Horatio Smith spends every day telling fibs. This habit is woven throughout the fabric of his days, weeks and months just as threads in a tapestry form a picture. Indeed, if you follow each of the stories Horatio tells, it will tell you a great deal about the man who lives in the attic in the house at the end of the street.

We don’t have time to unravel the entire warp and weft of his fabrications today. No. Horatio is in a great hurry, which is unusual for him. A man who is six feet tall and spindly is not built for speed. He is designed for lounging, for unfolding himself gently and deliberately from his old wing-backed chair, which is positioned just so to the left of his fireplace. In his fertile imagination, the grate burns merrily with logs that have been gathered from a nearby wood and seasoned to perfection. In reality, a two-bar electric fire takes pride of place in the Victorian grate, its electric cord snaking around the chimney breast to a socket which is fixed slightly askew to the plaster-clad wall. Oh, and by the way, there is no ‘nearby wood’. If you peer out of Horatio’s grimy dormer window, all you can see for miles are rooftops. His is not a rural retreat. Continue reading “Tapestry” →