Eleanor Luke

The tour guide promises she will stick to the shade.  I pull my Lisboa cap snugly over my eyes. George is embarrassed by this cap. But I think it gives me a Kardashian air. I have the butt to match.   Since I saw that message from Beth on George’s phone, I wear this cap

Her mother sips green tea from a mug with a hairline crack Dilly prays she won’t notice.  She tells Dilly he was a tour guide in Thessaly where she did her doctorate on high altitude eremite constructions. She thinks he runs a hotel up there now. A charmingly unconventional man but definitely not father material.

You can’t keep doing this, you say. Your freshwater-voice revives me and the road comes into focus again. Luckily, it’s deserted at this hour, the tourists still sipping their cappuccinos beneath parasols. You’re too tired. Plus, you’re killing the planet with all this aimless driving. I tell you we are two teardrops in a tidal

On wintry Sundays, Anna’s mother would make fruit crumbles. Apple, blackberry, rhubarb. But nothing beat the damson. Biting into the stewed fruit, wincing at the explosion of acid tang, Anna would use her tongue to separate stones from flesh. Slowly, she’d count them out: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

Elsie’s job is to the count the fish. Two graceful guppies containing the souls of her two sisters, their unremarkable grey bodies transformed by brilliant orange tails. One Siamese fighting fish embodies Harry, her only love, a soldier lost in the war. Darling Harry, with his fiery locks and handsome jaw. Ever the gentle giant,