BOOKS
Tenterhooks
Stories include ‘White Goods’, ‘Sync’, ‘Guts for Garters’, ‘Stood Up and Thinking of England’, and ‘Slipping The Clutch’.
In ‘Slipping The Clutch’, Miranda walks out of Boots one day into the beautiful, beloved, fast-living Uncle Robbie who, years beforehand, taught her to drive in his Alfa Romeo and then died in his Lagonda…
It was said in my family that Uncle Robbie cut a dash…I had never seen a beautiful man, before; or not one who was not made from celluloid. His cheekbones were so prominent that they seemed to precede him into rooms. They almost frightened me. His eyes were the colour of shallow water, they had the shine of water and water’s trick of moving without going anywhere. His smiles slipped lazily, could have been whispers that I did not quite catch. I was an only child, and, until Uncle Robbie, men had been mere teachers or dads: men who were strapped with bulky watches and tied into grim shoes with socks which seemed wrong, socks which were somehow both too short and too long…