During my teenage years, the BBC produced adaptations of a series of Roald Dahl’s short stories, entitled Tales of the Unexpected. The themes were rather risqué for the apparently respectable world of my childhood. The stories revealed Dahl’s cynicism about human relationships and often suggested the possibility that life takes revenge on those who are immoral. I loved the nasty edge in those stories and the lack of comfortable resolution. Later I read them and this one, in particular, stuck in my mind.
First published in the 1959 issue of Nugget. Then in Kiss, Kiss, Alfred A. Knopf, 1960
A Personal Anthology 