The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

      PART I Eleanor Voss arrived at Blackridge, the coastal town where her family’s history ran as deep as the jagged cliffs that framed the shore. The house had been empty for nearly a decade, yet it had been waiting for her—dust settling in corners, the scent of salt embedded in the wooden beams. Her mother’s family had owned the place for generations, but Eleanor had no memories of them. They had all passed before she was old enough to remember. It was the perfect place to practice her craft. She had spent years training her voice, shaping it into something worthy of the stage, but New York had been a waste of time. Her instructors were unimpressed, the opportunities were scarce, and every audition ended in polite rejection. She needed solitude. No distractions. No reminders of her failures. The house sat on the highest ridge overlooking the sea, its back porch opening to a sheer drop of dark stone. Below, waves crashed against the rocks, unrelenting. ...

    Flora Sampson still wasn’t sure what she was doing here. Come to that, she wasn’t sure if she’d lost her mind. Most people she’d spoken to certainly thought she had. Though to be fair, that was nothing new: the idea of a lady writer, let alone a reporter, was something people still couldn’t quite seem to get their heads around. Her poor dear mother certainly couldn’t. “A reporter indeed!” The old battleax had said more times than she could count. “Really, Flora! What man of quality is going to want to marry a woman who tramps about in dark corners getting soot on her petticoats? Absurd!” “Absurd,” Flora thought as she stretched her legs in the handsome captain’s chair emblazoned with the Eton College crest. “Yes, mother. Absurd is right. if you only knew how much, you might die of shame.” But Flora did know. It was only the fact that she would die of curiosity before she died of shame that had brought her here. Because when you got right down to it, the rea...

  I (37f) have two children: Nathan (12m) and Anna (14f). A couple of months ago, I took Anna to a private hospital for a procedure to have four of her wisdom teeth extracted. Teeth that were well-embedded in my daughter's gums, necessitating the use of a general anaesthetic. Necessitating, in fact, a visit to an all-hours private clinic; time was of the essence. Frustratingly, there were unforeseen delays with other surgeries that day, so Anna endured an agonising wait for what ended up being an extremely late surgery. An extremely involved surgery. The extraction of those impacted molars lasted two hours, all in all, and was rather anxiety-inducing for me too. Now, anybody who’s seen the aftermath of such a procedure, in either reality or the YouTube footage of a sadistic parent, knows that it often involves wonky, witty remarks from the recovering patient. And, whilst I didn’t have a recording phone at the ready, I’ll admit that I was hoping for s...