My latest short story, Dear Versailles, has been published in Issue 3 of Hark Magazine. You can read it right here on page nineteen!
There will also be a launch night on the 28th November, at the Washington Pub in Hampstead Heath. I won’t be reading this time (though I may be in the future – watch this space!) but my fangirls and I will be there, so should you!
Here’s a small excerpt to whet your appetites:
12th June 2006
Dear Versailles,
Once I thought we would never leave. You were the heart of us all, holding us together by one thread to make us look like family. Yet, today we drove away, disparate in four separate cars, parts of a whole that won’t function without you.
Around the front lawn of moss and daisies, pansies have begun to bloom and the trees have leafed into life again, a green and dappled haven, fortress to your sturdy walls. The gate latched with that familiar swing-thwuck, my feet resting on the first bar from the ground as I rode it closed for the last time. Driving away, my mother gave two beeps on the horn as we rounded the fast-corner, keeping tradition as we broke away.
We are trying to say goodbye to the empty house and the inhabitant who no longer lives there without forming the words, pretending we’ll be back. A hard lie to swallow: documents have been signed to confirm that you are not ours. Nor ever were. Nor ever will be again.
Yours so faithfully,
Arianne
3rd December 2007
Dear Versailles,
Last night I sat at table with my parents. There was something in a half-raised hand, a flicker of eye-light, which made me think of you, as if the veil of arguments had been lifted briefly over and left a taste, bittersweet, like a life not taken… [READ MORE]