Author: Lauren Thomas

“Why do you have a fork in your pocket?” He looked down at it and back up at her. He thought the answer was obvious. “Well, you never know do you?” “Never know what?” “When you might need one.” He put it back in his pocket, and they carried on walking down the street together,…

If they were lucky they saw each other twice a year. But each time they met it was like they were back at school, seeing each other every day by their scarred lockers and spending their weekends wearing too much heather shimmer lipstick and Spice Girls Impulse body spray. It was an effortless friendship, months…

“You’re wearing odd socks again.” “I have literally NEVER worn odd socks.” “You’re wearing them right now!” He looked down. “You think these socks I’m wearing don’t match?” “They DON’T match. One has footballs, the other has sheep!” He frowned in concern and placed a hand on her forehead. “Millie, I think you might be…

No one had lived in the house for nearly one hundred years when she bought it. It had stood silent as it crossed from one millennium to the next. And yet the sounds from the stories that filled it followed her from room to room. The emerald hairpin tucked beneath a skirting board, winking in…

He had a love hate relationship with technology. He appreciated his bug zapper because it got rid of flies. But then he hated the acrid smell of their singed bodies. He loved the internet because he could connect with his friends across the globe. But then he hated it because it made him feel like…

The magician was preparing for his greatest trick. He had escaped from watery prisons, asking his audience to hold their breath along with him, his assistant enjoying their red faced gasps as they faltered one by one. He had made an elephant vanish, a masterclass in the control of perception, the newspapers scratching their collective…

The bakery attracted people from around the world. Queues would start an hour before it opened, people jostling with impatient elbows. When they opened the doors the smell would hit everyone with a ferocity that was unmatched, sending each of them spinning into their own memories of childhoods tinged by rhubarb, dates heady with the…

She depended on her routine. She had porridge with blueberries for breakfast every day. She had a wardrobe full of pencil skirts and silk blouses that she wore to work, leaving at exactly 8:22am to walk the twenty-three minutes to her office. She finished her day at 5:37 to be home at exactly 6pm for…

“You’re not going out like that are you?” “Why not?” “Because look at yourself!” He looked in the hallway mirror and took in his too tall frame and his too wild hair. She had always said that she loved the fact that he was unconventional, and that he didn’t care what other people thought. He…

It had been five months since the accident, five months since she had an open fracture of the tibia, a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen. Five months since she had been dead for a minute. Five months since she had first seen the dark mist in the corner of her room. Five months of watching…