Tenth

Late summer festivals are Oakley's favourite thing. Especially when Jess is there, with her dimples and her cigarettes in the back pocket of her shorts. There's thunderclouds coming over, but he can't bring himself to feel afraid. He'll just hang here in the balance, and maybe fate will find him.

Nine

It's hot. The sun is beating on the roof of the fruit cage, but where it filters down to Ruby, it's dappled gently by raspberry leaves. The warm sweet scent of crushed fruit is all around her, and when she goes home tonight it will linger still, on her coarse linen sheets, until tomorrow morning's shower. Not far from her, Oakley is picking raspberries and placing each one in the blue punnets like it's made of gold. His hands are stained red.
Ruby takes a deep breath, and then another. It's possible she's never felt so alive, so in the moment. She closes her eyes and prays.

8

The dolphin wind chimes dance in the sea breeze, clattering together dully. A storm is racing across the sky from the east, waves pounding on the beach, but it's still warm and sunny here. The storm won't be here till nightfall, when Ruby will go out, and the dusty streets will be cobbled under pelting rain, and that certain smell of a hot country doused in water will rise into the air. She'll wear her red dress, the one with the ruffled hem, and she'll take a pretty dark-skinned boy home.
The photographer tells her not to move.
"Just like that, Miss Ruby."
The amber ring on her finger was her mother's. She wore it every day, and sometimes after Denise's marriage was ended, Ruby would steal into her room and slip the worn silver band onto her too-small finger, still warm from her mother's body.
The dress is Ruby's own, and she knows it as well as her own body, by now; every frill, every crease, every jewel, every seam. Peter had it commissioned especially for the engagement photographs.
It makes her blood pump harder to know that he suspects nothing.

Seven

Emily wore her golden hair loose. The first time Peter saw her, it was blowing in the wind as she leaned over the side of her father's boat, as shining and brilliant as strands of pure gold. He loved her for that, instantly, just for being so beautiful and bright in a world that had only seemed dark.
Emily and her father sailed around the world. That day Peter saw them docking at Falmouth, they were returning from a six-month journey all around the Mediterranean. Emily returned laden down with tiny gifts for her mother and sisters: little terracotta statues, enamel earrings, crystallised lemon slices, preserved black sausage, startlingly coloured hand-woven shawls.
Disembarking, she dropped a shawl, and Peter grabbed it before it could blow into the water in the fierce offshore wind. That day, he drowned in her green eyes, and he's never come up for air; but Emily sails on, her love for adventure greater than any before or since.

SIX

Her father calls this sort of time 'high hay days'. It's a good name, she thinks; all the world seems golden and slow and hay dust floats on the heavy air. The hay piles high on the trailers and they sway at five miles an hour down the roads, leaving sticks of straw caught in the hedgerows. Her brother stands on the top in the field, hauling each bale into place as her father throws them up to him. Their forearms are scratched and swollen with hay mites. This is the time of year she loves the best. She takes a sip of her lemonade, and squeezes his hand.

Five

Her stockings have run a ladder during the night. Her skin smells like cigarettes and other women's perfume. Her toenails are candy-apple red, matching her lipstick. She tastes lime and vodka on her tongue. There's ice on her fingertips and nose, and a glow on her wide cheeks. Throughout the long night, she'll be by herself, but she's never truly alone.

0.4

Dusk creeps slowly forwards and meets the last light of the sun drowning in the West. Across the water, the city is already in darkness, and lights have blinked awake in the marina. The harbour is utterly still. Over there, on the other side of the bay, there are many stories to be told in the night that comes. Before tomorrow's light shines in the water and the waves wake once more, there will have been a whole thriving night of change and new life.

Number Three

Ruby wears Egyptian hand-woven wrap, provinence Luxor; pink fleece, The North Face; Cornish sea salt.

Ruby's child is called Oakley and he is cradled in her lap, wrapped warmly in the thick rug around both of them. He has his father's blonde curly hair and Ruby's grey eyes. He is asleep, worn out with water and sun. The daylight has already sunk behind the dunes, leaving just a reflection in the blue miles of sky and sea. Long shadows rear their arms towards mother and child, where she sits and watches the ever-encroaching surf.

2

Dress by Haus of Tiger. Model wears Lip Vinyl in Ginger, Dior BB, and cigarette smoke.


She's not getting married in the morning. She runs away from things like bridal shops and wedding cakes and diamond engagement rings. She likes to be free. When she's free she can smoke on her balcony at three in the morning and watch the lights of Prague or Paris run beneath her like flowing rivers of neon. When she's free she can eat alone in resturants in Dubrovnic and Tripoli under cloudless blue skies that stretch forever. When she's free she can go places she doesn't speak the language, and no one knows her, and she could be anyone at all. Because she is not anyone. Not anyone at all.

First

Emelie wears knee-high socks by Avoca, dress by Dark Star, jacket by Superdry, boots by Dr Martin, foundation by Dior, lipstick by Rimmel.


Emelie is standing at the gate to her parent's house; it's quite a few years since she's been there. The sun is high and hot although the trees are still leafless, and there's a smell from the barn of old rotting hay and weathered warm wood. The rutted track stretches off in front of her over the hills and far away. She longs to follow it.