The door was open, and a blare of pop music came from that and the windows, also open. In the hall, a couple were standing in a corner, kissing, their bodies pressed together and motionless;...

‘I’ll remember you, Charlie. I got a memory for faces. I’ll remember yours.’ He swung an arm as he went, catching a standard lamp and pulling it over and shouldering Jane roughly out of the...

Walter had lectures the whole of the morning, and Jane did not see him. She did not go to lunch until half past one and, with some shopping that needed doing, it was a quarter...

Boxes within boxes, she thought. The family man with the distinguished looking wife and two handsome children. And Sexy Staunton, the flutterer of female undergraduates’ hearts. And inside that, to the few who really knew...

She told him about the take-over of Stephen’s party, of what they had found when they got back. He listened, frowning. ‘That’s exactly it. Don’t you see? The challenge already exists. With stupid louts, it...

‘I remember in Mespot,’ he said, ‘a place where they was digging up buried cities, from thousands of years before Christ. And there was angels, stone angels, with wings. Thousands of years before Christ, I...

They drank their coffees, and ordered more. A girl came with pastries on a trolley, and he asked her if she would have something. ‘No, thank you.’ He shook his head to the girl, and...

The atmosphere stayed good-humoured until they got to the Civic Centre. By that time they numbered several thousand. The leaders, with the microphone and amplifiers, took up their position at the top of the steps,...

He half-carried, half-pushed her to the police van. She was dazed, and saw things in unconnected tableaux. The television news van of which he had spoken, with a figure slowly panning a camera. Pigeons settling...

Martin’s robe was not ready when he came in from school. There had been a minor disaster with the weekly wash – the wind had blown the line down – and although it hadn’t really...