Legend Press

his lips mauve

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Guy Jenkin is a multi BAFTA, RTS and Emmy award-winning writer, director and producer. His television series include Outnumbered, Kate & Koji and Drop The Dead Donkey, all co-written with Andy Hamilton. He also wrote and directed a number of TV films including A Very Open Prison and Crossing The Floor, and two feature films, The Sleeping Dictionary and, with Andy Hamilton, What We Did On Our Holidays. This is his first novel.

It was mad to be in a shop buying shoes when her father was a shoemaker. When she’d threatened to come home with a pair, he’d told her that he’d throw them on the fire

her hose, and she was going to spend part of one on some shoes that didn’t leak, her father be damned.

The shoemaker’s wife sat, with a baby on her breast, on a stool by the door.

I told her that we don’t really have our own thoughts. Our minds simply contain reflections of what we’ve seen and experienced the way the moon borrows light and sends it back to us.

following days, a succession of candles

which is worse, danger or the fear of danger?

Vanessa cursed herself as she and her friends left the pub. A wet October night was not the time to have worn, of all silly things, a strapless dress with summer sandals. And what on earth was she doing splashing through rain and stubbing her toes on paving stones as she ran towards Balliol? Who was this person that everyone was talking about as though he were a god? Supposedly good