Alison Wassell

For my fortieth birthday my mother buys me a stuffed penguin that weighs as much as a toddler. She saw an advert in her Facebook feed, she says, and right away thought of me.   “When you live alone, your body thinks you’re in danger, so you’re in flight or fight mode all the time. […]

You’ve never been one of the cool kids but here you are, a virgin trick or treater with your Wednesday Addams plaits and pilgrim-collared dress, and it doesn’t matter that the others are in hoodies and jeans, nor that they’re calling you by your last name the way they do in school, nor that nobody

You were home all evening. I helped you with some algebra, leaning over your shoulder inhaling the not-my-little-boy-anymore scent of you, striking out your mistakes, promising you’d get it eventually. Anyway, who formulates a quadratic equation to solve a real life problem?   Afterwards I made us hot chocolate with marshmallows on top, the way

On the day the boy is born his father buys him a rugby ball and a tiny jersey in the colours of his hometown team, and a toast is drunk to the strapping front row forward he will surely become.   Every birthday and Christmas brings another ball. By the time the boy is six

My father always painted the past in primary colours, bright and uncomplicated, every day yellow-sunned, every cloud erased. My father always left my mother to deal with the difficult stuff, turned his face away from unhappiness, focussed on fun. My father always believed he would be the first to go, not the one left grieving

Her wedding is arranged in a hurry, because he has received his call-up papers, her dress hastily constructed from an old curtain. The honeymoon is a single night in a B&B in Blackpool and, since no-one has thought to prepare her, takes her somewhat by surprise.   She is war-widowed before she has become accustomed

Unless, like Sharon, you grew up in the seventies, some things are hard to believe. Until she was twelve, Sharon’s family had a black and white TV set, and all four of them would sit together on the sofa every Saturday night, watching the same programme. There were only three channels, and you had to

She was the kind of donation that, when tipped out of a black bin liner, made bored charity shop workers wrinkle their noses and declare that there was little demand, nowadays, for that kind of thing.   There were years left in her, still, but she was showing signs of wear. She was frayed and

She starves herself, and with the cash she saves, buys tickets to Comic Con. They catch the bus. Superman, in his school shoes, claims the window seat. She found his costume in a charity shop, its faded fabric bearing the marks, not quite washed out, of another boyhood, its red and yellow shield part melted

Every Saturday night, Sheila and I heard the suitcase being dragged from the top of the wardrobe and flung onto our parents’ bed. We knew, from the sound of it being packed, which of them planned to leave.   Dad packed slowly and methodically. We listened to the clump of his shoes going in first.