Lilo is one of the short stories dug up from my floppy disc archive – recently restored to me. I’m presenting it here in a slightly revised form, which is short-hand for me having excised all the bits from the original 1997 edition that felt in some way clunky or surplus to requirements when I read it again all these years later. This already short story just got shorter.
Aged nineteen or thereabouts I went on holiday with my girlfriend, my best mate, and his girlfriend. It was one of those sun, sea and sex holidays – a rite of passage you might say. The core exchange in this story is exactly what happened to my friend and I as we were lying beside the pool minding our own business. Like the resulting story, the episode was over in a matter of minutes, but I can recall even now how disquieted I felt for days afterwards, how entirely unsafe.
You can find a large print PDF version here.
Red's Kingdom 
Some children already know too much. (K)
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Indeed, I was left with nothing but questions about this unpleasant moment – it was power really, or rather powerlessness, and also questions about how the child knew how precisely unsettle in this way – a thought that is unsettling in itself.
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