11. An English Girl in Prague

Christmas Eve, 2009

“Love you too, Mum.”  Lola slaps a particularly bold, probing hand away from her thigh and switches the mobile phone to her other ear.  “I’ll be home before you know it.  Say hi to Dad for me.  Yeah, I will.  Yeah, merry Christmas to you too.  Love you.  Bye.”  She slides the phone shut and turns to the owner of the hand.

“That was my mother, you pig,” she says, helping herself to a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket.  “I thought you were going to the bar, anyway.”

“I did,” he replies.

“So where’s my vodka?”

“I drank. You talk a lot.”  His hand makes its way onto her hip, and Lola suppresses the urge to stub it with her cigarette.  Andrej might not exactly be the kind of man a girl would write about in her diary, but since meeting him this afternoon Lola hasn’t had to put her hand in her pocket once.  She might judge another woman for acting in such a way, but she can’t afford to have any feelings about it one way or the other just yet.  Can’t afford anything, full stop.

10. Bad Kids

It is the best kind of winter's morning: bright, crisp, and so cold that even a vampire's breath can be seen in the air.  A tall, rakish gentleman with shaggy dark hair sits outside a fast food restaurant on Wenceslas Square, flicking cigarette ash into a cup of cheap, undrinkable coffee.  His companion, a pretty young blonde, finishes the last of her hot chocolate.  It is their final day in Prague; at the train station a few streets away they will choose a new destination.  A new adventure.

9. Mother's Ruin

St. Helier, 1920

It is a Friday, and Mallory wishes to die.  It dawns on her rather suddenly, as if she has just remembered how to spell a word that has been bothering her all day.  She wonders if the enormity of such a wish should shock her, but then she realises that this desire for her life to be over has slowly and irrevocably seeped into every corner of her being over the last several weeks.  It is not so much an impulse as it is mere inevitability.

8. Holy Wine

Seth agrees with his wife; the blond boy is beautiful.  They’ve watched him for the last five minutes, since he strode into the bar with the purposeful rhythm of a man trying not to appear quite as drunk as he is.