Kaleidoscope

(1500 words) I poured boiling water onto freshly ground coffee, inhaling the feisty aroma. 11.30 p.m. Joanne should be here any minute. What the hell did she want? I couldn’t get my head around it. Unless someone had tried it on with her inappropriately. Molested her. That was the last thing I needed. “Darling, are you coming to bed?” It was Becky, my wife. Her blonde hair was ruffled and her heavy breasts pressed through her thin nightie. I felt my body stir. “No, someone from work called. They’re calling around any time now. … they want to talk. It’s urgent. I don’t know what it’s about. Some neurotic woman. I’ll get rid of her as soon as I can.” I kissed Becky’s warm nose. “Love you.” But Joanne didn’t call round and she wasn’t at work the next day. In fact, she wasn’t at work ever again.

Keeping It in the Family

(700 words) “Hard to imagine he’ll get away with it,” said my sister Donna. “Well, he says if we both stick to the story, they can’t prove anything.” Donna looked thin and pale, not surprising, considering the strain we’d all been living under. “I still can’t believe it, that poor woman!” “Look, I know it’s awful, but nothing we can say or do’s going to bring her back is it?”

Incident on Putney Bridge

(700 words) It was early, just gone 7.30 a.m., the pavements of the City of London still sparsely populated. Suited young men and women scurried to offices like robots, perhaps hoping to arrive early enough to impress their bosses. Towering buildings, beacons of opulence, homes to banking headquarters and financial institutions, dominated the area. Within their hallowed myriad offices, computers communicated thousands of impenetrable transactions a second with similar institutions in unimaginable places.