Best British Short Stories 2018

by Nicholas Royle

  ‘Call me,’ said Bobbi, following her out the door. ‘Call me when you get there.’

  Lane got into her car without answering.

  ‘Call me,’ Bobbi repeated. ‘I mean it. Leave your phone on.’

  Too late, as she watched the car leaving, Bobbi remembered they did not have each other’s phone numbers.

  It had been half an hour. Madison woke as Bobbi was carrying her out to the car.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’ As she started the car, she heard the girls whispering to each other in the backseat. She glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Madison sitting up. Her colour was better and she looked more alert.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Ruby as they turned onto Azalea, and when Bobbi stopped the car in front of a driveway, ‘Gamma, no!’

  There was no sign of Lane’s car. Bobbi opened her door.

  ‘Don’t go in there!’

  ‘Ruby, settle down. I am just going to knock on the door. You kids wait right here.’

  Ruby moaned as her grandmother got out of the car, and Madison whispered, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay now, she’s not there.’

  No one answered the knock on the door, and the bell made no sound. Tentatively, she tried turning the knob, but the door was locked. A scattering of dusty advertising flyers littered the doormat. The longer she stood there, the more Bobbi felt that no one was home, and the more frightened she became.

  The police broke down the door. The house was empty and appeared to have been unoccupied for many months. There were a few pieces of furniture, but nothing in the tower room, and nothing anywhere remotely like the carved wooden chest Bobbi insisted they had to find.

  The police were polite, and as patient as they could be, but they must have thought she was a crazy old bat. Ms. Alverson was a competent adult. There was no reason to believe any harm had come to her, and certainly no reason to put out an alert, especially as her own daughter was of the opinion that her mother, who had been a reluctant and difficult guest, had probably made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go home early.

  Bobbi never saw or heard from Lane Alverson again. Only in her dreams, she sometimes heard her old friend calling, but when she went to look, the room was empty, except for the presence, inexplicably sinister, of a carved wooden chest.

  No matter how many times she had the dream (and it would haunt her the rest of her life), Bobbi never dared to open it.

  IAIN ROBINSON

  DAZZLE

  IT SEEMED TO Lucian that there was almost nothing between him and the horizon. The sea had peeled back and the wet sands shimmered and calmed in the cool afternoon light. The waves were breaking nearly a mile out, on the first sandbar, and the wind ruffled the surface of the lagoon that had formed with the falling tide. Sometimes he would dare to wade into the shallows. He knew though that when the waters turned and began to run in, it was wise not be too far out.

  He walked where the wet sands were firm and pocked with the holes and curling initials left by lug worms. The sun was low but he had the sense it was all around him, a glaring sheen on the flats and shallows. He had his field glasses around his neck and his camera bag slung over his shoulder, although this was strictly a casual walk, a way of giving Judith a bit of time on her own. He didn’t expect to see anything special, just the usual coastal birds, but this was enough for him. In the distance, where the river ran out its diminutive estuary, he could just discern a cloud of oystercatchers, a dazzle of black and white plumage almost melting into the haze. This simple display left him breathless. Holding the glasses steady, he felt the shifting flock as though he were a part of it.

  They had two more days in the cottage. It had been a mistake, he realised that now. Judith would want this again and he would have to call a halt to things. He would wait until the evening. There was a spare room made up with a single bed; he could sleep out the remaining nights there, or else leave, make up some excuse to tell Sally when he arrived home early.

  As he pulled the binoculars away he became aware of two dogs bearing down on him, full of the rush of the wind and sea. He crouched to fuss them as they sniffed around his legs. A man, the owner, strode towards him and called them to heel. Lucian hadn’t noticed them approach, he’d been too engrossed with the birds, or perhaps the light had tricked him, the glare of it off the sands. Lucian raised a hand in greeting, but the dogs were already pounding up the beach and the man shrugged apologetically and carried on after them.

  Lucian felt a little relieved. He didn’t want to talk. The landscape was enough. The wind was blowing dry sand off the dunes and across the wet flats. It blew like a snaking mist at ankle height, or perhaps, it struck him, more like a river, a wide river of dry sand, and its sinuous currents alive and alert around him. He’d met Judith the previous autumn in one of the hides on the marshes. She was younger than him, a little nervous, but they’d hit it off, and when he suggested a pub meal together that evening, she’d accepted. It wasn’t the right thing to do, he knew that, but it had felt right, the way the estuary and the marshes felt right. The attention was flattering; he’d long ago given up on himself. Things had been tough for him and Sally.

  He glanced over at the dunes and realised that he was straying further from the high tide mark. His route had taken him across the salt marshes and into the dunes before he’d struck out along the beach toward the estuary. The cottage overlooked the marshes. From the bedroom you could see right over to the sandbars. It meant that they could set up a camera with a tripod and telephoto and watch the birds from there. He wondered whether Judith would have seen him, and if she had followed his progress along the raised footpaths to the beach. The circular route would take him as far as the estuary and then along the back of the dunes to the village again. With luck by the time he reached the head of the estuary the waters would be on the rise, pushing the wading birds off the mud and back to their roosting places. She would only lose sight of him when he reached the estuary and the path went behind a line of trees. Of course, he realised, there was no reason to think she would be looking out for him.

  He squinted into the wet sheen of the sands. He was well along the beach now and to his right, off the shore, he could see the rusted hulk of a freighter on the sandbank, broken in three. At high tide nothing of it showed except for the warning mast. There was a deep water channel into the estuary on the other side of the bank. A further channel ran between the bank and the beach, though it was shallow enough to wade out to the wreck at low tide. He could hear the cries, the distant yelps and shrieks, of black-headed gulls, the wind carrying the sound. He walked on, cutting across the sands towards the head of the estuary. The cries came back, keening and pleading. He looked out towards the sandbank. The water was moving in along the channel, the sun dancing white light off its surface. He shielded his eyes, wishing he’d brought his sunglasses. There was something. He couldn’t be sure. The light seemed to move, the air thick with it, distorting. He told himself it was the head of a seal; they came up the channel sometimes. He screwed up his eyes. The head was gone, something else. It looked for a moment like an arm, a flash of red. He pulled his field glasses up to his eyes and scanned. Nothing. He felt his heart pumping. The wind dropped a little, and the cries returned. He knew that people got caught out, spent too much time with the wreck and found themselves cut off. The sand bank was already sinking below the waters. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes and squinted into the dazzle. For a moment he saw the outline of a man, chest deep in water, then nothing again. He could have stumbled, gone under. Lucian waited for him to appear. He did not. Lucian looked back at the shore, wondering if anyone else on the beach had seen the man, but there was nobody else. He realised how far out he was. He had wandered off course, carried by the drifting sands, fixated on reaching the head of the estuary. It would be a short dash to the edge of the channel and then a longer run back to the safety of the beach. He could do it though. He had to be sure. He had to do what was right.
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br />   He set out at a jog, his boots slopping in the soft sand, the glasses banging against his chest. He wasn’t a runner. Coming to the estuary was all the exercise he got, the walks around sands and marshes a break from the sedentary day-to-day of suburban commuting. Sally was content with the semi in Aldershot, and all the clubs and societies she kept herself busy with, the women’s institute and the girl guides, the sports centre for gym, but it was nothing he’d ever felt able to share with her. Perhaps if the fertility treatment had worked out – but neither of them could face that again, all the anticipation and grief. At the weekends he had found himself walking the reservoirs and gravel pits where birds would stop off on their exhausting migrations. He felt an affinity. Every long journey needed a rest point, a break, and his was to be found by the water, with the birds, and he soon learned their names and calls, their distinct movements, losing himself in the migratory masses. Sally didn’t mind the trips to the estuary. She almost seemed to welcome them. Three times a year he would drive up the M11 and grow lighter with every mile.

  He slowed to a walk, his sides aching. It didn’t help that the sand was sinking beneath him, the water rising up over his feet as the tide came in. He was wading like a sandpiper. The light glistered off the waves. He was in the channel, the sea already around him. As he looked over at the bulk of the old freighter, he thought of how in the First World War the ships were painted black and white, like the oystercatcher, to trick the eye. He waded deeper into the channel, felt the tug of the water coursing in around his calves. He thought he saw it again, something rolling in the currents and then gone. He splashed towards it.

  Everything went black for a moment, and then he surfaced with a gasp. Saltwater slapped against his face. He’d have to swim for it now, get back to shore and call the coastguard. His camera bag was lost. His phone too then. He thought of how he’d tell it to Judith. It felt like the sort of thing that might bring them closer though, they’d laugh about it, and then it would make things all the more difficult. He would mend things with Sally, explain how all the years of hope and loss were a journey for him, and that he couldn’t go back now to the way things were without a change, a sense of arrival.

  He was treading water, trying to lose his welly boots with each kick. He thought he must have slipped off the edge of a bank into a deeper channel, the shallower water would be nearby. He had never been a strong swimmer, but he could hold his own in a pool for a few lengths. If there was anyone else in the sea they’d have to make it on their own. It was a cold jolt. It was him in the sea. It was only ever him. The same way he found himself, felt himself, in the wheeling flocks, he’d sensed himself in the channel and had followed the mirage like a fool. Judith would be looking out for him. Judith would see. She would be waiting for him with a towel and a cup of cocoa when he got back to the cottage.

  He managed to free his feet and writhe out of his jacket. The binoculars still hung uselessly around his neck. He pulled them off and let them go, nearly going under as he did, then he took a few strokes towards the point where he thought he’d slipped and a few more to be sure. He let his feet sink, feeling for the bottom, but they met nothing but the rocking, coursing waters. The sunlight flared off every wavelet. A swell broke over the now submerged sandbar and the water grabbed at him. The tide was pulling him, he realised, away from the sands and towards the head of the estuary. He kicked against it, trying to crawl back towards the beach. If he could get back he could explain things, put it right. Sally would have so many questions, and Judith wouldn’t know the right answers to give. That girl hardly knew him.

  The sea clutched his wet clothes, constraining him, as if in a fevered tangle of sheets. The muscles in his shoulders began to ache. He came gasping out of the crawl and trod water again, seeing the beach further away this time. There was a man on the shore, walking. Lucian tried to raise a hand, called out. The water swelled and he went under and up again, coughing water, struggling to locate the figure on the sands. He called out again, louder. He thought he saw a figure stop, break into a run, hit the water and wade in towards him, and then the vision faded, undid itself in the slap and dazzle of the sea. Lucian felt the current lock his legs and drag him, it flexed and flowed around him, muscular and swift. He was dissolving into the sea, into its skittering jabs of light.

  He kicked again towards the shore, but he felt his legs fading. It didn’t matter. Sally would understand. Sally would forgive him, with all they’d been through. Judith would be calling the coastguard. She’d be watching. He’d be pulled towards the mouth of the estuary and then pushed out again to sea. His hands grew numb. He could only tread water, struggle to keep his head up. He gasped, kicked, gasped, kicked. He could sense them, the redshanks and curlews, sandpipers and turnstones, as they took to the wing. He was losing himself in the great cloud of gathering oystercatchers, soaring and turning in their musical clamour, skirling in the last of the daylight. His body loosened. His legs were gone and so were his arms, and then his body and face as well, until there was nothing left but the sound and sight of rising birds.

  CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

  OWEN BOOTH is the author of What We’re Teaching Our Sons (4th Estate). He was the winner the 2015 White Review Short Story Prize, and won third prize in the 2017 Moth International Short Story Competition.

  KELLY CREIGHTON was born in Belfast in 1979. She teaches creative writing to community groups and has curated The Incubator, an online short story showcase, since 2014. She is the author of Bank Holiday Hurricane (Doire Press), a short story collection shortlisted for a Saboteur Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her debut novel The Bones of It is on the Political Violence degree reading list in the USA, and was the San Diego Book Review 2015 Novel of the Year.

  COLETTE DE CURZON was born in 1927. The daughter of the then French Consul General, she wrote ‘Paymon’s Trio’ in 1949 in Portsmouth, at the age of 22. Having no knowledge of available routes to publication, she tucked it away in a folder of her work, where it remained until 2016. Mother of four grown-up daughters and three grandchildren, she died in March 2018.

  MIKE FOX is married and lives in Richmond. His stories have appeared in, or been accepted for publication by, The London Journal of Fiction, Popshot, Confingo, Into the Void, Fictive Dream, The Nottingham Review, Structo, Prole, Riggwelter, Communion and Footnote. Four other stories have been published in paperback by the Bedford International Writing Competition. His story ‘The Violet Eye’ is forthcoming from Nightjar Press as a limited-edition chapbook. Contact via www.polyscribe.co.uk.

  M JOHN HARRISON is the author of eleven novels (including In Viriconium, The Course of the Heart and Light), five short story collections (most recently You Should Come With Me Now, longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize), two graphic novels, and collaborations with Jane Johnson, writing as Gabriel King. He won the Boardman Tasker Award for Climbers (1989), the James Tiptree Jr Award for Light (2002) and the Arthur C Clarke Award for Nova Swing (2007). He reviews fiction for the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement and lives in Shropshire.

  TANIA HERSHMAN’s third short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, was published by Unthank Books in May 2017, and her debut poetry collection, Terms & Conditions, by Nine Arches Press in July. She is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open, and two short story collections, My Mother Was an Upright Piano, and The White Road and Other Stories, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is curator of short story hub ShortStops (www.shortstops.info), celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. Hear her read her work at https://soundcloud.com/taniahershman and find out more here: www.taniahershman.com.

  BRIAN HOWELL lives and teaches in Japan. He has been publishing stories since 1990. His first collection, The Sound of White Ants, was published in the UK by Elastic Press in 2004. His novel based on the life of
Jan Vermeer, The Dance of Geometry, was published in March 2002 by The Toby Press. His second novel, The Curious Case of Jan Torrentius, about the notoriously libertine Dutch painter, was published in 2017 by Zagava. He likes film, cycling, Japan, the Low Countries and listening to podcasts.

  JANE MCLAUGHLIN’s fiction and poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2012, shortlisted in the Bridport Prize 2013, and has been commended and listed in other competitions. She was selected for the Cinnamon Press mentoring programme in 2013. Her e-book, The Abbot’s Cat, a crossover novella for adults and older children, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2014 and some of her stories appeared in the anthology Quartet in 2015. Her debut poetry collection, Lockdown, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2016. She lives in London, where she belongs to several writers’ groups and works as a consultant in adult and further education.

  ALISON MACLEOD’s latest story collection, all the beloved ghosts (Bloomsbury), was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Fiction and chosen as one of the Guardian’s ‘Best Books of 2017’. Her stories are often broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her most recent novel, Unexploded, was long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and, in 2016, she was a joint recipient of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award. Alongside her writing, MacLeod has appeared at numerous international literary festivals and has served as a judge for a variety of literary awards. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester. www.alison-macleod.com

  JO MAZELIS is a prize-winning novelist, short story writer, poet, photographer and essayist from Wales. Her first collection of stories, Diving Girl, was shortlisted for Commonwealth Best First Book and her debut novel, Significance, won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2015, while her third collection of stories, Ritual, 1969, was longlisted for the 2017 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.