A hot day in Malaga

1–2 minutes

From my tiny holiday flat, located on the top floor of one of the grand buildings of central Malaga I can see the very top of the cathedral. A large panoramic window, covering most of one wall in the small studio is like a screen to me, with a bird-eye view of this magnificent city. The cathedral, resplendently entitled “Santa Iglesia Catedral Basilica de la Encarnation”, is a Baroque cake-like creation, first started in 1528 and finished in 1782. The vast building is as resplendent as its name. It incarnates power and glamour, with aspirations bursting out of every stone curve. It is now being renovated. I can see a wooden skeleton of the new roof. Construction workers in hard hats and reflective vests are moving figurines on the top floor and the side terraces. They dash about, lifting, carrying, drilling.

The rest of Malaga is awake but still quiet, or at least quieter than it will become later in the day. Seagulls’ cries punctuate the quiet and so do the dozens or maybe hundreds of glass bottles being poured into a recycling container. Their crashing is the last memory of the night before, which has now melted like an ice cube: once shiny, firm and self-sufficient, it has shrunk, creating an unsightly puddle and then evaporated altogether. The bang of the bottles is its last hurray. It is now gone forever.

On the bus: a Susan Vega tribute

I was on a bus early this morning, surrounded by people either just coming off their nightshifts or on the way to their early shifts, maybe cleaning, maybe reception-ing. Two young South Asians, a girl and a skinny young man in a Macdonald’s cap got on. The girl, giggling and flirting, an invincible optimist on a minimum wage. They chatted for a few minutes, the young man monosyllabic, most likely tired.

The girl left him be and phoned – probably – her family, somewhere thousands of miles away. A video call, she in her large white headphones, a man (a brother?) and an older woman (a mother, a grandmother?), on her phone screen. “Is it hot?” she kept demanding, stroking the screen with her thin brown finger.

Thin fingers, wrists and hands, despite the rest of her being plump, maybe fast food related. She keeps giggling, she listens, she asks questions in heavily accented English. Her hair is in a beautiful long pony tail, silky and strong, like horse’s hair, reaching to her thighs.

Kateryna Khinkulova

I am a fiction writer. I have published two novels, one play and some short stories. I have also written a 16-episode TV series about love, loss and criminal masterminds. In my work live I’ve written countless news articles and analysis, but that’s less relevant for here. I love words, images and stories, and have a wild imagination which keeps life interesting, as if it weren’t interesting enough. What do you like?

The Campari Conundrum: A Sort of Murder Mystery

The copper smell was getting stronger and by now he was almost certain it was blood. Getting inside the house no longer seemed sensible, but he couldn’t help himself.

He was scared, but he also wanted to get back to his desk, where he left his journal — the one with the sketches, the notes, the half-finished letter he’d never meant to send. 

He stepped deeper into the hallway, each footfall echoing louder than it should. The shadows clung to the corners like cobwebs, and the smell — sharp, metallic, undeniable — seemed to thicken with every step.

He reached the edge of the living room and froze. The door to his study was ajar. Just slightly. But he was certain he’d closed it that morning.

Another cup

☕

He was waiting for Valeria in their usual cafe, at the usual table, his back to the window, his face to the green wall.

He was hungry as it was late morning and he hadn’t had breakfast, as he never had on Friday mornings, their assigned meeting time. It was now past 11, and with his usual getting time at 5, he was starving. 

The cafe smelt good as always: toast, cakes, donuts, sugar and spice. It was unlike Valeria to be late. He resisted messaging her, they had agreed to only message in the most extreme emergencies. He felt this had not qualified for an extreme emergency, not yet. He was on time, Valeria usually came a few minutes earlier. Now it was nearly quarter past eleven and still no sign of her. 

Hope and movement

He was thoughtful and broody, and often considered it a weakness: reflecting too much. 

Nothing ever passed his eye line without being taken in as a sign, a story to unfold and be told. Littlestest things inspired him – a fluttering leaf, a ripple on the calm water surface, a shadow of a woman’s silhouette. But the problem was, and again, something he himself considered a problem, – these inspirations never turned into anything longer lasting. He got inspired, he reflected, he brooded. And then the through, the reflection, the inspiration fluttered away, like the leaf or the water ripple. He was left behind, wondering what could have been. 

He shared this as an observation with his friend Valeria, who listened and shrugged. He and Valeria could not have been more different. She was all go, ambition personified.

Pre Autumn Coincidences

Never one for observing times of year and for saying things like ‘oh i can always feel the clocks change, summer time hits me so bad (or winter )’. But this year… this year I find myself reading a book serendipitously (I spelled it right first time, btw), given to me by the Magical Tanya, a few months ago, when we met, for the second time in our lives and had an extraordinarily sincere, open conversation, of the kind that’s soooooo rare, even between the oldest of friends. We sat at a bar-style table in a Japanese-style cafe, attached to the Japanese culture centre, with paper lamps dangling over our heads and Manga cartoon characters on the walls and katzu-everything on the menu. Magical Tanya, as always, a picture of elegance, despite being laden with bags, most of them filled with books, new, old, very old and it was her last night in London. 

The Woman Who Was Right

The airport is bursting at the seams, the rush of humanity like an ocean. Thousands of droplets washing across Heathrow Terminal 5 may seem impersonal, yet there is a story in each one. Tamara is observing the tide from her tall stool by a champagne bar. Queues to Starbucks and Pret were insufferably long. She didn’t want alcohol but was forced to get a very small and expensive glass just to keep the bartender less annoyed. All she wanted was black coffee. 

The Woman Who Was Wrong

Tonya will always remember their first meeting. She wasn’t in a bar waiting for a date, she wasn’t on a train for a what-are-the-chances encounter, she wasn’t in a fancy department store, trying perfume. Their eyes didn’t meet across the crowded floor, there was no instant chemistry. When she looked back and thought about their first meeting, her reaction was “this is not how you meet the love of your life”. She wished she’d looked better, she wished her lips were glossy, her hair in effortless fluffy curls, her figure, still excellent after three children, –  in shapely jeans. Tonya wished she could return to a moment in time and think: “This is how I met the Love of My Life”. She wished that even now. She thinks it would somehow affect what happened later.

The Woman Who Had Everything

Lily wakes up, as she often does, in the middle of the night. She knows what time it is even without looking at her bedside alarm clock. Insomnia made her an expert on telling the time. Darkness outside her window is Turkish coffee thick. It must be before 3 am. She makes a few guesses whether it’s 02:38 or 02:51 before she finally reaches for her phone. It is 02:47. She carefully slides to the edge of the bed and slips off trying not to wake Jasper. She fails, as usual. Not normally a light sleeper, he is attuned to her nightly problem. He sits up in bed rubbing his face, shaking his head.