Godfather

He preferred her face soap-scrubbed. Hair tied back with velvet ribbons; mouth unsmiling, eyes lowered in imitation of a purged and penitent Benedictine nun.

The first time he asked, and every time thereafter, he quoted Tennyson’s hackneyed invitation. Obtained parental permission to stroll with her to where there were trees enough to render the fleeing of the poet’s ‘black bat ‘ of night unnecessary. Distant enough for cries of passion to go unheard.

She had long ceased wondering if he’d had this in mind when, twelve years ago, he held her at the baptismal font and named her Maud.

Holiday reading

Even this far north ‘Midnight sun’ a misnomer, its vermilion orb already dipped below the horizon as the haar comes in on the tide, thickening a silence broken only by the gentle huff of foam rearranging stones; the melancholy piping of invisible oyster-catchers.

Then your voice, inappropriate as a cockatoo, ‘Wanna halfa orange?’ You divide one then hand me both knife and dripping semi-sphere, turn your half inside-out and begin slurping at its pulp.

The knife is sharper than the orange flesh, but sweeter still the thought that Ann Cleeve’s Jimmy Perez is about to have another murder to solve. 

Perusing the small print

DISENCHANTED-BY-PEDIGREE DIVORCÉE, 39, SEEKS MONGREL HUNGRY FOR ADVENTURE.

‘She saying she’s a dog?’

‘Nah. Posh bitch wanting a bit of rough –‘

Grin widened as he brought his pint glass to his mouth, ‘Rough I can do –‘

‘She don’t necessarily mean use your fists –‘

‘What then? Tie ‘er up and suchlike? Whips and kinky boots?’

‘You got any kinky boots?’

‘Only what I wear for work. And they’d need cleaning –‘

‘Get her to clean them. Use her tongue –‘

‘Then stick it into me mouth? Not bloody likely!’

‘S’pose not. Same again? ’

‘Victoria Bitter. Ta, mate.

’