Emily Taylor

LILY HARPER had raised her boy alone. Her husband, a reckless drifter, vanished the very night their

I was shuffling home late on a damp Thursday, absolutely knackered you know how it feels when every patient

Emma turned the key and froze: three fluffy strangers were perched on the doorstep. It was that relentless

That night I forced my son and daughterinlaw out of the house and took their keys; the moment had arrived

I often think back to that winter in the little village of Brookfield, when my mother, Margaret Whitmore

Marmaduke was perched on the gate, waiting. Day after day, then two, then a week The first snow fell

I walked out of the gate of the old bearing works, a crumpled payslip tucked into my jacket pocket.

He refused to marry his pregnant girlfriend. His mother backed him, but his father stood up for the unborn child.

The bus let me off in front of the walled garden of the councilrun assisted living block at precisely

Stay at a friends while my aunt from York spends a month here, my husband says, shoving my suitcase toward the door.