‘Wizards’ is the first story in Escape Routes, Naomi Ishiguro’s debut collection. It’s about two young men, strangers whose lives brush each other one fateful day in Brighton, as strangers’ lives do on summer days in seaside towns. Peter (or ‘Luciano the Diviner’, as he’s known to his customers) has a fortune-telling stall and his father’s voice in his head, criticising everything he does; Alfie can’t play with the other children, but he’s going to become a wizard when he turns eleven, so he has something to look forward to. Both are facing that summer feeling, destined to return again and again, like a season, throughout one’s life: perched on an ocean of possibilities, they brace themselves to jump in, with no clue what’s going to happen next.

Ishiguro’s beautiful, sea-clear prose effortlessly evokes the texture of childhood holidays, in a story that smells of suncream and has the too-sweet taste of ice lollies. Above all, it conjures the exhilarating and terrifying feeling of endless possibilities associated with the first days of summer.

First published in Escape Routes, Tinder Press, 2020. Picked by Raffaella Sero. Raffaella is a writer and theatre-maker. Her fiction has appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Profiles Journal, Seaside Gothic and Passageways (Sans. Press). Her one-woman show The Other will be on at the King’s Head Theatre in London on 21st July and at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2023.