Stories about nursery rhymes, strange labyrinths, a fruit machine, and turning into a goose.

Shortly after she hit "Send", Jenny learned by simple coincidence that a brace of something meant, very specifically, two. Everard would certainly know this, but would not acknowledge the mistake. He would proceed as though two was exactly what Jenny had meant. He would keep going even if

I only ever sang him songs with happy endings, where all of the five little ducks came back. He cried and shouted. He wanted to hear about the old man who bumped his head, and Humpty Dumpty all in pieces. I never could say no for long. But it felt

When they pulled the old church down, someone stood on the rubble and said that the church was not the building, but the congregation. I liked that. It made my eyes sting just a little. But I was not part of the congregation, and I did miss how the building

It was Ged's job to map the labyrinths. When a new one sprang up, he would gather his pencils and his yarn and set out. Most were simple, a single winding path, and Ged was needed only to let the people know how much time it would add

We lay under the stars, which after all is the only place you can lie, and we talked about the only thing you can talk about. By the time we felt too cold to stay out, we had discovered that each of us had a different idea about what that

Maria pulled the lever on the fruit machine, and watched the reels spin. There were two clunks, 7, 7, and then the whirring kept on. The last reel whirred, lemon cherry bar 7 bell smearing together down her vision. The next day it was still spinning. The next week, the

The shoes were really hurting my feet now. We had swapped them at the third pub, the whole group but me swept up in Misha's enthusiasm for her crazy fun idea. Misha had the biggest smile and the smallest feet and nothing in life ever seemed difficult for

Stories about the solstice, a friendship with a tree, melting ice, boiling eggs, cyanotypes, whether your dad likes jazz, and a malevolent inflatable.

It was three goes for a token on the Flayer, and the kids were screaming as they flew down the blood-slick inflatable slide. Billy emerged from the end, raw and pink and not smiling at all. His mum had told him he might have more fun on the Buccaneer

He had lain in the thick mud all day. The next day the sun baked it hard, so there was a bowl in the earth in the shape of him. If it rained again and then froze, there would be a doppelganger of him cast in ice. It would rise

I didn't take a camera, or even a pen and paper, so my memories of that summer are all cyanotypes. Leaves and feathers and little dead things, all no more than an absence in the background of blue. I thought they were beautiful, then. Now, I find myself

The tree grew taller every year, but I grew better at climbing, too. I thought we could keep pace with each other all our lives. I was a child with no idea of how things age. I was in its branches when the thought came to me that one of

The boys sat on the doorstep, watching ice cubes melt onto the pavement. "They disappear so quick when you put one on its own," said Brian, "but the ones together in the bag, they keep each other going. That's like how we are." His

It was my tenth year at the egg boiling championship, and I was determined to take home the golden saucepan. I had focused on the basics, of course: estimating weight by feel and volume by eye, and finding ways to count time that didn't depend on keeping a

The days began to grow shorter, but the nights refused to fill the gap. In those in-between times that were not for sleep nor wakefulness, we stayed quietly together, and found a new kind of rest. There were more hours for living, then. Soon the next solstice will come.

Stories about mysterious games, kissing frogs, apples, chambers, and a walk to the impossible whale skeleton on the hill.

I was certain I had forgotten something. Sleeping bag, ground mat, water bottle, pants. I went through the kit list in my head, but by the time I reached the end of it, I was no longer sure about the things at the start. Waterproofs, wash kit, spare socks, sleeping

When flowers began turning to fruit, I clipped off every setting apple I could find except for one. Into that one apple would go all of the sunshine of all of the days from now until the autumn. Into that one apple would go every drop of rain that fell.

One hundred days of kissing frogs for nothing but chapped lips and and upset stomach, and I feel fantastic. Why? Because the secret nobody wants to hear is: you were never going to find a prince in 100 days. This first stretch is all about building habits, refining techniques, and

The invitation said, 'Dr Quick will meet you in his chambers'. It had all seemed very friendly, but Carys thought that nothing good had ever happened in a chamber. Chambers were for tests and torture and bullets. She wondered which she was in for. It didn't

When she went round to Marnie's house they played a game where you twisted sections of a crystal tower to make gems fall down into a treasure chest. There were rules, but Marnie wouldn't let her see them. They always had to play just twisting and

They spent the lesson looking up rude words in the dictionary. But something was wrong. A small agricultural holding. The part of the leg that extends from the knee to the ankle. Sticky or claggy dirt. Not one of them was rude at all. They had been tricked. They would

I was still wearing the daisy chain, and somehow I knew that when it broke I would too. But days in the sun had dried the stems until they were stiff and brittle. We did not have long left. Unless I lay down in the mud to be preserved, we

Stories about bollards, an audit of unused possessions, a key under the mat, and a school trip to the cranking factory.

The playground is the best place to go. You sit on a swing and look at the empty climbing frame and you can't forget the way things are. In the cafés and the streets it is not so strange that you don't see children. We made

A year after it happened, I saw they had put bollards in where the car hit him. I stopped to give them a shove, a shake, a kick. I wanted them to break loose. I wanted them to crumble into powder. If they stayed standing under my bloody knuckles it

We spray-painted empty ice cream black and strapped them partway up lamp posts. That is, Tom painted them and Lou shimmied up the streetlights. It was my job to start the rumours, but I never had to. By the end of the week I'd heard they were

We were almost done with the morning shift when the kids from the school trip arrived. They lined up along the wall and numbered off, well practiced but distracted. We kept turning the cranks. The teacher explained that they were in the main cranking room, and said a few words

Halfway to the exit, a man she half-recognised put a hand up to stop her. "Hilary, perfect," he said. "Do you think you can help me with something?" While the answer was still softening in her mouth, he led her into a meeting room, the