The Guardian publishes a new short story by the winner of its First Book Award:
When I saw her yesterday, Miss McConkey looked vital and frail at the same time, like a cross between Doris Lessing and poor, murdered Cora Lansquenet. She stood in the queue for the only cashier inside the OK supermarket that replaced the Bon Marché at Mabelreign shopping centre. She carried her head as she always had done, slightly tilted to the left, and her hair, all white now, was pinned into a large bun at the top of her head. When I was a little girl, her hair reminded me of Mam’zelle’s at Mallory Towers. Not Mam’zelle Rougier, who was thin and sour and never any fun, but Mam’zelle Dupont, who was plump and jolly. Her eyes, unlike Mam’zelle Dupont’s, which were never still and sparkled and gleamed behind her lorgnettes, did not twinkle behind her round glasses. For all the time that had passed, I would have known her anywhere, and besides, you can count on all eight fingers the number of white people left in the whole of Mabelreign, from Sentosa to Bluff Hill, from Meyrick Park to Cotswold Hills.
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