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Just need an excuse to put pen to paper?

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

Shreds of Love by Irene Edwards, Angus, UK

Lip Service by Will Orr-Ewing, London, UK

Red by Gary Campbell, Mount Gambier, Australia

Leaving The City In Ruins. by Trevor Nicholl, Manchester, UK

One For The Watercooler by Simon Maltz, London, UK

My Own Personal Time Machine by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Women and Me and My Mate Jamie by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Collecting Footsteps by Annemaria Cooper, Glasgow, UK

The Burning Tree by Daniel Michael Manning, Bath, UK

As Still as Statues by Patrick Johnson, London, UK

The Bonestripper's Bait by Ben Schroeder, Melbourne, Australia

Apple Juice by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

I wish. Oh how I wish! But there, it’s no earthly use making wishes like that; no good trying to claw back the past in order to bite the cherry a second time. You can’t go back. Not ever. The tape of life winds only one way, and having wound to the end, stops. If it breaks in the process, it stops sooner than expected, but that is the only variation permitted.
I was offered the moon once, but like a spoilt child - was I spoilt? - probably, would satisfy with nothing less than the stars. And now? Now I had the tiny patch of earth underneath my feet, a patch that changed constantly with my footsteps, and all of it second hand. Still, the beach gave a spurious sense of ownership, washed constantly as it was to a smooth uniformness that gave the impression of being new and unused.
My feet sank into the soft, wet sand as I stared at the bottle drifting in with the tide. Retreating every now and then against the encroaching waters, I waited with what patience I could muster until the bottle was within reach, then stooped and picked it up, feeling slightly self conscious about the act. To be sure, there was nobody close enough to see, nobody even in sight at all, yet the feeling persisted just the same. Years ago I wouldn’t have felt the same self consciousness, but then years ago I wouldn’t have wandered along a deserted beach for company. Years ago I was a foreigner and did things differently.
I looked at the bottle with an artificial feeling of interest. It was green, a dark, deep colour that could only be described as bottle green. It was almost, but not quite opaque, though it was impossible to see what might be inside. Without a label, there was only one way to find out. I removed the cork, half expecting a genie to swirl out and grant me my heart’s desire, but of course no such thing happened. I would even have settled for one wish, and anyone else could have had the other two. The contents of the bottle, whatever they had been in the past, had long since gone, only a faint musty smell remaining, a smell that aroused a strong memory in the pathways of my mind. It wasn’t apple, but that’s the memory that came.

I was just eighteen when I accompanied my mother on her retreat to the countryside. Not that I had any objection, as I had always liked rural life, so different from the busy, noisy, and above all, impersonal city we lived in. I never liked cities, but I cannot go back to the countryside now. There are too many memories of things that never happened for it to be comfortable. I live by the sea instead, close by the shore, on the boundary, which is where my mind is situated.
But in those days, it was interesting to stay for several weeks that summer surrounded by farmland and sheep, moorland and forest. Boundaries of a different sort. We had taken a cottage for the whole summer, just my mother and I. There were only the two of us then. I had no brothers or sisters, and my father - well, my father was the reason we were there. With the resilience of youth, I had come to terms with his loss, but mother had taken it hard.
It was on the third day that I found the neighbour. I say the neighbour, as he was the only one I ever really got to know. The house was set at the end of a narrow, overgrown lane, immediately after a sharp bend. Tall trees that I later learned were chestnuts grew in a somewhat straggly fashion, shadowing the entrance to the house, so that I came across it suddenly, and with a sense of surprise. There was a man in the garden, or what passed for a garden, since it wasn’t cultivated in any way, merely the taller weeds cut back roughly with a scythe in order to give light and air to an otherwise small and cramped area. I knew it was a scythe that had done the work, because the man was using it as I turned round the bend and came into view. I gave some sort of stammered apology.
As it happened, an apology was not needed, as he turned out to be the friendliest man I ever met. After a slow start, we spent the summer days together, enjoying each other’s company in a purely platonic way. Always there was apple juice waiting for me when I arrived. Every day. Apple juice and strawberries with cream on top. We sat for hours underneath a tree that was full of bees going about their own business, just talking about this and that. I tried to guess what he was doing in such an isolated place and failed miserably with each succeeding guess. It didn’t matter. It was just a sort of game we played. He was good company for me at a time I needed company, though I didn’t realise it at the time, and I wished the summer days could last for an eternity instead of the very few weeks that were all I had.
And then, one day, it all went wrong. I was stretched out on the grass, as usual, revelling in the warmth, and gazing into the tree where the bees were so busy still. He came to kneel alongside me, then leaned over and kissed me gently on my lips. It wasn’t the first time I had been kissed, but this sent a frisson of excitement charging through my body, and I responded in the best way I knew how, inexpert, but willing, my arms going around his neck and pulling him closer. His hand came to my breast, not moving, just resting there, and that was for the first time ever. I closed my eyes and drifted off into a dream world of my own, where thoughts and emotions chased each other around, battling for notice, and wishing that this moment could be frozen in time. He spoke to me, bringing me back to reality.
‘ I love you, Jenny,’ he said. ‘Would you marry me?’
I sat upright with a start, fantasy fleeing as a snowflake on a hotplate.
‘ Oh no, Peter. No, I’m sorry, I couldn’t do that.’
He looked hurt at my rapid answer, and I hastened to explain.
‘ Marry you? I like you, Peter. You’re nice to be with, and to do things with, but... well... you’re so much older than I am. And we have different tastes in music. And we don’t know each other so well. And... well... I never realised you thought of me in that way. I didn’t know.’
With hindsight, I might have been more tactful.
‘ Well, you know now,’ he said with a queer laugh.
‘ I wasn’t trying to lead you on,’ I said, still fumbling for something to say.
‘ I know you weren’t. It doesn’t matter. I asked. You turned me down. I was a fool to think it might ever be different, but I had to ask. Otherwise I would never have known.’
I left shortly afterwards, and spent three miserable days before coming to the conclusion that even if he was so much older, there was no reason why we couldn’t continue to be friends. There wasn’t, of course, but I know now what I hadn’t realised on that day, that there was no going back. Life is not that sort of game where you can start again and do things in a different way in the hope that you get what you really want. I went back just the same, and found the cottage empty, devoid of all life, as though it had never been occupied, and I knew we would never meet again.

As I have grown older, I have learned many things I was ignorant of when only just eighteen. I know that our bee tree was a lime. I know the names of a good many wild flowers, including the small scarlet variety I had once wondered about. I also know that age differences are not as important as a young girl might think. Above all, I know that once you set your feet on a certain path, there is no going back. Words said cannot be unsaid. They stick in the memory. I closed my eyes as I had closed them so long ago, and tried to see the future, any future, any possible future engraved on the eyelids reddened by the light from the fading sun. There was nothing to be seen, but I knew that already. I pushed the cork back into the bottle and set it down in the sea, watching until the ebbing tide drew it away out of sight, then walked slowly back to my lonely flat for tea.