Far From The Madding Crowd

We called it a home, but the building remembered it as a magazine. You could feel it in the way the dust settled—heavy, vertical, obeying a gravity that felt anxious. Grandfather had chosen this place not for the view of the river, but for the thickness of the walls. He was a man who understood

Read more →

The first sound was not the wind here. It was the heater in the wall — the kind that ticked as it warmed, hissed as it cooled — but at night, when the Fenland fog pressed against the windows and the silence swelled, the heater’s breathing would drop away. And then he’d hear it. The

Read more →

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Sweet, heavy — sugar before anything else. Not the onion-garlic base of my own kitchen, not stew thickening on the stove, but cake. An iced one, fresh, the air dense with it. The backward mother ushered me in without turning. She walked backward through her doorway, her

Read more →