Category: World in WInter

Extracts from The World in Winter

The winter begins

The light was poor, the bulbs glowing dully on the inadequate voltage. He ruffled the pages back awkwardly, peering at dates and headlines – back through the early days of scientific reports, dubious prognostications, tucked...

Brilliant skies

It was difficult to tell, looking back, how good a summer that had been. The records gave a statistical answer – at Kew, the century’s fourth best for dryness, the third best in hours of...

Effect of high-altitude living

‘Extraordinarily rosy-cheeked, that girl.’ ‘Effect of high-altitude living,’ David said. ‘She comes from some tiny village up in the Italian Alps. You get that sort of thing above the fifteen hundred metre level. The small...

Being one of the boys

‘Everything degenerates into habit – nausea, vanity, everything. For a year after I began drinking beer, I couldn’t stand the taste of it. All I was getting was the satisfaction of being one of the...

infidelity,affair,best-friend's-wife

He’s meeting a woman

‘I do like you for being old-fashioned,’ she said. ‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t, under the circumstances.’ The last phrase carried a shadow of emphasis. ‘There’s nothing wrong – nothing basically. He’s meeting … a...

Always a stranger

She said: ‘I’m going to leave you, Andy.’ He was aware of a slight shiver that ran across his shoulders and down his spine; he hoped the tremor had not shown. The girl behind the...

An eternal sizzle

‘For weeks you were sleeping with my wife and meeting me seemingly as a friend.’ ‘Nothing seeming about it. It started with Carol when I hardly knew you – that first time you came round...

A realistic bastard

‘You’re something of a bastard,’ Andrew said, ‘aren’t you?’ ‘In both senses of the word, as a matter of fact. That’s probably what made her so self-sacrificing. I’m also something of a realist.’ Andrew said...