Excerpt: Nine Short Stories About Ducks

The night she died, I changed the curtains.

"How can you possibly expect me to spend the last moments of my life in a room with such hideous curtains, Annabel?" she boomed as I climbed the stepladder to hang the new curtains.

I didn't point out that they were the same curtains she herself had selected from the catalogue only a few short weeks before. Instead, I concentrated intensely on ensuring the new, purple drapes are perfectly spaced.

I finished hanging the final section of purple curtain and climbed down from the little stepladder. At any moment, I was expecting her voice to complain that the cushions, or the bedding, or the rug no longer matched the new curtains and I'd be sent to fetch replacements.

But there was no voice. I turned and looked.

"Eleanor?" I asked.

For the first time in four years, she actually looked like she was really dying. Her face was pale and thin, her crystal blue eyes seemed to be looking somewhere past me. Her dry lips opened, and, with an effort, she said the last words she'd ever speak during her lifetime.

"That will have to do".

(the opening few sentences of "Annie, Alone")