Need / Moving Messages (Storycuts)

Need / Moving Messages (Storycuts)

Summary

In 'Need', Biddy longs to escape the noise and claustrophobia of the travelling circus she calls home, the chaotic family she shares her cramped quarters with, and the teasing, intimidating presence of Little Midge - the neighbour boy who spies on her. The lack of a plan and her attachment to the frail fortune-teller Rosa, is all that prevents Biddy from leaving. But when tragedy strikes, Biddy finds comfort in an unlikely figure.

In 'Moving messages', Didi is afflicted by a curious condition: 'poetic tinnitus', which causes poetic snippets to ricochet around her mind at all moments. Despite this, she feels content with her lot, living in the country and making quilts to forge a living. She is happy - or is she? When Didi visits a glamorous old school companion in London, her self-doubt flares up, but she soon begins to see the cracks beneath the perfect veneer of her friend's life.

Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were previously published in the collection The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read.

About the author

Susan Hill

SUSAN HILL has been a professional writer for over fifty years. Her books have won awards and prizes including the Whitbread, the John Llewellyn Rhys and a Somerset Maugham, and have been shortlisted for the Booker. Her novels include Strange Meeting, I'm the King of the Castle, In the Springtime of the Year and The Mist in the Mirror. She has also published autobiographical works and collections of short stories as well as the Simon Serrailler series of crime novels. The play of her ghost story The Woman in Black is one of the longest running in the history of London's West End. In 2020 she was awarded a damehood (DBE) for services to literature. She has two adult daughters and lives in North Norfolk.
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