As soon as I step into the kitchen, I can see that something tragic has happened. Something that will change us forever. Mother sits, hunched, at the table; her face is frozen in a grotesque contortion, her lips pressed together so that they are barely visible, her eyes dull with anguish, her nose and cheeks…

“Rules are there for a reason,” Eric said, for probably the twentieth time that evening. “When I was assistant manager at the bank, there were rules. Everyone had to keep the rules because otherwise it would have been chaos. The same principle applies here.” He put his pipe back in his mouth and leant back,…

Father tells us that during the day the sky is merely a leafy branch which shades us from the heat of the sun but at night it is a window to outer space.

As we draw to the end of the competition in 2016, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our generous sponsors, Folkestone Town Council, Shepway District Council, Rosie Unsworth in co-operation with Rotary International and:  the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) ALCS makes sure writers are paid what’s due to them when people use…