Purgatory

Rees’ Motorpark, out of town industrial estate, 8am.

            They begin to arrive, hand their keys over the counter to Jed ­– I’m here to help – then sit down at plastic tables in a foyer overshadowed by a vast showroom where new electric Fords gather before them like a row of tanks.

            ‘Annual service,’ explains a skeletal old boy, leather jacketed. Former biker? Jed ponders. ‘Aye, down here on the paperwork, Mr Holland. Can I give you a token for the coffee machine?’ ‘Door latch,’ says the next in the queue, a woman in a trouser suit that is nearly as creased as her face. Jed nods politely.

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Stella

1985

‘Pass us a Carlsberg’, Brian grunted from his recliner.

Stella hauled her heavily pregnant body back to the kitchen and grabbed her husband’s beer and her own TV dinner.  

‘Move – I want to see the beginning of this!’ Brian said in an irritated tone, as his wife of three years passed by his seat. There was no way he would be missing a moment of Crimewatch.

As the now-familiar theme tune began to play, Stella crossed the great divide to the floral, velour sofa that was fast-becoming out of fashion. She sat down, finally resting her swollen feet. Nick and Sue appeared on-screen and started discussing a woman who shot dead her husband.

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Tomorrow

How I came to be in McLaine’s commune on the shore of Puerto de la Valencia is a story for another time, because today, of all days, is about tomorrow.

McLaine was busying himself with his fishing nets in the courtyard at the back of the pre-civil war building housing his community, his wives, Consuela and Pamela were arguing in a mixture of rapid-fire Spanish and Surrey English about the best way to gut hake, and the writers, me included, were sitting on the garden wall watching the TV we rented for the occasion. We’d positioned it there because no room in the house was big enough to hold more than two of us and one of those would have to be standing.

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