Diane Williams

How best to touch these woody objects or a person?     She batted together the parts of the sycamore stick she had broken in two and then made of them the self-important capital letter T – and she spun one.     She rolled the stick over her thumb and then she tried for greater twirling speed, as she sat on the park bench that bore a personalised inscribed...

I had had enough of everything during what I took to be my turn.

‘Can I just pet it,’ I said, when Tim and I were in bed, ‘instead of my taking it inside?’ But Tim said no.

And then, at the task, he pulled himself back and forth inside of me with many repetitions, enough to get to the next step for him – to stabilise the project. He was cramming rather a lot into...

He’d never quite seen anyone in that state before, even though he has a mother and all that.

Today Lizzie is, he thinks, irresistibly plaintive.

Then the doorbell jerked the husband to his feet.

Does Lizzie live here?

Who are you?

Where did she go? Where did Lizzie go?

Who wants to know?

Lizzie meant to answer hurriedly and hotly, but nevertheless stayed hidden.

Around here real and imaginary...

Eventually the mother died. My wife, was, in spite of everything, very fond of her mother, and had saved a dog abandoned at Vaughn’s – because, she said, the dog reminded her of her mother.

      Then why be so careless? Because Molly went up a walkway of stairs with the dog who wasn’t on a leash, and using by-paths – she went far into a...

One of them breaks the routine at the office usually – mouths off or is sullen, every once in a while.

The man said, ‘You know why I’m here, Jane.’

Jane grabbed at the man where some soft flesh is, with some force, perhaps because so many persons were no longer in her life – not Titus or Roddy, Mamie or Cecelia Bouché – whom...