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Then enter the Secret Attic Short Story Competition!

Each month you can submit an entry that will be passed onto our judges who will pick the best and award a winner. During some months the subject matter will be a 'free for all', where you can write anything you like, other months will have a specific theme.

Previous Competition Winners

February 2005 David Willshaw

April 2005 Christine Sutton

May 2005 George L Darley

July 2005 Robyn O'Hara

August 2005 Richard Adamski

September 2005 Hannah Southgate

October 2005 Heather Parker

December 2005 Feathers by Bob Lakin

January 2006 RD Larson

February 2006 Debra Spiller

March 2006 Nethi Sette

April 2006 Joe Louis

May 2006 Kim Montgomery

Love of Literature by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

Missing by Debra Spiller, Kent, UK

Diary of a Ghost by Suzanne Ralphson, Leicester, UK

We met at University, the second time around. I was trying to complete the degree I had run away from 10 years earlier and Law was finishing her MA.
I thought she was too clever for me when I joined mutual friends at the SU bar quiz machine and she got all the Arts and Literature questions right. I could only contribute to film questions but I think my wide ranging knowledge of black and white movies impressed her on some level.
We bumped into each other again at the same time the next week… and the next and soon it was just us on the machine, pouring pound coins into our new found relationship that neither of us admitted had begun. We would pit our differences at each other and offer tutoring assistance on our respective areas of expertise. Soon she was lending me books, modern classics I’d always meant to read and I was lending her classic films. On the day we both brought in George Orwell’s 1984 in opposing media I think we knew this was going to go somewhere.
By the summer we saw each other almost every day – sometimes it was hard to orchestrate these chance meetings but we managed to keep bumping into one another at the park, at the supermarket or, on very rare evenings, in my bed.
In July I met Emily and things changed. I’d always known some girl would pop up and spoil things – I wanted to be with Law and I didn’t want anyone else coming between us, but it was hard for Law to keep her daughter out of the equation for long. One day, at the park at the end of my road as I skived work for the second day running I was introduced to Emmy as “Mummy’s friend from college”. As I pushed Emily on the swings, Law and I talked about how we couldn’t carry on like this because Mark would find out sooner or later. Mark was Law’s husband of three years; the poor mug who had financed Law’s return to Uni, had happily waved her off to the SU bar every Wednesday night and babysat their first born child whilst Law and I snatched moments of telling glances and brushed hands over the quiz machine.
It was on another of these accidental meetings (in an out-of-town bookshop and coffee house) that Law told me she was pregnant. I burnt my mouth on a too hot latte in an attempt to seem calm and unfazed. My yelp of pain and repetition of the work “Fuck” didn’t help the situation – but it summed up how I felt - about the coffee and the baby.
Our email and texts stopped, our rendezvous ended, Law told Mark she was pregnant and he was delighted, of course, that he would soon have a son. They called him Edward and he was born a couple of days after my 33rd birthday. Law’s email to me (part of a distribution-list of work colleagues and non-friends) told me he had Mark’s eyes and her temper.
I was running, I remember running, thousands of them behind me, thousands in front, trying to catch a rhythm that would keep me going, tired, legs aching and hot, arms shaking and cold below the elbows tucked into a jogger’s cramp of piston movements; punching the air. I’m aware that I am being watched by yet more thousands of people. This is my first true understanding of being lonely in a crowd. I think if I see one man or woman stop running, I will stop with them, ask if they’re alright and use the time to try to ease the aching pain in my ribs. No one stops, the runners run and so do I.
I don’t know how long I carried on, tuning out of the constant one-two of the race, not thinking of anything in particular, just thoughts passing one another in a disorganised and dehydrated mind. Whatever anybody said later I kept on running, I didn’t give up. When the pain in my ribs moved in an inverted V and sat like a sports day stitch in the top of my chest I rubbed the heel of my palm steadily against that spot in the offbeat of my pounding and blistered feet. I was pale and sweaty, clearly dealing with chest pains. Neither I, nor the swathes of cheering gawpers thought that maybe, just maybe, I was having a heart attack. I had another fifty steps before I fell – I was counting by then to keep pace, I thought if I could count to 1000 I would probably have reached the finish line.
I didn’t reach the finish line, I fell, I landed on my knees and rolled sideways clutching my tee-shirt with one hand and the back of my cold, wet neck with the other, I remember this, I remember the sun bright in my eyes directly above me, I was on my back at the side of the road as a human snake of colours and numbers slithered by. I think I remember sirens and lights. In a moment of clarity I wondered if a half-marathon wouldn’t have been a better idea, and if I could still collect the sponsor money even though I hadn’t finished the course.
When Law chose her husband and partly unborn family over me, I should have been distraught but in truth I was relieved. There was no way I was ready for a baby or a 3 year old step-daughter, the looks, the questions, the responsibility, the house big enough for four, not being able to quit my job just because I want to. At the time I thought I had had a lucky escape from the ready-made family and instant parenthood that Law could have offered me. In hindsight I don’t know how I would have reacted if Law had asked me to take her and Emily, divorce Mark and set up together in preparation for the birth of a new baby. I think I would have run screaming down the street in terror. But she never did ask me. We both just assumed that we had to stop messing about and she needed to invest more time and effort into her fledgling marriage and her rapidly expanding family.
It was nearly three years before I heard from Law again – a text message out of the blue: “IS THIS STILL YOUR NUMBER? L” She needn’t have put the “L”, she was the only person I know who insisted on shouting in text messages. I replied (in lower case) that it was indeed me and we went from there – she texted that she needed to talk, then she rang to tell me that she and Mark were over, then she came over to ask for support and friendship and by midnight, her and her two children were asleep in my small professionals-only, non-smoking, pet-free apartment.
She never went home again. By the end of the year we were sending and receiving joint Christmas cards, we didn’t include the kids names until the year after – there’s an etiquette surrounding poaching a man’s wife and children apparently.
That night in my flat, with the children and their Mother red-eyed and asleep beside me, became our first date and we measured the success of our relationship on how far away from that date we could get without breaking up and ripping what little security the children had left from them.
For our first anniversary we went to New York, shopped and drank and asked strange Americans to take photos of us in front of places we later couldn’t remember the names of. One of these is framed above the TV in the lounge, Law and I, cold and red-faced, smiling embarrassedly at the helpful amateur photographer, arms around waists and under coats, the picture of a young couple in love.
I’m looking at that photo now; sometimes I visit New York without meaning to; a cheap holiday for the deceased. I wish I could travel in time too, be back there and know that I have to make more of this, that we won’t return, that in 5 years I’ll be dead and buried with a grave I can’t visit - never knowing my own epitaph. I’ve never read my obituary and I missed my own funeral. I only know who went from occasional references that friends make to Law when I’m (not) there. I don’t know if it was a “good” funeral or not. I hope it rained, I hope there was mist – I hope it looked like the last scene of a classic black and white movie like the ones I used to lend to my girlfriend.