This story is an uncomfortable read for aspiring writers. An established author befriends Marcia, a woman desperate to be published. Marcia feels her own life is small and her terrible hope that the friendship will turn to literary success is palpable in the text.

“She didn’t see how to go on. She did sometimes feel like this, although it was more ominous now. She had been writing for ten years and had never given up hope.” 

Published in Midnight All Day, Faber & Faber,1999, and then in Collected Stories, Faber, 2011