“It’s the blood I remember most,” I said. “He nearly slipped when he came to get me.” Kemma’s body tightened. Her eyelashes fluttered against my neck in a rapid staccato. I pulled the coarse sheet up and over her shoulder. “Why you always...
“I’m going to beat you,” she said. The first hours were easy. Jenny unpacked the groceries and stacked them in the fridge even though the power was off. It would be like camping, going back to nature, this expedition. The purer her body become...
“Peter, may I ask your advice?” she said, appearing at his elbow and standing so close he could see how carefully the orange dusting had been applied to her cheek. He pressed his arms to his side. The children called him ‘Stinky Pete’ behind his...
“It is my daughter’s party tomorrow. I must to buy presents. Or else my wife…” Fabien shrugged. “It is no matter; I will catch up on some reading. There is much I need to do.” Descending in the lift to the ground floor, he pondered the...
We were talking just now about how my neighbour, Jack Montgomery, lost his young son swimming in the river last year. A tragedy it was. His mother never stopped blaming herself for letting him out of her sight, and I don’t want to put anything on...
This essay is a review of Cubic Construction and its principal proprietor, Qulzam (Cooly) Mahmood. I am surprised by the absence of other reviews on the internet, either positive or negative, since my experience was so extreme. My goal...
Mark Cousins’ documentary A Story of Children in Film commences at the window of the sanatorium where Van Gogh spent time recuperating. The view through the bars is compared with how the artist painted the scene in his vibrant, emotionally honest...
“The first duty of Government is the defence of the realm”. This truism comes from The Armed Forces Covenant, a Ministry of Defence document articulating the relationship between the state and the soldier. Despite this obligation, the government...
The dog must have spied some cheeky interloper through the back window: a squirrel, or perhaps a magpie on the lawn. Whining and pawing at the carpet, she forced me to rise from my desk and let her out. As soon as the door was ajar she exploded...
When Jonathan and Iona unlock the door and enter the apartment, the first thing she does is throw herself onto the sofa and search for the wifi signal on her phone. Labouring with the suitcases, Jonathan tries not to dislodge pictures from the...
The first single I ever bought was Geno by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. It sat in a red, drop-front box for nearly five years before I found something worthy of joining it, Billy Bragg’s Between the Wars EP. Only two records, but five awesome...
‘Dawn’ is the story of a morally complex Israeli partisan who has been ordered to kill a captured British officer in retaliation for the British having killed a Jewish prisoner in occupied Palestine. The book follows the narrator’s arguments for...
Headsail Books © 2019 All Rights Reserved