FARRAGO

Together we fought with the magpies over the best places to find food, and we huddled close in the cold at night, watching for cats, and we would sit in the swaying branches of oak trees, peering down at the neat rows of dark-bricked human houses, the rectangular sections of grass bordering them, the great black wasteland roads where monstrous cars roared by.

Jess’ logic was that a towering, six foot Nigella Lawson in my kitchen would shame me into action.

Agatha Christie finally arrives and the most shocking thing is that she isn’t in black and white.

For as long as I can remember, I have not screamed.

(To be read instructionally, as if from a book.)

I collected the fragments of stories she shared, the interrupted monologues, the almost silent memories and pieced them together.