For six days this week, new stories from Alan Beard. Alan has published two story collections, Taking Doreen Out of the Sky (Picador, 1999) and You Don’t Have to Say (Tindal Street Press, 2010). Numerous stories and flash fiction have appeared in magazines and anthologies, in the UK, USA and Canada including Malahat Review, London Magazine, Best British Short Stories (Salt), most recently in Digbeth Stories (Floodgate 2023) and Thursday Nights (Tindal Street Fiction Group, 2023). Alan is Tom Gallon award winner; and is currently finishing off a third collection.
SLIGHTLY
She loved every minute of it, even the people around at other tables, a conversation about hybrid roses and evolution at the next table, coffee getting cold before them, the ones over there with matching bushy eyebrows, Russian, spies, have they got briefcases? Laptops these days. She loved the man in front of her sat at an angle, shifting in his chair, his freckles, his slightly too fat build, the legs inside his suit trousers, the fact he was going back to work soon, she loved every second of this rainy day meeting, her husband tucked up, down with COVID, surely not able to be up yet, while she sat with him, man shifting in his own aura, in his power over her, little game being played in his eyes, the way he turned slightly from her. She didn’t care she loved every unheard millisecond going by, even going to the toilet and seeing her slightly flushed face in the mirror and coming back to him, the tiny shreds of time coming in to surround her and take her far back into her mind.
© 2024, Alan Beard
essentials
Beard. An intro to Six Days with Alan Beard→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Wants to Get High→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Too Many Bags→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Slightly→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Gone→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Riot→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Whatwastherethematterwithher?→
Alan Beard on X formerly known as Twitter→
