The HiAce van eased to a stop in the train station car park. Ossian’s uncle said nothing. In silence, they emerged into the morning light and slipped behind the van. Ossian took his time, soaking up his surroundings: the row of commuters’ cars, the boarded-up station house, the pinkish sky over the town below, and…

Burls threw water over his face and ruffled the tight curls of his thick hair like pigeons did in the fountain in Washington Square Park. In his first week at NYU, he learned how just being in the city slickens you with a creeping layer of grime. It wasn’t always visible, but the dirt was…

With the euphoria of some chemical released to prepare me for impact, of held-down car horns announcing, with the high-pitched whine of brakes shrieking in distress – the car veering towards a stretch of grassy median before performing an elaborate skidding manoeuvre, as if all grip conceded by the four tyres at once, kicking up…

There’s an issue with one of my friends, Hector. He has a tendency to introduce me to gangsters and dealers. It’s only after the fact that he’ll say: “Here’s the scoop. That guy runs the heroin out of Darndale to the whole of North Dublin.”

My mules needed rest, as did I. In the distance, what seemed like a village. I dismounted and walked about. I was thrilled to find we spoke the same tongue. An elderly man with yellow fingernails led me to his home. His wife and granddaughter sat atop a floor of littered purple flowers. I noticed…

My first brother died of a disease with no name, or at least a disease with no name seventy years ago. They have presumably named it by now. Only eight at the time of his passing, he was the first of us to break my mother’s heart as she tended to him through the night,…