
‘Am going for a walk, back in a bit.’
Neither of them answered. We were supposed to be going on a boat trip today. I
guess they both forgot. I wondered if I’d get my money back.
*****
The evening sun set over the opposite bay. Its dying reflection gave the whole
coastline an orange hue that felt almost supernatural. Mum and Dad used to take
their evening drinks down to the jetty to watch it set, sitting on the old bench that
storms had long since washed away. We’d watch them from the house, her head
resting in the crook of his arm, the familiar sound of her laughter echoing over the
waves. Mum used to say it was worth every moment of scrimping and saving for two
weeks of those moments every summer.
I sat on the window seat, waiting for the perfect moment before calling them.
We set out across the stones. The evening was clear and the sunset every bit as
ethereal as I remembered it.
Paul was still in yesterday’s crumpled shirt.
‘You could have at least changed.’
‘What the fuck for? They’re not actually here. This whole thing, it’s to make us feel
better, nobody else.’
My eyes filled with tears.
‘Sorry sis, I don’t know why I snapped, am just hungover.’
‘It’s ok.’
Our pace slowed as we reached the towpath. I took off my trainers and let the tiny
waves lap at my bare feet, handing them each an urn.
‘Do you remember when Dad slipped here and got his bum all wet and we couldn’t
stop laughing? The year he bought that canoe and Mum had to call the lifeboat to go
fetch him?’
They were both silent. Yesterday felt like a long time ago.
‘Did either of you want to say anything?’
Paul shook his head, Amy looked at me, stone-faced.
‘I’ve said all I have to say already, I just want to get this done.’
I took a deep breath.
‘Let’s do Cleo first.’
I stepped out and opened the little box.
‘Bye bye Cleo. We didn’t really know you all that well, but apparently you were a
lovely dog, Mum sent us lots of photos of you. Thanks for being with them until the
end.’
The wind dropped momentarily and her ashes fell straight down into the sea by my
bare feet. I wish someone had warned me that ashes do not look like ashes, my
eyes widened at the sight of their texture and the feel of their weight. And their
stickiness to my damp skin.
Paul handed me the next urn as the sea tried to return more of Cleo to me. I stepped
out of the water, shaking myself clean.
‘Do you not want to?’
He stuttered.
‘I can’t.’
I nodded.
‘Bye Dad, we miss you so much. I hope you’re happy with the spot we’ve chosen.’
I timed it slightly better and the breeze took Dad towards the open sea just beyond a
natural dam of seaweed.
Amy handed me Mum.
‘Bye bye, Mum. We miss you too, so much. God knows how you forgot to put that
handbrake on.’
The breeze took her to land next to Dad. I felt momentarily bad for Cleo as she stuck
steadfast to the stones beneath my feet.
I looked back towards my siblings. It was all unfinished somehow, inadequate, an
anti-climax. I didn’t know what to do.
‘Shall we go then, sisters? I could use a drink.’
He’d already started walking so we followed. I tried to take Amy’s hand, but she
pushed me away, folding her arms and shaking her head at me.
We sat in silence at the house. I put the tv on, flicking through the channels until we
found Midsomer Murders.
‘Seems only fitting.’
We settled down to watch. Their absence from this moment was deafening, the
echo of every memory of them sitting here surrounding us. I could hear Mum saying
that John Nettles had aged like a fine wine, winking at us as Dad scowled. I could
hear Dad shouting about who did it, always getting it wrong, but never deterred. I
wanted to run back to the sea and scoop them back up, the pain momentarily
unbearable. Inside I screamed.
But still we sat in silence.
*****
‘You’re ok finishing up, aren’t you, sis? I need to hit the road.’
‘No problem.’
I was working my way through the twenty-five-point laminate on how to clean the
house to get my deposit back. Amy had left on the first train back to London, Greg
was flying to New York today and she needed to be back for the children.
Paul’s phone rang as he went to say goodbye, so all I got was a wave and a
mouthed apology.
And then it was just me. My heart sank lower with each room I checked, each bed I
looked under for forgotten socks or phone chargers. I took a photo of the meter, piled
up the towels, and then there was nothing left to do but leave.
I put the key back in the lock box and turned round for one last look, clinging to my
teddy, hearing the clink of the empty urns in my bag as I walked out of the gate for
the very last time.

 

‘Rutland’

Martin Jameson

When I was a child in the 1960s we had one of those chunky plywood jigsaws
of the British Isles, each piece cut to the shape of a different county. The trickiest
ones to place were the bigger, vaguely round, vaguely oblong counties such as
Lincolnshire or Limerick.
The obvious ones to start with were more idiosyncratically shaped. Cornwall
was a no-brainer; a ballerina’s leg with a swollen toe stretching on pointe into the
North Atlantic. Caernarvonshire, its gloved hand reaching out daintily into the Irish
Sea, was similarly distinctive. Wigtownshire (these days subsumed into Dumfries
and Galloway) was fun. I loved to slot it into the ‘chin’ of southwest Scotland with its
eccentric double-pronged goatee, even if the southern tip of the Galloway peninsula
had snapped off.
I was particularly fond of Warwickshire which had a curly tail like a fish, but my
favourite piece of all was Rutland.
It was by far the smallest, small, even for my six-year-old fingers. I would roll it
under my thumb wondering why it even existed, when its neighbours –
Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire – were so big. Why hadn’t one of
them eaten it up? Were the people of Rutland particularly fierce, fighting off any
potential invaders?
I would start by jumbling up the pieces in the lid, before searching for my
small but valiant keystone. Once I’d found Rutland, I would set it aside until all the
other pieces were in place, only slotting the little county into its home right at the end,
as if the Kingdom could not possibly be complete without it.
‘I’ve lost Rutland.’ I was fighting tears as I wandered into the kitchen where
my mother was making a macaroni cheese. She didn’t like cooking and her cheese
sauce was always lumpy.
‘Oh yes?’ She said vaguely.
‘Did you pick it up?’
‘Pick up what?’
‘Rutland! Did you pick up Rutland when you were cleaning?’ I was shouting in
frustration.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t like housework much either.
‘Mum!!’
She was attacking a particularly resistant lump of cornflour with a wooden
spoon. ‘Rutland… is that still a county?’
‘Don’t you know anything?!’
‘Well I’m not surprised you lost it, it’s tiny.’
‘I can’t finish the jigsaw without it.’ I wailed.
She stopped stirring. ‘Well… how about you do what you can, and after
supper I’ll help you make your own Rutland to fit the hole?’
‘It’s not the same!’
‘No, it’ll be better, because you’ll have made it. No one else will have a jigsaw
like yours.’
I hated it when grown-ups came out with stuff like this. I still do, now that I’m
at the other end of my life. You can’t just say something’s better when it isn’t.
After the macaroni cheese, which tasted of burnt metal, I slotted all the other
counties into place, the Rutland-shaped hole gaping as if England had had its heart
ripped from its chest. Mum was opening a fresh packet of Player’s No. 6, when she
had an idea, fishing the discarded one from the overflowing wastepaper basket.
‘If you stuff the foil into the hole and pack it down you’ll have your very own
Rutland made of pure silver.’
I scowled. ‘It’s tin foil. Actually it’s not even tin, it’s aluminlium.’ I still struggle
to pronounce the word, even now. I cried for half an hour, until Mum finally got me to
sleep insisting that I’d have forgotten all about it in the morning.
She was wrong. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, making
me late for school, looking everywhere on the sitting room floor for the missing
county. I reached under the out-of-tune piano, but despite running my fingers along
the dusty skirting board I couldn’t find anything other than a fluff-coated wine-gum.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Rutland all day. When I got home, instead of
watching the telly, I got the hoover out from under the stairs and emptied the bag
onto the carpet, methodically working my fingers through the mucky detritus,
convinced that Rutland had to be there somewhere.
But it wasn’t.
Annoyed, I hoovered it all up again, pleased that the sitting room looked better
than it had before, however I’d forgotten that now I was covered in dust, and in
trouble because my school uniform had been clean on that morning. Mum didn’t
shout at me. She was trying not to weep.
I never did the British Isles jigsaw again. A few years later, mum had a clear
out of all my baby toys giving them to a jumble sale for the Girl Guides.
I’m not sure when I had my first breakdown. To be honest, I’ve never liked the
word. ‘Bout of depression’, is that better? Churchill had his Black Dog. Seems a bit
unfair on dogs, especially as I have a penchant for Labradors of that shade who I’ve
always found to be cheery canines. I rather like ‘Blue Funk’ because of its Old Grey
Whistle Test prog rock vibes, suggestive of lanky 1970s musicians in sweaty
cheesecloth playing at breakneck speed to an empty BBC Studio in the middle of the
night.
I suppose having to drop out of Uni in my second year was the first time my
existential ennui actually punched a fucking great hole in my life. I spent about six
weeks in a loony bin (Yes! That’s my name for it so don’t get politically correct with
me!), where my psychiatrist (an elderly, bookish type) talked a good deal about my
‘slough of despond’. I’d never read The Pilgrim’s Progress where the idea originates,
but fifteen years earlier, shortly before the incident with the jigsaw, I had seen an
episode of The Tree House Family where two puppet koalas called Tingha and
Tucker acted out bible stories for children on ITV. My mum, who was an atheist,
didn’t approve of God (or ITV), and would usually switch it off with a tut, but that
afternoon, she sat with me for the whole episode which was a dramatisation of
Bunyan’s allegorical classic, told through the medium of squeaky antipodean fauna.
For reasons I never understood, The Pilgrim’s Progress was the one religious text
she spoke of with respect, and I could see her eyes welling with tears.
I tried to explain this to the old psychiatrist who wasn’t familiar with children’s
telly, so perhaps he thought I was describing some kind of psychotic hallucination,
which was fair enough in the circumstances.
The university let me retake my second year and I came out with a Desmond
(as we used to call a 2.ii affectionately in those days). The following year, I was still
temping for a company who, as fate would have it, specialised in geography
textbooks. I could feel myself starting to slip away again, but resolved to put my
depression on hold as Mum was downsizing to a bungalow in Sawbridgeworth, and
needed help with the move. Her old sofa, which she’d had for at least twenty years,
was in threadbare tatters, and too big for the new place. As I hauled it out to the skip,
I heard something drop onto the parquet flooring in the hall. I peered into the corner
behind the radiator to spy a tiny, vaguely triangular piece of three layered plywood.
‘Rutland,’ I murmured to myself.
I ought to have laughed, shaking my head wryly that it was there all the time,
literally ‘down the back of the sofa’. I ought to have said something reassuring to my
six-year-old self. Instead, my knees gave way, and I collapsed onto the upturned
sofa in floods of ridiculous tears.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ Mum had come into the hall. I made some
excuse about how tired I was and tried not to get annoyed when she suggested I
might need to ‘talk’ to someone again. I couldn’t tell her it was because of Rutland.
My new therapist chided me for imagining that my next hand-to-hand with
funks or dogs – of whatever colour – could possibly be within my control. Depression
doesn’t make an appointment to suit your schedule. He was right, however I was
annoyed that he’d failed to see the significance of the lost jigsaw piece, so I gave up
trying to express the paralysing wave of hopelessness that had overwhelmed me as
I rolled Rutland, once again, under my thumb. I kept thinking about the rest of the
puzzle as it was collected by the local Brown Owl in 1969 the day after the moon
landing, never to be seen again. I’d have kept it if I’d known that the little county was
inches from my skinny backside as I watched Neil Armstrong bouncing fuzzily on our
already fuzzy black and white TV. He was taking a giant leap for mankind, but I
couldn’t even look under the sofa cushions for a jigsaw piece. If that wasn’t a
metaphor for the futility of my own existence I didn’t know what was.
Why did I have to find the bloody thing? I could have gone for the rest of my
life never thinking about it again, but now the gods had returned Rutland to me, I was
confronted with my own failure – a failure that could never be remedied. Life is full of
people telling you that it will all be all right in the long run, but this was proof that was
a lie. I kept imagining the next child to attempt the jigsaw, throwing it across the room
in frustration when they discovered they had parted with their 40p under false
pretences. I could feel the sting of their contempt for the little bastard who’d cheated
them. It would have gone straight into the bin, the lid slammed eternally on any hope
of redemption.
Rutland. Rut-land. The Land of Rut.
A slough by any other name would smell as shit.
And so it was my ‘episodes’ became ‘Visits to Rutland’ although it’s not a term
you’ll find in any textbook.
I was thinking about all this because of the email. I hadn’t spoken to Nettie in
over twenty years. Or rather she hadn’t spoken to me. After my mother moved to
Sawbridgeworth, I found myself ‘visiting Rutland’ for the next fifteen months,
although I was actually chain-smoking roll-ups in Mum’s tiny box room for most of it.
When I finally emerged, I got a job as PA to a disgraced Conservative MP
who had taken up churning out badly written (if remarkably successful) political
thrillers, but whose ambition was to write the definitive biographies of every Tory
Prime Minister since John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. Only one of these was ever
published as, without the bonkbuster element, it left his terrible prose style horribly
exposed. I had been lured into the post by the promise of scholarly research
assignments in the Reading Room of the British Library but instead found myself
transcribing his sloping longhand accounts of Woolsack rumpy-pumpy (his words,
not mine) onto an unreliable Amstrad 9512 Word-processor. To the best of my
knowledge he never checked anything I typed, but as my literary interventions into
his god awful novels became ever more daring, I was rumbled by his daughter,
Henrietta, who I thought was going to ‘dob me in’ but instead seduced me in his
stables, insisting it was ‘like something out of Jilly Cooper’. I’ve never read any Jilly
Cooper but from what I’ve heard, I’m not sure the comparison really stands.
Anyway, she got pregnant and I got the sack – which seemed hypocritical
given the nonsense I’d been typing up for her Dad all this time. In an act of
daughterly rebellion, Hen decided we should get a place together. To everyone’s
surprise, it went quite well for a good few years. I did most of the childcare (out of
necessity, not for any progressive reason) and Annette – Nettie – and I formed the
closest of father-daughter bonds, which was therapeutic as my own father had been
absent throughout my childhood. Perhaps because of this, ‘Rutland’ wasn’t troubled
by my visits for over a decade, but then, shortly after Nettie started at Roedean,
everything went to shit again.
I couldn’t see what was wrong with the local comprehensive, but Hen’s
rebelliousness only went so far, especially as her Dad was paying. We never
recovered from those awful rows. They were worse than they should have been,
culminating in me driving the car off the road in the middle of a furious shouting
match, killing Hen and leaving Nettie with her leg amputated below the knee.
Nettie and I bumped along for a few years, until at some point in her early
twenties she stopped talking to me altogether, and who could blame her. I’d write
every few months, but she never replied until one day a letter was returned ‘Not
Known At This Address’. Her grandfather took out an injunction against me when I
asked for his help. Nettie had sworn her friends to secrecy and without a phone
number I had no means of tracking her down. Even when the internet came into its
own, there was no trace of her. Perhaps she was married now and had changed her
name. I thought about hiring a private detective, but what was the point? She didn’t
want to be found, and if I loved her – which I did – then the least I could do was to
respect that.
So I guess I’ve been exiled to Rutland for the last twenty years. Some days
are brighter than others, but even on those I’ve been loitering in the metaphorical
East Midlands, forced to confront the intractable nature of my failure…
…until two days ago, when I got an email from a Henry Kim. He said he’d
grown up in South Korea but his mother, Annette, was English and he was at school
in the north of England now and was my grandson, fourteen years old. What’s more,
he was in an end-of-term production of The Little Shop of Horrors, playing Seymour
(something about a man-eating plant) and would I come and see him in it on
Saturday night?
After I’d sprayed some GTN under my tongue (angina!), I replied saying I’d
love to, but was his mum all right with that as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. I
didn’t get a reply and had a sleepless night wondering whether or not I should go. If I
was to attempt a reunion with my estranged family, a school play with hundreds of
happy parents there didn’t seem like an ideal location. But I’d already accepted the
invitation. It would surely be worse to let him down, as I imagined what lengths he
must have gone to, just to find my email address.
Apart from a trip to the Edinburgh Festival once, I confess, to my shame, that
I’ve rarely been anywhere north of Luton, so I comforted myself that even if the trip
was doomed, I could soften the blow by a few days exploring ‘The North’ with its
sheep and dry stone walls. I put the postcode into my satnav, but was disappointed
to see that Henry’s school was barely north of Birmingham, not even half way up the
country.
However, a few miles after pulling off the A1 at Wansford, following the A47
towards Uppingham – with not a dry stone wall in sight – I slammed on the brakes,
skidding onto the verge. I left the engine running, and walked back to what I’d seen.
It was an old fashioned road sign, the sort you used to find at county borders
in the 1960s. It read, in large letters:
‘Rutland’
The school looked a bit like a castle. There were intimidatingly expensive cars
in the car park, so I was too frightened to go in until the last possible moment, just as
the lights were going down. Far from being the poorly adapted dinner hall I was
expecting, the theatre was in its own building and was indistinguishable from a
professional auditorium. I can’t tell you a lot about the production, because I was in
tears through pretty much all of it. Henry (mostly) sang in tune and the plant was
very funny. I thought I could see Nettie a few rows in front, but at the interval I ran to
the toilets, locking myself in a cubicle, and vaped for the whole fifteen minutes.
After a standing ovation and two encores, there was nothing for it but to wait
for my grandson in the foyer, feeling horribly self-conscious and shabby. To my
relief, I couldn’t see Nettie anywhere, but just as I was making sure I knew where my
GTN was, I saw Henry emerging from backstage, grinning broadly, heading over to a
man in his fifties – who certainly looked Korean – standing with a woman, about ten
years younger, who I realised with a thud was Nettie, not the woman a few rows in
front I’d run from earlier. Her hair was jet black, cropped stylishly short – which is
what had thrown me as I’d been looking for Annette’s resplendent ginger mane. As a
young woman she had worn her artificial leg with angry, ostentatious defiance, but
tonight it was hidden beneath expensive culottes.
I was frozen to the spot as Henry bashfully batted away their hugs. I couldn’t
hear what he said next, but I could see the questioning, anxious look on his mother’s
face, as she turned, her eyes scanning the foyer.
And then she saw me.
I lifted a hand in a tentative wave, half expecting her to call for someone to
have me thrown out. That moment lasted for a very, very long time – longer than felt
bearable, but perhaps only a single breath – and then she smiled.
I was in Rutland – actually in the bloody place – and, perhaps, just perhaps,
there was still time to complete the jigsaw.

 

Shortlisted Entries

Honourable mention: ‘The Landlady’ by Margie Taylor

Adena Graham with ‘Wave Theory’  

Leon Prescod with ‘Frogspawn’

Adam Pemberton with ‘Is There Time?’ 

Les Zig with ‘The Life Unglamorous’  

Catherine Herbert with ‘Berkshire’

Kate Benjamin with ‘Metronome’

Davinia Sutton with ‘Cafe Peek Show’

Jaye Williams with ‘Cohibas In The Myanh Hotel”

Anthony Martin with ‘Blind Ponies’ 

Richard Woulfe with ‘Squelcher’

R I Vinnicombe with ‘Toy Boy’

Charlie Moss with ‘If Seconds were Minutes were Hours’

 

Longlisted Entries

Annerose Watts, ‘What to Believe’ 

Susan Eley, Edited for Content and Sensitivity’  

Nicholas Magnolfi, ‘Eyes of the Sea’ 

Hamish Low, ‘A Spreadsheet is a thing of Beauty’

Aisling Lee, ‘Passive/Aggressive (a Sad Little Man)’  

Caoimhe Conway,‘The Bridge Between Us’ 

João Cerqueira, ‘The Miracle of St Teresa of Avila’

Tabitha Bast, ‘X,Y,Z.’  

B.F. Jones, ‘All the Bullets are Silver’ 

John Kirkaldy, ‘The Unknown American’

Angelena Demaria, ‘Hand in his Head’  

Shirley Benton, ‘Sophie’s Inconvenience’

Chandana Das, ‘Nightfall’ 

Lily Hargrave, ‘Monster Heart’ 

Jillian Grant Shoichet, ‘Confession’    

Martin Perlman, ‘Eavesdropping on the Night Train’ 

Suha Mardelli, ‘Cloudless’  

Simon Ward, ‘The Moor’ 

Eleanor James Sharpe, ‘The Loneliest Road in America’

Andy Malt, ‘Danny’      

Deirdre Laide, ‘The Bias of Beauty’

Noelle C Sacher, ‘What to Pack…’

Diarmuid O Connell, Our Best Days…’

Joanna Garbutt, ‘The Wave Machine’

Vivien Stella Strachan, ‘Sunshine on the ‘45’

Gary Finnegan, ‘The Leaving’

Daniel Day, ‘Gripped’

Les Zig, ‘The Turn of the Page’

Catherine Moffat, ‘Thanks for the Trouble You Took’

Govan Rothes, ‘Richard Claymore is Dead’

Patsy Parfitt, ‘Red Dirt’

David Barnaby, ‘Little Jokes’

Sofie De Smyter, ‘Sardines’

Kathryn Crowley, ‘Sitting in a Parked Car’

Jon Stapley, ‘A Friendly Match’

Julie McCoy, ‘Pound Special’

Tony O’Reilly, ‘The Sound of Animals’

Stephen Wing, ‘A Light too Bright to Bear’

Sharika Nair, ‘Pocket Paradise’

Angela N Nansera, ‘Mark of Approval’

Roger Leigh, ‘My Magnum Opus’

Lydia Marilyn Bunt, ‘How it Happens’

Gareth Marks, ‘Denouement’

Louis Temblett, ‘Embedded’

Irem Alici Silk, ‘Of Wombs & Artichokes’

Andrew Mark Trimble, ‘On a Cold Christmas Eve’

Marah Herreid, ‘The Mantis’

Carolyn Bremner, ‘A Love Letter in Retrospect’

 

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Short Story Competition this year!